SpaceX

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Re: SpaceX

#721 Post by Boac » Sat Aug 07, 2021 2:52 pm

SN20 now back in the paint shop.

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Re: SpaceX

#722 Post by Boac » Wed Aug 11, 2021 1:28 pm

Looks now as if BN4 is also going back - to have some 'go faster' stripes fitted?

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Re: SpaceX

#723 Post by Boac » Sun Aug 15, 2021 1:38 pm

Rather mysteriously, BN3 has been circumcised.

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Re: SpaceX

#724 Post by OFSO » Mon Aug 16, 2021 11:58 am

Boeing's capsule back at the factory. Oxidiser tank valves sticking, have to be replaced.

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Re: SpaceX

#725 Post by Boac » Mon Aug 16, 2021 1:38 pm

Coming back as 'Starliner Max' I guess?

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Re: SpaceX

#726 Post by Woody » Thu Aug 19, 2021 2:49 pm

Hopefully the mods are better than this :-o

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/trav ... heels.html
When all else fails, read the instructions.

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Chop Suey....

#727 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Mon Aug 30, 2021 5:04 pm

SpaceX will attempt to catch a massive rocket using “robot chopsticks”, according to Elon Musk.

chopsui.JPG

The audacious plan could be carried out later this year during a major test of the Mars-bound Starship craft, which will see it blasted into orbit by a Super Heavy booster rocket.

The so-called chopsticks refer to mechanical arms attached to SpaceX’s launch tower – named ‘Mechazilla’ by Mr Musk – which will help guide the booster rocket back down onto the pad.

This system could eventually allow for rapid reusability and allow for multiple Starship launches in a single day, though chances of early success are far from guaranteed.

“SpaceX will try to catch largest ever flying object with robot chopsticks,” Mr Musk tweeted on Monday. “Success is not guaranteed, but excitement is.”

In a series of subsequent tweets, the SpaceX boss said the robotic arms will be equipped with tank tracks in order to “slide” the booster back out to line up with the orbital pad.

There have been several high-altitude Starship tests this year – all without the booster attached. All but one of them ended in fiery explosions.


SpaceX briefly assembled the biggest ever rocket at its Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, earlier this month, demonstrating the scale of the fully stacked Starship craft.

The two segments – the Super Heavy booster rocket on the bottom and the Starship craft on the top – measured roughly 120m (400ft) when connected together.

SpaceX is yet to set a date for the next major test of its Starship prototype, which will see it fly from Texas to Hawaii in a 90-minute flight, though it is expected to take place within the coming weeks or months.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-styl ... 11138.html
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Re: SpaceX

#728 Post by PHXPhlyer » Tue Sep 07, 2021 7:54 pm

Phoenix teacher just days away from going to space with historic Space X 'Inspiration4'

https://www.azfamily.com/news/phoenix-t ... _id=997199

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5 ) - We are now just days away from the first ever all-civilian mission to space, and part of that four-person crew is a Phoenix teacher who has waited her whole life to go to space.

Space X's Inspiration4 will make history launching into space next week. The countdown to their flight is now the focus of a new docuseries on Netflix, including how Phoenix's own Dr. Sian Proctor was chosen to be one of the astronauts. Proctor can do it all - she's a teacher, she's been in space simulation experiments, and what won her the "prosperity" seat in the Inspiration4 was her poetry and art.

Arizona’s Family caught up with her right after she learned she was selected. “It was very emotional when I found out. I kind of reference it to when Harry Potter finds out he’s a wizard and he’s like wait, I can’t be a wizard! You picked me!” Proctor said.

Proctor has been working up to this for decades. “My only fear was that this moment was never going to come or happen for me,” she told us after she was selected.

Arizona’s Family first met Proctor and her friend Erin Bonilla before the pandemic, when they were heading to Hawaii to live in a Mars simulator to study effects on the body. Proctor was already making history then.

“Seven years ago, going from the very first crew to now being a crew that’s all female is very exciting,” she told us then.

Sian Proctor and Erin Bonilla are analog astronauts

Proctor barely missed the cut to be a NASA astronaut in 2009. Space is in her blood. She was born in Guam because her dad worked with a NASA contractor on the Apollo mission.

Now just days before the Space X launch, we’re seeing those behind-the-scenes moments in the Netflix documentary 'Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space' that Bonilla was a part of.

