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NASA Space

Watch NASA Astronauts on SpaceX Crew Dragon Docking with ISS (youtube.com) 55

"We're less than 10 meters away..."

"@AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug are suited up, strapped in their seats and ready to be welcomed by the crew aboard the @Space_Station," NASA tweeted an hour ago.

They're now just 135 meters away from the space station, and you can watch the docking live on YouTube.

1,024,406 people are already watching...

"NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken reported that the capsule was performing beautifully, as they closed in for the docking," reports the Associated Press. "The gleaming white capsule was easily visible from the station, its nose cone open exposing its docking hook, as the two spacecraft zoomed a few miles apart above the Atlantic, then Africa, then Asia." It's the first time a privately built and owned spacecraft is carrying crew to the orbiting lab. Hurley, the Dragon's commander, prepared to take manual control for a brief test, then shift the capsule into automatic for the linkup, 19 hours after liftoff. In case of a problem, the astronauts slipped back into their pressurized launch suits for the docking. The three space station residents trained cameras on the incoming capsule for flight controllers at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, as well as NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
UPDATE: At 7:16 PST, soft capture was successfully completed. We are now "moments away" from their boarding, with an official "welcoming ceremony" expected to happen soon.
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Watch NASA Astronauts on SpaceX Crew Dragon Docking with ISS

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  • To Bob and Doug! [wikimedia.org] You made it!

  • by turp182 ( 1020263 ) on Sunday May 31, 2020 @11:11AM (#60128352) Journal

    Watched the launch. Watched some of the docking.

    I'd be interested in the # of person-years this took to this point.

    Anyway, two days to remember. Awesome stuff.

    • We can make space stations and spacecraft using lowest cost foreign manufacturers that seal perfectly airtight in the vacuum of space, but are completely incapable of making a coffee cup lid that stays on the cup or keeps the contents inside!

    • And they're in!

      Also Ted Cruz is on the ground talking it up lol.

      • by Rei ( 128717 )

        The docking process was so ridiculously slow, with such a huge number of manual steps and lots of human labour. That must drive Musk crazy.

        • The docking process was so ridiculously slow, with such a huge number of manual steps and lots of human labour.

          Ummm, pretty much the only manual steps (for the Dragon, not necessarily the ISS) were the tests by the pilot of the Dragon.

          Normally, Dragons (uncrewed till now) do that all automagically. And in this case, the only parts that weren't automagic were verifying that the controls worked as intended.

        • by sjames ( 1099 )

          Tests of new technology when failure could kill someone tend to be like that. Once they have confidence in it, things will be a lot more automatic.

    • by lgw ( 121541 ) on Sunday May 31, 2020 @12:51PM (#60128544) Journal

      I'd be interested in the # of person-years this took to this point.

      For SpaceX, this is the culmination of the main focus of their work since the beginning. I'd estimate that at 30-40,000 man-years, all together. A big project, but there are often successful projects at that scale in the modern era. Heck, even in the ancient world, there were projects of that scale.

      For the ISS: the ISS is the most expensive structure ever built. When you add in all the costs to launch, assemble, and maintain its parts and the people onboard, it might well be the largest project mankind has ever completed.

      • For the ISS: the ISS is the most expensive structure ever built. When you add in all the costs to launch, assemble, and maintain its parts and the people onboard, it might well be the largest project mankind has ever completed.

        As such, astronaut time aboard the station is very likely the most expensive human hours in the solar system.

        And boy did they waste a lot of it for political campaign speeches after the astronauts boarded. Ted Cruz straight up gave a stump speech. The only thing he didn't say was "Vote for me next election!" He said every other sentence you'd expect. Yay you didn't vote against the transition bill, Ted. What do you want, a cookie? No senator from Texas, Florida, or Mississippi can vote against any NAS

      • I agree that it must be tremendously expensive, but so is an aircraft carrier. In terms of man years (and lives) the pyramids and the Chinese wall probably exceed the cost of the ISS by far. Even though if you calculate back with assumed similar inflation levels they were probably only a dollar a piece...
  • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Sunday May 31, 2020 @11:32AM (#60128394) Homepage Journal

    ... to just "privately owned", because the Space Shuttle Orbiter was privately built by Rockwell International (now part of Boeing). The Soyuz spacecraft is privately built by Energia, a publicly traded company listed as "RKKE" on the Moscow Stock Exchange.

