4 ms·
It'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 se
by albntomat0 6y ago
It'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