“Once she found out she was selected she was able to tell somebody about it. And I was the person she could tell during that time,” Bonilla said. “It was a really emotional moment as you can tell in the documentary, but it’s been years coming for her.” Bonilla is heading to Florida on Wednesday to be with Proctor and the crew and will be there in person for the historic launch. “It’ll be pretty awesome to be there with everybody to see it launch, and to know that there’s somebody we all know and love on that rocket is going to be pretty amazing,” Bonilla said.

Sian Proctor will be the 4th African American woman to ever be in space. This mission is also raising hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research for St. Jude. The launch is set for Wednesday September 15.

Nothing on SpaceX website...but :-?

SpaceX's private Inspiration4 mission is 'go' for launch on Sept. 15

SpaceX and the Inspiration4 team completed the flight readiness reviews on Sept. 2.






CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX's first all-civilian launch is officially "go" for launch.

"#Inspiration4 and @SpaceX have completed our flight readiness review and remain on track for launch!" the Inspiration4 mission team tweeted on Friday (Sept. 3).

The mission, called Inspiration4, is set to blast off from NASA's Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sept. 15. A crew of four private citizens will strap into a Crew Dragon spacecraft and blast off on a three-day journey around the Earth.

Billionaire Jared Issacman, founder of Shift4 Payments, purchased the flight as part of an effort to raise millions for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. He is joined by Haley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor and Chris Sembroski.

Arceneaux, a childhood bone cancer survivor and St. Jude physician's assistant, was chosen to represent the charity, while Proctor and Sembroski were selected as part of a global contest for a trip on the flight.

The group has been busy the last few months training for their flight. On Friday (Sept. 3), those efforts have paid off as teams from both SpaceX and Inspiration4 officially greenlit the flight.

In this artist's visualization, you can see SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft modified with a cupola observation window for the upcoming Inspiration4 mission.

In this artist's visualization, you can see SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft modified with a cupola observation window for the upcoming Inspiration4 mission. (Image credit: SpaceX)
Both the Dragon crew capsule and Falcon 9 rocket have flown before and are cleared to fly after teams thoroughly reviewed each of the crafts' systems as well as ground support system data from the launch pad.

Liftoff is expected on Sept. 15, with a backup launch date of Sept. 16, Inspiration4 officials said in a statement emailed to Space.com.

The exact liftoff time will be determined just a few days before launch. Three days before liftoff, the team will narrow the 24-hour launch window down to five hours, taking into account the weather conditions at the launch site, the flight trajectory and at potential emergency landing sites off the Florida coast.

Once in orbit, the crew will circle the Earth for three days before splashing down in the Atlantic ocean. Since the Dragon will stay free-flying in orbit and not visit the International Space Station, as previous Crew Dragon missions have done, its docking port was removed and replaced with a dome window.

The window, inspired by the Cupola on the International Space Station, will provide the crew with incredible views of Earth, according to the Inspiration4 team.

Issacman, Arceneaux, Proctor and Sembrowski are set to arrive at Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 9, ahead of their planned launch.

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Re: SpaceX

#729 Post by Boac » Tue Sep 14, 2021 8:26 pm

SpaceX put 51 Starlinks into a semi-polar orbit yesterday (and, boring as it is, then landed the second booster to fly 10 missions on a barge - and, ho-hum, only the 90th successful such.) This was the first launch from the west coast of the USA for which the barge had positioned through the Panama.

Not forgetting the launch tomorrow of the first 'customer-crewed' orbital Dragon flight.

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Re: SpaceX

#730 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Sep 15, 2021 4:40 am

Boac wrote:
Tue Sep 14, 2021 8:26 pm
SpaceX put 51 Starlinks into a semi-polar orbit yesterday (and, boring as it is, then landed the second booster to fly 10 missions on a barge - and, ho-hum, only the 90th successful such.) This was the first launch from the west coast of the USA for which the barge had positioned through the Panama.

Not forgetting the launch tomorrow of the first 'customer-crewed' orbital Dragon flight.
Canal? Hat? ;)))

tusk.jpg
tusk.jpg (12.2 KiB) Viewed 1282 times

While Elon Tusk continues to pollute LEO with his wretched constellation of Starlink debris, and light pollution, I can confirm that the Woz is looking to clean up the mess!
The big picture: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has joined forces with former Apple engineer Alex Fielding to launch a private space company. Based on what little we know about the company thus far, it seems as if the startup is all about space sustainability.

