151–160 of 839 posts
2nd attempt. Let's see how it goes.
I'm young enough for this to be my first time watching a crewed launch from America... Hopefully this goes well.
It is hard to convey how "sustainable" this feels to me. For the first time, humans have gone into orbit in a spacecraft that was designed from the ground up to be a commercial venture. All of the NASA missions prior to this have an ambience of "uneconomical but useful". Even the shuttle, which was supposed to be this cost effective space truck, turned out to be not even close. And the last thing I'm feeling is the a…
Not to detract one iota from this amazing achievement, but what definition of sustainable are you thinking of? This was still paid for by the government.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program#Budget
[1]: This article states the per-astronaut cost paid by NASA on a Crew Dragon mission is $55M, compared to $86M on Soyuz: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/26/spacex-demo-2-nasa-astronaut...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would expect Elon to push really hard to send something to Mars in 2022 aboard Starship, even if it's just an empty ship. They need to try navigating with precision and landing. It's a 2 year delay if they miss that window.
They could continue the tradition and drop a Cybertruck to Mars.
Boeing got the big bucks at $5B or so for their crewed services because they have the "better" more reliable design.
SpaceX only got $3B or so.
Boeing running roughly 60%+ more per seat as well.
So a real accomplishment so far for SpaceX to pull this off.
I assumed this launch would be uneventful since SpaceX has been flying numerous missions to the ISS, and this one merely has people on it but is basically business-as-usual for them.
The 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…
This is what makes America great. An immigrant making all this happen and I think all this can happen only in America.
Congrats SpaceX! A job well done. I assumed this launch would be uneventful since SpaceX has been flying numerous missions to the ISS, and this one merely has people on it but is basically business-as-usual for them.
It is hard to convey how "sustainable" this feels to me. For the first time, humans have gone into orbit in a spacecraft that was designed from the ground up to be a commercial venture. All of the NASA missions prior to this have an ambience of "uneconomical but useful". Even the shuttle, which was supposed to be this cost effective space truck, turned out to be not even close. And the last thing I'm feeling is the a…
If we are talking pure commercial travel, it is a vehicle without a destination. The ISS is definitely not a commercial project. There are lots of reasons for the ISS to exist, and they have changed over time, but it has never been a money-making venture. While the dragons certainly do come in under budget, they are a more efficient path to orbit, the purpose of the mission is not commercial. Crew Dragon's existence is funded by the need to move people to and from the ISS. Without the ISS, Crew Dragon would exist. I hold off on the "commercial" designation until the customer funding the mission actually intends profit.
What we need is a commercial, money-making, reason to launch people into orbit. Astronauts fly for science. They fly for national pride. They fly to demonstrate engineering excellence. They don't fly to make money. I'm a big spacelaunch fan but I just don't see any commercial reason to launch people into space. (Space hotels for billionaires might be a niche but that doesn't seem sustainable imho.)