Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about Bob and Doug.. MacKenzie?
That is what I think but you have to be over a certain age I suspect. Take off eh?
Strange Brew for those wondering. Classic movie.
SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit
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Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit
#12Here is the livestream with Mission Control Audio/Video feed:
Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit
#13The big and annoying issue with the Crew Dragon design seems to be the chosen RCS fuel (AFAIK, monomethylhydrazine and N2O4), which makes both fueling and clearing after landing a delicate process. Hopefully Crew Dragon proves itself as a capable platform for Earth-orbit transportation, but this fuel issue is a hard one to counter.
Hypergolic fuels have TONS of advantages, including extremely reliable ignition. Basically all crewed orbital spacecraft have used hypergols in some ways. SpaceX's Starship will not use hypergols, although it probably won't be available for years.
Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit
#14The big and annoying issue with the Crew Dragon design seems to be the chosen RCS fuel (AFAIK, monomethylhydrazine and N2O4), which makes both fueling and clearing after landing a delicate process. Hopefully Crew Dragon proves itself as a capable platform for Earth-orbit transportation, but this fuel issue is a hard one to counter.
RCS engines are practically always hypergolic since you need to be able to pulse on and off very easily/quickly, and propellents need to be storable (non-cryo). If you look at the choices remaining, they're all various levels of extremely toxic.
Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit
#15The big and annoying issue with the Crew Dragon design seems to be the chosen RCS fuel (AFAIK, monomethylhydrazine and N2O4), which makes both fueling and clearing after landing a delicate process. Hopefully Crew Dragon proves itself as a capable platform for Earth-orbit transportation, but this fuel issue is a hard one to counter.
One might say that Crew Dragon's days are counted already.
Even SpaceX' Gwynne Shotwell (she is SpaceX' long-time COO, in case you do not know her yet) is hoping that SpaceX will fly people on Starship in maybe 3-4 years and she is way more grounded than Mr. Musk. They plan to achieve this unreasonable sounding feat by producing large numbers of Starships and launching them very often to accumulate massive experience with the craft in very short time in parallel basically.
Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit
#16The big and annoying issue with the Crew Dragon design seems to be the chosen RCS fuel (AFAIK, monomethylhydrazine and N2O4), which makes both fueling and clearing after landing a delicate process. Hopefully Crew Dragon proves itself as a capable platform for Earth-orbit transportation, but this fuel issue is a hard one to counter.
Earlier this week when they were de-fueling they mentioned that the "escape system" was still active during that process. Is that because the fuel is potentially dangerous? Tangentially related, can the "escape system" be activated even when the rocket itself hasn't left the ground? I watched the escape system test but IIRC it involved launching and then aborting so the pod that carries the crew was already high off the ground before the escape system was triggered. It surprised me that it could triggered from a standstill.
Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit
#17The big and annoying issue with the Crew Dragon design seems to be the chosen RCS fuel (AFAIK, monomethylhydrazine and N2O4), which makes both fueling and clearing after landing a delicate process. Hopefully Crew Dragon proves itself as a capable platform for Earth-orbit transportation, but this fuel issue is a hard one to counter.
One might say that Crew Dragon's days are counted already. Even SpaceX' Gwynne Shotwell (she is SpaceX' long-time COO, in case you do not know her yet) is hoping that SpaceX will fly people on Starship in maybe 3-4 years and she is way more grounded than Mr. Musk. They plan to achieve this unreasonable sounding feat by producing large numbers of Starships and launching them very often to accumulate massive experience…
I wouldn’t say she is that much more grounded: she has also said they are planning on passenger New YorkShanghai rocket trips for a price between an economy and business class plane ticket by 2028:
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/11/17227036/flight-spacex-gwynne-...
Not a prototype or demonstration, a real commercial flight service.
Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit
#18I'm so excited about this.
I used to watch old space mission videos and I think how could it would've been to watch them live back in the day.
Now SpaceX has brought this excitement back.
Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit
#19Good luck to everyone! What an exciting time. Curious about the spacesuits and performance of the “minimal” touchscreen interfaces compared to the older stuff.
The suits are just pressure suits, more for basic protection and temporary loss of pressure, not extended EVAs or anything. They do look pretty comfortable, though, and I think the audio and signal are better.
The touchscreen interface is "different" - the astronauts talked a bit about helping SpaceX design it and the pros and cons of it in a recent interview. I wrote it up here but you can also check the original long NASA TV thing.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/04/this-is-certainly-differen...
Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit
#20The big and annoying issue with the Crew Dragon design seems to be the chosen RCS fuel (AFAIK, monomethylhydrazine and N2O4), which makes both fueling and clearing after landing a delicate process. Hopefully Crew Dragon proves itself as a capable platform for Earth-orbit transportation, but this fuel issue is a hard one to counter.
RCS engines are practically always hypergolic since you need to be able to pulse on and off very easily/quickly, and propellents need to be storable (non-cryo). If you look at the choices remaining, they're all various levels of extremely toxic.
Buran had non-toxic components for RCS. Kliper was planned with non-toxic RCS. Soyuz spacecraft at least has non-toxic components for capsule RCS, so when the capsule lands, it doesn't need to be approached in a chemical protection suit.
It's not a question of choices - there are choices. I suspect it's a question which is considered less important so far, so SpaceX didn't pay that much attention to it, considering they had to do a lot of other things already. But I hope we'll get there sooner rather than later.