Video: Space Adventures Plan to Fly Tourists on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon
Video Caption: Space Adventures’ mission to low-Earth orbit for private citizens on the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
91 responses to “Video: Space Adventures Plan to Fly Tourists on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon”
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meh.
SX needs to cut a deal with Bigelow and get a private space station up there. The business is there.
Maybe there is some business but Bigelow isn’t ready to fly yet and although they’ve proved concept with their free-flying mini modules, they still need significant investment before they’re ready to outfit, fly and support a B330 habitat. Even if they could build and fly one how do you trick it out? Will it be a SpaceBNB or a research lab or way station on the way to someplace else? Any of these will take dedicated support staff even when the habitat is empty.
This is why I continue to say that BA needs to launch one to ISS, deck it out as habitat, get NASA vetting, and then spin it off.
The habitat is the hard one. The rest is trivial.
The administration wants to commercialize ISS so that sounds like a good way to do it at minimal cost to taxpayers. The tricky part is that NASA is not going to want to subsidize Bigelow and at the same time, Bigelow will have to provide a working, useful B330 with independent power and life support so that NASA and Bigelow can vet the design. Maybe if they can set it up as a habitat module NASA and the partners could justify adding a few more crew members so that it could be properly evaluated.
its hard to see how a Bigelow module gets going without an ISS to set it up at…and there is no money for that
Why? It was designed to be a free flying space station. Do really think they need NASA to hold their hand like they are a little kid?
Perhaps you’re correct. That mean it’s getting close to put up or shut up time for private space. They’ve almost got the vehicles and almost have the habitats. Now they need a mission and they’ve got to make the business case to finance it from private funds. They also need to do it without legislative handouts from the government.
the logistics of a set up are daunting….if you start with nothing more then the blow up space station and say a dragon…but more importantly Bigelow and anyone else who wants to put a module up…needs customers and there are none…much less enough to keep the thing going for a couple of years…
I have no idea what Bigelow thinks it can operate a space station for…but lets say .5 billion dollars a year. so 500 million after the cost to build the thing
do you think they have the customers to make those numbers? I dont
It’s probably less than that, and Bigelow Arrospace has had a waiting list for years of folks who want to do micro-gravity research without the paperwork of NASA.
a list but no money
Money is pouring in to 3d printing in space.
“3D Printing in Space: Enabling New Markets and Accelerating the
Growth of Orbital Infrastructure”
http://pdf.ecoruspace.me/pd…
“3D Printing of Surgical Instruments for Long-Duration Space Missions”
https://www.ingentaconnect….
3D Printing in Space
https://onlinelibrary.wiley…
Issue #1(7) 2016 Astronautics
The Use of 3D Printing for Space Applications
https://room.eu.com/article…
You just are not paying attention to some of the capital moving by angel investors and space venture companies.
By the time commercial cargo, passenger services and a destintion is is place you will find a lot of new tech heading to LEO without dealing with NASA.
Tell that to Mike Suffredini, whose company, Axiom, was recently awarded a NASA contract to attach a commercial module to the ISS. Bigelow had passed on bidding for the contract, claiming that NASA wasn’t offering enough money. NASA replied that the number they had floated was negotiable, which is an oblique way of saying, “oh yeah, we gave Axiom more than that. ya cranky nutball.”
We will never know whether NASA would have awarded the contract to the budget motel magnate who chases after UFOs rather than the guy who used to be the ISS program manager. Bigelow did already have an inside track, what with the Beam module already attached to the ISS and performing well. But Bob aced himself out of that deal. Time for another round of layoffs!
I suspected he learned his lesson on working with NASA just as Elon Musk has.
Namely that NASA insiders look after their own and Mr. Bob isn’t one of them.
Mike is a friend…but he will be the first to tell you that the deal is hardly a done one
NASA selected Axiom to come up with a plan, to develop a plan which NASA will then evaluate…it will take many more plans and agreements and evaluations to get to anything like cutting metal or making composites and many many more plans to get it to launch and to do what you are saying “attach a commercial module to the ISS”
but you act like the entire thing is a done deal and they are cutting metal in Houston or Italy or lots of places in between. they are not.
