The American space agency is essentially now contracting out crew transport to SpaceX.
Whereas in the past, Nasa engineers would have top-down control of all aspects of vehicle design and the agency would own and operate the hardware - the relationship with industry has been put on a completely new footing.
Today, Nasa sets broad requirements and industry is given plenty of latitude in how it meets those demands.
Agency officials still check off every step, but the approach is regarded as faster, more efficient and less costly.
"I fully expect we're going to learn something on this flight," said Bill Gerstenmaier, Nasa's head of human spaceflight.
"I guarantee that not everything will work exactly right. That's cool. That's exactly what we want to do.
"We want to maximise our learning so we can get this stuff ready so that when we put crew on, we're ready to go do a real crew mission, and it'll be the right safety for our crews.
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