NASA Rushing SpaceX For Commercial Spaceflight: ‘It’s Time To Deliver’

Just before SpaceX and Elon Musk unveiled details of the reusable Starship spacecraft, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine reminded the company about its commitment to deliver commercial spaceflights for the agency.

Earlier this weekend, Musk hosted a presentation about the company’s future plans for visiting Mars. During the event, Musk also talked about the latest developments regarding Starship, which is set to be SpaceX’s fully reusable spacecraft.

Prior to the event, Bridenstine seemed to remind SpaceX regarding its commitment to NASA as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew program, which has been delayed due to issues encountered by the company.

Based on his statement, it seems Bridenstine is not too happy about SpaceX not being able to deliver what it promised.

“I am looking forward to the SpaceX announcement tomorrow,” Bridenstine said in a statement. “In the meantime, Commercial Crew is years behind schedule. NASA expects to see the same level of enthusiasm focused on the investments of the American taxpayer.”

“It’s time to deliver,” the NASA official added.

Through the Commercial Crew program, which was established in 2010, SpaceX, as well as other private companies such as Boeing, were awarded multibillion-dollar deals to deliver spacecraft that can be used by NASA.

As part of the deal, SpaceX agreed to develop the Crew Dragon capsule, which was supposed to transport astronauts to the International Space Station starting in 2017. Unfortunately, due to various issues including a failed test that left the Crew Dragon destroyed, SpaceX was not able to meet NASA’s deadlines.

Recently, Musk responded to Bridenstine’s statement and maintained that the development of Starship will not interfere with the Crew Dragon’s progress. According to the tech mogul, Starship only takes up a small percentage of the company’s operations and the bulk of SpaceX’s resources have been allocated for the development of projects that are part of the Commercial Crew program.

“To be clear, the vast majority of our resources are on Dragon and Falcon, especially Crew Dragon,” Musk said, according to Space.com. “It was really quite a small percentage of SpaceX that’s [devoted to] Starship – less than 5% of the company, basically.”