Privateer Space aims to keep space safe and accessible to all humankind. In a teaser video on YouTube, the firm mentions “taking care of what we have so the next generation can be better together.” In announcing the startup on Twitter, Wozniak said the company will be “unlike the others.”

So, what does it all mean?

Taken at face value, one could assume that this is simply another private space company in the same category as Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic or SpaceX. But, the wording used in the video and Wozniak’s own admission that it’s unlike the others seems to suggest otherwise.

On Twitter, Fielding said he was thrilled to be part of the AMOS conference in Hawaii this week. For the uninitiated, the AMOS conference is described as the top scientific conference in the field of space situational awareness / space domain awareness. Indeed, seems that Privateer Space is all about space sustainability.

In a press release from August, a company called Desktop Metal referenced Privateer Space, calling it a satellite company focused on monitoring and cleaning up objects in space.

Wozniak and Fielding have worked together previously. Back in 2002, the two founded a company called Wheels of Zeus that developed GPS-based tracking tags. The firm’s tech was licensed by Motorola in 2004 but the company shut down a couple of years later and sold its assets to ZonTrak.

The AMOS conference runs from September 14 through the 17th in Maui.
https://www.techspot.com/news/91224-ste ... space.html

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Re: SpaceX

#731 Post by PHXPhlyer » Wed Sep 15, 2021 1:43 pm

SpaceX set to launch first all-civilian crew into orbit
The three-day expedition will be the first mission to space without any professional astronauts on board.


https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/s ... t-rcna1992

Four private citizens are set to launch into orbit Wednesday in what will be the first mission to space without any professional astronauts on board.

The all-civilian crew will ride to space aboard a rocket and capsule developed by SpaceX. The mission, dubbed Inspiration4, is just the latest milestone flight in what has been a busy year for private spaceflight companies, following joyrides to suborbital space by billionaire entrepreneurs Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos over the summer.

Another billionaire, Jared Isaacman, is set to lead the historic all-civilian mission. Isaacman, the 38-year-old founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, a Pennsylvania-based payment processing company, paid an unspecified amount for the three-day expedition in SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule.

The spacecraft is scheduled to launch Wednesday atop a reusable Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The five-hour launch window opens at 8:02 p.m. EDT, and SpaceX is planning to broadcast the event live. Forecasts currently project a 70 percent chance of favorable weather conditions for the evening launch.

The Crew Dragon capsule will spend three days circling Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Florida, according to SpaceX.

“From the start of this mission, I’ve been very aware of how fortunate we are to be part of this history SpaceX is creating right now,” Isaacman said Tuesday in a preflight briefing, adding that the orbital outing is designed to inspire people.


SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said that while early space tourism flights may be out of reach for all but very wealthy people, these pioneering missions will lay the groundwork for more regular and more affordable trips to space in the future.

If successful, the Inspiration4 expedition will represent a major leap for space tourism. It will also be a boon for SpaceX, which has dominated the private spaceflight industry, including over rivals such as Bezos and his aerospace company Blue Origin.

Joining Isaacman on the journey will be 29-year-old Hayley Arceneaux, a bone cancer survivor who now works as a physician assistant at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Arceneaux, who will act as the crew's chief medical officer, will become the youngest American to fly in space.

Chris Sembroski, a 42-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran and aerospace data engineer, and 51-year-old Sian Proctor, a geoscientist and licensed pilot, will round out the crew.

The expedition is part of a charity initiative to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. In addition to giving $100 million to St. Jude, Isaacman donated the three other seats on the Inspiration4 flight to his crew members.

Procter, a former NASA astronaut candidate, won her ticket to space through an online contest conducted by Shift4 Payments. Sembroski won his seat in a charity drive to raise money for St. Jude.

The Inspiration4 mission will resemble SpaceX's routine flights to the International Space Station, except this time, the capsule will not dock at the orbiting lab. Instead, the spacecraft will circle the planet 15 times each day from an altitude of nearly 360 miles, higher than the current orbits of the space station and the Hubble Space Telescope, according to SpaceX.

