The Crew-4 mission has gone very smoothly, from a flawless launch into orbit to docking at the ISS ahead of schedule. At the time of launch, docking was expected at 8:15 pm ET on Wednesday (00:15 UTC Thursday); the actual time of docking was 7:37 ET on Wednesday, 23:37 UTC. Booster B1067 appeared to hit the middle of the X ring, landing successfully for the fourth time 9-1/2 minutes after liftoff. We watched the docking and stayed with it until the ISS crew and the new crew greeted each other.
This is SpaceX's seventh manned mission in the last 23 months, including the independent flights of Ax-1 and Inspiration4, carrying 28 people into orbit. Of course, with that Ax-1 mission that just concluded, it's their second manned mission this month. With the Ax-1 mission, SpaceX exceeded the total number of people launched into space by China in the 19 years the country has been doing manned spaceflight. Frankly, that fact blows my mind.
Screen captures from the video stream: the full Falcon 9 with Dragon Freedom atop early in the flight on the top and B1067 on drone ship A Shortfall Of Gravitas after its landing.
A side note that's not particularly relevant to Crew-4, just the "big picture" at NASA: the Artemis SLS Orion rocket was rolled back to the VAB over the night of April 25th/26th arriving Tuesday morning at 6AM. It will probably take a week to prepare the structures in the VAB to allow access to the areas that need service. There's the faulty upper stage check valve and the leak within the tail service mast umbilical ground plate housing. Once those things have been repaired, I'm sure there will be additional checks before returning to the launch pad for the next wet dress rehearsal attempt. I would guess that would be well into the month of May, possibly the end of the month.
I had heard that it probably won't be until August (or so!) before it launches...
ReplyDeleteI really won't be surprised.
SLS is slowly working to a potential launch, that is if they are actually able to actually launch.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, Boeing's Starliner is scheduled supposedly for late May. We'll see about that.
Meanwhile, SpaceX is delivering people on time and in record numbers. And they're speeding up the tempo. I wonder how quickly they'll be able to turn-n-burn their capsules?
Still waiting, of course, on Starship. B7's internal injuries seem to have taken it out of flight status, unless it's found to be more economical to repair than just replace.
And, you see, your last couple of words explain the entire difference between Oldspace and Newspace: NASA's got one baby, and it would take another 15 years (and enough money to buy Twitter again) to make another, so they are excruciatingly slow and careful with it.
DeleteSpaceX, on the other hand, has the option to just build another one rather than fix a stripped bolt.
Yep. By going to stainless steel rather than some expensive aerospace metal, SpaceX has made the pressure vessels so much stronger and cheaper.
DeleteWelds with steel make the joint stronger. Not the same with aluminum or aluminum alloys, unless you go with some weird version of welding like spin-welding or really expensive gas mixtures, all which drive the cost of manufacturing up and up and up.
Legacy Aerospace is making custom hulls. SpaceX is making Liberty Ships.
Which is a rather good comparison. Make lots and when mistakes come up, either fix the old or scrap them, and make changes in the next iterations.
Like, again, Liberty Ships. Which their welded construction, early on, allowed cracks to form midships and caused ships to literally break in half. Fixable by welding a huge patch along the upper hull over the center third of the ship. Not worth fixing already cracked ships but worth fixing uncracked ones.
Which is the place SpaceX is in right now. Basically they've gone to pre-production production and found a big 'oops' with the downcomer collapsing in B7 and now the next-gen downcomer is bigger/better/faster and the discussion is "fix or replace or destroy."
There is a strong but unconfirmed rumor that the downcomer collapse wasn't a design flaw, but was instead an operator error: somebody forgot to pressurize it when they pressurized the main tank.
DeleteIf operator error, then it further proves SpaceX's manufacturing philosophy of Henry Ford-ing the space industry. "Eh, downcomer collapse, oops (chuckle.) Next!"
DeleteYou won't and can't find that in Legacy Aerospace. Every part is precious, every part is pure, if a part is wasted NASA gets quite irate. (A play on a rather rauncy Monty Python sketch in one of their movies.)
Oh, yes. In Yorkshire:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzVHjg3AqIQ
I think I remember there being one of the early Starship prototypes - the flying grain silo type, like Hoppy - that they blew up because they overloaded the tank. Something about by filling in gallons and not pounds, and the Nitrogen density was heavier than the real stuff?
DeleteRumble, rumble, search, search...
Yeah, it was SN3, in which I made a regrettable error in the title and called it a Starliner and not a Starship.