SpaceX Launched Two Astronauts—Changing Spaceflight Forever

[Karlston]

SpaceX Launched Two Astronauts—Changing Spaceflight Forever

The test mission will clear the way for regular crewed launches from the United States for the first time in nearly a decade.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sits at Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 30, 2020.Photograph: MANDEL NGAN/Getty Images

 

 

Saturday T-4:00

 

It’s Saturday morning and in just four hours astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are expected to become the first humans to ride a Dragon. The veterans of NASA’s space shuttle program are scheduled to catch a lift to the international Space Station inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, which will be boosted to orbit by the company’s Falcon 9 rocket. The Demo-2 mission will be the final test before NASA certifies SpaceX’s capsule for human spaceflight and resumes regular crewed launches from the US after a nine-year hiatus. But the weather forecast is not looking good.

 

Swollen white clouds laze over Kennedy Space Center, portents of thunderstorms predicted to roll across the bay later in the afternoon. The Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron, the group responsible for monitoring the weather around the launchpad, predicts only a 50 percent chance that the launch will occur today. That’s worse odds than they gave on Wednesday, the first attempt at the Demo-2 mission, which was scrubbed just 17 minutes before launch due to concerns about lightning near the pad.

 

In less than an hour, Behnken and Hurley will ride to the launchpad in a pair of white Teslas, climb into the crew capsule on the rocket, and start preparing for launch. Neither SpaceX nor NASA want the astronauts to go through the prelaunch procedures again for nothing, so the organizations meet to re-evaluate the weather. At the press site, a crew of NASA employees are putting the finishing touches on a stage erected on the lawn for the president and his entourage, who are scheduled to arrive later in the afternoon.

 

 

The Demo-2 launch represents the culmination of nearly a decade of work by NASA and SpaceX. Following the end of the shuttle program, NASA was left without a rocket to send astronauts to space, so for the last nine years, the agency has relied on Russian rockets for a ride to the International Space Station. It was a pricey proposition—seats on the Soyuz capsule cost $80 million per astronaut. NASA embraced commercial crew contracts as a way to drive down the cost of space access by harnessing the powers of the market. And the gamble is about to pay off. Once SpaceX starts ferrying astronauts to orbit on operational missions, seats on Crew Dragon will cost roughly half the price of a seat on the Russian Soyuz capsule.

 

After reaching orbit, Behnken and Hurley will spend about 19 hours chasing down the International Space Station. The Dragon is designed to fly autonomously, but along the way they will test out some manual maneuvers just to make sure the backup systems are working. Although both astronauts will spend up to three-and-a-half months working on the space station, the Demo-2 mission is ultimately a test flight meant to show that the Crew Dragon capsule performs as expected. Behnken and Hurley will join an exclusive club of just seven astronauts who have been test pilots on a brand new spacecraft.

 

SpaceX and Boeing, the other company tapped by NASA to develop a commercial crew vehicle, have spent the last decade racing to become the first to deliver NASA astronauts to orbit. Along the way, both companies faced a number of setbacks: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule exploded during a test, Boeing’s Starliner capsule had to be deorbited after a timer failure during an uncrewed demo flight to the space station, and both companies experienced numerous parachute failures during tests. But each failure provided crucial data that the companies needed to make their capsules as safe as possible for crewed launches.

 

SpaceX won’t just be launching NASA astronauts, of course. Last year, Bigelow Aerospace—a space company run by the billionaire hotelier Robert Bigelow—purchased four flights on the Crew Dragon and is selling tickets for $52 million apiece. In 2018, Elon Musk also sold tickets to the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa for an around-the-moon excursion on SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket. If Musk has his way, this will also be the rocket that sends humans to the lunar surface and eventually to Mars.

 

The Demo-2 launch heralds the era of profit-driven human space exploration. During a press conference earlier in the week—held remotely due to rain—NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine underscored the agency’s commitment to commercial spaceflight as a way to create a robust extraterrestrial economy. “We need to build commercial space stations,” Bridenstine told reporters. “And in order to create the market where these kinds of programs can be capitalized with public-private partnerships, we need to prove that there is an economy for human activity in low Earth orbit.”

 

In just a few hours, NASA and SpaceX are about to usher the world into this brave new stage of commercial space exploration.

 

T-3:00

 

Three hours to launch and it’s muggy as hell at the Kennedy press site. The parking lot sweats rain from a brief downpour and patches of blue sky briefly appear between the clouds.

 

Reporters from all the major news sites huddle under tents erected on the roofs of a cluster of ramshackle newsrooms built during the Apollo era. Others mill about on the lawn, making small talk from behind NASA-mandated masks. The Covid-19 pandemic has put a damper on the spectacle—under normal circumstances, Kennedy would be crawling with hundreds of reporters and public spectators. Launch day is typically an orgy of rocket fanatics and spaceheads high off pre-launch energy. Not today. It feels like SpaceX organized the world’s biggest party, but hardly anyone bothered to show up.