Though the flight is an important milestone for the space tourism industry, the Inspiration4 crew members will not just be along for the ride. During their three-day expedition, Isaacman, Proctor, Sembroski and Arceneaux will perform a series of medical experiments that could inform future spaceflights and have applications for human health closer to home.

The crew members have been undergoing intense spaceflight training since March, including in simulators and on zero-G flights that offer short periods of microgravity.

In a preflight briefing, Proctor spoke about her excitement and anticipation ahead of the launch.

"Since the announcement when we were here last, every day has been the best day of my life," Proctor said, speaking from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "Every day, it just gets better and better."

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Re: SpaceX

#732 Post by PHXPhlyer » Thu Sep 16, 2021 12:18 am

4 more "Real" Astronauts minted. ^:)^ :YMAPPLAUSE: :-bd
Stuck the first stage landing, too. :YMAPPLAUSE: :YMPARTY:

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Re: SpaceX

#733 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Thu Sep 16, 2021 10:25 am

In praise of the Elongated Tusk!
It has not always been easy to get behind the billionaires’ space race. Let them have their midlife crisis. Some of us have taxes to pay. If Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson want to get as far away from our planet as possible, at the greatest expense imaginable, well, good luck – and good riddance. You go on ahead, lads, we’ll be right behind you. It’s all just so embarrassing.

But then SpaceX, Musk’s space company, goes and does something really quite remarkable and you have to stand back and applaud, while picking crumbs of humble pie off your jersey. It sucks.

At 8pm last night in Florida (1am BST, Thursday), SpaceX successfully launched the first all-civilian crew into orbit. The four-person team will spend three days orbiting Earth at an altitude of 575km, which I’m told is 150km higher than the International Space Station and the highest any human has flown since the Space Shuttle missions to the moon. Not only that, but the crew will conduct health research during the trip to try and better understand how humans can survive in space.

The Inspiration4 mission is not, then, a pointless bit of willy waving. It could be a genuinely ground-breaking moment in human history. Why? Because the crew is not made up of professional astronauts. Two members of the team – Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer and Sian Proctor, 51, a community college educator – secured their spots via a sweepstake. Beats a dusty bottle of Babycham. Space travel suddenly seems a whole lot more accessible. Inspiration4 feels inclusive, as if we are all invested in its success.

As my colleagues Anthony Cuthbertson and Vishwam Sankaran explained: “If the mission is a success, it will mark a major step forward for space tourism, and for Elon Musk and SpaceX’s plans to make it accessible to anyone with the money to fund a rocket and spacecraft to carry them to orbit.”

Okay, so you could argue that the key phrase there is “anyone with the money” but today is not the day for cynicism. This mission very much feels like progress in the democratisation of space travel. And Nasa astronaut Shane Kimbrough agrees. “To me, the more people involved in it, whether private or government, the better,” he said from the International Space Station.

Space travel and tourism cannot become yet another thing from which the vast majority of us are excluded. Of course we aren’t all going to head off into orbit, but we need to feel that these missions are for the benefit of mankind. That they are research-led, not a game for the rich kids. Which is why we need less of Bezos and Branson in their shiny space suits and more missions like Inspiration4, which has helped to normalise the idea of space travel for all and should throw up a whole heap of interesting scientific analysis.

Elon Musk, man of the people. Never thought I’d write that. Funny old world.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/el ... 21187.html
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Re: SpaceX

#734 Post by Boac » Thu Sep 16, 2021 12:13 pm

It should not be forgotten either that the level of 'automation' in this mission is going to be of benefit to future space missions, not to mention the level of reliability.

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Re: SpaceX

#735 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Thu Sep 16, 2021 5:00 pm

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Thu Sep 16, 2021 10:25 am
In praise of the Elongated Tusk!
It has not always been easy to get behind the billionaires’ space race. Let them have their midlife crisis. Some of us have taxes to pay. If Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson want to get as far away from our planet as possible, at the greatest expense imaginable, well, good luck – and good riddance. You go on ahead, lads, we’ll be right behind you. It’s all just so embarrassing.

But then SpaceX, Musk’s space company, goes and does something really quite remarkable and you have to stand back and applaud, while picking crumbs of humble pie off your jersey. It sucks.

