Astronauts Successfully Delivered to the International Space Station by SpaceX (cnn.com) 35
NASA has tweeted a video showing the arrival of four astronauts from three countries on the International Space Station early Satuday morning.
CNN describes the significance to their arrival — and what the astronauts will do during their six-month stay in space: This mission, dubbed Crew-2, marks the third-ever crewed flight for Elon Musk's company and the first to make use of a previously flown, privately-owned rocket booster and spacecraft... On Saturday morning, the capsule slowly aligned itself and moved in to dock directly with one of the space station's ports.
The crew consists of NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, and Akihiko Hoshide with Japan's JAXA space agency.
A prime focus of the astronauts' mission will be research with "tissue chips," or "small models of human organs containing multiple cell types that behave much the same as they do in the body" and that NASA hopes will advance the development of drugs and vaccines, according to the space agency. That work will build on years of studying biological and other scientific phenomena aboard the ISS, where the microgravity environment can give scientists a better fundamental understanding of how something works.
Kimbrough, McArthur, Pesquet, and Hoshide joined seven astronauts already on board the station, four of whom arrived on a different SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in November. That brings the space station's current total of personnel to 11 — one of the largest crews the ISS has ever hosted. But that number will quickly drop back down to seven when four of the astronauts who'd been on board hitch a ride home from the station on April 28.
CNN describes the significance to their arrival — and what the astronauts will do during their six-month stay in space: This mission, dubbed Crew-2, marks the third-ever crewed flight for Elon Musk's company and the first to make use of a previously flown, privately-owned rocket booster and spacecraft... On Saturday morning, the capsule slowly aligned itself and moved in to dock directly with one of the space station's ports.
The crew consists of NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, and Akihiko Hoshide with Japan's JAXA space agency.
A prime focus of the astronauts' mission will be research with "tissue chips," or "small models of human organs containing multiple cell types that behave much the same as they do in the body" and that NASA hopes will advance the development of drugs and vaccines, according to the space agency. That work will build on years of studying biological and other scientific phenomena aboard the ISS, where the microgravity environment can give scientists a better fundamental understanding of how something works.
Kimbrough, McArthur, Pesquet, and Hoshide joined seven astronauts already on board the station, four of whom arrived on a different SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in November. That brings the space station's current total of personnel to 11 — one of the largest crews the ISS has ever hosted. But that number will quickly drop back down to seven when four of the astronauts who'd been on board hitch a ride home from the station on April 28.
Well done SpaceX (Score:1)
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We have a problem... (Score:1)
Thanks, but will the delivery vehicle crash and explode on landing? SpaceX has been having problems with this.
Re:We have a problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
Which of the Dragon capsules, either first or second generation, have crashed and exploded (well, one did explode in testing)? I think you're conflating a nascent test program with their established operational vehicles.
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Search "spacex crash" in your favorite search engine to see some fiery videos of Starship models crashing... I said SpaceX was having problems, not Dragons specifically.
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That's called "testing". And yes, those Starship prototypes are built to be tested to destruction.
Again, that has nothing to do with the well-developed Dragon capsules.
A question about the industry (Score:2)
So it looks like SpaceX commitment to reusable components is paying off. Are there any other rocket/spacecraft makers following suit?
If not how are they going to compete on cost? Or do they even need to?
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As far as I know, only Rocket Lab are actively trying to recover their first stage right now.
Ariane and ULA might add reusability as an afterthought within a decade or so.
Looks like Russians and Chinese are planning on copying SpaceX's Falcon 9.
I guess most of them will be subsidized by their respective governments to maintain the capability, but won't be very competitive for commercial launches.
Re: A question about the industry (Score:3)
Re: A question about the industry (Score:5, Informative)
You are pretty much correct but I will expand a bit:
-Rocket Lab has already demonstrated parachuting their first stage into the ocean and recovering it, the plan is to catch stage 1 Electron with a helicopter "skyhook" type system. The planned Neutron rocket will propulsive land on a barge ala Falcon 9.
- China has shown a few plans for essentially Falcon 9 "knockoffs" right down to the grid fins and legs, no working hardware shown yet.
