4 Astronauts Aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon Successfully Dock With Space Station (npr.org) 67
Four astronauts aboard their SpaceX Dragon capsule "Resilience" have arrived at the International Space Station, circling 262 miles above the Earth, where they will stay until spring. From a report: The capsule lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center Sunday evening atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, chasing the ISS for 27 hours before matching its altitude and speed for an orbital dock. The flight marks only the second crewed flight for Crew Dragon, which became the first commercial vehicle to put humans in orbit when astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken launched in May. "SpaceX, this is Resilience. Excellent job, right down the center," commander Hopkins radioed to mission control after the docking. "SpaceX and NASA, congratulations." The flight marks another milestone for SpaceX flying its first fully operational mission. After the May launch, designated "Demo-2" with Hurley and Behnken, NASA certified the capsule for operational use in its Commercial Crew program. The Resilience crew includes three NASA astronauts and one from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency who were mostly passengers during the flight of Crew Dragon, which generally flies without human input and docks to the ISS autonomously.
Re:Correction (Score:2, Informative)
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Boeing is "too big to fail," and believe me, they know it.
SpaceX isn't.
Enough said.
Re:Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually at this point SpaceX has comfortably joined the "too big to fail" train.
They are now a prestige company for the US. NASA would not be willing to let go of the only human launch system they have.
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Re:Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. Boeing at this point knows they can continually suck the money teat and never, ever have to produce results. You would think at some point someone in the government would wonder why all that money in this direction does nothing, while substantially less tossed at SpaceX has full operation, but that's not how government spending works.
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It might be a good case study of the Innovator's Dilemma. [wikipedia.org]
.
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The two companies are essentially building the same project for NASA, but for dramatically different prices. The contracts, awarded under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP), are valued at $4.3 billion for Boeing and $2.5 billion for SpaceX
I wonder what Boeing are doing with all their extra money?
https://observer.com/2019/11/n... [observer.com]
They got stuck. (Score:5, Insightful)
They assumed that SpaceX would run out of money - after all, it's impossible to build a spaceship for $2.5B - and when they asked for more, Boeing would use that to convert this into just another cost+ gravy train.
But SpaceX put their craft into space without asking for more money - no way of knowing how much of their own capital they put in to achieve that - leaving Boeing with only what money they had contracted. Then they muffed their first test launch, raising their costs higher.
I shudder - well, giggle, really - to think of how much Boeing is losing on this one.
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It will pay off in the long run. Lots of good reasons to dual source manned flight capability, and to pay a little/lot more to do so.
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NASA might be better off with Blue Origin as the second source.
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It's an illegal subsidy to Boeing, plain and simple. They moan about subsidies given to Airbus then take much larger sums of money that is required from the US government to complete a project and this is apparently *NOT* a subsidy.
If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck it's a duck.
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America never does things like that.
Re:Boeing (Score:4, Funny)
The two companies are essentially building the same project for NASA, but for dramatically different prices. The contracts, awarded under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP), are valued at $4.3 billion for Boeing and $2.5 billion for SpaceX
I wonder what Boeing are doing with all their extra money?
https://observer.com/2019/11/n... [observer.com]
Apparently whatever they are doing with it, it's not investing in overhauling their software development practices.
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Shore up their stock prices that are getting murdered by COVID-19 and 737-MAXX.
Re:Boeing - And somebody probably going to jail (Score:1)
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lighting a fire under the CEO ass
Boeing executives are like canaries in a coal mine.
So Crew Dragon is the name of the vehicle, (Score:2)
Re: So Crew Dragon is the name of the vehicle, (Score:2)
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Naming the crew would be stupid, they each have their individual names.
Crew Dragon Crewman #1 through 4.
Seems simple enough.
Or should that be crewperson?
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Re: So Crew Dragon is the name of the vehicle, (Score:2)
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Nah the name of the "Crew Dragon" crew is "Dragon Crew", obviously.
also note self: don't search "docking" with safe search off
Re: So Crew Dragon is the name of the vehicle, (Score:5, Funny)
Well, the guys in the red shirts don't get names...
