NASA Orders SpaceX Crew Mission to International Space Station

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-orders-spacex-crew-mission-to-international-space-station

by jkaljundi • 11 years ago

593 135 11 years ago

ChuckMcM2• 11 years ago

Yay, passed phase 1 readiness review. I am a bit surprised they could pass before they have the inflight abort test but hey this is a huge step forward.

I keep wondering if there will be a program where a group of 5 can hire a pilot/co-pilot and ride in a Dragon Crew into orbit. Spend the day there, and then fly home. If you are re-using the first stage at that point I can't imagine the cost is going to be more than a few million $ for each "astronaut".

toomuchtodo3• 11 years ago

I'm assuming NASA is pretty confident in SpaceX's SuperDraco thrusters after the unmanned pad abort test [1].

With regards to the second comment, I can find out if you're interested.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_FXVjf46T8

rbanffy9• 11 years ago

In-flight abort is a more challenging scenario. If you need to get far from the rocket, you'll have to factor in its own acceleration. The pad won't try to run you over, but an ill-behaved rocket could. Hopefully, the SuperDraco engines will be able to steer the Dragon away from whatever direction the Falcon decided it'd go.

ChuckMcM2• 11 years ago

That was an excellent demonstration, and the static firings seem to have gone as expected as well. I would guess that the in flight ejection is mostly about being able to maintain both an escape route and the capability to execute it during an unplanned orientation divergence and rapid disassembly :-). Given the low cargo capacity (100kg) it seems like the 'trunk' is dedicated to the eject capability.

As for finding a space tourism company, I'd be interested if anyone had approached SpaceX with that as a business plan. I would certainly consider investing in something like that given the right team and opportunity.

karmicthreat• 11 years ago

Well at that point where there is demand for travel into space create a destination station for them to stay at and get more for their millions.

atroyn• 11 years ago

This might be seen as the tipping point in commercial space ventures. With SpaceX running LEO operations, NASA/Roscosmos can focus on the planets next.

rbanffy9• 11 years ago

LEO is the most difficult part. I bet NASA and Roscosmos will have tons of company up there.

dogma11387• 11 years ago

LEO by far isn't the most difficult part, not if you are aiming for moon/inter-planetary transport. LEO is ridiculously easy to get too, The ISS is at 340KM, GEO orbit is 35,000 you can put payload in LEO with "amateur" rockets, GEO/HEO is a completely different story, it's extremely hard and you need a heck of a rocket to do it with any substantial payload.

Now from GEO/HEO to anywhere else it's quite easy to get because you are pretty much near the escape velocity so it takes almost no delta-v to get pretty much anywhere you want in the solar system, at least as far as getting to a higher solar orbit goes as the closer you get the faster your solar orbital velocity is so using that speed to get even to the edges of the solar system takes very little energy. If we talk about say a mars shot then most of the energy in that trip goes to 2 things, getting to high earth orbit, and then slowing down for a mars capture the amount of fuel needed to do the martian orbit transfer is almost negligible.

rquantz• 11 years ago

LEO is the most expensive part, but we know how to do it pretty well at this point. Landing something big enough to carry humans on Mars, on the other hand, is a problem we haven't solved yet.

pjscott• 11 years ago

Good news on that! The Falcon Heavy is tentatively scheduled to have its first flight in April-May 2016. The Dragon v2 capsule is designed for powered landings, which is how the in-flight abort thing works. Combine the two, and fiddle with the configuration a bit, and you can land in a whole lot of desirable parts of the solar system. Want to send a Mars rover? They're calculating that they can deliver 2-4 tons of payload to the surface of Mars. Want to send an unmanned mission to the moon, or Europa? Ditch the parachutes and add extra propellant to make up for the lack of aerobraking. And so on -- it could be an incredible boon for planetary science.

soperj2• 11 years ago

I've been out of the loop. Has SpaceX flown any more rockets since their rocket blew up?

agildehaus• 11 years ago

No. Return to flight is scheduled for early December (ORBCOMM OG2). Specific time has not been announced yet.

soperj2• 11 years ago

Thanks.

toomuchtodo3• 11 years ago

Stage 1 is at the cape: https://twitter.com/Marc944Marc/status/667708558235066368

SCAQTony• 11 years ago

So far, SpaceX has completed 23 launches of both its Falcon 1 & currently active Falcon 9 rocket: http://spacexstats.com/previous.php

They have had two failures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...

Out of 25 launches is that a safe enough success rate?

the8472• 11 years ago

Is 25 a sufficient sample size?

rbanffy9• 11 years ago

I don't think anyone expects to strapping oneself to a rocket that packs the energy potential of a not-so-small nuke will ever be considered perfectly safe. And remember the failures they had would be survivable with the current launch abort system Dragon has.

There was a time sailing across the Atlantic was dangerous.

avmich7• 11 years ago

That's not very fair comparison for rockets. When people fly in B-747, it also has a pretty significant amount of fuel - and energy - aboard, yet safety complaints are rare regarding that.