At 8pm last night in Florida (1am BST, Thursday), SpaceX successfully launched the first all-civilian crew into orbit. The four-person team will spend three days orbiting Earth at an altitude of 575km, which I’m told is 150km higher than the International Space Station and the highest any human has flown since the Space Shuttle missions to the moon. Not only that, but the crew will conduct health research during the trip to try and better understand how humans can survive in space.

The Inspiration4 mission is not, then, a pointless bit of willy waving. It could be a genuinely ground-breaking moment in human history. Why? Because the crew is not made up of professional astronauts. Two members of the team – Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer and Sian Proctor, 51, a community college educator – secured their spots via a sweepstake. Beats a dusty bottle of Babycham. Space travel suddenly seems a whole lot more accessible. Inspiration4 feels inclusive, as if we are all invested in its success.

As my colleagues Anthony Cuthbertson and Vishwam Sankaran explained: “If the mission is a success, it will mark a major step forward for space tourism, and for Elon Musk and SpaceX’s plans to make it accessible to anyone with the money to fund a rocket and spacecraft to carry them to orbit.”

Okay, so you could argue that the key phrase there is “anyone with the money” but today is not the day for cynicism. This mission very much feels like progress in the democratisation of space travel. And Nasa astronaut Shane Kimbrough agrees. “To me, the more people involved in it, whether private or government, the better,” he said from the International Space Station.

Space travel and tourism cannot become yet another thing from which the vast majority of us are excluded. Of course we aren’t all going to head off into orbit, but we need to feel that these missions are for the benefit of mankind. That they are research-led, not a game for the rich kids. Which is why we need less of Bezos and Branson in their shiny space suits and more missions like Inspiration4, which has helped to normalise the idea of space travel for all and should throw up a whole heap of interesting scientific analysis.

Elon Musk, man of the people. Never thought I’d write that. Funny old world.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/el ... 21187.html
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Re: SpaceX

#736 Post by PHXPhlyer » Sun Sep 19, 2021 12:04 am

Safely back on Earth ^:)^ :-bd :YMAPPLAUSE: :YMPARTY:

Trailblazing tourist trip to orbit ends with splashdown
The SpaceX capsule parachuted into the ocean just before sunset, not far from where their chartered flight began three days earlier.


https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tr ... n-n1279511

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Four space tourists ended their trailblazing trip to orbit Saturday with a splashdown in the Atlantic off the Florida coast.

Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the ocean just before sunset, not far from where their chartered flight began three days earlier.

The all-amateur crew was the first to circle the world without a professional astronaut.

The billionaire who paid undisclosed millions for the trip and his three guests wanted to show that ordinary people could blast into orbit by themselves, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk took them on as the company’s first rocket-riding tourists.

SpaceX’s fully automated Dragon capsule reached an unusually high altitude of 363 miles after Wednesday night’s liftoff. Surpassing the International Space Station by 100 miles, the passengers savored views of Earth through a big bubble-shaped window added to the top of the capsule.

The four streaked back through the atmosphere early Saturday evening, the first space travelers to end their flight in the Atlantic since Apollo 9 in 1969. SpaceX’s two previous crew splashdowns — carrying astronauts for NASA — were in the Gulf of Mexico.

This time, NASA was little more than an encouraging bystander, its only tie being the Kennedy Space Center launch pad once used for the Apollo moonshots and shuttle crews, but now leased by SpaceX.

The trip’s sponsor, Jared Isaacman, 38, an entrepreneur and accomplished pilot, aimed to raise $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Donating $100 million himself, he held a lottery for one of the four seats. He also held a competition for clients of his Allentown, Pennsylvania, payment-processing business, Shift4 Payments.

Joining him on the flight were Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a St. Jude physician assistant who was treated at the Memphis, Tennessee, hospital nearly two decades ago for bone cancer, and contest winners Chris Sembroski, 42, a data engineer in Everett, Washington, and Sian Proctor, 51, a community college educator, scientist and artist from Tempe, Arizona.

Strangers until March, they spent six months training and preparing for potential emergencies during the flight, dubbed Inspiration4. Most everything appeared to go well, leaving them time to chat with St. Jude patients, conduct medical tests on themselves, ring the closing bell for the New York Stock Exchange, and do some drawing and ukulele playing.

