14 ms·

NASA aims for first manned SpaceX mission in first-quarter 2020

308 points by callwaiting 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rjf72 7y ago
Had no idea [head of NASA] Bridenstine had visited SpaceX. This is really cool. Here [1] is a video Q/A with Musk, Bridenstine, and the two astronauts who will fly on the first commercial crew shuttle that he (Bridenstine) streamed. For those unaware of the backstory there Musk recently had a major reveal of SpaceX's StarShip program. Bridenstine made a pretty direct jab the night before saying "I am looking forward to the SpaceX announcement tomorrow. In the meantime, Commercial Crew is years behind schedule. NASA expects to see the same level of enthusiasm focused on the investments of the American taxpayer. It's time to deliver." [2] That was generally not so well received, since SpaceX is engaged in Commercial Crew (the program to get astronauts to the ISS on commercial launches) but so is Boeing. And SpaceX is substantially far ahead of Boeing on this front. So it felt like a partisan and biased sleight since Boeing, who went unmentioned, has substantially more political influence and clout. In the Q/A Bridenstine acknowledged he was not really correct on his assumption, which makes me like this guy even more (as he does genuinely seem heavily driven to get the American space program back on track) - even if I think he should have figured this out before racing to publicly Tweet. Looks like he genuinely wants to get Commercial Crew going ASAP and was worried that SpaceX was putting it on the backburner since StarShip is also a really big and extremely ambitious program being done at the same that as Commercial Crew. [1] - https://www.pscp.tv/w/1OyKAengZAMKb https://www.pscp.tv/w/1OyKAengZAMKb [2] - https://twitter.com/JimBridenstine/status/1177711106300747777 https://twitter.com/JimBridenstine/status/117771110630074777...
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Had no idea [head of NASA] Bridenstine had visited SpaceX. This is really cool. Why would it be cool / unexpected? Isn't most of SpaceX's funding public money funneled through NASA?
  - _Microft 7y ago
    NASA is SpaceX' largest single customer but not making them the majority of their money if I remember correctly.
  - rjf72 7y ago
    When a public figure makes a negative statement against a group or individual in modern times, it's generally a carefully calculated political play that's about as authentic as you'd expect of a politician. Because of this, even when their statement is wrong (and it often is) they'll simply double down on stupid. His rapid followup visit, let alone his public acknowledgement that he was incorrect were major indicators that he's authentic. And this is a big deal because he is not only the most ambitious administrator NASA has had quite a long time but also the most politically capable. And that leaves me highly optimistic for the future of NASA. Bolden (the previous administrator) was everything you want on paper, but in practice he lacked both ambition and political skill. I've no doubt he very much had a love for space and technology, but he simply didn't have the toolkit to make it matter. As a result of this NASA ended up achieving little more than inertial progress for 8 years.
- danpalmer 7y ago
  More context, Musk responded to this somewhat snarky comment from Bridenstine: > “From a SpaceX resource standpoint, our resources are overwhelmingly on Falcon and Dragon. Let’s be clear, it was really quite a small percentage of SpaceX that did Starship,” His estimate was that 5% of SpaceX's effort is focused on Starship.
  - boznz 7y ago
    If they can do starship with 5% of their resources, the future is going to be awesome.
wnkrshm 7y ago
Why should we send people further than orbit, rather than robots? Robotic missions have been huge successes - you could have teams of people lead many robotic missions instead of one very limited human visit.
- coldtea 7y ago
  Because robots are not that flexible / multi-purpose? Except if you mean T-1000 or something... And because they eventually want go to Mars, have a little scientific colony, etc?
  - onion2k 7y ago
    Because robots are not that flexible / multi-purpose? Considering the limitations causing a person harm would put on a mission, and the complexity of bringing them back to Earth again, I'd have thought it'd be more flexible to send a bunch of robots.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      I think it ultimately all boils down to launch cadence, which seems to be the driving force behind how things are done in space. Launches are rare, which means you want to pack as much value generators into your payload as possible, which now means your payload is an expensive one-off workpiece (vs. a mass-produced item), which means extra risk, which means more safety requirements around integration and launch, which means more expensive launches, which means launching less often, ... So if you're thinking of sending something to Mars for Science, people look attractive (mass produced, can do a lot per dollar spent on getting them qualified for mission), but life support requirements make this too expensive, so sophisticated one-off robots fly from time to time instead. Now if we could increase launch cadence and payload capacity, which is what SpaceX is working on, we could start sending people... or we could load the Starship with multiple cubesat launchers and a payload bay full of remote-operated or semi-automated rovers and drones. In few missions, we could blanket most areas of immediate scientific interest with robots. In this reality, higher payload capacity and launch cadence would drive demand, which means both the scientific robots could be mass-produced, and there would be more iterating on design, increasing the amount of missions that could be done by machines. The way I see it, right now what SpaceX is doing to enable manned missions is pretty much aligned with what's needed to enable proper robotic missions.
jacquesm 7y ago
Given the fact that there are still some pretty difficult tests ahead and that they already incurred a significant delay as a result of the explosion in April I wouldn't bet on this happening on the proposed time table. Too many uncertainties.
- Robotbeat 7y ago
