SpaceX pausing production of new Crew Dragon spacecraft
SpaceX says it will no longer build new vehicles of its Crew Dragon capsule, the spacecraft the company uses to take humans to and from the International Space Station, according to a report in Reuters. The plan for now is to cap the Crew Dragon fleet for carrying humans at four, which SpaceX will re-fly again and again to get crews to space.
“We are finishing our final [capsule], but we still are manufacturing components, because we’ll be refurbishing,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told Reuters. After each flight of a Crew Dragon, the spacecraft must go through a refurbishment process in Florida, where certain hardware is tweaked or swapped out to make the vehicle flight-ready again. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.