REPEAT they are working on a plan
Axiom or NASA has yet to identify a single customer for this module or what the module will cost, who will pay for it, and what the charges are to attach it to the ISS and then use it or sell use on it or whatever.
REPEAT they are working on a plan
I have no idea why bigelow did not even bid to get to the contract to work on the plan. My guess is that truth be told Bob figured that this was not the last word in the process and somewhere along the lines there were going to be more opprutunities to get one of the docking ports on one of the nodes somehow
but I say again neither Axiom or Bigelow or NASA has money for the effort…they are working on a plan
I have no reason to doubt what you are saying, but the Space News article is presenting this as a done deal. A Michael CoAngelo interview with Suffredini on the MECO podcast goes into quite a lot of detail.
The first module, one of several, is on track to go up in 2024. Prior to that, it is Axiom’s stated intention, with NASA’s apparent blessing, to begin bringing up private and foreign sovereign astronauts for short to medium duration stays via separate flights in order to bring Axiom’s operational cadence up to speed in advance of the first modules arrival on station. Astronauts will be trained for these flights by the same company that provides astronaut training for NASA, using the same NASA facilities. During that podcast interview, Mike Suffredini said he expected to sign the contract with NASA that same day. He wasn’t doing any dancing around.
Obviously, NASA contracts are riddled with termination clauses tied to Congressional mandates and financial support and timely successful execution of contract requirements, but as the Space News article points out, the Texas congressional delegation started the flag waving on cue, and Suffredini is probably one of the best people on the planet to pull something like this off. It looks pretty real to me. Next time you see Mike just tell him to stay off the Joe Rogan Show. He’s an entrepreneur now, but he’s not a billionaire yet.
I know the KBR situation and the SpaceNews article but in reality the entire thing is about the same place it was three years ago…ie about four years away.
I think it will maybe happen and IT should happen but the reality is that if you get past the fluff the reality that is ignored here constantly is that there are no public statements of soverign contracts or companies that want to sponsor an astronaut etc.
and there is no real written agreement…yet but it doesnt exist where the money between government and a private contractor go back and forth
the reality is that any “module” is likely to be (and this would be a good thing) a private lab that is “rented” by NASA for use by the government astronauts on the station.
really I am quite pro this, go read my spaceNews op ed from two years ago…but there is nothing yet set in concrete
Axiom/Bigelow do not have the money.
SX and BO do have it, and need to work with BA.
They both need BA, but do not realize it.
its going to taka LOT Of money. OK Bezos can afford it but I suspect it will take nearly 10 billion dollars
anyone who opens and operates a private space station has to be prepared to pay at least the following cost
1. design and build the thing, 2). launch it, 3) povide it and then 4 operate it most likely at a loss for sometime. it might take years or never happen that a continual line of customers are there for such an activity. in the meantime even if you decrew the station, you still have to keep the infrastructure in place to crew it whenever you get customers
a lot of people here act like its the field of dreams…build it and they will come…but what if they dont?
what if bigelow and say bezos work together put up a BA something and then wow no one spins the money to fly on it?
what then?
1) design/build? That has been done by BA.
2) launch it? Either F9/FH/Starship/new shep.
3) outfit it? BA, along with companies.
4) operate it at a loss? No. that is YOUR opinion.
I think that if it is up there, with cheaper launch than ISS, then yes, field of dreams.
You keep referring to “new shep” as if it was an orbital booster. I think you mean New Glenn. New Shepherd couldn’t lift a BA 330 a mile, let alone to orbit…
if that were true then someone would have put some money on the table
No point of putting money on the table until there is OPERATIONAL passenger services. But Bigelow has put money on the table for astronaut flights
“There aren’t many further details about Bigelow’s plans, but since 2018 he’s put down “substantial sums” to reserve four future SpaceX flights specifically for orbital tourism”
https://www.wired.com/story…
I believe if Bigelow launches after commercial crew is operational NASA will leash space on it just so others countries can not get a leg in space without NASA’s say so. If NASA is the anchor tenant then they can use that to try and force bigleow to follow their rules?