  Much like everything in aerospace, the NET (No Earlier Than) date is not the most likely date. In fact, it's almost tautologically obvious that you'll usually miss the earliest possible date, no matter what the endeavor. If Quarter 1 2020 was really the most likely time, they would've most appropriately given a NET date of by the end of this year. It's a little frustrating that there's so little understanding of this, though. I blame lack of education.
  - mikelyons 7y ago
    If society stays in Spiral Dynamics stage orange, the education system will only cover things like this once there is profit in educating the public on it, like if asteroid mining becomes a thing (just an example, likely not feasible).
peter303 7y ago
Is NASA saying Moon is made of green cheese too? Both are equally likely. Boeing will win this race as Musk is unstable.
- Dude2029 7y ago
  So far Boeing killed far more passengers and pilots.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    I'm very much on SpaceX's side of things, but that's a bullshit comparison.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  Really? I don't see any of Boeing's craft making regular resupply missions to the ISS.
tzfld 7y ago
Overall, the fact that the US experiencing the longest period without capability of sending humans into space seems to be a serious organizational problem.
- umvi 7y ago
  Is there much value in sending humans into space besides studying how the human body deteriorates in microgravity?
  - Yajirobe 7y ago
    flexing
  - beerandt 7y ago
    There's certainly a loss of value for our already built and paid for space station, if we're not able to use it.
    - simias 7y ago
      That's a sunk cost fallacy. If they don't have anything important to do on said space station it's better to leave it empty and save the money for other projects. Mind you, I don't know if that's the case but I'm just pointing out that the station being expensive doesn't justify pouring even more money into it if you don't have a clear objective.
      - beerandt 7y ago
        It maybe by sunk cost. But it's still lost value, at least based on design life and planned/committed-to experiments/ missions, which I believe are booked up through 2024. And I'm not sure sunk cost fallacy applies, especially in the context of SpaceX / Dragon. Although it could definitely apply to SLS. If you wanted to argue that extending the life beyond 2024 or whatever it is, then I would agree with you, sunk cost is irrelevant. I tend to only apply the term to something incomplete with run-away costs to finish. Or if something changes (demand-side) that renders said product to become obsolete before completion. I'd argue neither applies to the space station. Political whimsy shouldn't be a factor.
no1youknowz 7y ago
A bit of a contrarian opinion. But nasa, whilst lauded for their achievements thus far. Due to the issues like: - politics surrounding it - regulations - money dependent on jobs (think SLS program) - ever changing goals (bush, obama, now trump) Should now just be a research only facility and fully give the mechanics of space exploration to private facilities such as Space X, rockets and Bigelow for the habitats for example. To clarify this more. Nasa should be given monies by the tax payer for various projects. Invest in such projects that require 100 years to come to-fruition to projects that can be achieved within 10-25 years and absolutely no government interventions! Just leave them alone and let them to their glorious work. They should be projects that the private sector can't invest in because it's too costly. That said however, they should also act in a VC capacity. That researcher that wrote a paper about newer modes of transport? Throw $10m at him, put a team around him consisting of nasa scientists and engineers and see what comes out of this. Do this for 10 or 100 ideas and we'll get a lot of inventions. Finally for gods sake, the current budget is 0.49% of the total spend. Increase that to 5%. If all the current engineers dedicated to the failed SLS program and moon base machinations were reassigned on separate projects like :- - vasmir ion engines - portable space nuclear reactors - simulating gravity without needing a spinning chassis - solving the galaxic cosmic rays problem with space ships (and I could go on...!) Would be a total game changer.
- zaroth 7y ago
  These types of ultra long open-ended research projects with no driving commercial or defense need, or real-world short term deliverables are just the kind of project you can dump billions of dollars into and get roughly nothing back in return. At the Starship even a couple weeks ago Elon quipped when it comes to schedules, "Long is wrong, tight is right." The point is that humans respond well to aggressive but achievable goals with big payoff in the short-term. It focuses the effort on what is actually needed to achieve mission success. To put it more succinctly, necessity is the mother of innovation.
  - wallace_f 7y ago
    Elon is also kind of like a dictator of his economic resources. NASA has thousands of stakeholders clamoring over getting a bigger slice of pie.
zarro 7y ago
After the death of the Peenemünde scientists its been all downhill for NASA.
UI_at_80x24 7y ago
If you are interested in the Space X vs Blue Origin vs ULA, and/or want to learn more about the birth of the private space industry I can recommend a book called: The Space Barons. It's an interesting read to be sure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Barons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Barons
kd3 7y ago
Bridenstine is the best thing that happened to NASA in a while: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU_vOt3wSDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU_vOt3wSDg
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  Maybe. He's done way better than I expected, I thought he'd be another idiot from congress who says global warming is fake - because that is what he was when he was in congress. He pretends today that he never said those things or changed his views or evolved or some bs (I figure that is just what he had to say to be in congress as a republican, I don't think he's so stupid as to deny reality in real life). He's played the political game and tried hard not to anger the SLS senators. If he was really effective, he would have figured out how to direct the SLS congressmen into doing something useful with that largess instead of the wasted billions and time that went into the Senate Launch Service.

