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SpaceX NASA returning human spaceflight to United States today (canceled)

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Re: SpaceX NASA returning human spaceflight to United States today (canceled)

#41
post #35
post #16

The cold war is back, the fashion is back and out of all the things that are back I am glad that the USA is back in space flights. Wish you the best luck and hope that this will lead to some serious competition. Soyuz is great but we need to do more as species.

Whom exactly is this Cold War against?

Shanghaiskaya Cooperation Organization

Re: SpaceX NASA returning human spaceflight to United States today (canceled)

#42
post #19

Love the new "Space" suits and the touch screen panel inside the capsule. This is going to be amazing. My prayers with the brave astronauts.

The space suit looks like it's made for a Halloween party. It looks kind of not flexible and fragile. The touch screen panel is surely very cool.

I bet one day these damn panels are gonna kill a crew.

Non haptic controls in critical systems like cars, planes, and rockets are an insane fad.

Re: SpaceX NASA returning human spaceflight to United States today (canceled)

#45
post #8

Love the new "Space" suits and the touch screen panel inside the capsule. This is going to be amazing. My prayers with the brave astronauts.

The space suits, UI, design of it all feels exactly what I’ve though the future of space technology would be. Maybe not all the way there yet, but a great leap from hundreds of manual switches and raw aluminum of the shuttle era.

> a great leap from hundreds of manual switches and raw aluminum of the shuttle era.

Wonder if reliability of virtualized controls surpasses the one of dedicated hardware though.

I suspect one of the reasons Apollo computers were all built with just one type of logical chip is the ability to replace faulty parts - one just need a single type of replacement. If for some reason touchscreen malfunctions, what options are left for the crew?

Re: SpaceX NASA returning human spaceflight to United States today (canceled)

#46

Love the new "Space" suits and the touch screen panel inside the capsule. This is going to be amazing. My prayers with the brave astronauts.

Is the touch screen usable during lift-off / landing? I'm thinking gravity (4+g?) and trepidations is making it hard to touch a specific spot.

Or, maybe there isn't much to do manually during this phase, and for the little things there are some classic controls.

Re: SpaceX NASA returning human spaceflight to United States today (canceled)

#47
post #8

Love the new "Space" suits and the touch screen panel inside the capsule. This is going to be amazing. My prayers with the brave astronauts.

The space suits, UI, design of it all feels exactly what I’ve though the future of space technology would be. Maybe not all the way there yet, but a great leap from hundreds of manual switches and raw aluminum of the shuttle era.

Having used (and been highly dissatisfied with) touch-based controls in cars I cannot imagine why touch-based controls for a spacecraft are a good idea. The ergonomics are terrible.

Switches can certainly fail, with potentially dire consequences (see the Apollo 14 abort switch failure). I would assume the number of failure modes for touch-based interface hardware are vastly more.

Touch controls are, no doubt, easily reconfigurable, which is probably great for profit margins. The idea of the human spaceflight industry applying "cost down" mentality to crew vehicles scares the heck out of me (and I'm not even flying in them). (I'm thinking about the Boeing MCAS mentality, but for spacecraft...)

Re: SpaceX NASA returning human spaceflight to United States today (canceled)

#49
post #42
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The space suit looks like it's made for a Halloween party. It looks kind of not flexible and fragile. The touch screen panel is surely very cool.

I bet one day these damn panels are gonna kill a crew. Non haptic controls in critical systems like cars, planes, and rockets are an insane fad.

This. Maybe I'm just ignorant about the reliability of the screens that they're using, but those sure scream single point of failure to me.

Re: SpaceX NASA returning human spaceflight to United States today (canceled)

#50
post #45
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The space suits, UI, design of it all feels exactly what I’ve though the future of space technology would be. Maybe not all the way there yet, but a great leap from hundreds of manual switches and raw aluminum of the shuttle era.

> a great leap from hundreds of manual switches and raw aluminum of the shuttle era. Wonder if reliability of virtualized controls surpasses the one of dedicated hardware though. I suspect one of the reasons Apollo computers were all built with just one type of logical chip is the ability to replace faulty parts - one just need a single type of replacement. If for some reason touchscreen malfunctions, what options ar…

> If for some reason touchscreen malfunctions, what options are left for the crew?

First, the spacecraft is I believe fully automated. While there is the ability to pilot the craft manually using onboard controls, my understanding is that is already considered a backup or unusual scenario.

As far as the touchscreens themselves, my understanding is there are four touchscreens total, and each can represent / control every aspect of the vehicle. So if a single touchscreen fails, the other 3 provide redundant access to necessary controls.

Finally, the dragon capsule does have manual (non-touchscreen) joystick controls for the critical flight controls.

So these systems have enough redundancy that a touchscreen failure should absolutely not jeopardize the flight.

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