“NASA will leash space on it…”
‘It.’
It’s not the Highlander, you speak as if there can only be one. The United Arab Emirates showed serious interest long ago. Bigelow will build as many modules as he can, for as many (mostly individual) customers as he can get, including non-US ones. NASA can ‘anchor’ their own, whatever way they want.
(Except China, which Bob is suspicious of, even if the politics on either side would permit their leasing one.)
Don’t think in terms of ‘the’ space station anymore.
NASA should be getting money from Axiom or Bigelow for berthing rights at their orbiting industrial park and charging them for the use of station resources, not paying them for anything.
Attempts to attract commercial activity to the station over the course of its lifetime have yielded underwhelming results. But NASA’s current goal is to foster a commercial LEO presence that will take over or replace the ISS.
The folks that have the wherewithal to undertake commercial ISS modules and/or commercial space stations are not interested in doing so. They don’t see the business case. The folks who do see a business case only see one that involves using other people’s money.
There is no demand for what NASA is supplying. This leads them to saying, “how about we throw in this pallet of cash?”
Maybe this will change. Maybe, when Starliner and/or Dragon 2 are actually flying people into space, someone will wager that there is a business case. Maybe SpaceX’s Gemini Experience cruise will happen and it will be great and other filthy rich people will say, “hey, I wanna do that too,” and then some private equity people will decide that it’s time for a LEO (or MEO) hotel.
The technology is there (or about to be there) but the niche industries like space tourism will not really support commercial development. They need to find something profitable that actually benefits people on the ground. Priming the pump is not the answer. It will turn into expected subsidies without incentives to develop private, non-subsidized opportunities.
Yes. This whole business of priming the pump is an act of faith, a gambit, a roll of the dice. They are the government and they’re here to help.
Musk thinks that if he deposits people on Mars then that will act as a forcing function, pushing the technology forward, driving down the cost of moving about in space. But he’s rather skeptical about the notion of making money here on Earth by doing stuff in space — space solar power, asteroid mining, zero G manufacturing. Zubrin is of much the same mind. His case for space is not about making money. He devotes a lot of space in his latest book to all the ways to not make money in space. There are, according to Zubrin, many opportunities to not make money on the Moon, in particular. He’s quite enthusiastic.
Bezos talks about moving heavy industry into space. He hasn’t said when that’s going to happen. We just got done moving all the heavy industry to China. I think South America and Africa are next on the schedule, no? Maybe not. Maybe we’ll skip Africa, leave South America to its Iberian curse and move heavy industry from China to space. But China will have to be in on that deal, one would imagine. Us, China and the rest of the world will have to believe that heavy industry in space is cheaper in some way than heavy industry in China. Such a conviction will probably first require putting a hard price on environmental degradation. We don’t seem inclined to do that currently. But the good news there is that the environment is degrading rapidly. So maybe business cases will present themselves sooner than we think.
SpaceX don’t need Bigelow to set up a space station. All they have to do is fit out a Starship for that purpose. Since it got about the same pressurized volume as the ISS even without fitting out cargo decks for additional accommodation.
Most reports that are out there on Starship indicates it is about 10% larger than the ISS in terms of pressurized volume.
Then you have to add in the methane/lox tanks, which all but kills that volume.
NASA lists ISS as having an internal volume of 916 cubic meters, 388 of it habitable.
https://www.nasa.gov/featur…
SpaceX says Starship’s “payload bay” is 9×19 meters. If we assume this 9 meters (r=4.5m) narrows to about 7 meters (r=3.5m) near the nose cone, and solve for a truncated cone’s volume, we get 960 cubic meters.
if only one existed lol
That could be a minimal fitting out at that. Air controlled(pressure, mixture, CO2, etc) , power, bathroom, consumables, and a docking ability. 4 at a time plus tour guide/pilot(s) for 5 days with the Dragon available for evacuation at any time.
