NASA and SpaceX Confirm SpaceX's First Ever Astronaut Launch is a 'Go' (techcrunch.com) 112
NASA and SpaceX are closer than ever to a moment both have been preparing for since the beginning of the Commercial Crew program in 2010. SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon spacecraft are now set to fly with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken onboard, making a trip to the International Space Station, and both the agency and SpaceX announced today that they have officially passed the final flight readiness review, meaning everything is now a 'go' for launch. From a report: According to NASA Commercial Crew Program manager Kathy Leuders during a press conference on Monday, everything went well with all pre-launch flight checks thus far, including a full-length static test fire of the Falcon 9's engines, and a dress rehearsal of all launch preparation including strapping Hurley and Behnken into the rocket. The only remaining major hurdle for SpaceX and NASA now is the weather, which is currently only looking around 40% favorable for a launch attempt on schedule for Wednesday, May 27 at 4:33 PM EDT, though during today's press conference officials noted it is actually trending upwards as of today. SpaceX and NASA will be paying close attention to the weather between now and Wednesday, and since this is a highly sensitive mission with actual astronauts on board the spacecraft, you can bet that they'll err on the side of caution for scrubbing the launch if weather isn't looking good. That said, they do have a backup opportunity of May 30 in case they need to make use of that.
Take off eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, best wishes for a safe journey.
Re:Take off eh? (Score:4, Funny)
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They're makin' a timmies run for the ISS. Beauty!
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Mankind will do something previously only achieved by a dummy!
It is inspiring all the same.
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Godspeed to Bob and Doug!
I first read that as Bob, Bill, and Jeb.
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touch dat wood
getting stuck in the engines or anything while happening by
this is totally epic !!Filter error: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.!!! best news since the mars rover ?
Theory? (Score:4, Funny)
Have a useful idea? Please write it.
Re: Theory? (Score:4, Funny)
He's from Mars. That's why he's so focused on going back.
Re:Please be helpful. Don't waste our time. (Score:5, Funny)
That's not a useful idea. It's a waste of our time.
What exactly are you doing on Slashdot then?
Re: Theory? (Score:2)
He can't be from Mars. He is missing the helmet and you can see his whole face, not just his eyes.
Re:Theory? (Score:5, Insightful)
He stands on the shoulders of giants.
Thats pretty much it.
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Not really. That's a large part, but he's also got a personality like Steve Jobs. Apparently including the bad parts.
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Unlike his father, he's shown zero sociopathic behavior... and no, outing Pedo Guy (rest assured Elon was informed of something that gave him good reason) and showing disdain for "Corona Cowardice" hardly count.
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"Pedo Guy" was clearly a textbook case of projection.
The narrative indicates that Elon was provided with supposedly dubious info about Ole' Vern; in any case, the twat popped out of the woodwork with an axe to grind and then gave every indication that Musk's response had hit a raw nerve. An argument could be made that Musk should've vetted the source better but I for one trust his judgment with people; there's literally no way he could have achieved what he has without delegating to thousands of people... and that very much requires world-class people-reading
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*God fucking forbid.
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He stands on the shoulders of giants.
Huh? We all do.
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He stands on the shoulders of giants.
Thats pretty much it.
As did Einstein. But I don't think Musk is quite on that level.
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100% useless shitpost, as usual.
You could probably say the same about Steve Jobs, but anyone who actually worked with either of these two would point out that while they may not be the guy writing software or designing an electric motor, but they definitely add something to the process, and the final result is something that wouldn't have otherwise existed, or would have been far less attractive of a product that people actually want to buy.
We get it, you don't like Elon Musk. The good news is, you don't h
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Have a useful idea? Please write it.
He was bullied as a kid... and adversity* build character.
*On a barely-related note, this is how you can be sure that certain demographics don't have it nearly as rough as the 'pro-victimhood' narrative would suggest - if they had, they'd be a lot calmer and tougher.
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How is it that Elon Musk can be so much more intelligent and productive than most people?
