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SpaceX’s Crew Dragon has room for several astronauts, but how many can safely squeeze inside?
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft has become the new workhorse for NASA astronauts and space tourists into orbit, but the number of people it carries on each flight has varied over its lifetime. We thought it would be interesting to see how many people can fly on different types of flights.
Crew Dragon was developed with support from NASA for the agency’s commercial crew program and made its first flight in May 2020. It usually carries a crew of four. Crew Dragon is based in part on the Dragon spacecraft that has been delivering supplies to the International Space Station since May 2012, but includes human-friendly features such as touch screens, seats, life support systems, and a space toilet.
Related: 8 ways SpaceX has changed spaceflight
DragonX’s SpaceX was originally designed to carry 7 people
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When it was first unveiled in May 2014, Crew Dragon was originally designed to carry seven people. Dubbed the Dragon V2, the craft’s founder Elon Musk said at the time that features of the new spacecraft included reusability and the planned ability to land with helicopter precision.
He added, after revealing the interior of the capsule, which is complete with seven seats arranged in two rows, four at the top and three at the bottom: “This is how the spacecraft should land in the twenty-first century.”
At the time, NASA was seeking a full seven-man capacity from SpaceX to allow full complements of ISS crews. Between 2011 and 2020, following the retirement of the space shuttle, the station was reduced to six personnel (or the capacity of two Russian Soyuz vehicles).
Having seven people on board instead of six means more hands-on deck for science, since maintenance takes up a share of the astronauts’ time. Once SpaceX really began sending manned missions to the station, the orbiting lab’s crew size was already upgraded to seven, but with four riding on Dragons and three on Russian Soyuz capsules. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon also launches into the ocean off the coast of Florida instead of landing on land.
SpaceX’s Dragon Demo-2 flight with astronauts
The SpaceX Demo-2 test flight for NASA was the Crew Dragon’s first crewed flight in May 2020, carrying only two astronauts, although four seats were moved. It was a test flight to the International Space Station and it lasted 63 days, 23 hours and 25 minutes.
SpaceX says its spacecraft needs at least two people, who will be a commander and a pilot. The crew was Commander Douglas Hurley and Pilot Robert Behnken, both NASA astronauts on their third and final spaceflight. Mission accomplished with a safe launch, mooring, dismounting, landing and splashdown with the pair on board.
During the Demo-2 mission, SpaceX launched a Crew Dragon capsule with four seats installed, although the test flight only carried a two-person crew. From launch to launch, Beta 2 lasted about two months and showed that Crew Dragon was ready to carry an even larger crew.
Crew Dragon configuration for 4 people
Starting with Crew-1, its first operational flight in November 2020, SpaceX has settled on a four-person configuration for NASA and private crew flights.
The billionaire-funded Inspiration4 flew a five-day space mission in September 2021 with four people on board. Its leader and financier, Jared Isaacman, later created a follow-up series called the Polaris Special Flight-on-Dragon Program that would see the first Polaris Dawn mission fly in 2023 or so, carrying another crew of four.
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Inspiration4 appeared in a variant on Crew Dragon: a wrap-around dome window for the crew to enjoy high-altitude views of the Earth. That’s because Resilience didn’t need to carry a docking port for ISS activities, allowing space for the window to be installed.
Crew capacity was up to four people for a week without docking, or six months with docking.
Related: Inspiration 4: SpaceX’s historic private spaceflight in pictures
Potential dragon for 5 people for Soyuz emergencies
We also saw an unusual situation in early 2023 that demonstrated the possibility of adding a fifth seat during an ongoing space mission that was supposed to bring home only four people.
On December 14, 2022, the crew of the International Space Station lost their way home when the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, called MS-22, lost all of its coolant due to a micrometeor strike. The Russian space agency Roscosmos sent a second Soyuz aircraft, the MS-23, as a replacement ride; It successfully docked with the space station on February 25, 2023. But something was needed to push the crew through a two-month gap before the new spacecraft arrived.
Roskosmos has determined that two of the MS-22 crew, cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petlin, can go home in it in the event of an evacuation from the International Space Station. Two people heat the spacecraft less than three. But Frank Rubio, a NASA astronaut, will still need to leave some other way during an emergency.
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NASA officials said Jan. 18 that the solution was to seat Rubio inside the Crew Dragon docked on the International Space Station at the same time as MS-22. more than Soyuz. Then I took some cargo straps from the Dragon cargo vehicle, whose mission was known as CRS-26, for a clever repurposing.
Steve Stitch, program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said during a press update on January 25, 2023.
Thus, Crew Dragon can fly up to seven people. We’ve also learned that modifications to spacecraft can be made in flight if needed, allowing a wide variety of space crews to use them for orbital activities.
Elizabeth Howell is co-author of “Why am I taller (Opens in a new tab)? (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book on space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @employee (Opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @tweet (Opens in a new tab) or Facebook (Opens in a new tab).
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