    Rockwell also did all the detailed design on the Space Shuttle, to meet a government-mandated system concept and design restrictions (space plane, 3 liquid fueled engine, external fuel tank, 2 SRBs). Rockwell won against competing designs bid from Lockheed, McDonnell-Douglas, and Grumman.

    I'd say the distinguishing characteristics of Dragon 2 are:
        * privately owned
        * privately conceived.

    • by c6gunner ( 950153 ) on Sunday May 31, 2020 @12:12PM (#60128468) Homepage

      No, while the shuttle was built by a private business, it was built to government specifications and entirely funded with government money. The Dragon capsule was designed and built in-house by spacex and AFAIK the government had zero input other than buying launch contracts and overseeing some of the safety testing.

      Kinda like the difference between the F-18 and the 777. Sure they're both built by Boeing, but the government had a hell of a lot more influence in the design of the former than the latter.

      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        NASA provided about 45% of the initial development costs of the Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule, and obviously they had at least some say in specifications.

        • by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Sunday May 31, 2020 @12:51PM (#60128546)

          Well, they did insist that Dragon only hold 4 people on NASA missions instead of the 7 that it can carry on SpaceX missions

          But, that was really after the fact

          From the Bridenstine/Musk interview on Everyday Astronaut they stated that SpaceX's aggressive advancements have directly influenced NASA processes and vice versa, but the specs on the original $400M contract were pretty open, such that the move from 7 to 4 crew members came very late in the design process

          • by hey! ( 33014 )

            Sure. The vision is to get NASA out of the routine spaceflight business, but manned orbital flight is not a viable private enterprise *yet*. There's only one customer, who is underwriting a lot of your development expenses and guaranteeing you future business.

            I suspect that the 47% public funding level was carefully chosen so it would still be greater than half privately-funded. It's a significant milestone, but it's not 100% private enterprise yet.

            • The vision is to get NASA out of the routine spaceflight business, but manned orbital flight is not a viable private enterprise *yet*.

              No, of course not. Nobody expected it to be. But the cargo spaceflight business is, and since the manned spaceflight capability uses almost entirely the same components, it overlaps beautifully into a niche where spacex can make a tonne of money off the government by launching astronauts on missions that are almost identical to their cargo missions. They're charging NASA $50 million a seat, which is significantly cheaper than what the Russians wanted. But their cargo launches cost $60 million per launch

    • by Rei ( 128717 )

      That perhaps overstates Rockwell's role, but it certainly was a massive contract for them. And they milked it massively. Since it was cost-plus, if any other Rockwell project went overbudget, they just billed the hours to the Shuttle programme.

      • Shuttle kept to its development budget surprisingly well ($5B budget v.s. $6B budget) and this was during a period of high inflation. What was more of an issue was that many capabilities and features that would have reduced operational costs (like integrated work platforms and extra avionic spares), were dropped to ensure the development budget stayed within forecast. It was penny wise, pound foolish. Spending a $1B on the front end, would have saved tens of billions across the lifetime of the shuttle progr
    • Yeah, Russia's space agency was bemused by our excitement:

      "The hysteria raised after the successful launch of the [SpaceX] Crew Dragon spacecraft is hard to understand," Vladimir Ustimenko, a spokesperson for Roscosmos, wrote on Twitter, referring to Trump's statement.

      "What has happened should have happened long ago. Now it's not only the Russians flying to the ISS, but also the Americans. Well that's wonderful!" he added.

  • Is so 1960's. Let's spend that money on modern robots and get some real science done!
  • Saw it. The only problem was during some down time they played some off the wall space music. (horrid) So I fired up YouTube and got a video of a performance of the Blue Danube running as was heard in the movie 2001 A space odyssey. Much better.
  • watched basically the entire live stream - hell yeah these guys!!! vitamiinid [ismile.ee] aint got nothing on these guys. really glad to see that SpaceX managed to get to this milestone as it is a massively important one. looking forward to more commercial flights in the future! Space - here we come!
  • The Dragon crew just boarded the ISS and Mission Control is letting VIPs, and Ted Cruz, talk to the astronauts.

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