Arceneaux, the youngest American in space and the first with a prosthesis, assured her patients, “I was a little girl going through cancer treatment just like a lot of you, and if I can do this, you can do this.”

They also took calls from Tom Cruise, interested in his own SpaceX flight to the space station for filming, and the rock band U2′s Bono.

Even their space menu wasn’t typical: Cold pizza and sandwiches, but also pasta Bolognese and Mediterranean lamb.

Nearly 600 people have reached space — a scorecard that began 60 years ago and is expected to soon skyrocket as space tourism heats up.

Benji Reed, a SpaceX director, anticipates as many as six private flights a year, sandwiched between astronaut launches for NASA. Four SpaceX flights are already booked carry paying customers to the space station, accompanied by former NASA astronauts. The first is targeted for early next year with three businessmen paying $55 million apiece. Russia also plans to take up an actor and film director for filming next month and a Japanese tycoon in December.

SpaceX capsule returns four civilians from orbit, capping off first tourism mission

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/18/tech/spa ... index.html

New York (CNN Business)Four people returned to Earth from a three-day extraterrestrial excursion aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on Saturday evening, marking the end of the first-ever flight to Earth's orbit flown entirely by tourists or otherwise non-astronauts.

"Thanks so much SpaceX, it was a heck of a ride for us," billionaire and mission commander Jared Isaacman could be heard saying over the company's livestream.

The tourists were shown watching movies and occasionally heard responding to SpaceX's mission control inside their fully autonomous spacecraft before it began the nail-biting process of re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. After traveling at more than 17,000 miles per hour, the spacecraft used Earth's own thick blanket of air to slow itself down, with the outside of the craft reaching temperatures up to 3,500º Fahrenheit in the process.
The Crew Dragon capsule, which is designed not to allow temperatures to go past 85º in the cabin, used its heat shield to protect the crew against the intense heat and buildup of plasma as it plunged back toward the ocean. During a Netflix documentary about the Inspiration4 mission, Musk described a capsule going through reentry as "like a blazing meteor coming in."
"And so it's hard not to get vaporized," he added.
The spacecraft then deployed two sets of parachutes in quick succession, slowing its descent further, before the capsule splashed down off the coast of Florida. Recovery ships were waiting nearby to haul the capsule out of the water.

Despite the risks, a former NASA chief and career safety officials have said the Crew Dragon is likely the safest crewed vehicle ever flown. And the vehicle had already completed two successful trips to space with professional astronauts on board before this group of space tourists took their multi-day joyride.
The passengers included the 38-year-old Isaacman, who personally financed and arranged the trip with SpaceX and its CEO, Elon Musk; Hayley Arceneaux, 29, a childhood cancer survivor and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital physician assistant; Sian Procotor, 51, a geologist and community college teacher with a PhD; and Chris Sembroski, a 42-year-old Lockheed Martin employee and lifelong space fan who claimed his seat through an online raffle. Isaacman has billed the mission as a St. Jude fundraiser, and it has so far has netted $154 million of its $200 million goal.

Though they're not the first tourists to travel to orbit, their mission, called Inspiration4, was notable because it did not involve a stay at the International Space Station under the tutelage of professional astronauts, as previous missions involving space tourists have. Rather, the four spaceflight novices have spent the past three days free-flying aboard their 13-foot-wide capsule on their own at about a 350 mile altitude — 100 miles higher than where the ISS is, and higher than any human has flown in decades.

During their stay in space, the civilians on board said they'd conduct a bit of scientific research focused on how their bodies respond to being in space, take time to chat with their families, gaze out a large dome-shaped window called the "cupola," and listen to music. During a livestream shared with the public on Friday, Proctor also showed off some artwork she did during her stay with metallic markers and Sembroski strummed a ukelele that will be auctioned off as part of the St. Jude fundraiser.
The Inspiration4 Twitter account also shared footage of Arceneaux speaking to her St. Jude patients, and Isaacman rang the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange via satellite feed on Friday afternoon.
Other than that, few updates were shared with the public while the crew was in orbit. The first live audio or visuals from inside the crew capsule were shared Friday afternoon, nearly two days after they launched.

