
NASA Astronauts in SpaceX Capsule Make First Water Landing Since 1975 - JumpCrisscross
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/02/science/spacex-nasa-return.html
======
ChuckMcM
Pretty impressive. And by that I mean boring return to earth, which is
impressive in that it is made to seem so "easy."

On the plus side, my friend from Lockheed-Martin who bet me dinner at one's
favorite restaurant that Boeing would be the first when the contract was
announced, now owes me dinner, so there's that.

I had hoped see Starship hop 150m today[1] however that seems to have been
scrubbed.

There is a really good lesson here for folks which is ignore the people saying
you won't be able to do something and just execute. They can't argue with
results.

EDIT: updated the link to point to the live camera pointed at the Starship
SN5. Not sure what happened there. [1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QbM7Vsz3kg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QbM7Vsz3kg)

~~~
baybal2
> On the plus side, my friend from Lockheed-Martin who bet me dinner at one's
> favorite restaurant that Boeing would be the first when the contract was
> announced, now owes me dinner, so there's that.

I read somewhere that Musk have managed to hire top of the cream engineers of
America's aerospace contractors, and NASA for very small money, relatively
speaking, after NASA got its original "new crewed mission" project cancelled.

And the irony is, that he got money for first SpaceX launches from NASA, and
got a lot of engineering made for him for free at NASA as well.

~~~
getpost
It seems to me SpaceX's secret sauce is continuous iteration on vehicles that
actually fly. It's hard to see how Boeing or Blue Origin can develop expertise
with any confidence their designs will work, except, apparently, by going very
slowly. Of course, Boeing has somewhat of a track record, but Blue Origin was
founded before SpaceX and still hasn't achieved orbit.

~~~
bane
I agree with this. It seems pretty clear to me that SpaceX's key innovation is
one of management -- namely rocket engineering using software-like iterative
methods. The driving force of course is Musk, who comes from software but
moved into hardware where we see the exact same iterative development at
Tesla.

There's no reason that other launch providers can't be doing what SpaceX is
doing, but they aren't. They continue to design and build using more
traditional and conservative aerospace management approaches.

Blue Origin is run by somebody with a background in finance and retail.

ULA by a former mechanical engineer.

Arianespace is run by a former policy guy turned exec.

Rocket Lab is run by an engineer.

Scaled Composites (I know a different kind of beast) is run by an aerospace
engineer.

and so on.

~~~
kiba
_I agree with this. It seems pretty clear to me that SpaceX 's key innovation
is one of management -- namely rocket engineering using software-like
iterative methods. The driving force of course is Musk, who comes from
software but moved into hardware where we see the exact same iterative
development at Tesla._

This is old stuff. They called it "skunkwork".

~~~
mcv
And Skunkworks was very successful too. Are they still using the same
approach, though? I'm getting the impression they're not what they used to be.

------
inamberclad
Random boats swarming is absolutely insane

This is a RESCUE operation and they're getting in the way.

Not to mention, there's still plenty of extremely poisonous UDMH on that
thing.

~~~
jccooper
All previous splashdowns have been much further from shore and, moreover, done
by squadrons of US Navy ships, so this really hasn't come up before. You don't
really take your bass boat up to an aircraft carrier a few hundred miles
offshore.

I expect they'll have more than one Coast Guard vessel on hand next time, and
will probably look into not publicizing the landing zone.

~~~
ridgeguy
It'll be hard to not publicize the LZ. NOTAMS (aircraft exclusion zone) and
maritime exclusion zones are public documents. They're essentially map
coordinates for the LZ.

I think you're right about there being some CG vessels around for the next
landing.

~~~
jccooper
True, though they could publish several zones and not announce which will be
used. Though the transponders from various ships would eventually give that
away.

But even if it's not technically secret there's a big difference between a
NOTAM and putting out press releases with specific locations, which they did
this time.

~~~
dogma1138
There’s an easier way, board, arrest, seize the boats and impose heavy fines
and bans next time.

~~~
jccooper
There's no legal basis for that outside territorial waters. Which is why that
was not done this time.

------
ehsankia
Here is the livestream:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-l6f4wcv2I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-l6f4wcv2I)

If it is live, go back to roughly 2:45 EST. If it is no longer live, it should
be around 7h15m in the VOD.

