SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station • Hacker News Board

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#111

Post by ncallaway » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:34 PM UTC

isostatic wrote: post #90

ncallaway wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The commercial crew missions by both Boeing and SpaceX are new and interesting for a number of reasons: - This will be one of the first vehicles developed by a private entity to launch people into space, rather than a nation. That represents a huge step "down" the ladder of who has access to space. First, it's only nations. Later, it's large companies and entities. Down the line a little bit medium-sized companies wi…

It's a step, but not a first step - it's the second step along the nations/large/medium/small/people road Nor have they actually put anyone in space. The first stage landing is great, but again it's not new -- SpaceX have been doing this for a few years now. Last year's Falcon Heavy, especially the two rockets landing simultaneously on live tv, felt very futuristic. This isn't anywhere near as impressive as that from…

> It's a step, but not a first step - it's the second step along the nations/large/medium/small/people road

Cool! I agree, but did anyone claim it was the first step?

Magellan or Captain Cook weren't the first steps of their day, either. Nor were the Apollo missions first steps. The Mercury missions had come first!

Why can't we be exciting, and have that feeling of exploration for each step? Why should only the first step be exciting? I reject the notion and would argue that every step in pushing our boundaries further out is exciting.

> The first stage landing is great, but again it's not new -- SpaceX have been doing this for a few years now

I feel like you and I have different time-horizons for what counts as "the dawn of a new space age". When areoform said we were at that dawn I didn't take it to mean on this day we are at that dawn.

The dawn of a new age takes a while. This decade is the dawn of a new space age, not necessarily this specific day. At least, that's how I interpreted the comments.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

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Post by whatislovecraft » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

vilius wrote: post #108

My “cool things to do once in a lifetime” list just got a new item - Watch SpaceX send humans to ISS. There is this strange urge to actually witness my species achieving great things.

That's definitely neat, but why not aim higher? Depending on your age?

I'm in my 30s: My goal here is to live on Mars. SpaceX's colony is aimed at being able to support 1M people, with something like 80,000 leaving Earth each Mars transit window on a BFR/Starship. Save some money now, wait 20-30 years for them to get the initial hard colony built and then buy my ticket.

Might not work, but I think I'll at least get close. You can definitely aim higher than watching them send people to ISS! That'll happen in the next few months/years, but so much more is happening after that, like the 7 people going around the Moon, or the first Mars launches on Starship, etc!

Woo!

(and lol that this is at -3, I'm just excited about stuff okay? no need to bury it deep underground and hate it so much!)

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#113

Post by telesilla » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #70

jononor wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now we can keep X% of the knowledge of humanity on a portable device. That should help.

Unless that device breaks? What hardware that we have today will still work in 100 years? Books you can make it happen. Phones are broke within 10. Desktops within 20.

We can send a new one over long-distance internet (to travel alongside the ship, if it's going light-speed).

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

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Post by Ankaios » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

Klathmon wrote: post #26

isostatic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soyuz takes people to the space station every few months, has done for years. Why is this specific mission new?

It costs about $81 million USD per seat round-trip to go to ISS on Soyuz. SpaceX is doing the same for around $58 million per person (last I read). That alone is a HUGE deal. And that cost is expected to drop as SpaceX gets more comfortable with launching humans, whereas Soyuz has been raising prices. Not to mention that it's increasing the number of countries and rocket designs that can send people to and from the I…

The price per seat of $58 M was actually the average over SpaceX and Boeing seats (https://spacenews.com/nasa-boeing-spacex-share-more-details-...), not the price for a seat on Dragon. As far as I am aware, the prices that NASA is paying for seats from each provider are not public.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

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Post by 7952 » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:43 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #43

zargath wrote: post #6

Fantastic, very impressive. But somewhere inside (my little star-wars/trek spirit), I wish that it was not so tricky. That we all could just travel and explore the universe. Everybody always talk about how difficult it is in space and how much better earth is. Wish the debate would be more about all the possibilities in space or on other planets. What can we do with zero gravity? For all the bad things with living on…

