51–60 of 89 posts
How many decades until these launches are the way we go from LA to Hong Kong for the price of a plane ticket again?
Live tracker https://www.spacex.com/dragon-tracker/index.html
Considering the Bezos/Branson debacle, I think it's easy for people to get lost in the "This is just another billionaire paying to go to space" thing... and it is, but that's a small part of it. The passengers themselves are basically unimportant compared to the bigger picture. Who cares if the passengers are some random billionaire and a group of people carefully chosen purely as a publicity stunt, let him have his…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There probably aren't going to be even 300 kerosene-burning Falcon 9 flights ever (this was number 127 or 128), because Starship is likely to start lifting commercial payloads by 2023 or 2024, and it burns methane, which could more easily than kerosene be part of a solar-power-to-rocket-fuel pipeline, recycling environmental CO2.
>could Yeah but will it be? As it stands no rocket fuel is made in a clean way. As someone who very much intends to stay on Earth for the rest of my life, I feel well within my rights to be concerned that unneeded space travel is making stuff worse for us down here. Going into orbit is environmentally expensive, and society should use this technology judiciously.
This is also assuming that there's no value in small, safe, steps on a path to socially acceptable space travel. Right now there's a perception of a lot of risk in going to space which is valid. If technology becomes safer over night no one will know it is safer. These incremental "we can launch", "we can reuse", "we can send a person", "we can send 4 people", etc messages are broadcasting to people that we can do this and that we are doing it. It's no longer science fiction.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There probably aren't going to be even 300 kerosene-burning Falcon 9 flights ever (this was number 127 or 128), because Starship is likely to start lifting commercial payloads by 2023 or 2024, and it burns methane, which could more easily than kerosene be part of a solar-power-to-rocket-fuel pipeline, recycling environmental CO2.
>could Yeah but will it be? As it stands no rocket fuel is made in a clean way. As someone who very much intends to stay on Earth for the rest of my life, I feel well within my rights to be concerned that unneeded space travel is making stuff worse for us down here. Going into orbit is environmentally expensive, and society should use this technology judiciously.
Maybe I'm jaded but I find no "inspiration" in one billionaire sending another one into space. I know they took along "guests" but I can't imagine there's any significant science in this.
And the 100 million he donated to St Jude Childrens Hospital? Or the 220 million target for donations during the flight? I do not understand how some people can be such a wet blanket. This is history. Civilians, further out from Earth than anyone has been in 20 years...and they were able to buy a ride. This is the beginning of commercial space flight. It's the equivalent of driving a gold spike in the Transcontinenta…
I find that NASA streams tend to be just far too loaded with spokesholes jabbering.... like a big infomercial.... and don't even get me started on Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic.
Maybe I'm jaded but I find no "inspiration" in one billionaire sending another one into space. I know they took along "guests" but I can't imagine there's any significant science in this.
And the 100 million he donated to St Jude Childrens Hospital? Or the 220 million target for donations during the flight? I do not understand how some people can be such a wet blanket. This is history. Civilians, further out from Earth than anyone has been in 20 years...and they were able to buy a ride. This is the beginning of commercial space flight. It's the equivalent of driving a gold spike in the Transcontinenta…
Wow. Well, you're welcome? Or, sorry? Welcome to HN. :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree. The challenges are still real in that with enough of these you'll lose people (just like you do in airplanes occasionally) but this is a pretty significant moment. I haven't seen any mention of any "science" they are going to do which was a late add to the qualification list for astronaut, and it was really apparent the difference between having access to the NASA deep space network vs not having that access.…
We don't know the public price of Inspiration4, but the $62m list price of Falcon 9 does not include Crew Dragon, which is a substantially more expensive vehicle to operate.
Live tracker https://www.spacex.com/dragon-tracker/index.html
The altitude is really interesting, showing that Crew Dragon is higher than both the Hubble and the ISS. They really want to show that, yes, there is no doubt, these people are in space and not just high altitude.