7 ms·
Please let this go well.
by heyflyguy 6y ago
Please let this go well.
- randomsearch 6y agoAgreed. I'm so nervous, this seems high risk.
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoHigh risk relative to?
- AmVess 6y agoNot launching your ass into space on a giant rocket?
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoThank you for a delightfully clear explanation.
- TomMarius 6y agoRelative to staying on the ground, at the very least
- albntomat0 6y agoIt's the first manned launch on the Dragon platform. There have been a number of unmanned launches and tests, but no where near as many as on Soyuz. A quick search through Wikipedia shows 140+ manned Soyuz launches, and around 20 total for the SpaceX Dragon. Note those numbers are for the spacecraft, not the booster (the Soyuz platform has both the spacecraft and booster named Soyuz, SpaceX has the Dragon spacecraft on the Falcon 9 booster).
- randomsearch 6y agoExactly. The odds are not what I'd like them to be.
- albntomat0 6y agoWhile I agree the risks are higher than Soyuz, there has to be an acceptable risk threshold, in order to build the safety record of a new platform. Both the Saturn 5 and Space Shuttle had far fewer unmanned launches than Dragon, before the first manned flight. The Soyuz booster started as an ICBM, and thus has a harder to compare track record. Here's a graphic for the booster family historically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_R-7_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_R-7_launches
- nickik 6y agoSo, never flying on new vehicle or flying a vehicle uncrewed for 40 years is the only option you consider save? That seems like incredible pessimism to me.
- randomsearch 6y agoMaybe somewhere between those two extremes.
- nickik 6y agoThis is the Dragon 2, it has flown twice, once to the Station and back. A second time where the rocket was blown up to test the in-flight abort system. It is pretty different from the 20 Dragons used on CRS.
- albntomat0 6y agoTrue. I looked around for an explanation on what changed, and couldn't find anything super specific. I expect a decent number of systems were reused or modified, rather than being fully original
- samcat116 6y agoFor some context they certified the Dragan capsule with a LOC (loss of crew) rating of 1 in 270, which is more than double what the shuttle had (IIRC it ranged from 1 in 10 for the first shuttle flight to 1 in 90 towards the end of the career)
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoMmm. Was that risk evaluation in house? I hope for the best too