(I really wish you could link to a time on a livestream, or even better,
create a "Clip" like with Twitch.)

EDIT: Well it is streamed on Twitch so here's a clip:
[https://www.twitch.tv/nasa/clip/CourteousPatientVelociraptor...](https://www.twitch.tv/nasa/clip/CourteousPatientVelociraptorTBTacoLeft)

From which you can also click "watch full video" which puts you at the exact
right time in the full VOD.

------
firebaze
The lack of drama is what dramatically displays the maturity of SpaceX
technology.

Congrats, I'm looking forward to the next steps. And I am so sorry american
citizenship is required to apply for SpaceX jobs :-(

~~~
new_realist
If it were considered mature it wouldn’t be on the front page of HN.

~~~
kazagistar
"First privately owned round trip to the ISS". Its obviously still a first,
but its not a technical first, but an economic first. Hacker news focused on
both technical and economic things, so this still is interesting for it, but
that doesn't mean it is a new tech.

~~~
HPsquared
Perhaps the first reusable manned capsule? (Unless there's another)

~~~
m4rtink
The Soviet TKS capsule was designed to be both manned and reusable, but it
never flew manned in the end as it never took over from Soyuz as originally
planed.

------
robomartin
Proud to have played a part in advancing access to space.

You don’t quite get the historical significance of what you are working on
until you get to see it in context.

I’ll always look back at my work at SpaceX as one of the highlights of my
journey through engineering. Among other things, it is because of this that we
are now working on a project for NASA’s Artemis mission and will likely
deliver hardware to the moon starting next year and possibly every year until
2026 or thereabouts.

~~~
Ziggy_Zaggy
Hats off to you for putting in work at SpaceX and NASA to advance humanity.
The work you do is more valuable then any of us can begin to comprehend until
we're much older, wiser, and a multi-planetary species.

------
avmich
Vostok, Mercury, Voskhod, Gemini, Apollo, Soyuz, Shuttle, Shenzhou - and now
Crew Dragon. We still have progress, ladies and gentlemen.

~~~
idlewords
How is it progress if they all do the same thing?

~~~
Robotbeat
It’s progress because the spacecraft and the vast majority of the launch
vehicle are reusable and affordable. But I agree it’s still only incremental.
And nothing close to the scale and ambition of Apollo. Hopefully Starship will
change that.

~~~
avmich
> And nothing close to the scale and ambition of Apollo.

I'd argue Apollo, as spacecraft, is left behind. Far behind, and the scale of
today's works is way bigger. You can't compare Sno-Buggy - a towering
automotive achievement of its time - with modern Toyotas in numbers,
development resources spent, functional richness, versatility of uses.

Apollo was different because it flew away from a low Earth orbit - a first for
manned spacecrafts. And Starship maybe will fly even farther - qualitatively -
than Apollo - in this sense it's a big step, yes. But making what was nearly
impossible 60 years ago routine and affordable isn't unimportant or cheap.

~~~
Robotbeat
Oh sure, but I think even Dragon won't make it _quite_ routine. It's cheaper
than Apollo per-seat by slightly better than a factor of 2 (Saturn Ib plus the
Apollo command module was ~$500 million adjusted for inflation compared to
~220 million for Dragon Crew per launch), but the routineness is not much
different than apollo during its prime.

That's why Starship is the most important step. It's like Apollo in scale of
the launch, but will be launched much more often. And the vehicle itself can
be refueled, which means you can send ~100 people to the surface of the Moon
and back instead of just 2-3... And perhaps can send people all the way to
Mars. And for maybe a tenth the price of a Dragon run to LEO.

THAT is transformative. Orders of magnitude more ambitious while being an
order of magnitude cheaper per mission. Dragon is still just incremental,
although probably a necessary step along that road.

~~~
avmich
> THAT is transformative.

We may argue about what is transformative - first orbital flight, first flight
above LEO, first lunar landing and first hand-off of expedition on a space
station all are.

From question "do we have progress?" we switched to "do we have big step up or
not?". And if you look at achievement during 1960-s, all subsequent steps were
incremental over previous, from technological point of view. Yet people
managed to do something which wasn't done before - and to have a period in
time, roughly 1960-s, when, if you compare what you had before that period and
after, you have accumulated achievements which seem like a lot.

