as far as I’m aware, they’ve done 1 EVA to look at the thing

Don’t think so.

They do have access to camera imagery, but as you say, most problems like this probably need much more intrusive investigation.

A landing leg failure, for example, likely could be quickly cleared because it is not used in other phases of flight

I assume SpaceX wouldn’t make any big assumptions along these lines though?

I imagine, for example, that a worn component that could fail catastrophically on landing might also be at risk of some kind of failure during max Q, in a way that affects the primary mission.

Of course, there could come a point where you judge that so unlikely as to be not worth wasting any (further) time on.

But as an armchair observer I’m fairly glad to see a pause at this point before Polaris Dawn, even just a couple of days …

“We’re just focused on recovery weather at this point,” he said after the announcement of the FAA investigation into the booster landing anomaly. “I think that is still gate to our launch.”

Surprising. Does this mean they have good reason to think they’ll get a Public Safety Determination in a matter of days? Does the FAA work weekends?

P.S. If a landing leg realistically could, say, pop open at max Q, I guess that further strengthens the argument in favour of rocket ‘catchings’ rather than rocket landings!

the host says they’re going to higher altitudes than the Apollo program

Ah, yes, well normally that would be my opportunity to remind people of Gell-Mann amnesia.

But this time it’s unfair to the host. Isaacman has made that mistake himself on (I think) multiple occasions. She might have got it from him. (Perhaps indirectly.) Here’s one: https://youtu.be/aASZ2rKdS6I?t=1m2s (He meant “since”, not “than”.)

One source of confusion might be if this crew is planning to be in the highest ‘free’ orbit of Earth ever occupied by humans. Where I’m using ‘free’ as a vague way of trying to exclude, for example, the astronauts who were actually on the moon (which is of course orbiting the Earth).

Is that a scientifically/technically legitimate & meaningful distinction? If so, is there a better term for it?

the host says they’re going to higher altitudes than the Apollo program

Ah, yes, well normally that would be my opportunity to remind people of Gell-Mann amnesia.

But this time it’s unfair to the host. Isaacman has made that mistake himself on (I think) multiple occasions. She might have got it from him. (Perhaps indirectly.) Here’s one: https://youtu.be/aASZ2rKdS6I?t=1m2s (He meant “since”, not “than”.)

this one doesn’t really have anything that makes it fundamentally unsafe.

You’re probably right, but we’ll see. The altitude and the spacewalk are the first big new initiatives for SpaceX’s human spaceflight work that haven’t been done under close NASA supervision. That’s probably a good thing but … I’m nervous.

Talking of the altitude, this is from the article:

The mission is scheduled to launch between 3:30 and 7 a.m. Eastern Aug. 26 in one of three instantaneous launch windows. Isaacman said the launch times were selected by SpaceX to minimize the micrometeoroid and orbital debris impact risk to the mission given its unconventional orbit.

He said it during the event (which is available to watch here), and I don’t think any further explanation was given for why certain launch times are better than others for MMOD. Does anyone understand why? Is it obvious? Any resources I could check out to learn more?

Talking of the article, they still haven’t fixed the first sentence!:

spacewalk on a is ready

If Jeff or anyone else from Space News is reading this, hire me as your proofreader!

Interesting title on the video about this, just uploaded to YT by CBS News: SpaceX sending private citizens on risky mission that includes spacewalk attempt

I find myself agreeing with the sentiment. I’m fairly nervous about this mission.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d jump at the chance to join it. I’d choose it over a routine trip on Starliner, but not for the reason you might be thinking. … I can’t help wondering if Polaris Dawn is both higher risk and reward than a routine trip on Starliner.

No, that’s this one, funded by a crypto billionaire, announced a week ago and launching in ~4 months.

Polaris Dawn is funded by a payments processing billionaire, announced 2.5 years ago, and launching this month.

That has to be a requirement regardless I guess since a depressurization could happen on any flight.

Yes, this has been pointed out by the crew (IIRC) in an interview about the mission. (Not to suggest that no work was needed on the issue, just less work than people might expect. Obviously it can be the case that taking an unlikely contingency scenario and making it a deliberate part of a mission, raises the level of assurance needed.)

In the implication here that it is Congress who want a diversity of suppliers, whereas NASA doesn’t care as much?

Yes, I think that’s the implication. I realized it’s not correct but decided to leave it like that. I’m a big picture kinda guy; someone else can sort out the details!

I guess it might be more like a combined NASA / Space Force high level strategic fund providing the subsidy. So that individual ‘low level’ programmes within NASA / Space Force then don’t have to worry too much about the long term strategic goals like dissimilar redundancy, and can mostly just focus on their own needs.

If NASA decides to send Starliner back empty, it’s a vote of no confidence in Boeing that may lead the company to cut its losses and withdraw from the program.

How would this work, contractually? Would they have to give back the whole $4.1 billion (or whatever)? And pay penalties on top to cover NASA’s costs?

the most likely alternative would be to bring the astronauts back using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon by removing two astronauts from the Crew-9 mission

The most likely? Not convinced. Wouldn’t anyone removed from Crew-9 just be shifted to Crew-10? So it’d seem silly to announce Crew-10 only to have to change it a week later.

And even if they don’t care about looking silly in that way, they might instead just go with one empty seat ‘uphill’ for each of Crew 9 and 10. Because that’s a less drastic change to make to Crew 9 at such short notice.

But maybe I’m wrong. So, assuming the quoted scenario actually is what happens …

I guess they’d have to keep the Russian (Gorbunov)?