Start with the right genes for IQ and personality. Add some good timing and luck to get a windfall profit from Paypal, giving him the sort of obscene quantities of money to do what he likes. The real trick is holding a huge motivating dream, the large-scale colonisation of Mars, even though he is smart enough to know it is not really a good idea. (Mars being far less attractive than Antarctica, or the bottom of the ocean - but I'm hoping to see something like Amundsen–Scott Station on Mars in my
Re: Theory? (Score:2)
Nah, he has the brains of Steve Jobs too. Which isnâ(TM)t necessarily a bad thing. They might not be engineering geniuses themselves, but they know how to recognize genius in others and get those others fired up about his ideas. Muskâ(TM)s Woz is Tom Mueller, the chief engineer behind the Merlin and Raptor engines that make SpaceXâa ambitions possible.
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This attracts really smart people. They say, "Sure, I want to help do that."
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Support for this theory (Score:3)
Elon Musk is really good at bringing excitement to a project.
Dolly Singh's answer to, "What's it like to work for Elon Musk?" [quora.com]
Specifically, following his comments to SpaceX employees on the third Falcon I launch (and third failure): "I think most of us would have followed him into the gates of hell carrying suntan oil after that. It was the most impressive display of leadership that I have ever witnessed."
Go big or go home (also no deadlines) (Score:3)
Musk is successful with really, really big projects.
Mostly that's because he takes on really, really big projects.
You probably accomplish your projects at work. I'm fact, you probably even get them done *on time* and meet the requirements someone else set, within a budget someone else set. Musk accomplishes his project, often a couple years past the deadline that he himself chose, after spending seemingly unlimited amounts of money. You might actually be smarter than Musk, he just does big.
He does big, hu
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Their definitions of "success" are a bit different. One actually wants to accomplish things, the other is happiest when he's abusing others for his own amusement. Their management skills are also different, one surrounds himself with the brightest and most talented people he can find, the other with yes-men who will tell him how wonderful he is.
One of these is not like the other.
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Everybody has their own political opinions, of course.
Personally I wish he wasn't president. After Biden said some more stupid stuff the other day, my wife and I were commenting yesterday that in November we'll have a choice between a dumbass and a dumbass. I joked that my should run for president with the slogan "She's not an idiot".
That said, the standard shorthand for saying someone will be extremely successful one day is to say "she could president one day". There isn't really any mark of success gre
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Even brilliant people can be really fucking stupid sometimes. What makes them successful, is that they can usually recognize when they are being really fucking stupid and course-correct.
Unfortunately, Mr. Musk has not done that where Covid19 is concerned.
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He was very lucky. Parents gave him $300,000 to start his first business. There are lots of people with drive and great ideas and a willingness to take risks, but it's a lot easier when your parents are rich and the consequences of failure are small.
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It turns out the best possible decision you can make in life is to have rich parents.
It's pretty obvious really and if you don't make the obvious wise choice, it's your fault really and you should live with the consequences.
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I don't want to take anything away from the guy, he has done some impressive stuff, but also I really dislike this Randian/objectivist idea that some people are just deserving or inherently better because they are successful entrepreneurs, when most of them were born with a silver spoon up the arse.
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There's plenty of people that are given money by their parents to start a business and fail. Having the resources is great and really helps out, but you also have to be able to create value where it didn't exist before.
I'm not sure why getting startup capital from your parents and succeeding is different than getting startup capital from a bank and succeeding. It's still success.
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Sure, but you will definitely fail if you don't even start because you didn't have $300,000 to set it up. It's a rather large hurdle that Musk was able to avoid.
This is why the idea we have a meritocracy is crap. Some people clearly have more help than others so unless your parents gave you $300,000 and all the other opportunities you can't really compare yourself to him.
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Too often this is overlooked by conservatives. There were probably half a dozen people in the computer industry who could have made and sold what would become the dominant computing platform for the next half a century, Bill Gates was lucky that his dad was a well-known lawyer and could get a loan for him to start Microsoft. I admire the guy immensely, but he did get a head start.
12,000X (Score:2)
You're exactly right.
It's easy to turn $300K into 3,700,000K.
80-100 hour work weeks had nothing to do with it.
Being daring had nothing to do with it.
Spending years researching the businesses had nothing to do it.
I'm sure you can multiply money by 12,000 - easy.
I'm so sure of that, I'm gonna send you $10 and watch you turn it into $120,000.
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> BTW I call bullshit on the idea Musk ever did 80-100 hour weeks, or "researched" businesses any more substantially than most would do.
