SpaceX Gets Astronauts To Try Out Its Dragon Crew Cabin 84
Zothecula writes "With the space shuttle program now officially over, the United States needs a new reusable vehicle for getting supplies to and from the International Space Station. NASA is considering the Dragon spacecraft, designed by California-based SpaceX Exploration Technologies, to take over that role. The Dragon's scheduled late March/early April test flight to the ISS will be unmanned, utilizing a cargo configuration of the spacecraft. Last Friday, however, SpaceX released photographs of an engineering model of its planned seven-passenger crew cabin, complete with a crew that included real, live astronauts."
Only 4 images? (Score:1)
Re:Only 4 images? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want images of the exterior of the craft, use your search engine of choice: the internet shall provide.
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Hey! (Score:5, Funny)
the exterior of my wessel was sturdy and
Pavel Chekov... is that you?
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as funny as your trying to be, considering this is being made and run by a private corporation. and like all of them they have a financial 'interest' to cut corners. i would not be surprised if it's made of the space craft version of cardboard and duct tape.
as Neil Armstrong pointed out to congress, they value money over safety. and because of that, something is going to fail, and there won't be a backup because backup's cost money.
i personally will not be surprised that the first launch will end with every
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Who do you and Neil Armstrong think built the space shuttles, government employees? From Wikipedia:
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different set up. those programs were non-for profit to use the lack of a better term. the arrangement was not made to seek a profit but to facilitate a goal.
in this instance though you have a for profit company being in complete charge of the design and construction of the vehicle and the u.s. government is merely a paying passenger like everyone else. with a profit motive there is the motivation to increase the profit margin, with such a motivation they start cutting corners. another poster compared this
Re:Only 4 images? (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, the next time you go flying on Delta Airlines, tell me how their safety record is and how they keep killing passengers on every flight they make (or even every once in awhile). While no doubt there are some slackers in the airline industry, there aren't that many.... they simply wouldn't be flying.
Also note that the FAA has jurisdiction over the flying of spacecraft too... from the Office of Commercial Space Transportation. While they are admittedly taking reference information from NASA in terms of human spaceflight experience and safety guidelines, ultimately that vehicle can't fly without FAA approval and even a flight worthiness certificate. Since the Dragon spacecraft is also docking on the ISS, SpaceX also needs to meet NASA standards, as well as JAXA, and Roscosmos standards too! If any one of them says "No", it can't dock up there (or rather be "bearthed" to the ISS as the remote manipulator arm attaches it to the ISS).
Your assertion that the first flight is going to end up with everybody dying is not only trolling, but it should be noted that SpaceX has already flown the spacecraft too... although that flight was unmanned as will be the next several flights as well. It will be on about flight six before any crew is even suggested to go up, where any really risky issues should have been resolved. SpaceX also has some full-time astronauts who are involved with the flight safety protocols who also wouldn't mind being among the first of those going up.... do you think those astronauts are going to risk their own necks on something that doesn't work?
Where SpaceX is saving money is both on the procurement costs and construction of the vehicle, because they don't need to send everything out for a GSA competitive bid nor do they have some congressmen poking them in the side to move some of their production to multiple congressional districts to ensure "their district" gets some more pork. On top of that, SpaceX has done an amazing job of streamlining the production process of building spacecraft by moving almost all of the part production in house and even in the same factory. As was said in the 60 Minutes piece, raw metal comes in one door and spacecraft come out the other. That doesn't happen for other spacecraft by the major builders for many of the reason I mention above and others as well.
The Dragon isn't being build with a cost-plus contract in part because SpaceX doesn't need to. There may be valid reasons to offer such a contract, but putting people into space has long been a solved engineering problem where it is possible to even understand the financial risks of putting people into space. That may not have been possible 50 years ago, but it is today.
Besides, it is in the interest of SpaceX to keep its passengers alive as killing off customers is bad for the bottom line. Elon Musk isn't that stupid.