Yes it's a lot. Yes it was built on top of what was possible by then - with a
lot of efforts during 1960-s. Yes we plan to have similar situations soon :) .
However - even though we don't have Starship yet, and no matter if Crew Dragon
is needed for that (it is), we still have progress right now.

Only instead comparing years 1960 and 1970, you have to compare 2005 and 2020.
Shenzhou was a refined descendant of Soyuz, with corresponding limitations
learned later, while Crew Dragon is a clean sheet implementation of what we
know about capsule flight, a complex dance of engineering and economy.
Discounting it as an insufficiently ambitious is a little like dismissing ITER
just because it's not going to support itself economically, so can't be
economically scaled.

In other words, I'm not talking about Starship here, focusing on Crew Dragon.

~~~
Robotbeat
It's fair to point out Dragon/F9 is an advanced vehicle that is improving the
state of the art after about 50 years of stagnation. The change in sign from
negative (stagnation) to strongly positive is worth noting, even if it's
relatively incremental vs Starship.

------
whoopdedo
Are those bozos who piloted their boats into the recovery area breaking any
laws?

~~~
xwdv
No, it’s international water and they have every right to be there.

~~~
ceejayoz
Try getting close to a warship in international waters and you'll find that
right has some... functional limits, though.

~~~
SergeAx
Devil's advocating: I did exactly this several times in my sailing career.
Military vessels are regulated by the same international laws and rules as all
other sea navigation subjects.

Fellow sailor crossed the course of Turkish submarine while under sail
(meaning he had a right of passage). It was in Turkey's waters (!) about 10
years ago. Instead of changing course they made an emergency dive exercise.

~~~
pcl
> Instead of changing course they made an emergency five exercise.

It’s gotta be fun to have three dimensions of freedom available when making
course changes.

But man, I’d freak out if I were on the sailboat watching that happen!

~~~
SergeAx
Me too! But he is a racer and was ready to do a quick tack just in case.

------
m3kw9
Elon as CEO delivering on so many things is pretty amazing. I always think
once you are lucky, twice you are good.

~~~
perl4ever
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell)

~~~
nickik
I'm so sick of this. Yes Gwynne is great, but to deny or downplay that Elon is
by far the most important person at the company is just nonsense that she
wouldn't even agree with.

I hate to talk against here because she is awesome. But this social trick
where everytime SpaceX does anything, the Anti-Elon crowed have to truck out
the 'actually its all the enlighted levelheaded female president' not the
'nasty meme-obscessed man child asshole' is actually responsable for all the
success argument, its so fucking tiered and inaccurate.

You didn't go there fully but the amount of people who argue that SpaceX
achieves what it does despite Elon is just stagering. People seem to believe
any bullshit if it confirms their bias.

Again, I love Gwynne she is great and so are others who work at SpaceX now or
have done in the past. They achieve what they do as a team, at the same time
its no question who leads the team, who makes the most important choices, who
owns and controls the company.

~~~
atonse
I actually like to use Gwynne Shotwell as a great example between Tesla and
SpaceX.

There's no doubt that Elon is gifted from the engineering and vision side. But
Gwynne is the one that actually (paraphrasing her words) turns his seemingly
crazy vision into an actual project with milestones and how to get there. I
think they complement each other really well.

You can see how much of a mess Tesla is, without having someone like that to
complement Elon's skills. SpaceX (also because of the domain) seems like it is
run by a grownup.

Tesla on the other hand seems like it's run by a bunch of people who excel at
the tough engineering challenges (contrast the cars themselves with the
service experience), but have less interest in the easier stuff (running a
well stocked service center). Look at the way they confusingly change pricing
so often.

Tesla needs an Elon Musk but they badly need a Gwynne Shotwell.

~~~
nickik
> You can see how much of a mess Tesla is

Based on what objective metric?

~~~
atonse
Numerous manufacturing delays, the dismal perception of their service centers
(I'm a part of Tesla owner groups and nothing gets people riled up like
talking about their service experiences), the constantly changing prices, the
consistently missed deadlines.

Let me be clear. I own a Model 3, and I love it. I also own Tesla stock. And I
cheer when their sales go up.

My criticism is from wanting them to be better. They've got all the really
difficult stuff right (the car is amazing, comfortable, and we all love it).
It's the easy stuff that's "boring grown up stuff of running a business" where
they need a lot of help.