Read ... well just about anything written by anyone who has ever worked with him. Working for Musk is great because you get to work with really cool stuff, it's horrible because you feel like you have to work at least half as hard as he does. 80 hours is a light week for him, and about what some of his closest people put in because they want to show that they are at le
He makes an effort of avoiding ... (Score:2)
... wishful thinking. He said it himself: Physics is a very good field to learn to find counterintuitive truths.
I presume it also allows him to avoid fearful thinking.
Think about rockets: Reusability is key. Throwing away the most expensive vehicle ever after single use is basically insane. He said it. And it's 100% corrent. So once he has cracked reusable to-orbit rockets, humanity will have taken the next step forward.
It's his way of thinking that enables him to see the real issue and then he focuses on i
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Is he the intelligent and productive one, or is he just really good at getting intelligent and productive people together?
Sacrilege in the Church of Musk? (Score:1)
Not sure why your question was modded as funny, but I recently addressed it and don't mind recapping.
Intelligence is not so rare. I think productivity is scarcer. However just having those attributes is not sufficient, and there are plenty of examples of people who seem smart and capable and even diligent but who failed anyway. A big chunk of it is luck. You have to be working on the right idea at the right time and putting the right amount of focused effort into it. Try too hard and you may burn out or win
Genuinely good news (Score:5, Interesting)
With all the struggles over the past few months this is really nice to see. No matter how you feel personally about Musk or NASA or where you fall in political thinking I feel like we can all agree on this and take some excitement and pride in getting people back to space as a nation. Congrats to the thousands of people who put a lot of hard work into it.
Re:Genuinely good news (Score:4)
Absolutely. It's great to see the US regain human launch capabilities. Here's wishing the astronauts a safe and successful mission.
Although, I think you're underestimating the number of sourpusses who won't be happy even with something genuinely positive like this. I've never understood people who think manned space exploration is a waste of resources. In my opinion, it's one of the most worthwhile things we as a species can do.
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Although, I think you're underestimating the number of sourpusses who won't be happy even with something genuinely positive like this. I've never understood people who think manned space exploration is a waste of resources. In my opinion, it's one of the most worthwhile things we as a species can do.
At least the grouches can take consolation in 1/ The money is staying in the U.S. rather than going to Russia (not even for engines) 2/ That the price is significantly lower than it used to be even without allowing for inflation.
I just wish SpaceX were Canadian.
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I just wish SpaceX were Canadian.
Tell Musk you'll make him a giant robotic space arm if he relocates from California.
Re:Genuinely good news (Score:4, Insightful)
They probably think that the money is being launched into orbit, rather than being spent on thousands of people here on Earth who design and build the hardware.
Or they ascribe to the theory that if we don't spend money on space, then somehow that same money will actually get allocated *usefully* towards achieving substantial progress in all the causes they think are more worthwhile.
IMHO, a lot of those other causes almost feel like intractable problems or issues more of politics and/or culture than of funding.
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I've never understood people who think manned space exploration is a waste of resources. In my opinion, it's one of the most worthwhile things we as a species can do.
Because we don't even have an idea of where we might go. Mars doesn't count, it's a frozen hell-hole. Walk before you run. We can save a lot of money sending unmanned spacecraft out to explore while we take care of our own planet which is literally the most hospitable planet we know about in the entire universe.
Re:Genuinely good news (Score:4, Insightful)
There is one way to learn how to live in space; GO THERE. Humans didn't evolve in Africa and then walk directly to Tierra de Fuego, nor did they send a raft full of monkeys and then wait to see what they would report when they got back. We have always been wanderers and explorers since before we were human, but there is nowhere on Earth where people don't go today. Amundsen, Cook, de Gama, Polo, ibn Battuta, Zheng He, are all remembered today because they did things that almost all of us want to do. So with space. Kennedy is remembered for two things, getting shot and launching the Apollo program, Neil Armstrong is the next-most famous person from the 1960s. Who are our heroes today? Sleazy rappers, abusive businessmen, corrupt politicians and juicing athletes. We as a species desperately **need** new inspiration, and if we don't want to go the way of the Neanderthal and Australopithecus then we need a new frontier to aspire to.
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So "nationalism" is a perfectly straight line, and any pride in your country at all is over it? We should never encourage our country to do good things and be happy about it when it does?