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The risk to SpaceX of a failure in a Dragon capsule with a crew aboard has huge consequences. Notably the loss of all future NASA contracts for sending people into space.
Dragon has to be safe, or they won't use it. This cost cutting excuse is just that, and excuse.
Also, they will have to send quite a few Dragon cargo missions to the space station before they'll even get the chance at a manned mission.
I'll be very surprised if their first manned launch ends with the loss of the whole crew.
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as Neil Armstrong pointed out to congress, they value money over safety. and because of that, something is going to fail, and there won't be a backup because backup's cost money.
So how do you explain the space shuttle? Money in spite of safety?
NASA needs to be freed-up from doing the mundane and reinventing the wheel. NASA needs to be free to push the envelope. Putting astronauts into LEO is now mundane.
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All American space vehicles were built by private companies with specifications provided by NASA. The commercial vehicles are still being reviewed by NASA for flight worthiness (hence the technical review in TFA). How can you say they have a financial interest to cut corners and ignore the obvious financial interest to succeed? Face it, NASA has had some pretty astronomical failures in its time, and what backups were available in those situa
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Just one question: Where's the bathroom? If I'm having 64oz of my favorite delicious fountain beverage, I'm gonna need to pee...
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Google Image Search "spacex dragon."
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This 60 Minutes piece on SpaceX [cbsnews.com] from last weekend shows videos of Dragon capsules under construction at 4:50, video of the exterior of the capsule they returned from orbit at 10:08, and video of the interior at 10:50.
60 Minutes piece optimistic about SpaceX (Score:4, Interesting)
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I heard on Fox News the first ship will be christened the USS Fake Hawai'in Muslim Socialist.
60 Minutes, Neil Armstrong etc (Score:2)
I guess he's just doing his blind loyalty thing for NASA, but come on. 3 astronauts killed in a pure oxygen atmosphere? 2 shuttles and crew lost spectacularly?
Re:60 Minutes, Neil Armstrong etc (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's not my point. I think some of these guys see the stuff as worthwhile just for its own sake, and lose the fact that millions of people pay billions of dollars so that scores of pilots can fly really fast. And they lose the wonder of the advances made in the everyday world, for the everyday person.
Yesterday, I downloaded an app, for free, to my Android phone. It used satellites and radios to track me a course to ride on my bike superimposed on images sent from a server across the continent. That's fucking amazing. And everyone can do it.
I wonder sometimes if part of the opposition to this sort of space exploration is the fact that, some day, space travel may just not be that special. And they'll lose the romanticism of it.
Re:60 Minutes, Neil Armstrong etc (Score:5, Interesting)
While I will be the first to say that the congressional testimony of Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernen about commercial spaceflight was more shilling for the traditional launcher builders (Lock-Mart, Boeing, ATK) than about any real concerns, there is a legitimate issue at hand in terms of moving to commercial services. There are examples of commercial outsourcing for government services that fall flat on their face (Blackwater Security... to give an example) where it does work better if they are government employees doing the job.
On the other hand, these same guys shilling for the SLS vehicle are also dissing well established vehicles like the Delta IV and Atlas V, suggesting those vehicles are so unreliable that shipping multi-billion dollar satellites into orbit isn't proof that they can also ship people into orbit too.
I don't think the issue at hand is that spaceflight should be special, but that these two former astronauts simply don't accept the possibility that some of these new companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin have the right motivations to be able to provide a safe and effective way to get into space. There is also the distinct possibility that these younger companies simply don't know enough about spacecraft engineering to be able to compete against the traditional companies either. There are examples of some of these companies having to "relearn" lessons from the past by blowing up rockets or other mistakes which caused a mission failure that the more traditional companies wouldn't have done, so the concern that perhaps what these young upstarts are doing could in the long run cost more is legitimate.
