SpaceX pausing production of new Crew Dragon spacecraft

SpaceX

The company will no longer build new vehicles of its Crew Dragon capsule, which is used to take humans to and from the International Space Station, according to a report. The plan is to cap the Crew Dragon fleet for carrying humans at four, which will allow the company to get crews to space again and again.

We are finishing our final capsule, but we still make components, because we will be refurbished, according to the president. After each flight of a Crew Dragon, the vehicle must be refurbished in Florida, where certain hardware is changed or swapped out to make it flight ready again. The company did not reply to the request.

The Crew Dragon was developed for NASA's Commercial Crew Program, an initiative to spur the creation of private vehicles to ferry agency astronauts back and forth from the International Space Station. Four astronauts from NASA have been sent to the International Space Station on the Crew Dragon. In September of last year, the company launched its first fully private crew, carrying four civilian astronauts to Earth for a three-day trip.

The company has a lot of future trips planned for the four Crew Dragons, each of which has been named by their first astronauts.

A crew of four private astronauts will travel to the space station on a Crew Dragon in a week. After the first human mission to the International Space Station on Crew Dragon, there will be at least three more. NASA still has a contract with the company to send crews to the International Space Station every six months. In February, NASA awarded three more human missions with Crew Dragon to the International Space Station, on top of the six that had been contracted to do. The award of the Commercial Crew contract with NASA was brought about by the news.

While the production of the Crew Dragon has been paused, plenty of resources are being poured into the development of the company's new Starship rocket, a massive new vehicle designed to carry people and cargo to deep space destinations like the Moon and Mars. If necessary, Shotwell says that the company can restart Crew Dragon production.