The late 2021-2022 timeline suggests that an early Starship that is not intended to reenter could possibly be in place. So it wouldn’t even require a full up Starship. Selling point that early visitors are beta testers for the orbital experience, thus the discount on the first few dozen flights.
Flight crew does maintenance and minor fitting out while staying mostly out of the way. If it becomes a maintenance hog ala ISS, use that vehicle for an unmanned reentry test. Avoid the “stuck with it” situation of ISS, and build the next one to better serve the purpose.
Have a bunch of 3D printers on the star ship and passengers and crew can print knick Knack keep sakes ect.
And some private suites for couples that practice docking maneuvers.
And some zero gee games, ping pong, 3d billiards, dance, wrestling and ??????
Pro quality cameras and video for external and internal shots.
A little thought could probably find hundreds of things people would like to try that wouldn’t require heavy, complicated, or permanent fixtures.
So what happens first, SpaceX flies paying customers on Dragon2 or VG flies paying customers on a hybrid powered pea shooter?
VG will either have failed or be a roaring success long before this happens
\
Or be plodding along like it is now…
they are not plodding
Might want to have maintenance take a look at your plodspeed indicator.
They’re not plodding? That’s a matter of opinion now isn’t it?
Note that SS1’s first flight was on May 20, 2003 and it was retired on October 4, 2004. So here we are nearly 16 years since SS1 was retired and we’re still waiting for SS2 to become “operational”.
I’ll be more impressed when Virgin Galactic flies their first SS2 full of paying passengers or when they launch their first payload into orbit from their 747. Until one or the other happens, all they hype driving their stock trading is just that, hype.
you could say exactly the same thing for SpaceX and star whatever its name is today
That’s simply untrue. SpaceX has just now started building a second prototype Starship (after the previous one failed a tanking test). They’ve not been building prototypes for nearly as long as Virgin Galactic has been working on Spaceship Two.
Note that Spaceship Two’s first glide flight was way back on October 10, 2010. So nearly 10 years of on and off test flying and not a single paying passenger has flown. I seriously doubt that Starship will take quite as long before it flies a paying customer’s payload.
just because you think that building alone is making progress…VG has fixed the engine issue (we hope) and dealth ith a major event by reworking the cockpit flight regime
Starship will not fly a major paying payload for another 5 years if they ever get a design
or learn how to weld or….
Building and testing certainly constitutes making progress.
Right now I’d say Starship looks passably likely to be in orbit before 737 MAX returns to flight.
They’re learning how to weld. They should be moving quite a bit of the welding inside.
IF IF it happens this is a big deal
IF IF indeed. And, no, it’s not a big deal. It’s, at best, a minor sideshow.
So is SpaceX training its own people to fly this thing or are they certain enough that everything will work to perfection that they’ll risk the lives of four paying customers?
It won’t take much training to press the “DEORBIT NEXT” or “DEORBIT NOW” buttons.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
What if it doesn’t work?
If that doesn’t work, then Dragon 2 is so seriously screwed up that no amount of “manual control” is going to help it. Dragon 2 isn’t like an aircraft that has control cables going to its control surfaces. It’s more like a fully fly by wire aircraft.
thats not true about people on board. it is a fly by wire vehicle
It doesn’t matter what we say or what has happened during the entire history of manned spaceflight. The fanboys think Elon’s software and equipment is infallible (notwithstanding having blown up their first Dragon 2 due to an unrecognized design defect) and that Dragon 2 is as safe and reliable as a modern elevator. I hope for the sake of their passengers that they are correct because it will only take 1 vehicle loss along with loss of passengers for the courts and Congress to dismantle SpaceX and regulate the crap out of the entire industry. That’s a hell of a risk to run just to avoid training a few professional astronauts.
in my view we are headed for that event that you talk about…I just dont know who will go first Boeing or SpaceX. but in my view without a doubt sometime in the next oh five years or so one of the two will have ‘THE EVENT” which will cause the loss of vehicle and crew…and then well yes I agree that it will be hard for any of this to survive.