308 points by callwaiting 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Had no idea [head of NASA] Bridenstine had visited SpaceX. This is really cool. Here [1] is a video Q/A with Musk, Bridenstine, and the two astronauts who will fly on the first commercial crew shuttle that he (Bridenstine) streamed. For those unaware of the backstory there Musk recently had a major reveal of SpaceX's StarShip program. Bridenstine made a pretty direct jab the night before saying "I am looking forward to the SpaceX announcement tomorrow. In the meantime, Commercial Crew is years behind schedule. NASA expects to see the same level of enthusiasm focused on the investments of the American taxpayer. It's time to deliver." [2] That was generally not so well received, since SpaceX is engaged in Commercial Crew (the program to get astronauts to the ISS on commercial launches) but so is Boeing. And SpaceX is substantially far ahead of Boeing on this front. So it felt like a partisan and biased sleight since Boeing, who went unmentioned, has substantially more political influence and clout. In the Q/A Bridenstine acknowledged he was not really correct on his assumption, which makes me like this guy even more (as he does genuinely seem heavily driven to get the American space program back on track) - even if I think he should have figured this out before racing to publicly Tweet. Looks like he genuinely wants to get Commercial Crew going ASAP and was worried that SpaceX was putting it on the backburner since StarShip is also a really big and extremely ambitious program being done at the same that as Commercial Crew. [1] - https://www.pscp.tv/w/1OyKAengZAMKb https://www.pscp.tv/w/1OyKAengZAMKb [2] - https://twitter.com/JimBridenstine/status/1177711106300747777 https://twitter.com/JimBridenstine/status/117771110630074777...

