41–50 of 260 posts
We are a small step closer inhabiting Mars. When we will, it will be the most important event in the five billion years history of our solar system. In other words, we are witnessing some pretty cool stuff.
Elon Musk will have cities on planets names after him for generations to come. The legacy he leaves will be greater than that of Ghengis Kahn, Ceasar, or Alexander the Great.
So when seeing this I had two questions, one of which I've found the answer to, one of which still remains a mystery. 1. Why only two astronauts? and 2. How much is Crew Dragon costing? For (1), it's stated [1] that Crew Dragon has a capacity of seven astronauts but only 4 for NASA? How does that work? Does that mean the NASA configuration only has 4 seats? I found this [2] saying seats 1 and 4 were empty. Why not 4…
We are a small step closer inhabiting Mars. When we will, it will be the most important event in the five billion years history of our solar system. In other words, we are witnessing some pretty cool stuff.
SpaceX runs basically as a giant R&D program that also happens to accomplish useful things as byproducts of its approach (with the miracle of insurance to cover costs if things get explody). Every flight is data for incremental improvement. If you think of all SpaceX has ever done was try to get to this point, with somewhere around 80 flights on the Falcon 9, but for a variety of mission buyers (NASA, USAF, Commercia…
This is the part that's exciting for me. Whether it comes in the form of more space stations like the ISS or a much bigger and reinvigorated ISS, either way is a vital step in the right direction toward making humanity less beholden to a single planet.
Lots of challenges still to come, but this is a reminder that those challenges can someday be overcome.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lower cost to orbit, sure. Increased economic activity in orbit? Where does that part come from? It's not like we haven't sent people to the ISS before. And it's not like SpaceX hasn't managed to reuse hardware before. It's basically just a mix of those two things. Really the most significant things about this were that astronauts were launched to space from the US and it was a private company. And out of those, the…
Well we're not gonna get to Mars with that attitude!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lower cost to orbit, sure. Increased economic activity in orbit? Where does that part come from? It's not like we haven't sent people to the ISS before. And it's not like SpaceX hasn't managed to reuse hardware before. It's basically just a mix of those two things. Really the most significant things about this were that astronauts were launched to space from the US and it was a private company. And out of those, the…
Well we're not gonna get to Mars with that attitude!
Its not the stream resolution, is it? Other knife-sharp features were visible.
Maybe the space station is fuzzy? Maybe the module material blurs shadows? What am I missing?
So when seeing this I had two questions, one of which I've found the answer to, one of which still remains a mystery. 1. Why only two astronauts? and 2. How much is Crew Dragon costing? For (1), it's stated [1] that Crew Dragon has a capacity of seven astronauts but only 4 for NASA? How does that work? Does that mean the NASA configuration only has 4 seats? I found this [2] saying seats 1 and 4 were empty. Why not 4…
You've been in the teamwork game a long time, right? You know that each new team member added to a team does something like double or quadruple communication overhead. They're trying to work out the kinks - they're going to with a small team of experienced people to stay focused.
There's probably also a limit to how many people they want to keep track of on ISS, like you said. It's also less risky like you said - you need two people in case one gets incapacitated, and also for psychological support, but you don't want to risk any more people on the maiden voyage than you have to.
>Compared to Soyuz [4], which cost NASA $80m/astronaut, that's a saving but not as much as I would've thought.
There's more to it than costs. We now have the agency to launch as many astronauts as we want, when we want, rather than filling in a vacant seat the Russians have. Something not considered in just costs is we can also charge other nations for rides on our rockets, and as long as it's less than $80m, we'll make profits and it'll be a win for those nations who'd normally ride on Soyuz.
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All true, however, (splitting hairs, yes), the reason FH9 can best the shuttle boosters is because they had to carry the shuttle itself, which was around 50 tons.
I wonder, as a percentage of launch vehicle, how much mass the shuttle program managed to reuse after a mission vs. the F9Heavy? It turns out not having to "shuttle" half a dozen humans up to orbit every time you want to get something up there is a good idea.
How much AI/ML do you think is running on the software associated with this launch and docking? I suspect there’s a great deal of very explicit, well tested code, but very little AI/ML.