Space Things

[brewloc]

Reports of SN11 venting tonight. Tomorrow should start the cryo/pressure tests, then raptor tests. Hopefully another hop as soon as this weekend.

Elon mentioned that the SN10 single engine lost some thrust during the landing causing a harder landing, crushing the landing legs, which did deploy.

[brewloc]

I am looking forward to this! Things will start getting much more spicy!! The numbers are not set yet, but lets just say 'lots' [~28] of raptors will be in this booster.


Reports that stacking of BN1 has started!

[brewloc]

SN11 tested this AM. It was very foggy at the site, not many visuals. No landing, a lot of falling debris. Looks like the flight termination system was used.


NSF's remote cam survived:

[Dadhawk]

Were they using the Autopilot software in the fog? Maybe that's the problem.

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Were they using the Autopilot software in the fog? Maybe that's the problem.

[Spuds]

Helicopter on another planet seem space-y enough?

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021...-first-flight/

[Dadhawk]

I saw today where Musk beat out Bezos for the lander first mission back to the Moon despite not having yet successfully landed his. Apparently his bid was significantly below the price of everyone else because he is funding half of it through his commercial ventures.

[Transport3r]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

I saw today where Musk beat out Bezos for the lander first mission back to the Moon despite not having yet successfully landed his. Apparently his bid was significantly below the price of everyone else because he is funding half of it through his commercial ventures.

Don’t forget underpaying/overworking his workforce.

[Stephen W.]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

I saw today where Musk beat out Bezos for the lander first mission back to the Moon despite not having yet successfully landed his. Apparently his bid was significantly below the price of everyone else because he is funding half of it through his commercial ventures.

Reminds me of that quote attributed to John Glenn about how one would feel if they were getting ready to launch and knew they were sitting on top of 2 million parts, all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

[brewloc]

'Challenger: The Final Flight' was a good look into the risks vs the rewards. You can visibly see who lives with the devils and who does not in the faces of those interviewed.

[Spuds]

Ingenuity stream.

Skip ahead to 36ish minutes if you want to get to the good part.

https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8923/nasa...-first-flight/

[Irace86.2.0]

SpaceX Crew-2 reaches orbit, with Elon Musk’s company launching 10 astronauts in under a year

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/23/spac...hes-orbit.html

SpaceX launched a group of astronauts for NASA early on Friday morning, with Elon Musk’s company now having sent 10 astronauts to space in under a year.

The Crew-2 mission, the company’s second operational crew launch for NASA and its third to date, reached orbit after launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 5:49 a.m. ET. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried the four astronauts to space in the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft named Endeavour.

The launch marked multiple new firsts for SpaceX, with the company reusing both a rocket and a capsule for the mission, as well as surpassing the total number of astronauts launched to space under the Mercury program that began in 1958.

“It was just spectacular,” acting NASA administrator Steve Jurczyk said after the Crew-2 mission launched. “Our partnership with SpaceX has been tremendous.”

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule — carrying NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide and Thomas Pesquet of France — is on its way to the International Space Station. The mission is scheduled to dock with the ISS about 24 hours after launch, at around 5:10 a.m. ET on Saturday.

“We’re just glad to be back in space, and we’ll send our regards to Crew-1 when we get there,” Kimbrough said, speaking from the spacecraft after the launch.

The Crew-2 team will perform a full duration mission on the ISS, spending about six months on board. The four will join the Crew-1 astronauts, who launched in November, before the latter team’s Crew Dragon capsule Resilience undocks and returns to Earth.

After the launch, SpaceX also landed the booster of its Falcon 9 rocket, which is the large, lower section of the rocket. This Falcon 9 rocket booster previously launched the Crew-1 mission in November, and SpaceX plans to continue using it to launch future missions.

“Thrilled to be part of advancing human spaceflight and looking forward to going beyond Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars, and helping make humanity a spacefaring civilization,” Musk said during a post-launch press conference.

SpaceX developed its Crew Dragon spacecraft and fine-tuned its Falcon 9 rocket under NASA’s Commercial Crew program, which provided the company with $3.1 billion to develop the system and launch six operational missions.

Commercial Crew is a competitive program. NASA also awarded Boeing with $4.8 billion in contracts to develop its Starliner spacecraft — but that capsule remains in development due to an uncrewed flight test in December 2019 that experienced significant challenges.

Crew-2 represents the second of those six missions for SpaceX, with NASA now benefiting from the investment it made in the company’s spacecraft development.

NASA emphasizes that, in addition to giving the U.S. a way to send astronauts to space, SpaceX offers the agency a cost-saving option. The agency expects to pay $55 million per astronaut to fly with Crew Dragon, as opposed to $86 million per astronaut to fly with the Russians. NASA last year estimated that having two private companies compete for contracts saved the agency $20 billion to $30 billion in development costs.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

SpaceX Crew-2 reaches orbit, with Elon Musk’s company launching 10 astronauts in under a year

Amazing progress. Starting to feel good about the US space program again.

[Ohio Enthusiast]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Starting to feel good about the US space program again.

And it only took keeping the government from getting involved. Capitalism FTW?