~~~
nickik
> Numerous manufacturing delays

SpaceX has that and they have Gwynne. So do pretty much all other car
manufactures, specifically with electric cars.

Having great service while scaling is insanely difficult. Just having some
other influentual manager is not gone magically solve that incredibly
difficult problem.

Overall the company has been anything but messy, rather they have been
executing pretty well, better then most people expected.

~~~
atonse
For what it’s worth, I feel they are also doing things that are tougher than
most other companies. And actually moving the industry forward in some ways.

I don’t know what people expected but I expect them to miss deadlines with the
harder stuff where they’re trailblazers (like autopilot).

But building a reliable car is largely a solved problem. Even Elon has
admitted they over engineered the manufacturing before they had to just use
more people.

~~~
nickik
Tesla had issues with manufacturing, like everybody. That is why there are not
more car companies. But they have mastered this and massively improved each
generations, go look at the tear down of the 3 and the Y. They have managed to
make China Model 3 cheaper and have achieved pretty good margin.

They continue to innovate and have been strategically investing in becoming a
battery provider and building and expanding factories in all the important
markets.

And building EV at good margin is defiantly not a solved problem.

------
mensetmanusman
SpaceX is a hopeful story in today’s time

~~~
gb_moth
Can anyone share why they are "inspired" by these events? Honest question.

With all of the real problems occurring on Earth today, I cannot help but feel
this is just ego-driven madness. The time, resources, and energy being poured
into such projects could have been spent building a better world for us today
--with results that we could (and would) see in our lifetimes.

Instead, are we merely spread humanity across the galaxy in centuries to come
--if at all? For what purpose?

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
I'll explain why I downvoted you. Basically, I feel the exact opposite. I've
been a been depressed of late with the feeling that America can't really _do_
much anymore. The pandemic made clear that what feels like simple things, like
producing sufficient quantities of PPE, are simply out of reach as a nation.
This is just one example in a long list of problems (climate change, mass
shootings, healthcare, etc.) that I feel like the US is not equipped to
address.

But SpaceX gives me hope that we _can_ actually do "big things" again. On the
contrary, with all the other problems on Earth, this launch gives me _more_
hope that we can tackle some of those problems. I mean, it's not like the
resources that go into launching space ships would just shift into, I don't
know, school lunches or something.

I think this is especially relevant to the HN crowd, where a common lament
that all the technical wizardry of silicon valley got us over the past 20+
years was smartphones and facebook, but not real "hard" problems. Feels
inspiring to see there are companies out there that can really address things
that really are rocket science.

------
SergeAx
"NASA team, thanks for flying SpaceX"

They forgot to add "For our frequent flyer program members, your mileage
accounts will be updated in next 24 to 48 hours"

Also: "Seats are spacious, entertainment system is top notch, big screens,
good internet connection except during descent. After landing they didn't open
the exit for half an hour. Good food. Overall 4/5, would recommend".

------
m0zg
As a Russian-American this doubly pleases me. As a Russian I have found
Rogozin's "trampoline" comment distasteful, and I think they should fund
Roscosmos much better and come up with new stuff instead of relying on 40 year
old Soviet designs. Now they might. And as an American, I'm in awe of the fact
that SpaceX is possible in this day and age when companies live and die for
quarterly profits and internet advertising is considered to be a respectable
thing to do, and I especially love that a private company is running circles
around bloated government bureaucracies and ULA that's feeding from that money
pit.

------
mlindner
Great speech by Elon afterwards.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z3J-muBiVQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z3J-muBiVQ)

------
donatj
Does it go from Crew Dragon to Crewed Dragon when it's occupied, or is that a
typo?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Does it go from Crew Dragon to Crewed Dragon when it 's occupied, or is
> that a typo?_

Autocorrect typo. Fixed. Thank you.

~~~
donatj
I'm actually kind of sad, I would have liked that as a convention.

------
BooneJS
Congrats to the NASA and SpaceX teams. Awesome public/private partnership!

------
mensetmanusman
I’m now wondering what the maiden ‘success’ voyage of The Boring Company would
be...

Would they have to dig 100 miles in a day or something to show the world
something as impressive? Thoughts?

