Elon Musk’s SpaceX sneaks ahead of Boeing in race to be first company to send astronauts into space
Nasa approached the companies to revive the US’s ability to fly to the International Space Station without buying seats on Russian Soyuz capsules
San Francisco/Dallas — Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies is set to beat Boeing in the battle to be the first company to ferry American astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX plans to fly Demo-2, its first crewed test flight, in April 2019, while Boeing’s Crew Test Flight is now slated for mid-2019, according to a new schedule that Nasa released on Thursday. Both dates are later than the companies had been targeting. Nasa awarded both companies a combined $6.8bn in September 2014 to revive the US’s ability to fly to the orbiting lab without buying seats on Russian Soyuz capsules — berths that cost about $80m apiece. Nasa will announce which astronauts will fly with Boeing and SpaceX at an event on Friday at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft will blast off atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket, while SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft will travel on the company’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. In July, the Government Ac...
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