I hope it doesn’t come to that but I really don’t see how it can be avoided. Everybody who makes commercial aircraft has at one time or another had to deal with a catastrophic loss. The Russians lost spacecraft on reentry and possibly in orbit and we lost two shuttles, Apollo 1 on the ground and came close to having disasters both in LEO in the early days and on the first lunar landing. IT WILL HAPPEN to somebody in “Private Space” eventually. Also, the uber capitalist zealots are counting on keeping the regulatory environment that they see now when almost all of their spacecraft should have “Experimental” emblazoned on their sides. That will change as companies like SpaceX have matured some of their products to the point that “assumption of risk” for paying passengers is close to a legal oxymoron. If you warrant that your vehicle is safe enough to fly paying passengers without a pilot, you pay a massive penalty if something goes wrong and you kill your customers.
As the late, great Bob Heinlein once wrote, “It’s hard to reason a man out of something he wasn’t reasoned into in the first place.”
Private space already has graves along its backtrail. That “massive penalty” for Virgin Galactic seems curiously slow in arriving.
And there will, of course, be more death as space is opened to humanity. Just as with airline travel, accidents will be investigated, lessons will be learned, adjustments will be made, the line will be redressed and the march into the future will continue.
I can see why you like Heinlein. He was a bit of a fascist too.
You obviously know nothing about Heinlein, fascism or me – nice hat trick.
You and Rawnsley think that because you are both statists and because Rawnsley, at least, is an hysteric. And you are deeply marinated in the myth of legacy contractor “expertise.”
SpaceX has already done at least 20 successful visits and returns from ISS, including a nominal Crew Dragon test. The total number of Crew Dragon missions yet to be run before ISS is decommissioned is probably no more than this number. So Crew Dragon would need to have an actual 1-in-20 (5%) chance of failure on any particular mission in order for you to be right.
No, cancel that. In order for said notional failure to happen in the next five years, the actual LOC probability needs to be more like double that – 10%.
I’m not sure even the Starliner with the original funky software would turn in that dire a performance. Given the wire brush scrubbing its code is going to get before it flies again, I don’t think Starliner is going to oblige you by blowing up in service either.
silly
so you dont think that if VG were to lose a vehicle and passengers with some celebrity or ties on board the outcome would nto be different?
In a word – no.
You mean like when celebrity dies on a plane, boat, car, train, hot air balloon on and on and on and on
Name a mechanical transportation system (other than zepplins, although we still use balloon) that people died on and now no longer exists? Even zeps have been modifed and are used.. people die on ALL OF THEM
Nobody thinks SpaceX hardware is infallible. But it is pretty reliable. And this mission isn’t even going to exercise a lot of Crew Dragon’s fancier capabilities as it isn’t going to ISS.
As for the rest of your paranoid fantasy, you really are quite emotional aren’t you?
I would point out, by way of refutation, that Richard Branson, a billionaire space entrepreneur who isn’t even an American citizen, has already got four graves on his backtrail, including a vehicle co-pilot who died during the regulation-mad Obama administration. But Congress showed no inclination to dismantle Virgin Galactic and “regulate the crap out of the entire industry” even at that time and Trump, needless to say, is not exactly a friend of regulators. If, as I expect, Trump wins re-election and the Republicans take back the House this November such a prospect becomes still less likely even if this notional plutocrat joyride makes like a 4th of July firework.
had paying passengers been on the flight including some celebrities…the outcome in my view would have been different
Trumps polls look horrible and so do prospects to take back the house
GO SANDERS feel the bern
We may yet find out given that VG might still manage to lose an operational flight despite your assurance that it has retained “top men” from legacy aerospace to shape it up. But even should that happen, I don’t think the outcome would be as you imagine. Has the death of Kobe Bryant led to calls in Congress to shut down charter helicopter services?