So the goal for rockets - for now - could be to become as safe to ride as airplanes are. 100% safety is unobtainable, so shouldn't be a requirement.

mh-• 11 years ago

According to [1], the shuttle program ended with a failure rate of 1 in ~67.5.

1: http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a6611/us-space-shuttle...

varjag• 11 years ago

In the context of manned missions, it's unsurvivable failures that are unacceptable.

simonh• 11 years ago

The regulatory and compliance checks for manned missions are considerably more rigorous than for unmanned ones. If you look back, manned missions have historically had much better success records than unmanned ones by the same operators.

dantillberg• 11 years ago

I dug up the number for Shuttle missions for comparison: Out of 135 total missions, 2 shuttles were destroyed in accidents [0].

While it is certainly great to aim for 100% success, it's helpful to remember that astronauts are willing to take measured risks in order to perform their missions, and that we must select rockets/etc from the options available, not from the options we might wish to have.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Space_Shuttle_missions

lutorm9• 11 years ago

Although if you count F9-4 as a failure, you should also count the STS-51-F Abort-to-Orbit as a failure, which brings it to 3/135.

programd• 11 years ago

As I recall the original engineering estimate was a 2% catastrophic failure rate - i.e. loss of orbiter - on the Shuttle [1]. Columbia was STS 107. The estimate was spot on. You have to respect the level of engineering involved here.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Development-Shuttle-1972-1981-History-...

avar• 11 years ago

As far as I know neither of those failures would have resulted in loss of crew. One was a partial failure where due to a partial engine failure they didn't make their secondary orbital insertion, and the other was a loss of vehicle that would have been covered by either the crew escape system, or the dragon capsule parachuting to safety.

InclinedPlane2• 11 years ago

With the addition of the crew escape system plus nailing down the causes of their last failure, very much safer than any other manned launcher the US has had in service.

lutorm9• 11 years ago

That's a hope though, not a fact...

avmich7• 11 years ago

You think it's going to be more reliable than Saturn-V manned stack? Why?

mhandley• 11 years ago

Once they start to recover the first stage, they'll get a lot more information about how their systems really performed, as opposed to how they think they performed from the telemetry. You can do all sorts of testing on all the returned components, figure out how much of the margin of safety was actually used, and look for fatigue cracks that weren't quite bad enough to result in failure this time round. In principle at least, this could greatly increase the safety of future launches, at least as far as the first stage is concerned.

krschultz2• 11 years ago

Mercury was flown on Redstone rockets for suborbital flights and Atlas rockets for orbital flights.

Redstone had a success rate of 5/6. [1] Atlas had a success rate of 13/24. [2]

It was certainly a different time, but spaceflight has always been really risky. There has also always been more attention paid to human rated flights during the manufacturing & testing process. I also imagine SpaceX will not be doing first flights of new Falcon 9 variations with humans aboard.

That's not to say it is low risk, but 23/25 considering these are unmanned and largely R&D flights is not bad.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Redstone_Launch_Vehicl...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas#Atlas-D_deployment

Shivetya• 11 years ago

Well the D was the first operational and it did not have that failure rate that the A,B, and C, models had. I doubt NASA would have ever launched a version that didn't have a high nineties success rate.

jackgavigan• 11 years ago

Few things that are worth doing are risk-free.

ggreer2• 11 years ago

The first failure was a secondary payload. The Falcon 9 had less spare fuel than expected because one of the first stage engines failed.[1] The primary (NASA) mission went fine. The secondary mission had a 95% chance of success, but NASA vetoed it.

The second failure was a second stage exploding. Had the payload been a crewed Dragon V2, those inside would have survived. Even without a launch escape system, the Dragon V1 was fine[2]:

The Dragon CRS-7 capsule was ejected from the exploding launch vehicle and continued transmitting data until impact with the ocean. SpaceX officials stated that it could have been recovered if the parachutes deployed, however the software in the capsule did not include any provisions for parachute deployment in this situation.

Overall, it's a much safer design than the Shuttle. The crew vehicle is on top of the stack instead of along side it. If anything goes wrong, the capsule can GTFO and land with parachutes.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_CRS-1

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_CRS-7

ForHackernews• 11 years ago

however the software in the capsule did not include any provisions for parachute deployment in this situation.

That seems like a pretty significant oversight?

mikeash7• 11 years ago

Saying "two failures" is awfully misleading. There was one catastrophic failure and one minor failure. In a hypothetical manned mission, the minor failure probably wouldn't have even prevented the mission from going forward, let alone endangered the crew.

The catastrophic failure is obviously a problem. However, for a manned mission, there is an abort system which is supposed to save the lives of the crew in an event like this. This is not like the Shuttle where if anything goes wrong on launch, everybody is doomed.

To state it more precisely, out of 25 launches, there has been one problem which wouldn't have been a threat, one catastrophic failure which would be survivable, and zero failures which would have killed anybody if they had been manned.

melted2• 11 years ago

There were at least two catastrophic failures that everyone knows about: Challenger and Columbia.

