301–310 of 839 posts
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I think it's the general problem of infrastructure-like endeavors. "If you build it, they will come" absolutely applies to infrastructure.
Not quite, it’s “If you build it, they might come.” You only need to look to the history of railroad in the US to see how infrastructure frequently didn’t pay off.
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SpaceX has brought the costs down a lot. Around $500mil for a shuttle launch.
Didn’t shuttle have a larger payload? Up to 8 people and larger cargo. NASA gave a $55million estimate on cost per seat on crew dragon, which would be about $440 million to launch 8 people. Not sure that is factoring in reusability once they are willing to use that for crew missions (or offset price reusing crew boosters on non crewed missions). Another issue with shuttle was reliability though. It may take hundreds…
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They said during the launch live broadcast that SpaceX intends to fly paying tourists by next year. Apparently many tourists have also visited the space station. https://www.space.com/spacex-crew-dragon-will-fly-space-tour...
I'm not sure I would call seven people "many".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_travelers_by_nam...
I'm surprised how I almost ended up tearing up and was close to crying while watching this. Saying this as someone who is not a huge NASA or space enthusiast. I did study physics, and I'm more into science than the average person though.
I pulled over on the side of the street to watch this with my kiddo on my phone. It was a historic moment that I didn't want to miss. I really wish that we didn't have to make EVERY experience ultra casual these days though...it was disorienting to keep hearing the astronauts referred to as "Bob and Doug". These are veteran Air Force and Marine pilots. They deserve their honorifics being honored if anyone does.
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…
>> into orbit in a spacecraft that was designed from the ground up to be a commercial venture. 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…
I'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.
I wish I could have been there at the time, and today was the next best thing. Truly amazing.
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There are two rows of physical buttons below the touch screens along with a large manual abort lever. The physical buttons are used for manual docking.
And it’s painted black against black backdrop when the decision to pull it happens in milliseconds level. :facepalm: This is what a Martin Baker ejection handle looks like: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BJTDWG/martin-baker-ejection-seat-... With all due respect to all the engineers that work at SpaceX, the UI of the cockpit has regressed to the point of pure marketing. Same with the suit design, looks like an awful low b…
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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.
The sheer cost of launches is much lower on a Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon versus the Shuttle. Amortized per-launch cost for the Shuttle was about $1.5B [0]. The cost of the Demo-2 mission today with 2 astronauts costs $110M [1]. [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://…
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Non-toxic would be better than toxic. What would be the options? Compressed cold-gas (which don't have much kick, and require compressed gas which carry their own dangers). You could go with a monoprop Hydrazine which would eliminate half the toxic stuff. There are also some new developments here: hydroxylammonium nitrate (HAN)/water/fuel ? No idea of the trade offs there. Biprop hydrocarbon/gaseous compressed oxygen…
> What would be the options? Soyuz uses straight hydrogen peroxide, I believe, 82% concentration. For 3 tons capsule it takes 30 kg of peroxide - monopropellant - to land. Buran is still the example of a high tech option - it used LOX and kerosene for RCS, the biggest trick was to keep LOX liquid for a month-long missions. It was done with mid-1980 technologies. Kliper planned to use LOX and ethanol. The craft wasn't…
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If Crew Dragon is only making money from the government, how would it still be there tomorrow if the government weren't paying? Do you really imagine that there will be a market for this as it stands today? How much training and medical evaluation have the astronauts gone through to ensure they could survive the trip and know how to operate?
I think your parent poster's point was that previously the IP was owned by NASA. The companies contracted to build Apollo or the Space Shuttle was unable to reuse the IP to sell rides to another company or fly private citizens, nor could they bundle and sell the IP. SpaceX owns the Crew Dragon IP and tooling, and they can sell flights to private citizens - in fact I believe they said today that they are contracted wi…