SpaceX’s Crew Dragon officially became the longest-lived American astronaut spacecraft ever built, breaking a record of 84 days set by the Apollo-era Skylab-4 mission almost half a century ago.
Crew Dragon was able to break that record so quickly because NASA ended up choosing to cannibalize its existing Saturn rocket and the Apollo CSM spacecraft experience, production capabilities and budget to go all-in on the Space Shuttle program. In order to be reusable quickly and cheaply, a wide range of commitments, budget deficits and design errors by committee ended up producing a bus that was terribly complex, unsafe, only partially reusable, below ideal for most tasks and more expensive to launch than Saturn V.
The space shuttle was ultimately a beast to refurbish and “reuse”, often requiring almost complete disassembly and reassembly and extensive rework on most propellant components. Partly due to these extreme deficiencies and a catastrophically fatal launch failure just five years after its debut, the Shuttle was never able to come close to realizing its limited but still strong potential, including a maximum orbital longevity of just two weeks or more .
As a result, NASA went from Saturn I, Saturn V and CSM – a combination that allowed single-launch space stations, manned space flights of several months and the Apollo Program – to the Space Shuttle, an anchor that pulled the human from the space agency agency’s ambitions to return to low Earth orbit (LEO). In defense of the space shuttle, NASA ended up joining an international initiative to build the International Space Station (ISS), a program that the space shuttle supported with several dozen launches of crucial modules, components and supplies.
However, if NASA had been able to continue the Skylab program with Saturn and CSM, a space station with a habitable volume similar to the ISS of 2021 could have been completed in just three launches, compared to no less than 30 launches to build the ISS.
After all, after an unfortunate and unnecessary 47-year pause, SpaceX – with funding from NASA – has returned the space agency and the US to its push-push legacy. In the wake of 20 successful Screwless Cargo Dragon missions to and from the ISS over the past 9 years, all of which have spent about a month in orbit, the third launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon has already broken the US record of longevity of manned spaceships in orbit and is ultimately about to fold it before the mission ends.
Crew Dragon’s Crew-1 astronauts even celebrated the landmark in orbit with (though virtually) Ed Gibson, one of three astronauts who set the Skylab-4 record 47 years earlier. Furthermore, in a pleasant coincidence, Skylab-4 and SpaceX Crew-1 were almost launched on the same day, meaning that tomorrow (February 8) is the true 47th anniversary of the Skylab-4 mission re-entry and splash.
In all, all Crew Dragon operational missions – of which Crew-1 is the first – are scheduled to spend approximately 180 days in orbit between launch and re-entry. As the first U.S. spacecraft (and first private spacecraft) for attempt on such a long space flight, there is obviously some uncertainty and no guarantee that this first attempt will not be interrupted, but chances are in SpaceX’s favor that the Crew Dragon C207 capsule will leave the ISS smoothly and safely return its flight crew. four astronauts to Earth in May 2021.