And keep the capsule commander (Cardman)? But she’s never been to space, so maybe the pilot (Hague)? I can’t immediately see if he was expected to be the ISS commander, but if so, I guess that would give them a good excuse to ‘promote’ him over Cardman?

Wilson has had more launches than Hague (3 versus 2ish) but a lot less time in space, and I don’t know if she would be as well trained for Dragon as the commander & pilot.

They say they really like Starliner, and I think they mean it. After all, it’s not that bad! If you offered me a free trip to space in it, I’d jump at the chance.

In fact I’d offer to pay at least 1/3 of my net worth. (Sadly this doesn’t quite equate to the current cost-per-astronaut of, what, $150m?)

Turns out that some of the later parts of the video I posted largely negated my above comment.

What do you think will happen to the other one? Do you think they’ll maintain a Florida splashdown capability indefinitely, as a backup

Question at 43:08.

43:56 “There may be a small transition period as we’re moving vessels through the Panama Canal … where we can support either Coast …” (implying not indefinite)

e.g. in case of bad weather in all the new West Coast splashdown zones

51:15 “one benefit of moving to the West Coast is much better weather”

Also of interest …

30:39. Sounds like they didn’t bother with a Public Safety Determination in the end, and just went directly to full(?) approval.

And I see that the Soyuz TMA-11 crew included Peggy Whitson. We wouldn’t want the same kind of thing to happen to her twice!

(Her 2nd Axiom mission is NET November this year, so that shouldn’t be affected by this change, but any subsequent Axiom missions might be.)

Only yesterday I was here objecting to large expenditures on debris mitigation (specifically, to the “US De-Orbit Vehicle” for the ISS), so I guess I’d better be consistent (regardless of down-votes)!

If I was advising SpaceX, I’d tell them to go with this West Coast plan.

If I was advising humanity as a whole, I’d point out that despite our evolved psychology as a species, we are sometimes still capable of behaving rationally. And if the expected value of any particular iniative to make some space industry debris less likely to do harm to people/property is less than the actual cost of that initiative, it probably shouldn’t go ahead.

Also, I’d be interested to see how this changes the Loss of Crew probability. Presumably it’s less risky to do trunk separation prior to the deorbit burn, because if the separation process encounters any problems, there is much more of an opportunity for troubleshooting.

We’ll move a Dragon recovery vessel to the Pacific some time next year

What do you think will happen to the other one? Do you think they’ll maintain a Florida splashdown capability indefinitely, as a backup (e.g. in case of bad weather in all the new West Coast splashdown zones)?

Or just keep it going for a while, until they’re happy with the new arrangements? Would they then decommission the other recovery vessel? (There are just two of them, right?) Or move it to the West Coast to join its sister?

I interpret the figurative use of the word “stomped” the same as I do for “wrecked” or “destroyed” or “annihilated”. Basically, ‘to beat easily/substantially’.

Do you have any examples of cases where it has been used to imply underhand behaviours? (Obviously if a SpaceX employee literally stomped on a competitor’s prototype, that would be an example! But I assume that’s not what you mean.)

Uncontrolled re-entry of a single large object would, I think, be preferable to re-entry of dozens of them.

I guess the opposite. It won’t be a single object for long, after the final re-entry has started, so I say give the breakup process a headstart! (Well, I don’t actually. I actually assume it’s a bad idea, and would like to know why. Geopolitics not included.)

No agreement would have any effect on the headlines saying “US allows its spacestation to crash on city, killing 800 people”.

Agreed. However, I’d bet my life that this wouldn’t happen. Both literally (though I’d need good odds, and a high valuation for the value of my life!), and in the sense that I (and all my loved ones) live under the ISS’s flight path.

I estimate (partly based on this) that less than 0.6% of the earth’s surface is “built-up”. (Though the ISS doesn’t fly over it all equally, so call it 1%.)

For what it’s worth (nothing?!), I used that figure, and some other guessed figures, to guess that the expected value of the number of people killed per uncontrolled ISS reentry is 0.05, so on average needing 20 space stations to kill 1 person.

Cost Plus contracting (including hybrids thereof) should probably be banned (in anything other than a war economy).

If companies can’t compete and that’s undesirable, subsidize them - but be up front about it.

One option would be to have them bid as normal, but then have central government pay X% of the money so that it doesn’t come out of the budget of the specific department (e.g. NASA), if the struggling company wins the contract. And so the department would be incentivized (and required) to treat the struggling company’s bid as if it was actually X% lower.

Keep increasing X until you’re satisfied with the level of dissimilar redundancy.

But later on the SpaceX person is asked about launch and just says something about the “Falcon product line”, IIRC.

There’s a lot of evidence that he’s an ass-hat

That’s a separate question from the one I thought we were discussing.

But equally unverifiable evidence that makes him look like a kind of crazy genius is A-OK?

It’s all unverifiable to us. But at that point you have to remember the elephant in the room: his companies’ multiple successes, pushing forwards the state of the art, in multiple domains, in a commercially viable way.

I’ll remind you that my previous comment used wording such as “I suspect”, and “you can imagine”. I’ll now, off the top of my head, put a number on it. I’m 85% confident that the primary explanation for his otherwise unlikely run of successes, is that he’s a genius of an engineering manager.

What’s your primary explanation, and confidence level?

Which makes sense, given that the folks that adore him are also into conspiracy theory nonsense.

I consider myself anti- conspiracy theory. When I encounter them in various comment sections, I quite often briefly reply, politely correcting people. My guess would be that such people are more likely than average to dislike Musk.

As for me, I don’t adore him. And I have multiple criticisms, and things I’d want to learn more about before judging him too positively overall.