Commercial Crew Flight by 2015?

I was watching NASA TV and caught part of Congressional Committee
discussing/grilling Administrator / General(?) Bolden on the Obama
space plan and he stated that he expected the first Commercial Crewed
Flight to occur by 2015. How likely is this to happen?

I checked the Space X site, since they are the only ones who are
designing a return craft that is being designed for Crewed
flight( Heck Orbital is only designing a craft to deliver cargo to the
station only! http://www.orbital.com/CargoResupplyServices/) and found
this
http://www.spacex.com/launch_manifest.php.
Which looks like they are 'planning' at least 11 resupply flights by
2015. Not clear if the the last ones would be crewed or not.
So how likely is this to happen?


Just my $0.02

Keith W of St Louis, AKA Space Cadet

Not Racist
Not Violent
Just No Longer Silent

On 05/13/2010 11:15 AM, Space Cadet wrote:
I was watching NASA TV and caught part of Congressional Committee
discussing/grilling Administrator / General(?) Bolden on the Obama
space plan and he stated that he expected the first Commercial Crewed
Flight to occur by 2015. How likely is this to happen?

I checked the Space X site, since they are the only ones who are
designing a return craft that is being designed for Crewed
flight( Heck Orbital is only designing a craft to deliver cargo to the
station only! http://www.orbital.com/CargoResupplyServices/) and found
this
http://www.spacex.com/launch_manifest.php.
Which looks like they are 'planning' at least 11 resupply flights by
2015. Not clear if the the last ones would be crewed or not.

None of the 11 resupply flights currently planned will be crewed.

So how likely is this to happen?

No one knows; anyone who claims they do is BSing.

On Thu, 13 May 2010 09:15:34 -0700 (PDT), Space Cadet
wrote:

Which looks like they are 'planning' at least 11 resupply flights by
2015. Not clear if the the last ones would be crewed or not.

Nope.

So how likely is this to happen?

General concensus is "pretty good chance". There seems to be little
doubt that SpaceX could have a crewed Dragon in five years, although
it might still be in the test phase. (They claim three years from
go-ahead. Add 2 years for "oopsies" like the Falcon 1 Follies.)
Lockheed-Martin should be able to get an Atlas-launched Orion ready by
then, most of the trials and tribulations of Orion were due to Ares
I's ever dwindling performance envelope and annoying desire to shake
its payloads to death.

This assumes the money to do either or both shows up. Right now,
Congress is screaming bloody murder at the very suggestion of it.

Brian