AC__2• 11 years ago

Humans are a dime a billion. We have no problem slaughtering humans daily in contrived conflict but somehow losing a few furthering scientific understanding is unacceptable.

mtrpcic• 11 years ago

First, this is an extremely naive view as to what goes into training an astronaut to be sent into space. It's not like we just plucked four random people from the globe and are sending them to space. These are people who are very likely at the top of their fields, have gone through rigorous (and costly) training, and are going up to do very specific jobs. These people are not a "dime a billion", and claiming so is the same as saying that if Elon Musk were to disappear today, that any other person could simply take his place and keep moving his companies forward.

Second, just because there are negative aspects in the world that cause loss of life, doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing everything we can to ensure a safe flight. This is unrelated to the cost aspect mentioned in my first point, but the average person living in the U.S.A is only living as comfortable as they are because modern civilization, for the most part, values safety quite high. It's a poor argument to say "Well X people died yesterday, so we shouldn't care so much about the 4 that might die in a launch".

adrae5df• 11 years ago

You are making the appeal to common practice fallacy. Even if human death (or sacrifice) is a common occurrence, it does not make it acceptable.

mikerichards• 11 years ago

This type of comment was and is "a dime a billion"

"Thousands of people die in car accidents every year and..."

It's bizarre that anyone would find this type of comment insightful after all the times its been posted ad nauseam.

zdean• 11 years ago

This article from a few years back tries to quantify that answer...

https://reason.com/archives/2012/01/26/how-much-is-an-astron...

rebootthesystem• 11 years ago

The entire company is firmly focused on return to flight. Sometimes failure can be a great motivator and, ultimately, if used as an opportunity to learn and improve, a good thing.

Arjuna• 11 years ago

When this mission occurs, it will be particularly historic, because we are at a point in history that is similar to the human spaceflight gap that existed between the Apollo program and the Space Shuttle program in that the U.S. does not currently possess this mission capability.

It will also be symbolic for Americans: an American flag was presented to the ISS crew during the STS-135 mission (the final Space Shuttle mission). It is awaiting return by the next mission that is launched from the U.S.

saganus3• 11 years ago

It will also be symbolic for Americans: an American flag was presented to the ISS crew during the STS-135 mission (the final Space Shuttle mission). It is awaiting return by the next mission that is launched from the U.S.

I find it very interesting how the human sense of belonging to a group carries on as we keep, as a society, moving forward.

Arguing in favor of, or against it is not really what concerns me, but instead just observing how we change as we move closer and closer to the possibility of having to leave those old notions aside. I guess that's why it's common in sci-fi to have people born in other world have no sense of belonging to the Earth.

Probably a lot of the reasons for making it a big deal to return the flag in a US-launched vehicle has to do with PR, but still I can imagine that both engineers and astronauts will be very proud of making that happen nonetheless.

azernik• 11 years ago

If we do have to leave Earth-based nationalities and nationalisms behind, I'm quite confident we will find new arbitrary group identities to hold on to. The human tribal impulse is very strong.

mkempe• 11 years ago

Much more significant than nationalism is the fact that SpaceX is a private enterprise. Private space ventures are our only hope for purposeful success, sustained expansion, and the conquest of space.

teddyh• 11 years ago

— If it’s that important a project, why doesn’t the government undertake it?

— Here’s the reason: The vast amount of brains, talents, special skills, and research facilities necessary for this project are not in the government. Nor can they be mobilized by the government in peacetime without fatal delay. Only American industry can do this job.

Destination Moon, 1950 (Loosely based on the book The Man Who Sold the Moon by Robert A. Heinlein, written 1949, published 1951)

dingaling• 11 years ago

Much more significant than nationalism is the fact that SpaceX is a private enterprise.

So were Douglas, Grumman, North American and Rocketdyne. Those were the companies that put men on the Moon.

So too is Orbital Science, which has been launching satellites on a commercial basis for 30 years.

There's nothing 'significant' about the status of SpaceX as a company.

jacquesm• 11 years ago

I'm surprised they would do this while the previous launch was still a failure and SpaceX has not shown a series of unmanned flights with a reliability as good as what the Russians offered. That would seem to be the benchmark for manned flights.

lutorm9• 11 years ago

As pointed out in the article, this is basically a direct consequence of the commercial crew program:

"The contracts call for orders to take place prior to certification to support the lead time necessary for missions in late 2017, provided the contractors meet readiness conditions."

There is plenty of time for NASA to back out if either of the companies don't meet the milestones.

satyajeet23• 11 years ago

I can't help but feel, his success is somehow related to how awesome his name sounds!

kowdermeister• 11 years ago

I came up with pretty cool names before. Not an active ingredient in success :)

quantisan• 11 years ago

Oh, it's a purchasing order. I misread it as a commanding order and thought there's some emergency or something.

zensavona• 11 years ago

Quick guys, to the rocket!

peter303• 11 years ago

Three years late better than never. Bush promised 2014 private LEO launches when ending the shuttle program in 2007.

NASA Orders SpaceX Crew Mission to International Space Station

Related Stories