Demo-2 will mark SpaceX's first launch of a Crew Dragon capsule carrying astronauts — a major moment for NASA's human spaceflight, which has been hitching rides to orbit with Russia since the space shuttles retired in 2011
This is going to be great.
Hope it all goes well.
Hats off to the folks at Space-X.
Getting this far is a tremendous achievement on its own, if successful it'll be truly world altering.
This is going to be great.
Hope it all goes well.
Hats off to the folks at Space-X.
Getting this far is a tremendous achievement on its own, if successful it'll be truly world altering.
+1
Re: SpaceX
Posted: Wed May 27, 2020 4:11 pm
by G~Man
Best wishes to Spacex. I worked with some of the people at launch control when I was part of the very last launch at the equator with Sea Launch, ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Launch ), incidentally, 6 years ago yesterday.
This is going to be great.
Hope it all goes well.
Hats off to the folks at Space-X.
Getting this far is a tremendous achievement on its own, if successful it'll be truly world altering.
If it's not successful then it'll be world-altering for a few people.
Re: SpaceX
Posted: Wed May 27, 2020 4:47 pm
by TheGreenGoblin
I was listening to the evening news on BBC Radio 4 and Helen Sharman and she said that there was a 1 in 270 chance of a failure.
I must admit I would think very carefully about getting into an aircraft with odds of failure like that.
These are brave guys even if they do have an escape system and better odds than the Shuttle Astronauts, 1 in 100, had!
The mission, called Demo-2, will launch NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley into orbit on a Crew Dragon spacecraft atop a Falcon 9 rocket. Liftoff is set for 4:33 p.m. EDT (2033 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
For those in the South of England the space craft will be visible low in the sky soon after launch.
Re: SpaceX
Posted: Wed May 27, 2020 6:23 pm
by Boac
The guys are now strapped in aboard the capsule with 2 hours to go. 'Mummy - I need the toilet..........'
Weather looking marginal guys... Status RED (intermittently)
Re: SpaceX
Posted: Wed May 27, 2020 7:36 pm
by Undried Plum
Manned spaceflight is daft. It's utterly pointless, monstrously expensive, and has a very poor safety record.
We went through the same evolution in the offshore oil business. In the 1970s we had divers ("pond life") on every rig and on a large number of DSVs. Then we had primitive ROVs which were little more than a camera on a wire ("soap on a rope"). Then we had seriously capable work class ROVs, but we continued to use pond life.
Nowadays all new subsea installations are ROV-friendly and are designed for diverless intervention. Divers are rare nowadays. Obsolete.
Same ought to be true of space. Robotic spacecraft are vastly cheaper and smaller and more capable than the ones which lug talking monkeys. The ISS is an absurdity. They are running out of highly contrived 'experiments' which are designed to be done by humans in order to 'justify' them being done by humans and not by the space equivalent of ROVs and AUVs.
Having said all of that, I'll be watching the spectacle of a Tesla being launched this evening and I'll raise a glass of Mac30 to the health and success of the two passengers.
Nobody does the hoopla and showboating of such occasions better than the Septics.
I entrust my personal safety to an Elon Musk product every time I drive my car. It's the safest car type in the world by several measures. I therefore have a very high level of confidence that this vehicle will do a bloody marvelous job of carrying two passengers to that shiny thing in the night sky.
I worked on the seabed search and recovery of Challenger for USN SupSalv's civilian contractor. I've held pieces of the damned thing in my hands. It was a piece of junk. Utter garbage. It was designed for a particular task and was built to need talking monkeys to operate it. It's predecessor, Buran, did not need talking monkeys and was 100% safe and 100% successful in its limited mission.
Re: SpaceX
Posted: Wed May 27, 2020 7:45 pm
by TheGreenGoblin
I agree with everything you have just written/said, but my human madness trumps my logic in this, for the moment...
This kind of thing panders to our human delusion of primacy and mitigates against our knowledge and fear of the potential meaninglessness of our lives cast against an uncaring and potentially, and unfathomable, universe!
I revel in this, and bask in the futility of mankind of which I am one...
Re: SpaceX
Posted: Wed May 27, 2020 7:51 pm
by TheGreenGoblin
T-43 and lightning rate is dropping. Arming of LES is GO...