 

But no one at Kennedy is talking about the pandemic, really. It’s become a sort of background hum, so pervasive and unrelenting that you no longer notice it. Instead, everyone’s talking about George Floyd, the black man killed by a white police officer this week, and the entire thing caught on video; they’re talking about riots in Minneapolis, and reporters getting arrested live on air. They’re drawing comparisons to 1968, when NASA was preparing to send humans to the moon, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, and a crooked politician was elected president.

 

And of course they’re talking about the weather, always the weather. Two miles in the distance, the Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon stand erect on the pad, distorted by the humid Florida air. The weather forecast for Kennedy isn’t improving and even if it does, it might not be enough. NASA needs clear weather all the way from the Eastern seaboard to the coast of Ireland in case of an abort during flight.

 

Two miles away from the press site, Behnken and Hurley roll up to launchpad 39-A in a white Tesla Model X; a major departure from the “astrovan,” a modified Airstream motorhome that brought astronauts clad in orange flight suits to the pad during the shuttle era. It’s the same pad that hosted the final space shuttle mission in 2011, the last time NASA astronauts launched from the US. SpaceX leased the historic launch pad a few years ago and since then has given it a facelift. The launch tower’s open facade, once a dense mesh of steel struts, now has a sleek black exterior reminiscent of the alien monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. A window-lined crew access arm extends from the crown of the tower to the Crew Dragon mounted on top of the rocket and serves as the bridge between the heavens and the Earth. The brilliant white of the Falcon 9 rocket stands in sharp contrast to the tower, its exterior emblazoned with the cherry red NASA “worm” logo that was revived for the launch.

 

Behnken and Hurley arrive at the pad and emerge from the Tesla’s gull-wing doors in matching white SpaceX flight suits. After stopping to make a last phone call to their families using a phone in the launchpad tower—a NASA preflight tradition—they climb into the Dragon.

 

T-2:00

 

Now strapped in, Behnken and Hurley are spending nearly two hours checking out the capsule’s system. Abort system armed? Check. No leaks in the spacesuits? Check. Communication with mission control? Check. Once the initial system check is complete, a small SpaceX pad crew dressed head to toe in black seals the hatch on the capsule and verifies that the pressure holds.

 

T-1:00

 

A few miles from the pad, Air Force One touches down on the old shuttle landing strip, carrying President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump. Trump’s administration has made human spaceflight a cornerstone of its extraterrestrial policies. Shortly after taking office, Trump directed NASA to return astronauts to the moon by 2024. Last month, NASA tapped SpaceX and two other companies to develop a lunar lander for future crewed journeys to the moon. The Demo-2 mission is a critical milestone on the path toward that goal.

Their next stop is the press site, where a small viewing area flanked with American flags has been assembled for the president and his entourage. It’s the best seat in the house.

 

T-0:45

 

It’s 45 minutes before launch. The crew access arm detaches from the capsule and SpaceX crew begin to load the rocket with superchilled liquid oxygen and kerosene. Thick white plumes billow off the rocket as some of the oxygen vents from the tanks and condenses the water vapor in the humid Florida air.

 

Elon Musk and a small team of SpaceX mission operators are behind a bank of computers in the glass fronted firing room just across the parking lot from the press site. They are responsible for monitoring Crew Dragon and controlling the rocket right up to launch. At that point, they will transfer control of the mission to operators at SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California.

 

T-0

 

The mission operators give the go-ahead to proceed: “Dragon SpaceX go for launch.”

 

Countdown sequence.

 

Ignition.

 

The Falcon 9’s engines roar to life and spit nearly 2 million pounds of thrust from the tail end of the rocket. The air crackles with the staticky sounds of the nine Merlin engines as they struggle to break the bonds of gravity.

 

There’s an old rule among sports reporters that admonishes them against cheering in the press box—but the space press corps isn’t bound to such mandates. As the rocket climbs into the hazy Florida sky, cheers erupt from behind the reporters’ masks. Some have been waiting for this moment for years; others, for a lifetime.

 

T+0:01

 

The Falcon 9 rocket recedes into the blue. From the ground, it looks like an inverted torch suspended in the sky, a pinprick of flame lighting the way into an inconceivably vast frontier.

 

 

SpaceX Launched Two Astronauts—Changing Spaceflight Forever

 

[dufus]

fantastic news ... 

[Karlston]

SpaceX successfully launches first crew to orbit, ushering in new era of spaceflight

NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are on their way to the space station

 

Image: SpaceX / NASA

After nearly two decades of effort, Elon Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, successfully launched its first two people into orbit, ushering in a new age of human spaceflight in the United States. The flight marked the first time astronauts have launched into orbit from American soil in nearly a decade, and SpaceX is now the first company to send passengers to orbit on a privately made vehicle.

