NASA Unveils the Astronauts Who Will Relaunch Human Space Flights From US Soil (washingtonpost.com) 54
NASA on Friday announced the crews of the first flights from U.S. soil since the space shuttle retired in 2011, an elite group of astronauts that the agency hopes will help open a new era of space travel. From a report: The crews would fly on spacecraft developed not by NASA but by two corporations, SpaceX and Boeing, which are under contract to provide a taxi-like service to the International Space Station. On the first human test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, NASA selected astronauts Eric Boe and Nicole Mann will join Boeing executive Chris Ferguson. NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley would fly on the first human test flight of SpaceX's Dragon capsule. On the first operational mission to the International Space Station, Sunita Williams and Josh Cassada would fly for Boeing. NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Michael Hopkins would fly Dragon's first operational mission to the space station.
Interesting looking spacesuits (Score:3)
Just my 2 cents
Re:Interesting looking spacesuits (Score:4, Informative)
The SpaceX ones, at least, have been through the vacuum chamber testing etc... and the one that was flown on the Falcon Heavy Test Flight, sitting in the roadster, was real as well (though I don't know if it was actually pressurized).
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The SpaceX suits aren't planetary (or lunar) surface suits. That's what needs development. Although this is not and never would be, a significant blocker for a planetary or lunar mission. It's just an engineering problem.
What's the rest? The ISS has proven we can live in a tin can for a very long time in zero-G, with low-G probably a lot longer. Chemical rockets have brought probes throughout the entire solar system and beyond, there's nothing about say a manned Mars mission that seems unfeasible if you throw enough money at it, at least as a $100 billion dollar flag-planting exercise. Don't get me wrong, SpaceX is doing a lot of revolutionary engineering. I'm a lot less sure how much new science there is to it.
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I have several times walked up to a pile of radioactive material that was actually glowing with Cherenkov radiation bright enough to see in daylight. The reason this wasn't scary? It was in a pool of water perhaps 20 feet deep. Engineering problem solved.
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Their mission is engineering. They don't get infinite capital for a flag-planting exercise, though. So, engineering for economics is a big part. First-stage recovery was low-hanging fruit - nobody had the incentive to do it before SpaceX came along.
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I wonder if they are real or just photo shoot mock ups. Since I thought I read something a while back about the design for new space suits running over budget and years behind.
Well, there are always the existing stock of space suits to use for now. Shouldn't take too long to build a few more of those if necessary as the specifications blue prints and tooling likely still exist.
Of course they are heavy, bulky and getting old, but they still work.
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Shouldn't take too long to build a few more of those if necessary as the specifications blue prints and tooling likely still exist.
They do, but the technical know-how has retired, and the tooling doesn't exist anymore; it would need to be rebuilt. Most of the ISS space suits are multi-decade old shuttle ones with regular retrofit to keep them in operational shape and resized for the appropriate astronaut. So don't look to NASA to build new space suits anytime soon.
Fortunately, as pointed out above and below, the commercial companies are also designing their own.
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The "Starliner" spacesuit, developed by Boeing. https://www.boeing.com/feature... [boeing.com]
I don't know guys (Score:2, Funny)
Starliner sounds like luxury. Champagne, caviar, fine food.....
Dragon Capsule sounds of fire and death.
Maybe it's just me....I've watched too much Game of Thrones.
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I don't know what they have planned because I haven't been paying attention.
But in my book "space" starts well above the ISS. If they're just going up to that height and coming down, they're not going to space. You have to leave the magnetosphere.
"Taxi like" (Score:3)
So...they charge by the mile? Dodge municipal "rocket for hire" laws? Attach a stupid moustache to the front?
In other words, how exactly is this a "taxi-like"?
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It's going to be a ride-hail business model.
Be sure to get the app, Space Force iCadet.
ISS is on the move, so mileage may vary.
What's the purpose of NASA? (Score:2)
I've heard this joke before...
What's the purpose of the Space Shuttle? To get astronauts to ISS. What's the purpose of ISS? So the Space Shuttle has a place to go.
Well, NASA retired the Space Shuttle program. Good thing too, those were dangerous vehicles that should have been retired long ago. I heard someone point out that with 135 flights and 2 resulting in deaths of the crew that the failure rate was between 1% and 2%, only to have the be corrected by someone else that pointed out with 6 orbiters bu
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To be fair, the shuttle was a bad idea who's time had come. It should have never made it off the drawing board, but it did, under the promise of lower costs, faster to space, reusability.