During previous SpaceX Crew Dragon missions — all of which have been flown for NASA and carried professional astronauts to the International Space Station -— the public has had more insight. The space agency and its dozens of communications personnel have worked alongside SpaceX to share practically every moment of the journey from launch until the astronauts dock with the International Space Station.
But this mission left the public largely in the dark when it came to questions about the crew's schedule and how they were feeling while in orbit. Even though development of the Crew Dragon spacecraft was largely funded by taxpayers and SpaceX rents NASA facilities to support all its missions, Inspiration4 is considered a private, commercial mission. That means SpaceX's customers only have to be as transparent as they want to be.

There could be several reasons why the space tourists were publicity shy during their trip. It is possible, for example, that the crew wasn't feeling all that great after first reaching orbit. According to a NASA research paper, "many astronauts report motion sickness symptoms just after arrival in space and again just after return to Earth" and getting a restful night's sleep in orbit was "also a serious challenge for many crew members aboard shuttle missions." It's also possible the four novice space explorers wanted their privacy or simply to enjoy the experience without having to stop to talk about it.
But favorable reviews of their experience could be crucial. SpaceX hopes that this mission will be the first of many like it, building up a new line of business for the company in which it uses Crew Dragon to fly commercial missions with tourists or private researchers rather than just professional astronauts.
SpaceX already has contracts for five other private missions, as well as at least four additional NASA-contracted missions.

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Re: SpaceX

#737 Post by PHXPhlyer » Sat Sep 25, 2021 1:49 pm

An alarm went off on SpaceX's all-tourist space flight. The problem was the toilet

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/25/tech/spa ... index.html

New York (CNN Business)As Jared Isaacman and his three fellow crewmates were freeflying through Earth's orbit, shielded from the unforgiving vacuum of space by nothing but a 13-foot-wide carbon-fiber capsule, an alarm started blaring.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft's systems were warning the crew of a "significant" issue, Isaacman said. They'd spent months poring over SpaceX manuals and training to respond to in-space emergencies, so they leaped into action, working with SpaceX ground controllers to pinpoint the cause of the error.
As it turned out, the Crew Dragon wasn't in jeopardy. But the on board toilet was.
Nothing in space is easy, including going to the bathroom. In a healthy human on Earth, making sure everything ends up in the toilet is usually a matter of simple aim. But in space, there is no feeling of gravity. There's no guarantee that what comes out will go...where it's supposed to. Waste can — and does — go in every possible direction.
To solve that problem, space toilets have fans inside them, which are used to create suction. Essentially they pull waste out of the human body and keep it stored away.
And the Crew Dragon's "waste management system" fans were experiencing mechanical problems. That is what tripped the alarm the crew heard.

Scott "Kidd" Poteet, an Inspiration4 mission director who helped oversee the mission from the ground, tipped reporters off about the issue in an interview with CBS. Poteet and SpaceX's director of crew mission management later confirmed there were "issues" with the waste management system at a press conference but didn't go into detail, setting off an immediate wave of speculation that the error could've created a disastrous mess.
When asked directly about that on Thursday, however, Isaacman said "I want to be 100% clear: There were no issues in the cabin at all as it relates to that."
But Isaacman and his fellow travelers on the Inspiration4 mission did have to work with SpaceX to respond to the problem during their three-day stay in orbit, during which they experienced numerous communications blackouts, highlighting the importance of the crew's thorough training regimen.
"I would say probably somewhere around 10% of our time on orbit we had no [communication with the ground], and we were a very calm, cool crew during that," he said, adding that "mental toughness and a good frame of mind and a good attitude" were crucial to the mission.
"The psychological aspect is one area where you can't compromise because...there were obviously circumstances that happened up there where if you had somebody that didn't have that mental toughness and started to react poorly, that really could've brought down the whole mission," Isaacman said.
SpaceX did not respond to CNN Business' requests for comment.
The toilet anecdote also highlights a fundamental truth about humanity and its extraterrestrial ambitions — no matter how polished and glitzy we may imagine our space-faring future, biological realities remain.
Excreta in space, a history
Isaacman was — as numerous astronauts before him — bashful when it came to discussing the "toilet situation."
"Nobody really wants to get into the gory details," Isaacman said. But when the Inspiration4 crew talked to some NASA astronauts, they said "using the bathroom and space is hard, and you've got to be very — what was the word? — very kind to one another."
He added that, despite the on-board toilet issues, nobody suffered any accidents or indignities.
"I don't know who was training them, but we were able to work through it and get [the toilet] going even with what was initially challenging circumstances, so there was nothing ever like, you know, in the cabin or anything like that," he said.
Figuring out how to safely relieve oneself in space was, however, was a fundamental question posed at the dawn of human spaceflight half a century ago, and the path to answers was not error-free.
During the 1969 Apollo 10 mission — the one that saw Thomas Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan circumnavigate the moon — Stafford reported back to mission control on Day Six of the mission that a piece of waste was floating through the cabin, according to once-confidential government documents.
"Give me a napkin, quick," Stafford is recorded as saying a few minutes before Cernan spots another one: "Here's another goddamn turd."