coldtea 7y ago
>Had no idea [head of NASA] Bridenstine had visited SpaceX. This is really cool. Why would it be cool / unexpected? Isn't most of SpaceX's funding public money funneled through NASA?
- _Microft 7y ago
  NASA is SpaceX' largest single customer but not making them the majority of their money if I remember correctly.
- rjf72 7y ago
  When a public figure makes a negative statement against a group or individual in modern times, it's generally a carefully calculated political play that's about as authentic as you'd expect of a politician. Because of this, even when their statement is wrong (and it often is) they'll simply double down on stupid. His rapid followup visit, let alone his public acknowledgement that he was incorrect were major indicators that he's authentic. And this is a big deal because he is not only the most ambitious administrator NASA has had quite a long time but also the most politically capable. And that leaves me highly optimistic for the future of NASA. Bolden (the previous administrator) was everything you want on paper, but in practice he lacked both ambition and political skill. I've no doubt he very much had a love for space and technology, but he simply didn't have the toolkit to make it matter. As a result of this NASA ended up achieving little more than inertial progress for 8 years.
danpalmer 7y ago
More context, Musk responded to this somewhat snarky comment from Bridenstine: > “From a SpaceX resource standpoint, our resources are overwhelmingly on Falcon and Dragon. Let’s be clear, it was really quite a small percentage of SpaceX that did Starship,” His estimate was that 5% of SpaceX's effort is focused on Starship.
- boznz 7y ago
  If they can do starship with 5% of their resources, the future is going to be awesome.

wnkrshm 7y ago

Why should we send people further than orbit, rather than robots? Robotic missions have been huge successes - you could have teams of people lead many robotic missions instead of one very limited human visit.

coldtea 7y ago
Because robots are not that flexible / multi-purpose? Except if you mean T-1000 or something... And because they eventually want go to Mars, have a little scientific colony, etc?
- onion2k 7y ago
  Because robots are not that flexible / multi-purpose? Considering the limitations causing a person harm would put on a mission, and the complexity of bringing them back to Earth again, I'd have thought it'd be more flexible to send a bunch of robots.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I think it ultimately all boils down to launch cadence, which seems to be the driving force behind how things are done in space. Launches are rare, which means you want to pack as much value generators into your payload as possible, which now means your payload is an expensive one-off workpiece (vs. a mass-produced item), which means extra risk, which means more safety requirements around integration and launch, which means more expensive launches, which means launching less often, ... So if you're thinking of sending something to Mars for Science, people look attractive (mass produced, can do a lot per dollar spent on getting them qualified for mission), but life support requirements make this too expensive, so sophisticated one-off robots fly from time to time instead. Now if we could increase launch cadence and payload capacity, which is what SpaceX is working on, we could start sending people... or we could load the Starship with multiple cubesat launchers and a payload bay full of remote-operated or semi-automated rovers and drones. In few missions, we could blanket most areas of immediate scientific interest with robots. In this reality, higher payload capacity and launch cadence would drive demand, which means both the scientific robots could be mass-produced, and there would be more iterating on design, increasing the amount of missions that could be done by machines. The way I see it, right now what SpaceX is doing to enable manned missions is pretty much aligned with what's needed to enable proper robotic missions.

jacquesm 7y ago

Given the fact that there are still some pretty difficult tests ahead and that they already incurred a significant delay as a result of the explosion in April I wouldn't bet on this happening on the proposed time table. Too many uncertainties.

Robotbeat 7y ago
Much like everything in aerospace, the NET (No Earlier Than) date is not the most likely date. In fact, it's almost tautologically obvious that you'll usually miss the earliest possible date, no matter what the endeavor. If Quarter 1 2020 was really the most likely time, they would've most appropriately given a NET date of by the end of this year. It's a little frustrating that there's so little understanding of this, though. I blame lack of education.
- mikelyons 7y ago
  If society stays in Spiral Dynamics stage orange, the education system will only cover things like this once there is profit in educating the public on it, like if asteroid mining becomes a thing (just an example, likely not feasible).

peter303 7y ago

Is NASA saying Moon is made of green cheese too? Both are equally likely. Boeing will win this race as Musk is unstable.

