 NASA has released the milestones for its most recent and final round of the Commercial Crew Development Program. This is your space pod for March 17th, 2015. NASA announced on September 16th of 2014 that they selected Boeing and SpaceX to continue development in their Commercial Crew Development Program. This contract is called the Commercial Crew Transportation Capabilities Contract or CCT Cap, and this contract will have the final testing, development, and certification of crew transportation systems that will provide operational flights for NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. On March 3rd, NASA released the redacted contracts outlining the milestones both companies are expected to accomplish before operations begin. And what I mean by redacted is that everything in those contracts that had to do with money, whether it be how much money would be awarded when the milestones are reached or how much the actual launch services would cost, were all blacked out. NASA wants to award $6.8 billion through fiscal year 2015-2019, per congressional approval. In the past, Congress has underfunded the Commercial Crew Program, but in 2014-2015 they actually started giving more towards the program as they see the necessity of and the virtues of having our own transportation system other than Russia. Of that $6.8 billion, NASA wants to give $4.2 billion to Boeing and $2.6 billion to SpaceX. So let's get into the details and see where all that money would be going. Let's talk about Boeing first. Boeing is building what they're calling the CST-100 Crew Capsule, and it's designed to carry up to seven people to the International Space Station, although NASA's requirements are for four people and cargo. The goals that Boeing has already completed towards the Commercial Crew Transportation Capabilities contract so far is a certification baseline review, which is essentially an outline of all the goals that Boeing has set for itself in order to accomplish this, as well as NASA's requirements that they have set so far. They've also completed a ground segment, Curitical Design Review, which essentially is a review of all of their different ground testing, their simulators, flight software, and their mission control center. They've started construction on the Crew Access Tower on the Atlas V launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41 in Cape Canaveral. Also according to John Elbon, the Vice President and General Manager of Boeing Space Exploration, he said that the uncrewed and crewed flight tests of the CST-100 are already on the launch manifests for the Atlas V. The uncrewed test would fly on the 74th Atlas V, and the crewed flight test would fly on the 80th Atlas V. Remodeling of the orbital processing facility number three at Kennedy Space Center is on schedule and the hardware for the structural test article has already been delivered. Boeing still has to complete a critical design review, which is a review of the design of the CST-100 spacecraft to make sure that it meets all of NASA's requirements before they start manufacturing the actual capsule that will be on the first crewed flight test. The flight software that they're going to use is going to arrive sometime this summer so that they can start utilizing their simulators. Later on this year, they're going to need to prove that their software and the actual flight computers that they're going to use can demonstrate nominal launch, docking, and the orbit of the CST-100 capsule. They're going to need a readiness review of their qualification test vehicle, which is going to undergo all the structural tests, and they're going to need approval of their mission control center and the simulations that they're going to perform there. Boeing has tentatively scheduled a pad abort test of their CST-100 in February of 2017. That's going to be followed up by an uncrewed flight test in April of 2017 and a crewed flight test in July of 2017. And that crewed flight will have one Boeing test pilot on board and one NASA astronaut. If everything goes according to plan, then they're going to get their certification to begin services in December of 2017. And that'll be right within the deadline of having crewed transportation vehicles available by 2017. All right, let's talk about SpaceX now. SpaceX is building their crewed Dragon capsule or Dragon V2. And like the CST-100, it's going to have a pusher escape system. And the escape system has dual use as a propulsive lander. Although landings won't be certified initially and will still utilize parachutes to safely return to Earth. SpaceX still has two milestones to complete under the previous contract CCiCAP or Commercial Crew Integrated Capability. And those milestones are a pad abort test, which according to Gwen Shotwell, she said back in January 26th that they were a month or so away from doing that test. So here we are in March and that pad abort test could be imminent. The other milestone, which they're planning to accomplish later this year, would be an in-flight abort test, which would take place during the maximum dynamic pressure of Falcon 9's Ascent. But that's for CCiCAP, for CC-T-CAP or the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability. SpaceX has already completed their certification baseline review. And everything looks good for all the milestones that SpaceX and NASA have put forth. Construction has begun on a horizontal integration facility near Launchpad 39A, where crewed flights will launch from. SpaceX also is currently using Space Launch Complex 40 for Commercial and NASA cargo flights, but all of their crewed flights will take place from Launchpad 39A. The milestones that SpaceX still needs to complete for this contract is they need to complete the testing for their propulsion module and they need to complete their critical design review of the Dragon V2. They also need to complete their qualification testing for their docking system, which should be easy since their Dragon capsule has already visited the ISS several times. They're going to need to have an operational readiness review of the launch site twice actually, once for the uncrewed flight and again for the crewed flight. Although SpaceX has stated that they wouldn't initially be certified to have propulsive landing of their Dragon capsule, one of the milestones is a propulsive land landing. That's scheduled to take place in September of 2015 and I couldn't find in the contract whether or not that was for the Dragon capsule or for the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket. And with the September 2015 timeframe, that might also line up with their in-flight abort test. So if those two tests happen to coincide, either one of those vehicles, either the Falcon 9 first stage or the Dragon capsule could attempt a propulsive land landing. So I'll be very interested to see what takes place in September. An uncrewed flight test of the Dragon capsule is scheduled to take place in March of 2016. They're also going to have life support integration reviews, parachute qualifications, spacesuit qualifications and finally a crewed flight test to the International Space Station in October of 2016. Again, if everything goes according to plan, then SpaceX is going to be certified to begin crew transportation services in April of 2017. So I've explained what this contract is and a little bit about how they're planning to do it. But what I haven't talked about is why NASA and these companies are doing this at all. The short-term goal is that NASA wants to bring the price down from roughly $70 million per seat that we're paying the Russians to fly American astronauts on Russian Soyuz capsules. They want to bring that price down to about $58 million per seat to these American commercial providers instead. The long-term goal is to enable low Earth orbit infrastructure to be handled completely by industry so that NASA can go to CIS lunar space and eventually to Mars. This is not a hoax, this is not a dream, this is happening. We're going to give you guys lots of updates as this program continues in advances because I love human spaceflight, especially commercial crew. Because if a commercial space industry can be successful, that might mean that one day regular people like me can actually go to space. And that is a future I want to live in. Thank you very much for watching this space pod. My name is Michael Clark and don't forget to subscribe to our channel. And if you're interested in helping us out, please visit patreon.com slash tmro to find out more information about how you can become a patron of tomorrow. I have been loving these comments that you guys have been leaving on the space pods and I want to hear more. And if you're so inclined, give us a like, give us a thumbs up, give us a hashtag, give us a plus one and let me know your comments about this whole commercial crew program and what it could mean for human spaceflight. But next time we're going to talk about some disruptive technology that could have implications beyond spaceflight.