NASA has approved the preliminary design review of SpaceX’s launch abort system, which will help crews aboard the Dragon capsule get out of harm’s way should any problems crop up during liftoff, company officials announced last week. With this hurdle cleared, SpaceX can now start building hardware for the system.
Emphasis mine. That’s not my understanding of a PDR. I thought that PDR meant that you could start doing detailed design, advancing to a Critical Design Review. After passing CDR, you start bending metal. Is there not going to be a CDR?
Dana Rohrabacher makes the case. He doesn’t seem to be consistent in his terminology, though. He starts out calling them “fuel” depots, and later switches to “propellant.”