------
ben_w
My partner and I are convinced we could hear the splashdown in sync with the
visual.

If that was real, how? (340 m/s)

If the sound wasn’t real, what was it?

~~~
Kuinox
You don't see real-time, delay is added, and there is sound sync, they may
have delayed the image so the sound is synced

------
bamboozled
A great triumph for private industry and the privatization of space
exploration!!!

------
Animats
Why bother with a helicopter? How far is the recovery boat from Pensacola?

~~~
jccooper
It allows them to go straight to the airfield, where a jet will be waiting to
take them immediately to Houston. They have facilities as JSC specifically for
evaluating and managing returning astronauts.

------
rsa25519
Holy cow. This feels so surreal. I don't think things will stop feeling this
way, and I don't really want them too.

I still can't believe the moon landing was only fifty years ago.

~~~
p1mrx
50 years to get from "the moon" to "low earth orbit but cheaper" isn't that
impressive in the grand scheme of things.

~~~
mhh__
The Wright flyer to Apollo 11 was about 60 years, for reference.

------
sidcool
SpaceX is a no nonsense execution machine. Kudos engineers. You make us proud.

------
peter303
I hope SpaceX officials and astronauts get a fete at the White House. In the
old pre-virus-gathering days they might have merited a parade. Although I dont
like the current occupant of the White House, I do like their interest in
space.

------
fnord77
imagine being stuffed in those seats for 19 hours.

~~~
RedShift1
What if you have to pee or a number two?

~~~
smiley1437
It's not the most glamorous fact, but astronauts have diapers

~~~
51Cards
True, though Crew Dragon also has a "washroom". (likely acts more like a
vacuum than anything though)

~~~
ceejayoz
It's reportedly dubbed the "Commode O' Dragon", which I find greatly
entertaining.

------
Ziggy_Zaggy
Has the crew exited the module?

~~~
ceejayoz
Yes, they're exiting now.

[https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1290016670287765505](https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1290016670287765505)

[https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1290017288729407488](https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1290017288729407488)

~~~
Ziggy_Zaggy
Phew - glad to see them come out safely!

------
_Microft
Private vessels in the vincinity of the capsule, one waving a Trump flag? WTF.

[https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1290001444968505344/ph...](https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1290001444968505344/photo/1)

~~~
matt-attack
What’s honestly wrong with that? If I owned a boat in the area, I would have
though to cruise out take a look. What exactly would be the problem?

~~~
mulmen
It’s a dynamic rescue operation so you could easily end up in the way. It’s
also a space ship so there’s toxic fuel and gasses involved.

So lots of obvious problems and probably a few more that are less obvious.

------
rtx
It looks like billionaires are the most effective way to deploy resources in
today's world. Spacex and Jio are great examples.

~~~
idlewords
Don't forget WeWork

~~~
mattkevan
And Theranos. And Enron. And Lehman Brothers. And Bernie Madoff.

~~~
rtx
Exactly my point, we need actual billionaires in control.

~~~
CrazyStat
Elon was only worth ~150 million dollars when he started SpaceX. Obviously he
should have stepped aside and waited for Bezos to do it.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Jeff would have barely qualified, as he was only worth ~$1.5B in 2002, when
SpaceX was started.

------
neals
Is this also how they're going to have people come back from Mars? Seems like
a very inefficient method, with the parachutes and all...

~~~
ceejayoz
No, Starship is designed to return to land using rockets.

~~~
pixl97
In theory the Dragon could be too, but it was much faster and cheaper to have
it splash down with parachutes instead.

------
tpmx
First: That's absolutely fantastic. Congratulations to everyone, etc.

Second:

I'm a bit disturbed that they are using Chromium + some javascript framework
as the UI layer in the Crew Dragon.

There was a sequence when Bob and Doug were debugging the local UI layer. I
guess it was a good thing that didn't happen at a critical part of the flight.

Edit: And I write this having spent 10 years working in a browser company in
an engineering/engineering management role. I believe I have a decent
understanding of the risks.

Going with a browser-based UI for something as critical as this is insane,
IMHO.

~~~
jniedrauer
Browsers are the new operating system. This trend is only going to become more
ubiquitous over time.

~~~
mlindner
It's not used as an operating system, only as a GUI.

