SpaceX Announces First Human Mission To Ever Fly Over the Planet's Poles (arstechnica.com) 31
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: SpaceX will fly the first-ever human spaceflight over the Earth's poles, possibly before the end of this year, the company announced Monday. The private Crew Dragon mission will be led by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur named Chun Wang, and he will be joined by a polar explorer, a roboticist, and a filmmaker whom he has befriended in recent years. The "Fram2" mission, named after the Norwegian research ship Fram, will launch into a polar corridor from SpaceX's launch facilities in Florida and fly directly over the north and south poles. The three-to-five day mission is being timed to fly over Antarctica near the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, to afford maximum lighting.
The four-person crew will fly, fittingly, aboard Crew Dragon Endurance, which is named after Ernest Shackleton's famous ship that was trapped in the Antarctic ice and eventually sunk there about a century ago. The spacecraft will be fitted with a cupola for both photography and filming. This will be SpaceX's third free-flying mission aboard Crew Dragon, following the Inspiration4 mission funded and commanded by US entrepreneur Jared Isaacman in 2021, and his forthcoming Polaris Dawn mission which may launch later this month. In an interview, Wang said he modeled the Fram2 mission's crew and public outreach programs on the template established by Isaacman.
The four-person crew will fly, fittingly, aboard Crew Dragon Endurance, which is named after Ernest Shackleton's famous ship that was trapped in the Antarctic ice and eventually sunk there about a century ago. The spacecraft will be fitted with a cupola for both photography and filming. This will be SpaceX's third free-flying mission aboard Crew Dragon, following the Inspiration4 mission funded and commanded by US entrepreneur Jared Isaacman in 2021, and his forthcoming Polaris Dawn mission which may launch later this month. In an interview, Wang said he modeled the Fram2 mission's crew and public outreach programs on the template established by Isaacman.
How about instead... (Score:2)
Why don't they stop off and rescue the astronauts stuck in the boeing capsule until next year?
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They could certainly (briefly) intersect the ISS's orbit if they REALLY wanted to ;)
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Sure, you are correct! The technology already exists and would only need to be slightly adapted, see link below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
USELESS (Score:2)
If nobody did that by now it must be completely useless to do other than as a first.
What other firsts will they hype next?
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Flat Earth Society (Score:2)
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Of course, they'll say it's fake news.
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Laugh at the poor cgi
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Obviously they'll use whatever brain cells that remain in their heads to think of anything but reality and share their ideas on social media. That's ALL they do.
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Early vote for Trump; and later they'll protest mail in voting. Again.
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Why should this be a problem to them? They already think all the footage that exists is fabricated in a world wide conspiracy consisting of hundreds of thousands of people. Why would this put a dent in their beliefs?
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What will the flat earthers do then?
I am not sure about the flat earthers but the hollow earthers might get a picture of the hollow Earth entrance in Antarctica posted on X.
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>What will the flat earthers do then?
stamp their feet to squish the spacebug underneath, I presume . . .
Um.... (Score:2)
"First Human Mission To Ever Fly Over the Planet's Poles"
Is that a fact?
https://transportationhistory.... [transporta...istory.org]
https://www.history.com/this-d... [history.com]
Perhaps they meant to say "First Human Space Mission To Ever Fly Over the Planet's Poles"
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And Poland? (Score:2)
SpaceX Announces First Human Mission To Ever Fly Over the Planet's Poles
Other than Poland, which countries have a significant numbers of Poles?
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SpaceX Announces First Human Mission To Ever Fly Over the Planet's Poles
Other than Poland, which countries have a significant numbers of Poles?
I think none but planet Earth has two poles which commands a plural for "Poles". An orbit that flies over one should logically fly over the other as well.
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Radiation? (Score:2)
I thought polar orbits were to be avoided for humans. They will get nice shots of aurorae but at what cost?
Lithographs (Score:1)
They can go and make low angle lithographs to tell us the saga of the ice wall. Then claim it's not really the ice wall because their guidance system was fake and fooled them into thinking they were at the ice wall to hide the real ice wall.
Billionaires (Score:2)
titanic sub vibes?? (Score:2)
I hope I'm wrong, but this flight really seems like its destined to go poorly, for a thousand different reasons. I really am getting the vibes all the pros were saying they felt BEFORE the Titanic sub failed. They all knew it was a bad idea and had less than perfectly executed engineering and construction.
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The hardware for this flight is supplied by SpaceX, who have safely transported multiple crews already, and who are currently operating the most reliable rocket in history. They couldn't be farther from the Titan clusterfuck if they tried.
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A key difference is that SpaceX Dragon is an established design: it has brought crews to/from the ISS a dozen times. (The uncrewed Dragon Cargo vessel, very similar in design and operation, has flown >20 times.) This is not some shitcan cobbled together in a hangar, with a radically different des
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I guess the vibes are related to the multiple public mishaps SpaceX has had lately and Musk's tendencies to overpromise.
If you watched any of the news when the sub imploded, nearly every sub expert that knew about it (pre failure) said it was a bad idea and destined to fail sooner than later. I'm no expert, but I generally believe experts in a field when they have a consensus. From your description "shitcan cobbled together in a hangar, with a radically different design to other capsules", It sounds like yo
Question (Score:2)
I think maximum lighting would be during the Antarctic summer, when it's never dark. I suspect they mean an efficient quantity of daylight, since those endless summer days are a few months distant.
Also, certain polar orbits result in the spaceship never having 'night-time'. Do they need night-time on the ship and the landmass, to calculate when lighting is optimal for their cameras?