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SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

nasa.gov

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Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#231

Post by dang »

Other things people have posted, whose threads we've merged hither:

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1266812530833240064

https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/30/spacex-makes-history-with-...

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/todays-the-day-weath...

If there's a particularly good article, we can swap out the URL above. Edit: beefman suggested the nasa.gov page (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23364975), so we'll put that up pending any better suggestion. The submitted URL was the livestream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIZsnKGV8TE, which was fine while it lasted, but is now of the second freshness. Submitted title was "SpaceX and NASA: Crew Demo-2".

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#232

Post by philwelch »

Teever wrote: post #214
philwelch wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also because it costs less when you can reuse the booster rocket.

And now you know why Boeing never bothered to develop reusable rockets.

No, that doesn't make sense. SpaceX can achieve much higher profit margins by reusing rockets, even with lower prices, because their costs are lowered by a much greater proportion thanks to reusability.

Also, Boeing doesn't make mistakes as the result of some bizarre conspiracy that turns out to benefit them in the end. Most of Boeing's mistakes hurt Boeing.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#233

Post by monocasa »

nradov wrote: post #222
monocasa wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WTO is run by a very specific brand of economists that don't see the value in a country subsidizing an industry to maintain local expertise in that industry. I for one disagree pretty heavily with this ruling.

The WTO is run by bureaucrats who enforce the terms of the membership agreement. If national governments think it's important to subsidize local industries then they should negotiate agreements to allow for that. Don't blame the WTO.

That has the effect of cutting yourself off from more or less all trade.

The WTO leaves you with three options as not the US. 1) Capitulate and lose about any industries as the efficiencies of scales of the US economy steam rolls any industries they don't explicitly prop up in your country (the Israel model if you're lucky, the African model if you're unlucky). 2) Cut yourself off from essentially all global trade (the North Korea model) 3) form a large enough economy that you can flaunt more and more of the WTOs rules because what are they going to do? (The Chinese and EU model).

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#234

Post by chipsa »

avmich wrote: post #33
Robotbeat wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soyuz still uses hypergols on the service module. SpaceX has no separate service module (just the trunk which has no propulsion), which saves money as the whole propulsion system can therefore be reused. If the Soyuz used peroxide for the service module, it’d weigh far more due to lower performance. Peroxide has serious limitations in performance (and, like all strong oxidizers and monopropellants, has serious safety…

Kliper is a relatively modern design, which, while admittedly not produced in metal, used much more benign components for RCS. And Kliper also doesn't have a separate service module. One can always say "but Klipper is a paper spacecraft". Of course, nothing is perfect. Buran can be brought as an example, and arguments against that could be broght up - "oh, it's too old". The point still stands - it's possible to not…

Paper spacecraft can do anything. Buran was designed for the same mission lengths as the Shuttle, on the order of a few weeks at most, not half a year or more. For long mission durations, storable hypergolics are the way to go for now. We don't have good flight time on anything else, and we need that for something we're putting crew on.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#235

Post by colordrops »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #92
haunter wrote: post #60

I'm actually surprised they use a touchscreen interface, and they will use that for the manual docking too! https://i.imgur.com/YKiqIqO.jpg

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.

The physical buttons are not used for manual docking. There are on screen controls for translation and rotation.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#238

Post by zitterbewegung »

sandworm101 wrote: post #160
ChuckMcM wrote: post #86

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…

Most people are floating the idea that eventually we would either have commercial companies adding a "space hotel" to the ISS for testing purposes and when the ISS is retired that the hotel would continue to exist.

Once you have companies either vying for real estate in orbit the demand for people to visit the hotel could eventually spur demand for other places to go.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#239

Post by runawaybottle »

sneak wrote: post #167
haunter wrote: post #60

I'm actually surprised they use a touchscreen interface, and they will use that for the manual docking too! https://i.imgur.com/YKiqIqO.jpg

I understand it runs Chromium code and that the UI is written in Javascript. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9243/what-computer...

Wait wait, you’re telling me there’s Javascript floating around in space (not including web traffic being sent through satellites)?

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#240

Post by NikolaeVarius »

fermienrico wrote: post #185
bryanlarsen wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's almost like these missions all have vastly different mission requirements.

They sent voyager up with the Golden record. Those dumb engineers wasted precious mass on something purely for sentimental value.

Also compare with other abort modes Shuttle was a dial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_abort_modes#/med...

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