 

The two astronauts — veteran NASA fliers Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley — rode into space inside SpaceX’s new automated spacecraft called the Crew Dragon, a capsule designed to take people to and from the International Space Station. Strapped inside the sleek, gumdrop-shaped capsule, the duo lifted off on top of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:22PM ET on Saturday. The rocket dropped the Crew Dragon off in orbit about 12 minutes later. Now, the pair will spend roughly the next day in orbit before attempting to dock with the International Space Station on Sunday morning.

 

“Bob and Doug, on behalf of the entire launch team, thanks for flying with Falcon 9 today,” Crew Dragon’s chief engineer said to the two astronauts after they reached orbit. “We hope you enjoyed the ride and wish you a great mission.” SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket also successfully landed on one of the company’s drone ships following takeoff, making for a smooth launch throughout.

 

This launch is a critical moment for SpaceX, a company formed by Musk with the express purpose of sending humans into space and building settlements on Mars. It’s also the final major test for SpaceX as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Through that initiative, NASA enlisted two companies, SpaceX and Boeing, to develop new spacecraft that could regularly ferry the agency’s astronauts to and from the space station. After six years of development and testing on the Crew Dragon, SpaceX pulled ahead in the race to launch humans first. Today’s mission is SpaceX’s last big test flight for that program, meant to determine if the Crew Dragon is ready to start regularly carrying NASA astronauts to the ISS in the years ahead.

 

Though this mission is considered a test, it still carried enormous weight for the United States. The last time people launched to orbit from the US was during the final flight of NASA’s Space Shuttle on July 8th, 2011. Since then, Russia’s Soyuz rocket has been the only vehicle available to do crewed flights to the ISS, and just one seat on the Soyuz runs NASA about $80 million.

 

The Commercial Crew Program was created to end NASA’s reliance on Russia but also to jump-start a new way of doing business at NASA. For all of spaceflight history, the government has been in charge of overseeing the design, production, and operation of spacecraft that take humans into orbit. With Commercial Crew, NASA wanted the private sector to get involved. When NASA first awarded SpaceX and Boeing their contracts in 2014, NASA hoped that they would be flying their vehicles by 2017. Technical delays and testing failures set the program back, but eventually, SpaceX made it to today’s milestone.

 

“They’re laying the foundation for a new era in human spaceflight,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said before launch. “It’s an era in human spaceflight where more space is going to be available to more people than ever before.”

 

It’s not a total victory yet. Behnken and Hurley will spend the next 19 hours in orbit and try to get some sleep before tomorrow’s next big event: docking with the space station. The Crew Dragon is designed to automatically dock with the ISS without the need for any input from the crew, though the two astronauts will try their hand at manually flying the capsule with its touchscreen monitor controls when they approach the station. After testing out that interface, the astronauts will relinquish control to the Crew Dragon, which will attempt to automatically approach the station and latch itself to an available docking port. Docking is scheduled to take place around 10:29AM ET on Sunday.

 

The two astronauts also have to come home eventually — and test the Crew Dragon’s ability to return humans safely to Earth. NASA hasn’t decided when the pair will head home; it’ll be sometime between the next six and 16 weeks. When that decision is made, Behnken and Hurley will climb back into their Crew Dragon capsule and begin the intense journey back through our planet’s atmosphere. The Crew Dragon is equipped with a heat shield to protect the astronauts from the fiery descent, and the capsule has a suite of four parachutes designed to open and gently lower the vehicle into the Atlantic Ocean. After splashdown, a SpaceX recovery boat will greet the crew and take them and their capsule back to shore.

 

A lot is riding on this mission, but if all goes well, the flight could serve as merely the beginning of SpaceX’s journey into human spaceflight. NASA plans to use data collected from this mission to certify the Crew Dragon to perform regular trips to and from the International Space Station with astronauts on board. SpaceX and NASA are already targeting August 30th for the company’s next Crew Dragon flight, which will transport four astronauts: NASA’s Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins, and Shannon Walker, as well as Japan’s Soichi Noguchi. That means we could be soon entering a new era where private companies are the ones routinely taking people to low Earth orbit.

 

SpaceX’s ambitions don’t stop there. The company is currently working on a new monster rocket called Starship, that may one day take humans to deep space destinations like the Moon and Mars. There are plenty of hurdles between that bold vision and reality, but today’s success is a step in the right direction for a company aiming to take people deeper into the cosmos.

 

“Everything in our trajectory is towards that particular moment to launch people on a spaceship,” Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of build and flight reliability at SpaceX, said during a press conference. “And it’s a huge step.”

 

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SpaceX successfully launches first crew to orbit, ushering in new era of spaceflight