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It is not preparing to visit the ISS. It is preparing for its first actual flight, since so far the closest it’s gotten to an actual flight is being dropped fr

by K0balt 2y ago

It is not preparing to visit the ISS. It is preparing for its first actual flight, since so far the closest it’s gotten to an actual flight is being dropped from a helicopter from about 3700 meters. It crash-landed when one of its landing wheels failed to deploy correctly. I love the idea of private aerospace, but we need to be realistic about the complexity and difficulty of trans-atmospheric / gravitationally dominated ballistic flight as an endeavour. This spacecraft may very well become a safe, economical option for short haul cargo and crew missions to and from earth to orbit… but let’s not breathlessly declare that it’s preparing to visit the ISS when we haven’t even burned any of them up yet testing the reentry capability of this adorable cessna-sized space minivan. It’s not a good look for companies in the aerospace segment to wildly overstate their operational capabilities, and if that’s what is needed to attract investment, maybe we should figure out a better way.

dotnet00 2y ago
For starters, the test you mentioned happened in 2013, after making improvements, they successfully redid that test in 2017. Visiting the ISS does not involve the reentry capability, and being a test flight, on the journey back, they won't be attempting to bring down any cargo they can't afford to lose. They're saying it's preparing to visit the ISS because that literally is the objective of the first test flight. Maybe they've pulled a Boeing and it has too many issues to make it there, but the only way to find out is to actually launch it and attempt to head there and back. As for carrying crew, that's still far away, they don't have a commercial crew contract from NASA, and are instead working with Blue Origin to provide transportation to their commercial space station. Given Blue's rate of getting things done so far, this is probably going to materialize well into the 2030s, if it materializes at all.

by K0balt 2y ago

dotnet00 2y ago

For starters, the test you mentioned happened in 2013, after making improvements, they successfully redid that test in 2017. Visiting the ISS does not involve the reentry capability, and being a test flight, on the journey back, they won't be attempting to bring down any cargo they can't afford to lose. They're saying it's preparing to visit the ISS because that literally is the objective of the first test flight. Maybe they've pulled a Boeing and it has too many issues to make it there, but the only way to find out is to actually launch it and attempt to head there and back. As for carrying crew, that's still far away, they don't have a commercial crew contract from NASA, and are instead working with Blue Origin to provide transportation to their commercial space station. Given Blue's rate of getting things done so far, this is probably going to materialize well into the 2030s, if it materializes at all.