- ULA's Vulcan is going to drop off the engines and skyhook them up out of the air for re-use, but they have no plans for this just yet, at least the first few Vulcans are going to be expended and I think that plan depends on the cost and reliability of the BE4 engines over time, as they really don't have any use outside of test stands at this point.
- ESA Themis program is initially funded and will use propulsive landing ala Falcon 9, still early with no real hardware just yet, supposedly 2023.
- BO New Shepard has already proven landing albeit with a non-orbital rocket. New Glenn is also planned to land on a large landing and recovery ship they are building/retrofitting. That said since they have lost out on the last air force launch contract supposedly development of New Glenn is delayed and we may not see it until 2023/2024, which is disappointing. Progress may be even slower as they have also lost the HLS moon lander program for the moment to SpaceX.
- Russia has also announced the re-usable Amur program to develop a re-usable launch system but that was pretty recent.
- India is also working on a re-usable system, the RLV-TD
Really SpaceX has changed the launch market to such a degree that the "legacy" space providers were caught so off guard that there is a scramble to catch up. Everyone did not seem to believe Falcon 9 would work at all, much less so well and so economically that have eaten up such a large part of the launch business that they cannot even rely on future launch missions to fund this new tech they have been forced to develop to hope to be competitive in the future.
NASA has essentially given in by awarding SpaceX the moon missions, by extension funding the development of the Starship program seemingly due to the reality that SpaceX would likely get to the moon and/or mars before them even without their help so it's better to get on board early.
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"there is a scramble to catch up"
There should be, but is there though? Just look at how BO and Boeing have responded to the accomplishments of SpaceX, by doubling down on the old defense contractor tendencies of lobbying instead of innovating. The "National Teams" (Boeing, BO, others) lunar lander concept was a joke. A Matryoshka doll of expendable vehicles that would have littered space with defunct hardware on each flight. Boeing backed out of their Phantom Express program with DARPA a year ago, one o
Re: A question about the industry (Score:2)
Oh yeah for sure, they are "trying" to catch up but most as you pointed out, don't have the methods or culture to do it fast.
Boeing, as we have seen in the last 3 years is a shambles between SLS and Starliner both boondoggles, that company has bigger issues overall.
BO is an interesting case, they should be moving fast but apparently they are staffed and led by old style aerospace guys and Bezos does not seem to be pushing so hard without those government contracts.
Russia is too corrupt and Roscosmos is alwa
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While more money to the space program would be nice (and less of a bloated defense budget) I don't think it is primarily what is holding the US space program back. As (hopefully) will be proven by recent developments (commercial crew/cargo, Lunar Lander contract, etc), performance based fixed contracting and a more forward thinking NASA will advance the space program at a far more meaningful rate. The Lunar Lander contract seems to be a distillation of this effort, with SpaceX being one of if not the most
Good thing they tell us about their actual work (Score:5, Insightful)
A prime focus of the astronauts' mission will be research with "tissue chips," or "small models of human organs containing multiple cell types that behave much the same as they do in the body" and that NASA hopes will advance the development of drugs and vaccines
It is good to see that mainstream media point out that work is being done on the ISS that can benefit people on Earth. Obviously, it is nothing new for science nerds, but making it more public should answer the concerns of those who think we have better things to do than offer a few people a ride in orbit, as awesome as it might be.
Re:Good thing they tell us about their actual work (Score:4, Interesting)
I think (hopefully) more people are aware of the general discrepancy of what the space program gets ($24B/y) and what we spend on military operations ($721B/y)
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I'd be delighted if NASA got the $720B-odd, but it's not going to happen, if only because too many congress-critters have military bases in their States...
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What a crappy headline. (Score:1)
Didn't the astronauts have anything to do with piloting the capsule to the ISS?
Perhaps it should read "Astronauts successfully reach the ISS in SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule."
After all, astronauts aren't cheap consumer merchandise from China.
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I believe the Dragon can be completely automated. I suspect the astronauts were mainly passengers with great seats for most of the journey.
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Re:What a crappy headline. (Score:5, Informative)
In this case, no they did not - the flight was completely automated from launch to docking.
The crew have the ability to manually control the capsule, but it has not been required for any normal operations (it has been used in testing).
Media Sharing Very Much Required. (Score:1)