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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)

#61

Post by nathan11 »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #47
danbr wrote: 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.

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…

Isn't this attributable to needing to focus on driving and the controls being a secondary concern? The astronauts don't seem to have much more to focus on than the screens and controls in front of them.

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

#62

Post by deegles »

galacticaactual wrote: post #54
dmos62 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do more as species Space exploration and exploitation is awesome, but shouldn't the first items on the "do more as species" todo list be about taking care of earth?

Why is this question never raised whenever the latest web company raises X million dollars that could’ve funded green tech?

It's clear that the people writing the checks thought they would make more money with the web company. Either they're looking at the green projects and thinking "meh" or they're not seeing them at all.

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

#63

Post by albntomat0 »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #32
randomsearch wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I'm so nervous, this seems high risk.

High risk relative to?

It's the first manned launch on the Dragon platform. There have been a number of unmanned launches and tests, but no where near as many as on Soyuz.

A quick search through Wikipedia shows 140+ manned Soyuz launches, and around 20 total for the SpaceX Dragon.

Note those numbers are for the spacecraft, not the booster (the Soyuz platform has both the spacecraft and booster named Soyuz, SpaceX has the Dragon spacecraft on the Falcon 9 booster).

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

#64

Post by snazz »

Rerarom wrote: post #41
aquajet wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whom exactly is this Cold War against?

Shanghaiskaya Cooperation Organization

India and Pakistan have now joined that pact as well. As I understand it, the US has the biggest beef with China and Russia.

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

#65

Post by bryanlarsen »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #5
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #2

*Pending weather

Nominally a 60% chance of a go for launch weather, but according to Ken the Bin on Ars Technica, the weather in the abort corridor is poor so he expects a postponement.

Eric Berger now has an article about the iffy weather: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/spacex-may-launch-to...

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

#66

Post by JKCalhoun »

imshashank wrote: post #3

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.

Hate the helmets. Sorry.

I think the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo cool was that the hardware was completely lacking in design: it was as practical as a carburetor and as stylish. And that's why we liked them.

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

#67

Post by Koshkin »

mrtksn wrote: 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.

Well, the human species first and foremost should be seen as consisting of individuals, and while being deeply excited about and appreciative of all the high-tech endeavors, I keep asking myself, how much they are - and for how long they will continue to be - dependent on a near-slave labor of millions of said individuals around the world. (It's still there, on a massive scale, in spite of automation, machines, robots, the AI and what not we take as a given these days.)

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

#68

Post by simonh »

dmos62 wrote: post #28
mrtksn wrote: 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.

> do more as species Space exploration and exploitation is awesome, but shouldn't the first items on the "do more as species" todo list be about taking care of earth?

I think as a species, it should be possible for us to do more than one thing at a time.

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

#69

Post by billfruit »

mrtksn wrote: 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.

Yes, but is manned missions really going to achieve much. I thought there was much differing opinion about the value/lack of value of manned missions among the space community itself.

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

#70

Post by rrss »

j-pb wrote: post #42
luizfzs wrote: 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.

I agree for cars and planes, but for spacecraft, the crew doesn't really need to "keep their eyes on the road," so to speak (and it's not like the spacecraft controls can be done without looking, anyway, like turning up the radio).

Comparing to Apollo, I can imagine that being able to impose some hierarchy on the controls could be beneficial (rather than having all 566 switches laid out across the cabin), and the reliability is probably better than one dedicated switch per control, since the control can be used on any of the several touch screens.

Apollo 14 nearly failed due to a faulty switch. Apollo 12 was saved by flipping a switch that was not well known. Are there other incidents where the controls were critical? In general it seems like when the astronauts are in a hurry you've probably already got major issues, and being able to find the control out of the hundreds (or thousands) is probably more important than being able to flip it with your eyes closed.

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