Lucky stiffs.
On Friday April 8th, the Ax-1 mission lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center bound for the International Space Station on a mission expected to last 10 days. Instead, they undocked last night, Sunday the 24th and splashed down in the Atlantic east of Jacksonville, this afternoon. Seventeen days in orbit, with all but about 24 to 36 hours divided between the ride up and the ride down spent as the first all civilian mission on board the ISS.
Between the splashdown of the Dragon capsule Endeavour and the much slower splash of the four parachutes. Screen capture of the SpaceX feed.
In the process, capsule C206 (Endeavour) became the first Crew Dragon to successfully transport astronauts to the International Space Station and back to Earth three times. SpaceX and NASA have already certified each Crew Dragon capsule for five flights – a number that will likely need to expanded within just a year or two. SpaceX is currently scheduled to launch Crew-4 no earlier than (NET) April 27th, Axiom-2 NET Q3 2022, Crew-5 NET October 2022, and Polaris Dawn NET late 2022.
At liftoff, NASA had Ax-1 scheduled to depart the space station on April 19th. On
April 19th, NASA, SpaceX, and Axiom decided to waive off the first
departure attempt due to weather issues that were apparently impacting
all seven of Crew Dragon’s nominal recovery zones – four in the Gulf of
Mexico and three in the Atlantic Ocean. On April 20th, the next
undocking attempt was pushed to no earlier than April 23rd. On April
23rd, the teams again called off the departure. From my perspective, south of the southernmost Atlantic recovery zone, today was the first day in over a week with winds less that 15 to 20, but we still had small craft warnings for well offshore this morning.
SpaceX's video coverage emphasized that the crew's second week on the ISS wasn't wasted, and they plenty of things arranged to do for just such a contingency, but I have to think there was a certain amount of "party time" attitude in not having to leave. After all, the people that ride a New Shepard to suborbital heights that someone considers space get mere minutes up there. They were getting more than 15 days.
As of the last time I checked, the Crew-4 mission is still set for Wednesday April 27th at 3:52 AM ET. It's possible the delay of Ax-1's return could affect that, but hasn't yet. There won't be a full 48 hours between the splashdown of Ax-1 and the launch of Crew-4.
We want about 2-days between #Ax1 return & Crew-4 launch for @NASA & @SpaceX to complete data reviews & stage recovery assets. In this case, 39-hours between operations gives us enough time to finish up the work. If needed, we’ll adjust Crew-4’s launch to ensure we are ready.
— Kathy Lueders (@KathyLueders) April 23, 2022
Kathy Lueders is NASA's Associate Administrator of the Space Operations Mission Directorate. Before this, she was in charge of the private space initiatives that led to SpaceX doing these things.
That aside, this could be a big few days for SpaceX. Crew-4 is on Pad 39A and will (most likely) launch either on time or no later than Thursday, April 28th. Three miles slightly east of south on Pad 40, SpaceX is preparing to launch another batch of Starlink satellites as early as April 29th. If both missions avoid delays, Starlink 4-16 will be the company’s sixth launch in April and 17th launch this year.
That's a lot of activity. Everyone else has a much slower launch cadence per launch pad. Much much slower.
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to see recycled capsules working out so well.
Funny thing is, the next flight of Apollo capules (past the ones used for Skylab and Apollo/Soyuz) were supposed to be 75% recyclable with the flight after that pushing up to 90% recyclable/reusable. At late 60's, early 70's tech. Proven on already flown Apollo capsules. And this was before the not-really reusable-must-be-rebuilt every time Shuttle...
I remember nothing about potentially reusing Apollo capsules.
DeleteI listened to the whole video stream on Ax-1 yesterday, hosted by a woman from SpaceX that I think is a quality manager and a guy from Axiom. She was saying that they rebuild the thermal protection system on each Dragon between flights. Since they repaired it on the Shuttles and would have had to rebuilt on ablative designs (pretty sure Apollo was one), that's probably a given.
You can tell they do a lot more refurb to the Dragons than they do to F9 boosters. The recycled capsules are shiny clean at launch, as opposed to what they look like on the recovery ships.
At one time I had a huge archive of Post-Moon Apollo and Saturn and what little was available on BigGemini and other projects, especially space stations made out of 2nd and 3rd stage pieces-parts.
DeleteAfter Apollo 20, the whole capsule was going to be lighter, more rugged, with new interiors, more modulality and refurbishable.
And later Saturns would potentially have what the ULA Vulcan is supposed to do. A returnable 1st Stage Engine-Section only. Of course carrying the Mighty F1a engines, along with liquid boosters that contained more F1a engines, also recoverable...
Agree with Beans, that's a pretty stout launch cadence. We did six in one 12 month period, and we were all pretty burned out.
ReplyDeleteYeah, and they're pushing one per week - on the average. Yeah, it includes one pad at Vandy and two here on the KSC, but still. If there are two different crews at the KSC, it's still every other week.
DeleteAnd that would be a major grind. They'd almost have to have four crews to keep things sane...
DeleteThe Falcon 9 boosters have proven to be more robust than SpaceX had originally thought! The latest launch, 12th time, and other boosters are doing almost as well! Let's hope the Dragon capsules are just as good (if the toilet doesn't leak any more...) becasue SpaceX isn't going to be makeing 'em any more. Or, so they say.
ReplyDelete'Twill be interesting to see just how reusable the Rocket Labs boosters are, they are of a different material (cabon-fiber??) and the launch/land/relaunch cycle will (I think) be harder on their boosters as opposed to SpaceX's. We'll see.
I saw something somewhere (I really gotta take better notes!) that they had put some heat reflecting overlay on the carbon fiber composite, but I have a hard time thinking CF is going to be as robust as metal. It's the brittle failure mode and the plastic the fiber is embedded in that make me nervous.
DeleteThe CEO said if they got two uses out of a booster it would be a breakthrough.
Which is why at one time SpaceX had the largest carbon-fiber winding equipment, and then they switched to Stainless because of all the properties.
DeleteFunny, David Drake predicted all of this in his Reaches (Venus is Elizabethan England) series, that 'glass boats' aren't as rugged as steel boats, boats being spaceships.