SpaceX and NASA Break Down What Their Historic First Astronaut Mission Will Look Like (techcrunch.com) 19
NASA and SpaceX's most defining moment of our current space era is coming up at the end of this month, with its Demo-2 mission on May 27. The mission will be the first ever launch for SpaceX with humans on board, and for NASA, it'll mark the first return to U.S.-based astronaut launches since the Shuttle program flew its last flight in 2011. On Friday, representatives from both SpaceX and NASA briefed the media on the mission and the specifics of what it will involve when astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley board the Crew Dragon for its debut crewed performance. From a report: The first thing to note about this mission is that it's still technically a test, as noted in the "demo" name. This is the capstone demonstration in a series of such missions that will fully human-rate the SpaceX Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 for operational use. As noted during today's press briefings, a big chunk of the actual human rating process occurs during this final mission -- in fact, the majority of the actual final human rating happens on this flight, despite the many years of preparation and live tests to date, including the Demo-1 mission which was essentially a full round-trip flight, just without any astronauts on board. Even though it's technically a demonstration, the stakes couldn't be higher -- SpaceX has a lot to prove here, and it bears the utmost responsibility in terms of keeping Behnken and Hurley safe for the duration of the mission. Which, it turns out, is actually going to be longer than originally planned: NASA says the mission will last anywhere between 30 days and 119 days, depending on a few different factors, the most significant of which being how quickly the agency ends up being able to launch the first operational Commercial Crew mission, Crew-1, which will carry four astronauts, including two from NASA and one from Japan's space agency.
Horray! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Losing that capability was just one more sign that America had lost its way in the early 21st century. Hopefully launching our own astronauts again will be a sign that we're starting to get our groove back.
Re: Horray! (Score:3)
Expensive. Dangerous. Hard to repair. Huge fuel load no matter the payload.
Mostly just a hyped up PR show piece that ultimately was a complete failure and utter disaster by every metric.
We should have continued building a variety of different sized rockets for different purposes. The faux re-usable nature of the shuttle was over run by the costs of maintaining the h
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You are one sick puppy dog......
I don't think they stop being tests (Score:3)
Looking at the space shuttle I'd say riding any rocket to space is still in the "make sure your will is updated" territory even if it's a production vehicle. Just because they put a serial number on it doesn't make it particularly safe just yet. Though I'd be very happy for SpaceX to exceed my expectations, even though we've lost men in space before I feel like the tolerance for casualties is plummeting. Even if people do stupider things just to get on top of a mountain.
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Re:I don't think they stop being tests (Score:5, Informative)
If it's any consolation, the current commercial crew participants (SpaceX and Boeing) are being held to enormously stricter safety criteria than the space shuttle ever was. And while no system is completely safe from catastrophic failure, their basic designs (capsules entirely on top of the rockets with launchpad and in-flight abort abilities) are inherently safer than the space shuttle, which provided no rapid escape mechanism at any point.
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Risky? Sure, but test pilots know what they're about. Historically the risk has been in the 1%-2% range, if you ignore the early Russian program where they explicitly upped the risk to go faster.
So, yes, there is a risk, but it's probably safer than a lot of surgeries.
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Keep in mind that the Space Shuttle was a 1970 design that then got multiple redesigns over three years by lawyers in Congress and generals in the Pentagon before an entirely altered design was handed back to NASA with a fraction of the budget. Even then NASA took that lemon and made lemonade from it for over three decades, when the initial lifetime per shuttle was only designed to be 10 years, and one of the only two failures was caused by an entirely political decision (Challenger).
Had NASA been left to
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I dont think people realise just how close NASA got to having the shuttle cancelled, and it was the USAF requirements which saved it - the USAF were handed a mandate to use it for everything, and that mandate didnt change until the Challenger disaster. The USAF lost things like the Manned Orbital Laboratory as a result.
Read Roland Whites “Into the Black” for a fascinating look into parts of the Shuttles history that had never come out before, its a damn fine read.
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ISS (Score:3)
The summary totally omits any mention of the ISS, which left me wondering exactly what they were doing (surely the astronauts weren't going to be in the capsule for over 30 days?). They are launching astronauts to the ISS, who will remain at the station at least 30 days, so the capsule will have to remain in space docked for at least that amount of time. Then it returns the astronauts to earth. As opposed to launching astronauts into orbit, where they remain in the capsule for a few days, then return to earth, like they used to do on first flights like with the shuttle, Apollo, Gemini, etc.
Re:ISS (Score:4, Informative)
https://previews.agefotostock.... [agefotostock.com]
Confidence (Score:1)
Unfortunately Elon Musk's bizarre outburst on Twitter today is probably making Jim Bridenstine very twitchy. Justifiably so. The rank and file at SpaceX can't help but be distracted when their CEO starts publicly blathering about selling all his worldly possession[sic]. Elon straight up cracked this week. He's going to lose another SEC lawsuit and pay another whopping multi-million dollar fine, he's going to lose his CEO slot at Tesla, and he may still lose the girl. Not having a good week, is Elon Mus
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Eh, it's just the beginning of "Meltdown May". I'm sure there's plenty more crazy to follow.
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Thankfully SpaceX is bigger than Elon, and Gwynne Shotwell's control provides focus and stability to smooth the edges of Elon's behaviour and split attention.
It's not SpaceX I'm worried about. SpaceX is privately held and its board knows it's Elon's religion, not just his baby. He's fine there. It's Tesla I'm worried about. I still want to buy one right now, but after Elon gets forced out as CEO, I'm not sure I still will. It's going to turn into just another car company run by finance wonks in short order and lose its way. It could quite literally kill the company. All the new CEO has to do is order them to make the same limited range shitboxes the rest