I despise Trumps brand of populism and false bravado about America, but most Americans are pretty critical of their own country, sometimes to a fault. They can still take pride when something good happens. Total cynicism will kill us just as fast as ultra-nationalism.
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The Venn diagram of "proud of America" and "racist" is very nearly a circle. Where on the diagram do you lie?
Nationalism killed millions in Europe and has killed far too many in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. Why don't you ask any of these victims how they feel about nationalism? About watching Americans chant the chilling "USA, USA" while watching a rocket climb in to the sky?
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Where do I lie? Depends what we are talking about. I can think two things about the country at once.
If you think being proud about a space launch and Nazism are right next to each other, i don't honestly know how to respond. There is nuance to things. I can be proud of this and still against the war in Iraq, and war in general. I can be proud of this and still want Trump out of office and think he is a racist dolt. I can be proud of this and still recognize that America has deep systemic issues of ineq
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I can be proud of this and still recognize that America has deep systemic issues of inequality and hate.
Nah, you can't be proud of a country like that. Nobody can. Cultural exceptionalism and nationalism started 2 world wars. It literally killed millions. Nationalism is bad because nationalism is divisive and exclusive. It is inherently xenophobic and reactionary. Try and think of an open, progressive and welcoming nationalist country. Can you list any?
Nationalism is a collectivist scourge that needs t
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You are equating personal "I am proud of my country for doing something good" for institutional governmental nationalism as policy. Yes, nationalism started into those wars but a different type of "nationalism" or "patriotism" powered America to build the industrial machine that supported the fight back, gave the British the resolve to hang on during the air raids, the remaining French to continue the resistance and let the Soviets persevere through the millions of losses to take the eastern front.
Again,
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Wow, actual racists in the audience. If youâ(TM)re not a racist, maybe reconsider why youâ(TM)re applauding the same things as a racist.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Not all patriotic Americans are racist, but all racists definitely cheer when a rocket is fired, whether it be a space probe or an ICBM.
Never Grey area with weather, even unmaned (Score:2)
"and since this is a highly sensitive mission with actual astronauts on board the spacecraft, you can bet that they'll err on the side of caution for scrubbing the launch if weather isn't looking good"
For the record, for all launches (certainly in the US for sure) there are always spelled out weather rules. Either they all are met and you can launch, or one or more are violated and you can't. There is no "extra eye" here. There is a set of rules, probably not dissimilar to those for any other Falcon 9
Re:Never Grey area with weather, even unmaned (Score:5, Informative)
Actually SpaceX have deliberately launched unmanned missions when the conditions were outside their specified range (esp. in the booster recovery area) because they felt it would be a good way to collect more data on the actual capabilities of their systems. IIRC one of the launches earlier this year was done this way.
Of course they only do these kinds of experiments with StarLink launches (i,e. when they're not risking customers' payloads).
One of the advantages of reusing boosters and having a production line is that most launches are an incremental cost. They have enough Falcon 9 boosters built to easily cover the expected remaining launches before it's pulled from service, so the loss of a few during experiments isn't a disaster.
Excited to Witness History in Person (Score:2)
I wasn't lucky enough to ever see a shuttle launch from the Space Coast. However I've moved to the Space Coast in the last few years, and I'm extremely excited to witness astronauts launch into space from U.S. soil. I'm about 20 minutes from KSC, and I can just stand outside my front door and witness every launch without having to cram along the waterways here in Brevard county.
Best of luck to Bob and Doug on bringing us into a new era of spaceflight.
How did SpaceX beat Boeing and Russia? (Score:2)
Back in 1980 during the Winter Olympics it was Team USA, a young team with minimal professional experience vs. five time Hockey Champ the Soviet Union.
The upstart USA team managed to win in what was known as the "Miracle on Ice".
How does Boeing, the company that helped put men on the moon lose to an upstart rocket company?
It is a modern day miracle.
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What do you think has been lost? We were routinely launching 2 men to low earth orbit almost 60 years ago.
