The Rocky Marriage of SpaceX and NASA

When the Crew Dragon capsule splashed down recently in the Gulf of Mexico, it marked the consummation of a marriage between two organizations with cultures about as different as could be. SpaceX became the first company to launch astronauts into orbit, ahead of competitor Boeing, whose first test flight ran into a series of major problems. Boeing's corporate culture was much closer to NASA's, but in the end, the upstart won the race.

CNN looks at the political and cultural history of the relationship between the two organizations, a relationship that was hardly made in heaven, but turned out well in the end. 

The prevailing perception was "they're cowboys; they're dangerous; they're going to kill somebody," said former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman, a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions who joined SpaceX in 2011 as a senior engineer, working on Crew Dragon development.

Even after SpaceX began to prove its engineering chops and was awarded multibillion-dollar NASA contracts, cultural divisions kept tensions brewing behind the scenes.

NASA repeatedly signaled that it was more confident in its legacy partner, Boeing (BA), which was developing the Starliner, a spacecraft to rival SpaceX's Crew Dragon.

As recently as 2016, NASA was planning its schedule around the idea that the Starliner would beat the Crew Dragon to the launch pad. And, as recently as last September, NASA chief Jim Bridenstine and Elon Musk were publicly sparring over whether SpaceX was paying adequate attention to the spacecraft's development.

But by the new year, Boeing and SpaceX's race to the launch pad took a clear turn. A Starliner test flight in December was riddled with missteps and left NASA and Boeing officials scrambling to figure out what went wrong. Shortly afterward, SpaceX's Crew Dragon soared through its final testing milestones, and, in the midst of a pandemic, swiftly prepared for its crowning launch achievement.

NASA officials admitted earlier this month that they had turned a more scrutinizing eye toward SpaceX and its unorthodox ways, while issues with Boeing's Starliner slipped through the cracks.