The problem was that NASA had expended the bulk of their resources on shuttle operations so after the Challenger accident made it clear that rocket science was kind of a hard problem, it was a bit too late. All the eggs where in that basket, we had interdependent programs that required the shuttle (Hubble, ISS and more) o
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It's a good point. For people who like to pick on the Shuttle, I like to point out that your beautiful Hubble telescope would be crap if it wasn't for the Shuttle repair missions that fixed it. Try to do those repairs with an Apollo capsule and see how far you get.
As has been said, the Shuttle was a jack-of-all-trades but a master of none. It was fantastic for constructing the space station but once it was constructed, there wasn't much for it to do but be an expensive taxi--like taking a dump truck to p
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President Trump made an announcement to investigate the creation of a military space force, which if created makes many missions from NASA redundant. This military space force could operate military space launches, manned and unmanned, for the military instead of contracting that out to NASA.
Like the military would do anything like build rockets in-house, they'd outsource it to ULA at 10x the current cost. But then I kinda knew this would be a facepalm when you mentioned Trump...
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Like the military would do anything like build rockets in-house, they'd outsource it to ULA at 10x the current cost.
The military build little in house. There's an Army armory and a Navy shipyard or two, but most of the military equipment is built by contractors. NASA doesn't build a whole lot in house either, they do some final assembly in house but almost every component is built by contractors. How does moving military space missions from NASA to the military change the government getting fleeced by contractors?
The one thing that largely put an end to the high cost of putting satellites in orbit has been NASA ending
Re:What's the purpose of NASA? (Score:4, Informative)
Do you know who does it now? The FAA. They license launches. They should keep doing so. NASA is a research organization.
Do you know who does military space missions now? The Air Force. Not NASA, NASA is a civilian research organization. Creating a "space wing" takes a department of the Air Force and makes it a separate service. Just as the AAF, the Army Air Force, became the Air Force. Creating a "Space Force" does nothing to or about NASA's mission.
Re: What's the purpose of NASA? (Score:2)
Look at the bright side. At least a military space program will never be hurting for funding. Compared to the DoDs budget, NASAs is a rounding error.
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Do you know who does it now? The FAA. They license launches. They should keep doing so. NASA is a research organization.
Who manages orbital space? I won't disagree that NASA, and the military, gets permission from the FAA to launch and re-enter the atmosphere. Once in orbit though does the FAA license the orbits? I can see that the military and NASA operate facilities that track satellites and debris in orbit, so they must have some authority on who goes where and when in space. If the FAA is in charge of managing orbits then I've been unable to find any reference to it.
I put "air space" in quotes because it's not "air s
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I agree completely, why does splitting off Space Command from the Air Force into the Space Force cause so much consternation and confusion? NASA is a relatively small player in space. The Air Force and other governmental agencies have been doing far more and spending far more on space than NASA for many decades now. It's perfectly analogous to splitting the Air Force out of the Army after WW II.
It's a critical function, and the structure as a separate force is mostly in place, just ta
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Because weaponizing space is a really bad idea.
Currently, NORAD collects the data, which means the U.S. and Canadian Air Force. Regulation is by FAA, you don't get to launch if you don't have a de-orbit plan, if you are a danger to a manned mission, or if you're liable to cause the Kessler syndrome. And these days you have to change orbit when directed, too. NOAA regulates imaging systems, you can't image war zones or Israel at high resolution, etc. FCC regulates the civilian radios and won't license them i
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No.
The spacecraft you mention were built by corporations but to NASA designs and under close NASA supervision.
Starliner and Crew Dragon were designed by their respective corporations with just a requirements list from NASA.
Nobody's going anywhere (Score:1)
Pretty soon private corporations will be able to do what NASA's been doing for half a century. Let's all pretend this matters.
News for nerds? (Score:2)
Meatbags in space is not science, its politics and soon to be tourism.
Really? (Score:2)
Are they like, 8 years old?
Because it's going to be at least 2 decades for the clusterfuck that is our government funding (with priority-changes in budget at LEAST every 4 years, if not less) to actually get this to happen.