
NASA Orders SpaceX Crew Mission to International Space Station - jkaljundi
http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-orders-spacex-crew-mission-to-international-space-station
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SCAQTony
So far, SpaceX has completed 23 launches of both its Falcon 1 & currently
active Falcon 9 rocket:
[http://spacexstats.com/previous.php](http://spacexstats.com/previous.php)

They have had two failures:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches#Launch_history)

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

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AC__
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.

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mtrpcic
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".

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polymatter
> 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

That is irrelevant to the level safety precautions. Unless you were trying to
argue that their costly training makes them worth more than other people. I
hope that is not what you were arguing.

> doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing everything we can to ensure a safe flight

At some point you have to declare something 'safe enough' since 100% safety is
an impossible perfection. Bicycles aren't 100% safe, but we don't go around
insisting on multiple backup systems. Personally I do find it curious that the
standard of safety for astronauts is so high. The cynic in me suggests its
less out of concern for the astronauts and more to do with the publicity
fallout that occurs after disasters and the damage to other assets. The
optimist suggests its more a concern for all the ground crew and spectators
who are also at risk. There is potential for a lot more than 4 casualties when
you play with that much fire.

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saganus
>> 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

>That is irrelevant to the level safety precautions. Unless you were trying to
argue that their costly training makes them worth more than other people. I
hope that is not what you were arguing.

I believe GP was arguing about the "a dime a billion" part. They are not worth
more than other people in the human sense, but that doesn't make them any more
common. It's just the fact that there are very few people with such
qualifications that negate the argument of "a dime a billion".

And I guess it's also true that not any of those billions could be trained to
be an astronaut for a myriad of reasons.

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avmich
> And I guess it's also true that not any of those billions could be trained
> to be an astronaut for a myriad of reasons.

This is less clear. Even more, the space tourism industry relies on that to be
false. To an extent.

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saganus
Well, in part I agree.

But I think there is (or at least will/should be) a difference between a
trained astronaut and a space tourist.

I mean, being an astronaut is more than just going to outer space, isn't it? A
space tourist might do a lot of the stuff that astronauts do, but I think
there will still be a fundamental difference. Astronauts are there to do
research, push the limits on human capabilities, etc.

After all that is settled, then the tourists can come.

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

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zensavona
Quick guys, to the rocket!

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ChuckMcM
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".

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toomuchtodo
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_FXVjf46T8)

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rbanffy
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.

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dogma1138
It's really not as hard as you think off, an ill behaved rocket won't be like
a balloon flying around in "random" directions, even if there is loss of
vector control at the nozzle the existing inertia of the rocket would keep it
flying relatively quite straight.

Considering that the capsule still has the inertia from the main engine at the
time where the separation/landing boosters fire it doesn't need that much to
outrun the existing rocket since it pretty much just needs to get out of it's
way.

In-Flight Abort is nice, but this is the 1st and only human piloted craft that
has it, even if it will have quite a bit of risk attached to it it's still
better than the competition.

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AnimalMuppet
> In-Flight Abort is nice, but this is the 1st and only human piloted craft
> that has it...

Apollo had it - at least for during the first stage.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_%28spacecraft%29#Launch...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_%28spacecraft%29#Launch_Escape_System_.28LES.29)

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rbanffy
Mercury had it. Gemini (and Vostok) had ejection seats. Soyuz has it, but it
first flew well after the Apollo's first used them.

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Arjuna
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.

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mkempe
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.

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dingaling
> 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.

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pixie_
SpaceX is significantly disrupting the entire launch industry right now.

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

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

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toomuchtodo
Stage 1 is at the cape:
[https://twitter.com/Marc944Marc/status/667708558235066368](https://twitter.com/Marc944Marc/status/667708558235066368)

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atroyn
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.

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

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dogma1138
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.

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mikeash
What amateur rockets can put payload into LEO?

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dogma1138
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Space_eXploration_Tea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Space_eXploration_Team)
Their "go fast rocket" got to about half the altitude of Sputnik so if you got
the cash you don't need to scale "go fast rocket" up by that much to put a
cube-sat / micro-satellite up there.

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Gravityloss
It only takes 2 km/s to get to 100 km altitude on a ballistic hop. But the
gravity pulls you down.

It takes a 8 km/s horizontal velocity just to stay in orbit. That is in
addition to the 2 km/s to just get to the right altitude.

So just by speed ratios orbit is 5x the difficulty of a space hop. In reality
rocket scaling is exponential (you need more fuel to carry more fuel...)

Anyway, I do think nowadays "amateurs" actually could build orbital rockets
with budgets in the low millions class. Modern electronics and GPS make it a
bit easier than a few decades ago.

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idlewords
GPS receivers have US-government mandated speed and altitude cutoffs to
prevent this scenario. A nice writeup on bypassing them is here:
[http://www.wired.com/2013/09/bypassin-us-gps-limits-for-
acti...](http://www.wired.com/2013/09/bypassin-us-gps-limits-for-active-
guided-rockets/)

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sbierwagen

      US-government mandated
    

GPS receivers "capable of providing navigation information at speeds in excess
of 600 m/s" are actually covered under the Missile Technology Control Regime.
(category II 11.A.3.b.1) [http://www.mtcr.info/english/MTCR-
April2011-Technical-Annex....](http://www.mtcr.info/english/MTCR-
April2011-Technical-Annex.pdf)

The MTCR has 34 members, basically the G20 minus China and India. Since the
MTCR doesn't have any provisions for enforcement, (It's "an informal and
voluntary partnership") its US equivalent is the International Traffic In Arms
Regulations Act. (Category XV, Section c, if you want to read how the US
statute words it. In imperial units, of course, just to make things simple.)

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jacquesm
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.

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lutorm
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.

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peter303
Three years late better than never. Bush promised 2014 private LEO launches
when ending the shuttle program in 2007.

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satyajeet23
I can't help but feel, his success is somehow related to how awesome his name
sounds!

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