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There is no meta-name applied to the collective crew.
To be pedantic, the meta-name attached to the collective crew is actually Expedition 64. Although, that name also applies to the three astronauts who are staying on board from Expedition 63
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A crew named Dragon would be Dragon Crew.
The pod is named Dragon.
The crew version of Dragon is called Crew Dragon.
It's not confusing if you speak English.
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They're the Crew Dragon Crew. And their pet dragon is the Crew Dragon Crew Dragon
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The pet dragon is, of course, named Crew Dragon
Say what you will about Space "Karen" (Score:1)
Space "Karen" may be a complete douche canoe, but he does get shit done.
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The TARANIS satellite (the name is short for Tool for the Analysis of RAdiation from lightNIng and Sprites)
Agreed. The lightNIng one is pretty much an cry for help. Besides, what's wrong with TARALIS? Heck, even TARLS would be better.
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Whatever you thinkof the acronym, losing the research on this mission was a real shame. Thunderstorms have been found to produce some truly unexpected radiation effects that might lead to development of usable low-energy nuclear reactions. Now we will never know.
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The difference is startling (Score:5, Interesting)
With the successful launch of the crew to the ISS, here is what our president-elect had to say [9cache.com] on this achievement, compared against our glorious infallible leader.
Re:The difference is startling (Score:4, Insightful)
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Zamol'chi!
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Nice speeches are nice, but Trump has shown the space program more love than any president in the last 40 years. Let's see what Biden does with it. Prepare to be underwhelmed.
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By taking credit for programs that began under another administration and came to fruition under his? Bridenstine wasn't bad at all, but to say these things weren't already in motion to occur is disingenuous.
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By taking credit for programs that began under another administration and came to fruition under his? Bridenstine wasn't bad at all, but to say these things weren't already in motion to occur is disingenuous.
If you paid attention to history you's see it's not unheard of to cancel projects from the previous administration to save money and prevent them from getting credit, then starting your own new launch system.
As hard as it is to imagine, just not doing that is a good thing. The earlier heavy launch system was cancelled in such a manner. Then the Space Shuttle was cancelled, in favor of Rooskies doing the launches, paid by us. Then things got troublesome with Russia, and it didn't seem so brilliant any mor
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Hmm. You may be right, we may be underwhelmed.
In 'Bama's admin, the nation was recovering from teh Great Recession. Shrub's admin scheduled the wind-down of STS, and 'Bama executed on the plan. And I imagine that we're still paying off the debt on the ISS.
Sleepy Joe wants to spend bucks on infrastructure as his Big Program. Hopefully NASA, while perhaps not having a growing budget, will have a stable budget. I'd be good with that.
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That's the difference between a person speaking totally for themselves and unfiltered, and a committee determining every single word that is written or spoken. You can guess which is which.
Personally I prefer neither end of that spectrum for a President.
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True, true.
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Trump isn't wrong. Imagine cancelling your only crew launch system without anything to take its place.
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Well, we were running close to the statistical chance of another SLS failure. Engineers estimated a 2% failure rate on the system. And Boeing probably said "we're within 2 years of another launcher" or something like that.
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It's been said NASA has been non-partisan but not political. It was created because of politics (response to Sputnik) but has been able to stay clear of the bitter divides we have these days. Maybe. In some ways Artemis is a Trump campaign program, it was never widely mentioned because just about everyone outside the space business and fan clubs have never heard of Artemis or SLS. Everyone knows of Musk and Dragon. If Artemis cancelled or significantly delayed from 2024 landing, I'd say it is more of lack a
First time for 4 people since Space Shuttle (Score:5, Interesting)
The takeoff and stage releases were awesome. The docking was very boring (but certainly not to those doing it, process intensive), but nice to see once everyone was in.
Soyuz only carries 3 people. This is the first time since the Space Shuttle that 4 passengers were on carried up.
Amazing job Space X!
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There was room for 7 passengers originally, but then NASA changed their minds about retro-propulsive landings and wanted parachutes instead. That entailed rearranging seats (and losing 3) to reduce G-forces on landing approach.