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Polaris Program
- perilunar 5y agoWith a name like 'Polaris' you'd think they would try a polar orbit. AFAIK no crewed missions have ever done that. Would be cool to see.
- ladyattis 5y agoIt's amusing to see that Elon Musk still hasn't admitted that the Starship program won't ever achieve the Mars mission he keeps touting (especially the original proposal of having the single ship take around a hundred human beings into orbit and then refuel and go to Mars in such a tiny vessel). At least someone is getting some use out of the vehicle and hopefully Musk will stop trying to bully his engineers too and let them do good work on the vehicle earth orbit deployments.
- ir193 5y agobest landing page I've ever seen
- caiobegotti 5y agoThis is the juicy part of the whole announcement: "the crew of Polaris Dawn will conduct a spacewalk". That's going to be a major feat and important milestone for Starship (and Dragon until then, of course).
- regnerba 5y agoSounds like they will be using SpaceX designed EVA suites, not NASA ones (which wouldn't fit through the hatch I don't think).
- _Microft 5y ago... and since Dragon has no airlock, they will either: (1) have to add one, (2) have actual EVA suits for all crew memebers or (3) keep the rest of the crew in their flightsuits in the vacuum inside the capsule while the hatch is open during the EVA. If I had to guess, I would think that it is (3). This way they wouldn't have to carry a flightsuit and EVA suit for each of the crew members. The suits of the other crew members would still be connected to the capsule which takes the role of the environmental control and life support system.
- twic 5y agoFrom the press conference: > Menon: Since there is not an airlock on Crew Dragon, the whole crew will be exposed to the vacuum of space for the EVA. [1] > Gillis: For Polaris, "the suit that we're going to be designing will be a single suit that we would launch and then similarly use for the EVA." [2] Sounds to me like one crew member will wear the EVA suit for launch and for the EVA, and the other three will wear flight suits for launch and while the capsule is depressurised. So only one EVA suit, no changing suits in space, no airlock. [1] https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1493277018968006656 https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/14932770189680066... [2] https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1493273907251621891 https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/14932739072516218...
- throwoutway 5y agoThat’s even more interesting. I wonder if components inside the Dragon capsule need to be rebuilt to handle cold vacuum. Or is that a standard design?
- jsmcgd 5y agoA vacuum inside a spacecraft is not necessarily cold, nor is the vacuum outside the spacecraft. Components may even begin to overheat in the absence of circulated air.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- h2odragon 5y agohttps://polarisprogram.com/polaris-program-will-undertake-a-series-of-pioneering-spacex-dragon-missions-demonstrating-new-technologies-and-culminating-in-the-first-human-spaceflight-on-starship/ https://polarisprogram.com/polaris-program-will-undertake-a-... I can't tell if this is fundraising or straight up bragging. "We raised $240 million for St Jude Children's Hospital" ... by spending how much? They're selling swag but that doesn't appear to have serious commercial or influence potential.
- lekevicius 5y agoLed by Jared Isaacman, CEO of Shift4, who last year was part of Inspiration4 mission. I'm super confused how this programme works. Does Jared want to fund all these missions? If not, what is the "team's" contribution here?
- mlindner 5y agoThink of it a joint partnership between SpaceX and Jared. Jared gets to fly in space again in a "better, higher, faster" mission and SpaceX gets a discount on in-space experimentation of their capsule and technologies they're working on. It's a win-win partnership.
- thereddaikon 5y agoWhat I think is happening, SpaceX is already developing starship. Regardless of that NASA or anyone else wants they will try to make it happen for their own purposes. As part of that program there will have to be a lot of test flights. SpaceX will need to prove they can do things that NASA did decades ago like space walks. Issacman has a lot of money and wants to be an astronaut. He is willing and able to pay SpaceX for flights. Since he has already been trained and flown in space he is also a conveniently available and willing commercial astronaut that they dont have to pay. On top of that he brings the partnership with Saint Jude which is always good PR. Especially when people are being So Issacman gets his dream of being an astronaut, SpaceX gets some good PR out of something they were going to do anyways. And Saint Jude gets some donations.