I honestly don’t see any benefits to living on Mars until every inch of space on Earth is used up. Everything about living on Mars is hostile to life. Doing anything there like mining and manufacturing will be orders of magnitude more difficult and for what? To say we are somewhere else that looks like the Atacama but infinitely more difficult to get to? It seems silly to be trying to rush to a place that wants to ki…

The irony is that this kind of technology could be important on earth now. From an environmental perspective a closed ecological system could be very beneficial. A system where resources are not wasted or allowed to pollute. And where all outputs are used as an input for something else.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

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Post by SubiculumCode » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

jpatokal wrote: post #51

raducu wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be a time when a single person mastered X% of humanity's technology anf knowledge. Packing up 100 people on some boats meant you could start a viable colony across some seas. Can you still do that today?

Colonies don't subsist in isolation, they require trade to survive. See Jared Diamond's Collapse for the pop science version of what happened to a few isolated colonies (Greenland, Easter Island, etc) when trade stops.

What happened in the past in very different circumstances won't be all that informative. Differences in education, environment, technological requirements and capacities, different world-views, different superstitions, native populations (or lack thereof), medical practices, air gravity and radiation.

Moreover, colony is a soft boundary word. I daresay that the United States (former European, now independent Colony) could survive without external trade if it came to that..what would it take for a colony on another planet to be self-sufficient? Minimally, the ability to produce items required for survival (e.g., airtight living quarters and vegetable gardens, energy, oxygen, etc).

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

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Post by simplicio » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:45 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #104

russdill wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily true. The artic and Antarctic destroy structures over time. It's also dark for several months at a time.

No light for part of the year vs no air ever. Hmm, let me think about that one for a minute. I think settling Mars will and should happen, but anyone who doesn’t realise it will be thousands of times more expensive, risky and dependent on external support than eg Antarctica I think isn’t really grasping the difference in scale of the problem.

Yea, I mean, just as far as accessibility, it costs 10,000 times more to deliver a pound of cargo to the ISS vs McMurdo station in antartica. I don't have numbers for the building and maintenance of the two stations, but presumably its even more than that.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

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Post by greglindahl » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #96

simplicio wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I think a good demonstration is Antarctica. Antarctica is both much more accessible and much more hospitable than Mars. But there's very little human activity there. It's hard to imagine there's an economic case for Mars or the Moon while Antarctica remains undeveloped.

Antartica is not a stepping stone to further and greater endeavors out into the cosmos It's more of a "dead end", cosmically speaking. This is why it doesn't have same interest or appeal. There are also other reasons. You can't learn about the possibility of life on other planets in Antartica, and seek to answer one of the greatest questions of all time: "are we alone?". You can't closely study another planet in Anta…

Antarctica is a great place to do science, and the majority of the activity at the US South Pole base is currently astronomy. Mars and the Moon will pass through that sort of phase before they might become actual colonies.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

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Post by jetzzz » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

goshx wrote: post #77

isostatic wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What event are you thinking of which will make Earth less hospitable than Mars? Supervolcano? Asteroid?

All those plus climate changes, lunatics in power, etc.

With all those things, even after nuclear war, Earth is still much better place for life than Mars.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

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Post by rocqua » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

bobl wrote: post #94

leesec wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making rockets re-usable is a massive step forward and not about 'not regressing'.

I doesn't seem clear at this point whether re-usable will be significant for activities beyond earth orbit. Partly the excitement comes from being a workaround for humanities reluctance to spend money on space exploration. Believe what you want, but from what I can find this doesn't seem to be a significant part of what would e.g. make humanity interplanetary. At least not yet.

Getting to orbit is hard, for anything big beyond earth orbit, we'll probably need manufacturing or at least some assembly in orbit. That takes a lot of trips from earth to orbit. Making that more efficient means more resources left for the real exploration.