The feces collection process at the time, a NASA report later revealed, was an "extremely basic" plastic bag that was "taped to the buttocks."
"The fecal bag system was marginally functional and was described as very 'distasteful' by the crew," an official NASA report from 2007 later revealed. "The bags provided no odor control in the small capsule and the odor was prominent."
In-space toilets have evolved since then, thanks to strenuous efforts from NASA scientists, as journalist Mary Roach, author of "Packing for Mars," told NPR in 2010.
"The problem here is you've got this very elaborate space toilet, and you need to test it. Well, you've got to, you know, haul it over to Ellington Field, board it onto a zero-gravity simulator — a plane that does these elaborate up-and-down arcs — and then you've got to find some poor volunteer from the Waste System Management Office to test it. And I don't know about you, but, I mean, to do it on demand in 20 seconds, now that is asking a lot of your colon. So it's very elaborate and tricky."
And, Roach writes in "Packing for Mars," astronaut potty training is no laughing matter.
"The simple act of urination can, without gravity, become a medical emergency requiring catheterization and embarrassing radio consults with flight surgeons," she wrote. And because urine behaves differently inside the bladder in space, it can be very difficult to tell when one needs to go.
Adapting to space
The human body is evolutionarily designed for life on Earth, with its gravity, oxygen-rich air and predictable ecological cycles. It is specifically not designed to float disoriented in weightlessness, a fact that has caused numerous astronauts to experience a sickening queasiness, especially during the first couple of days in orbit.
"I vomited 93 minutes into my first flight," NASA astronaut Steven Smith, a veteran of four Space Shuttle missions, told one journalist. "That was the first of 100 times over the four flights. It's odd going to a job where you know you're going to throw up."
NASA has a formal term for the illness — Space Adaptation Syndrome, which in one paper it estimates about 80% of astronauts have experienced.

Isaacman said that during the Inspiration4 mission, he didn't feel the urge to vomit. But adjusting to microgravity can be uncomfortable.
"It's just this pooling in your head, like when you hang upside down on your bed," he told CNN Business. "But you have to kind of find a way to just ignore it and work through it...About a day later, it kind of balances out and you don't know it as much."
Not all of his crewmates were as lucky. Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old cancer survivor who served as Inspiration4's medical officer, had to administer Phenergan shots — an antihistamine used to treat motion sickness — to crew members Sian Procter and Chris Sembroski — to combat nausea, Isaacman said.
The inescapable fact is that humans will be battling maladies for as long as we continue to look at space and see it as place we should be going. That's why many journalists, including Roach, have questioned our tendency to romanticize space travel and downplay the harsh realities and risks.
But despite the discomfort, Isaacman said he has zero regrets about his decision to spend roughly $200 million on a three-day spaceflight.
"I hope that this is a model for future missions," he said, adding that he believes in SpaceX's mission to eventually support entire colonies of people living in outer space.
During his flight, "I just felt really charged up and energized about the idea that we just have to keep pushing and going further and further."

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Re: SpaceX

#738 Post by Boac » Wed Oct 06, 2021 8:40 pm

It looks as if the 'catching arms' are about to be fitted to the launch tower in BC.

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Re: SpaceX

#739 Post by Boac » Thu Oct 07, 2021 2:30 pm

False alarm! Dey went oop in the air and doon agin.

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Re: SpaceX

#740 Post by Boac » Sun Oct 17, 2021 6:14 pm

A sodding great tube has just been slowly moved down the highway to the launch site. It closed the road while moving. No road closures had been notified for Sunday lunch-time so I guess there will be a bit of angst there!

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