Dude2029 7y ago
So far Boeing killed far more passengers and pilots.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  I'm very much on SpaceX's side of things, but that's a bullshit comparison.
SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
Really? I don't see any of Boeing's craft making regular resupply missions to the ISS.

tzfld 7y ago

Overall, the fact that the US experiencing the longest period without capability of sending humans into space seems to be a serious organizational problem.

umvi 7y ago
Is there much value in sending humans into space besides studying how the human body deteriorates in microgravity?
- Yajirobe 7y ago
  flexing
- beerandt 7y ago
  There's certainly a loss of value for our already built and paid for space station, if we're not able to use it.
  - simias 7y ago
    That's a sunk cost fallacy. If they don't have anything important to do on said space station it's better to leave it empty and save the money for other projects. Mind you, I don't know if that's the case but I'm just pointing out that the station being expensive doesn't justify pouring even more money into it if you don't have a clear objective.
    - beerandt 7y ago
      It maybe by sunk cost. But it's still lost value, at least based on design life and planned/committed-to experiments/ missions, which I believe are booked up through 2024. And I'm not sure sunk cost fallacy applies, especially in the context of SpaceX / Dragon. Although it could definitely apply to SLS. If you wanted to argue that extending the life beyond 2024 or whatever it is, then I would agree with you, sunk cost is irrelevant. I tend to only apply the term to something incomplete with run-away costs to finish. Or if something changes (demand-side) that renders said product to become obsolete before completion. I'd argue neither applies to the space station. Political whimsy shouldn't be a factor.

no1youknowz 7y ago

A bit of a contrarian opinion. But nasa, whilst lauded for their achievements thus far. Due to the issues like: - politics surrounding it - regulations - money dependent on jobs (think SLS program) - ever changing goals (bush, obama, now trump) Should now just be a research only facility and fully give the mechanics of space exploration to private facilities such as Space X, rockets and Bigelow for the habitats for example. To clarify this more. Nasa should be given monies by the tax payer for various projects. Invest in such projects that require 100 years to come to-fruition to projects that can be achieved within 10-25 years and absolutely no government interventions! Just leave them alone and let them to their glorious work. They should be projects that the private sector can't invest in because it's too costly. That said however, they should also act in a VC capacity. That researcher that wrote a paper about newer modes of transport? Throw $10m at him, put a team around him consisting of nasa scientists and engineers and see what comes out of this. Do this for 10 or 100 ideas and we'll get a lot of inventions. Finally for gods sake, the current budget is 0.49% of the total spend. Increase that to 5%. If all the current engineers dedicated to the failed SLS program and moon base machinations were reassigned on separate projects like :- - vasmir ion engines - portable space nuclear reactors - simulating gravity without needing a spinning chassis - solving the galaxic cosmic rays problem with space ships (and I could go on...!) Would be a total game changer.

zaroth 7y ago
These types of ultra long open-ended research projects with no driving commercial or defense need, or real-world short term deliverables are just the kind of project you can dump billions of dollars into and get roughly nothing back in return. At the Starship even a couple weeks ago Elon quipped when it comes to schedules, "Long is wrong, tight is right." The point is that humans respond well to aggressive but achievable goals with big payoff in the short-term. It focuses the effort on what is actually needed to achieve mission success. To put it more succinctly, necessity is the mother of innovation.
- wallace_f 7y ago
  Elon is also kind of like a dictator of his economic resources. NASA has thousands of stakeholders clamoring over getting a bigger slice of pie.

zarro 7y ago

After the death of the Peenemünde scientists its been all downhill for NASA.

UI_at_80x24 7y ago

If you are interested in the Space X vs Blue Origin vs ULA, and/or want to learn more about the birth of the private space industry I can recommend a book called: The Space Barons. It's an interesting read to be sure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Barons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Barons

kd3 7y ago

Bridenstine is the best thing that happened to NASA in a while: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU_vOt3wSDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU_vOt3wSDg

NotSammyHagar 7y ago
Maybe. He's done way better than I expected, I thought he'd be another idiot from congress who says global warming is fake - because that is what he was when he was in congress. He pretends today that he never said those things or changed his views or evolved or some bs (I figure that is just what he had to say to be in congress as a republican, I don't think he's so stupid as to deny reality in real life). He's played the political game and tried hard not to anger the SLS senators. If he was really effective, he would have figured out how to direct the SLS congressmen into doing something useful with that largess instead of the wasted billions and time that went into the Senate Launch Service.