- gameswithgo 5y agoThat about sums it up, plus you can try to get sponsors, like a monster truck event. Do a spectacle, get people to pay to put their logo on it. Many will say it is all silly, and it is, but leveraging the madness of humans to do good (and bad) things is what moves history.
- thereddaikon 5y agoI don't know why people are all that surprised really. This is what commercial space is going to look like. SpaceX isn't NASA. They aren't gifted a budget by congress to carry out their mission. They have to pay for it justify the cost with a profit somewhere a long the line. Getting sponsorships, partnerships and paying customers is all a part of that. The age of rockets just having a flag painted on them are over. For every mission that isn't bought by the government, expect the space suits to look more like racing suits.
- thom 5y agoSurely a name with a lot of baggage for a rocket?
- jamessb 5y agoI'm not sure why you're downvoted. The name immediately makes me think of the submarine-launched ballistic missile system that proceeded Trident [1, 2]. TBH, I was expecting the link to be to an article about the history of SLBMs. There's apparently also an Israeli reconnaissance satellite [3] and North Korean SLBM that are referred to as Polaris [4] (plus, obviously, the star). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGM-27_Polaris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGM-27_Polaris [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris_(UK_nuclear_programme) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris_(UK_nuclear_programme) [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TecSAR-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TecSAR-1 [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pukguksong-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pukguksong-1
- hbrav 5y agoWhy the hell would someone choose to refer to a second, unrelated, SLBM as 'Polaris'? This has the same energy as the professor who decided to write an exam question using small epsilon and large epsilon for different energies.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gameswithgo 5y agobecause normal people don’t care
- fsloth 5y agoIMO stars names precede the weapon systems that unfortunately tarnish their name. I would view this as a chance to eradicate the unfortunate association between the star and war.
- altacc 5y agoAlternative title: Billionaire buys himself three new space missions. This is obviously great for SpaceX, as Jared Isaacman will be helping to finance SpaceX's development without (as I understand it) any long term stake in the company. The "Launching Soon" label for the Starship mission is optimistic, seeing as Starship hasn't yet reached anywhere near space but Isaacman now gets a front row seat to it's development. There are worse ways to spend your money (but arguably also better ways).
- api 5y agoIt's amazing how much negativity this gathers compared to the more typical "billionaire buys yet another super yacht" or "billionaire throws loads of money at a dubious political think tank." It seems like people hate billionaires more when they invest money in productive things vs. when they piss it away on bullshit.
- cloutchaser 5y agoA mixture of envy and cognitive dissonance about billionaires being evil exploitative rich people
- beaconstudios 5y agoI think a lot of people view the billionaire space race as just another version of them comparing super-yachts. At least with the super-yachts, nobody's pretending it's an altruistic endeavour.
- agar 5y agoCalling it a "billionaire space race" always makes me laugh. If orbit is a marathon, two billionaires have made it to about the 10 mile mark, while the third one has run 112 successful marathons in a row.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
- nix23 5y agoThat's not a good name for a civil rocket/-program tbh.
- iab 5y agoAlso equipped with MIRVs - Multipurpose Instruments for Research and Validation
- BeefWellington 5y agoI'm honestly surprised SpaceX doesn't have a planned moonbase named DEATHSTAR already. Probably too gauche from their point of view. It is really nice to see the work of going back into space is happening again.
- was_a_dev 5y agoI really zoned out of the Inspiration4 mission, mainly because it's branding was "space for all" when in reality it was (and always will be) ITAR restricted, so for all really meant for Americans. The Polaris missions here don't seem to promise that, so feels more genuine already
- MPSimmons 5y agoThe 'all' more meant for people who wouldn't necessarily pass the stringent NASA astronaut reqs.
- pkaye 5y agoI don't think ITAR is the issue. There was a Japanese billionaire who wanted to do something similar with the SpaceX Starship. The passenger doesn't need to know how the ITAR restricted technology functions. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56261574 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56261574
- softwarebeware 5y ago
- quantumduck 5y agoFunfact: Anna Menon's husband, Anil Menon, was recently selected in the NASA space corps. It would be fun to see if Anna Menon ends up flying before Anil Menon. Would they be the first couple where both partners went to space?