The problem with this line of thought is that it is presuming that the federal government is going to be footing the tab for failures by private companies. Instead, what you actually do see is that private commercial spaceflight developers are risking their own money (or the money of their investors) and when they make too many mistakes, the companies simply go bankrupt. Organizations like Benson Aerospace, Kistler, or "Space Services, Inc. of America" have tried in the past to build rockets and have failed to do so. Indeed there is a big list of failed companies. On the bright side, there seem to be several companies who have learned the lessons from the past and are being successful today in spite of those past failures of others.
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Re:60 Minutes, Neil Armstrong etc (Score:5, Informative)
I was also very impressed by that part of 60 Minutes.
It was striking how Elon Musk (the SpaceX boss) looked on the verge of crying. Apparently seeing Neil Armstrong side against his endeavors was tough to take.
For me, the astronauts siding against SpaceX are defending what they think is the most reliable and proven way to go to space. Their interpretation could be the following:
- Nasa has had success and will have more success with enough funding
- SpaceX is unproven and might be unable to ever achieve what NASA could do
- SpaceX threatens NASA funding by its very existence (Politicians can think "why give NASA billions now if I can wait a couple years and there is a chance SpaceX will do the same for hundreds of millions?")
Let's hope SpaceX or their competitors succeed, otherwise we are going to stay grounded as the US government is not prepared to invest in space conquest.
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The early astronauts were heros, selected as the best of the best, exploring space for the first time and fighting the cold war. They were symbols of national pride. Anyone that hasn't seen "The Right Stuff" really should see it, because this comes through loud and clear.
Commercial spaceflight is about making space accessible, inexpensive, on a schedule, and humdrum. Of course they hate it. It takes the bloom off their rose.
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I guess he's just doing his blind loyalty thing for NASA, but come on. 3 astronauts killed in a pure oxygen atmosphere? 2 shuttles and crew lost spectacularly?
And that was when money was no problem. Imagine if NASA had been trying to get to the moon in the economic environment of ValuJet.
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NASA Needs to be super careful every time they do something... Sometimes too much that real mistakes happen, because they spend too much time looking at X and not enough time looking at Y.
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Yes Commercial organizations will be a little more lax on safety at first however they will be able to innovate faster... In the long run making a far safer and better methods of getting into space.
You think a commercial organization can get away with selling flights on a spacecraft that kills its crew more than one time in sixty?
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Think of the early sailing voyages... How many ships were loss at sea... When we are exploring a new area unfortunately people will die.
So you do think that a commercial organization can get away with killing its customers one time in sixty?
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If Armstrong's testimony is the one I saw on C-Span about two years ago, he was also with Gene Cernan (Apollo 17 Commander) and Norm Augustine (former CEO of Lockheed Martin). Augustine was also head of the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee which was formed in 2009 for the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Both Armstrong's and Cernan's testimony came off as fairly uninformed and mostly saying how great it is to have a space program. Augustine came off as the informed one i
"Live Astronauts" (Score:2)
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Not sure if you're serious but I'll bite anyway. The alternative to "Live" in this case is not dead but "recorded" or "simulated". An actor in the role of an astronaut as opposed to an accomplished professional astronaut. A less salacious version of your other example would be "Live theater" as opposed to a movie.
Is this cabin designed to handle pressure suits? (Score:2, Interesting)
The seats, particularly the top 2 in the middle, look really close together. In jumpsuits or other normal clothes this wouldn't be a problem as in the photo, but I'm not seeing how two astronauts wearing an ACES, Sokol or some private sector pressure suit could sit side by side in the top seats without one of them placing his arm on top of the the guy beside him. The Soviets already tried the idea of suitless ascent/re-entry so they could fit 3 seats instead of 2 and it killed Soyuz 11's crew - even with go
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If the worst part of the design, is that an astronaut has to rest their arm on another astronaut's body, its a pretty good design.
Re:Is this cabin designed to handle pressure suits (Score:4, Interesting)
...astronauts wearing an ACES, Sokol or some private sector pressure suit...