Boeing did the largest part, but far from the most difficult. McDonnell was the go-to contractor early on, and North American later. Anyone associated with spaceflight from McDonnell was long gone by the time Boeing bought them out
Mercury/Gemini - McDonnell
Apollo CSM - North American
Apollo Lunar module - Grumman
STS Orbiter - North American
Atlas - General Dynamics
Titan - Martin
Saturn 1b (1st st
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What do you think has been lost? We were routinely launching 2 men to low earth orbit almost 60 years ago.
We've lost the ability to launch 2 men to low earth orbit.
Regardless of how you feel about the purpose and future of manned spaceflight, not having the ability to do it is inexcusable at the United States' level of play.
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Back in 1980 during the Winter Olympics it was Team USA, a young team with minimal professional experience vs. five time Hockey Champ the Soviet Union.
Story I heard is Soviets changed coaches for their hockey team who was not as effective as previous coach. Plus many key players were replaced. So the US team faced a Soviet team nothing like the previous.
I think for Boeing is probably many reasons, much debate, seems like Mentour Pilot sums it up fairly well here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The big question is how did a startup begin after Orion was under development for some time, and jumped way ahead of everyone else. Also been able to fly a wo
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EDT? (Score:1)
Now I have to go and find out that that will be in my country. It's a shame there's not a time they could quote that everyone could use as a reference. We could call it UTC.
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It's the local time of the launch, which seems relevant. When you launch men to orbit from your country, you can use your local time.
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It's a shame that you think that an achievement of a US Company which involves launching a US-made rocket with two US astronauts, on behalf of the US Government, starting at a location within the US, reported by a US media outlet, would be in any other time zone than what was reported.
Fucking Google it if you can't be bothered to do the math, and stop being spoon-fed.
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Wow. Calm down. You guys are losing it.
Isn't it about time? (Score:1)
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To launch these spacecraft electrically instead of putting the pilots on top of a firey Roman candle?
Ah, you're an "ideas guy" I see.
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Great. Now explain by what mechanism you would generate the millions of pounds of thrust in order to get something to 17,500 mph, where the majority of that journey is not in any significant amount of air which you can use to generate lift, with electricity. Oh, and since weight is everything in the business of space flight, tell me what electric source will generate the amount of energy needed to do that without significantly reducing the payload mass to orbit if you can even get there at all.
I won't hol
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Check Yo Stagin' (Score:2)
In a separate announcement NASA has confirmed that they have, in fact, Checked Their Stagin'
Their interview process is absolutely (Score:2)
Their interview process is absolutely fucked in the head though. I interviewed with them a few years back. If you thought Google was bad, you ain't seen nothin'.
Be that as it may, if it's stupid but it works, it's not stupid. They certainly seem to be getting state of the art results in everything they do.
Re:I Hope I'm Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
They've had 56 successful launches in a row, following a rocket that blew up on the pad during fueling. They've only had one Falcon 9 fail in flight, and that was in 2015.. The Falcon 9 is has more launches than any other American rocket.
So besides meeting all the NASA standards for human-rated flight, SpaceX has an excellent history, and has every incentive to make sure that they do this right.
There have been lots of failed booster landings, but that has always been where they're pushing the envelope, and recovering the boosters isn't required for mission success.
Re:I Hope I'm Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention that they recently had a rocket engine fail live on stream recently and no one outside SpaceX noticed at the time, it went so smoothly. It was only as that booster turned for re-entry that anyone noticed there was something funny, before we lost that camera feed. That's resiliency!
The Merlin engine has far more launches than anything else American made, at least 837, I think more than any other engine, and the theory that one could blow without damaging its neighbors has now been proven in flight.
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It didn't blow up, it shut itself down after a left over pool of ethanol from refirb burned out a sensor and the rocket mistook that sensor reading for a breach.
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The Falcon 9 is has more launches than any other American rocket.
Only more than any other extant rocket. They've had 87 launches. The space shuttle had 135.
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Two of which ended in complete failure. So if you figure that into a reliability percent...
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Two of which ended in complete failure. So if you figure that into a reliability percent...
It's a bit worse, but not a lot worse than Falcon 9. 2 failures out of 135 missions versus 1 in flight failure (and one partial failure) out of 87 missions.
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Well, arguably, only one had a launch failure...
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And while Falcon 9 has had one in-flight failure, the capsule is designed to survive such a failure and land safely.
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Well, isn't that what all the testing and NASA design review is for? Are you saying you don't trust NASA to check their work?