- dtparr 5y agoDefinitely not. For a recent example, both Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley of the first manned SpaceX Dragon crew have astronaut wives, (Megan McArthur and Karen Nyburg, respectively). Jan Davis and Mark Lee, a married couple, both went up in 1992 on the same flight, STS-47. (I think they actually were selected prior to being married, and got married in secret during training, but I forget the exact timeline)
- mzkply 5y agoIt's basically assured that Anna will fly before Anil. Anil's got to do 2 years of astronaut candidate training, then become an astronaut and wait for a flight slot. Remember the epic "Navy Seal + Harvard Doctor + Astronaut" guy still hasn't flown.
- lashloch 5y ago"Launch the Polaris; the end doesn't scare us"
- silverfrost 5y ago"Polaris, a constellation of three stars more commonly known as the North Star...". Nope. It is a triple star system, something completely different.
- bhouston 5y agoThe three body problem in real life?
- fasteddie31003 5y agoI believe a triple star system would be a subset of a constellation.
- e12e 5y agoNo, apparently not: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation#Terminology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation#Terminology
- mattkrause 5y agoThe article is frustratingly vague about what constitutes a "proper" constellation. Does it just require being one of the 88 officially-enumerated ones, or is there more to it?
- dylan604 5y agoThere are official constellations, and then there are other shapes/patterns known as asterisms. This article will be able to explain way better than I could in a reply here. https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/constellations-asterisms-what-difference/ https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/constellations-ast...
- mattkrause 5y agoReporting back.... It seems like the important thing about the 88 officially-enumerated constellations is that they divide the sky up into standardized sectors. Asterisms are just the stars themselves. In other words, the asterism "The Big Dipper" is exactly seven stars. Since these stars are prominent, they--and some others--define the constellation "Ursa Major" but the constellation is actually the region of space around them. Thus, you could say that you can see (e.g.,) a comet "in" Ursa Major, but not "in" the Big Dipper.
- disadvantage 5y ago> The Polaris Program is a first-of-its-kind effort to rapidly advance human spaceflight capabilities, while continuing to raise funds and awareness for important causes here on Earth But if we're launching loads of people into space, what does the carbon footprint of that look like? How can you care for the earth if burnt rocket fuel is detrimental to the atmosphere?
- Me1000 5y agoIf you actually care about the answer you can read up on it (or watch the video) here: https://everydayastronaut.com/rocket-pollution/ https://everydayastronaut.com/rocket-pollution/ tl;dr: In 2018 rockets accounted for about 0.0000059% of global carbon emissions. To put that in perspective, the airline industry produced 2.4% in 2018.
- ceejayoz 5y ago> But if we're launching loads of people into space, what does the carbon footprint of that look like? Pretty small. A 747 holds about 200 tons of fuel. A Starship holds something like 1,200. One Starship flight is roughly equivalent to six long 747 flights (as a rough estimate). Even with an absurd thousand Starship flights a day, commercial air travel far exceeds it.
- Me1000 5y agoA couple caveats: the 1200 figure (which is only for Starship) includes liquid oxygen. So the actual methane capacity is about 265 tons as roughly 78% of the propellant is liquid oxygen by mass. But the super heavy booster carries about 800 tons of methane.
- lumost 5y agoThis will mark a huge developmental milestone of privately funded human space flight. I don't doubt that NASA's bureaucracy slows down human spaceflight progress - but hopefully this project sticks the safety protocol. I would strongly prefer to fly on the 10th flight of starship over the first flight of Artemis.
- mlindner 5y agoNASA wants commercial human spaceflight development. Head of NASA's human spaceflight program and leader of the Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA: https://twitter.com/KathyLueders/status/1493342424537706497 https://twitter.com/KathyLueders/status/1493342424537706497 > Congrats to @SpaceX on the announcement of their next fully private missions to space! Seeing growth in commercial spaceflight and human space exploration where @NASA is one of many customers is the future we envisioned.