I sort of hope they use Sokol suits, or something with compatible valves, making it easier for astronauts to go up in one type of space craft and, if necessary, return in a different one. Of course, the seat liners would also have to be compatible with the ones used in Soyuz, but it'd be nice to be able to switch crafts without having to send up a second pressure suite and seat liner, like we did when we had astronauts switching between the shuttle and a Soyuz mid flight.
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The russian Soyuz is a very similar construction in terms of the safety systems. They intermittently reduced the size of the crew to 2 cosmonauts, after a crew of 3 died in Soyuz 11 by asphyxation. An air-valve stuck open during reentry. This changed with better pressure suits and some improvements of the Soyuz spaceship and rocket, to accomodate a crew of three in pressure suits.
Either SpaceX equips its astronauts with a better pressure suit (like the biosuit) or they'll have to make do with a crew of 5 fo
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Yes, there is a pilot console for the astronauts in this cabin, and even a separate "mission commander's" console that has been planned. If you want to see at least a simulation of what is envisioned, checkout this video:
http://www.spacex.com/multimedia/videos.php?id=6 [spacex.com]
It certainly has real pilots running the vehicle and doing some actual piloting. As a matter of fact, the "ground crew" for the Falcon 9 is considerably less than anything NASA has done for manned spaceflight even though there will be a "mis
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that video is over three years old, and quite a lot has changed since then.
for example: they show an escape tower being jettisoned - there isn't going to be one now, SpaceX are working through NASA sponsored milestones to design and build a 'built in' launch abort system, which they also plan on using for landing at a later date (ie: no dunking in the sea).
they are also working on designs for crew cabin (again, part sponsored by NASA). that's what the original posting is talking about - a step in that proce
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Sure, the actual console might look different, but it isn't going to be "Spam in a can" either. I merely referenced the link to show there is going to be a real pilot of the spacecraft and that they will be following American manned spaceflight traditions as opposed to a capsule that is controlled from the ground entirely... like what goes on with Chinese space capsules and the real piloting is on the ground.
BTW, I think that escape system that SpaceX has come up with is pure genius, particularly where the
Launch date (Score:2)
I have it down for April 27th, unless it's been changed.
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SpaceX is being very cautious with this particular flight. The largest problems might come from scheduling conflicts with other launchers though, including D.O.D. payloads from the adjacent Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Considering the schedule slip so far, it wouldn't surprise me that this flight gets pushed into May or even June, and I don't think Elon Musk is going to have "go fever" in order to simply get this to launch. He is taking enough of a risk by combining the first two of the original tes
Currently scheduled for NET April 30 (Score:2)
Aptly named "Dragon" (Score:2)
"The Dragon's scheduled late March/early April test flight to the ISS will be unmanned"
Considering SpaceX's record of launch failures, I hope they stick to unmanned flights for many years to come. Otherwise, the Dragon -- named after a mythical man-eating creature that killed it's prey with it's flames could prove to be a very suitable name.
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Look at the sequence of the failures: First 3 failures with all the ones after those being successful. This means that they learned the appropriate lessons from the early failures.
While the small number of flights is still too low to make me confident in their safety, I wouldn't say the early failures are a particular cause for concern. Its not like Orbital Sciences where the most recent launches have dumped their payloads in the ocean.
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Considering NASA's record of launch failures (in the 1960's), I hope they stick with unmanned flights for many years to come. God forbid they try something crazy like putting a man into orbit using one of these things. All this "put a man on the moon before this decade is out" talk is a bunch of hooey.
The above sarcasm was brought to you by Intelligent Thinking Processes. Nobody starts out in the space business with perfect success on day one. NASA's failure record early in the space race was so awful i
link to 60 Minutes piece (Score:2)
Here's the 60 Minutes piece that everybody's mentioning but not linking to:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50121782 [cbsnews.com]
The seven-crew version of Dragon can be seen briefly in it. I believe it was the scene where Garrett Reisman was getting out of it. In a side note, it's too bad there wasn't more of Garrett, he's a real card.