Trump’s popularity is at record levels and on the rise.
As for the Brooklyn Bolshevik, I suspect he’s not even going to be able to secure the nomination never mind defeat Trump in Nov. Being crushed by Trump is an honor that seems likely to fall to someone else – I don’t think who that is will matter very much.
Trump reelection? House goes back to Rep’s? So noted. You know pulling a Dershowitz only gets you so far. He’ll do what’s needed to crank the system in favor of his client, but nobody thinks his clients are innocent. Trump’s your O.J. Now you understand why African Americans celebrated when their guy ‘won’. Now you understand what it means to be tribal and push for your side even when you know your man was pegged guilty from several paths of investigation. But he only won so much. How many people do you think really believe in Trump’s innocence? And what makes you think he’s not going to do it again? He might get reelected, at this point that seems within sight. But the Rep hold on the Senate is fragile, the house seems stable and having watched much of the hearings raw, the Republicans provided much raw meat for the Dem electioneers to use.
“Why So Many House Republicans Are Retiring, And Why More Could Be On The Way”
https://fivethirtyeight.com…
“There Are Now 18 House Republicans Retiring. What Does This Mean For 2020?”
https://fivethirtyeight.com…
forecast with any certainty of the outcome of the Nov election at this point are as I suspect you agree only made by fools
I agree with what you wrote on impeachment…he was guilty
Of course you think Trump is guilty. Given that pretty much everything else you believe is utter nonsense also, that’s pretty much a dog bites man story.
Being dubbed a fool by someone who thinks Bernie Sanders can be elected President is a credential, not an insult.
The idea that Trump is guilty of anything except beating the Democrats like a rented mule is simply farcical as were all the “investigations” run by the Kangaroo Court House. You’ve got to believe otherwise, I suppose, as the alternative is acknowledgement that your entire worldview is defective and that the actual criminals are all your guys.
How many people believe in Trump’s innocence? At least twice as many as “believe” he’s guilty. Given that he didn’t do anything objectionable – except to partisan leftists – in the first place, I am unmoved by the prospect that he will continue to “do it again.”
The balance of the House and Senate will be determined, along with the Presidency, in November. I suspect you will not be pleased at the outcome.
In the battle of the raw meats I think you badly misapprehend the actual balance as well, but that has long since become normative for people on your side of the political divide.
Nothing wrong with using taxpayer dollars appropriated by Congress to the Ukrainians who were citified by the DoD as having met their requirements to receive it, to use a muscle to hold over another nation to have them conduct politics on behalf of an American politician. THATS OKAY?! Well. You guys ain’t the party of Regan anymore that’s for damn sure. If you really believe that this kind of behavior is okay, you need to do the same kind of forethought into what that will mean for the future of the United States as you do to the effects of Space X on the future of space travel. You and your kind are truly asking for the United States to become an international nation. You realize once that kind of behavior is acceptable we’ll totally lose control of our government to foreign interests. You’re surrendering the nation.
That isn’t what Trump did it’s what Joe Biden did – or at least bragged about doing.
No wonder your side dominates the movie industry – everything is projection with you people.
Well I’m glad you think it’s not okay. I’m glad once Trump is gone you’ll be upset when someone not from your tribe tries it. Doublethink has its plus side maybe even a doublepluss good side. Having watched it all. That’s what was charged, with several witnesses throughout the entire process testifying about it under oath. I challenge you watch it all. I know you’re retired. You have time. It’s all on C-Span. If there was anything of value to the Biden story Fox News would have unearthed it and reported it in great detail. They’re a capable billion dollar literature dissemination business. Yet after 9+ months in the conspiracy-sphere nothing specific. And be honest with yourself, that’s just as they want it.
The House “hearings” were a procession of carefully chosen liars and fabulists with no rebuttals allowed. The Moscow show trials of the 30’s are also available on video.
And so far their stories all check out with further investigation. If they did not FoxNews would have been foaming all over it. It’s not like your side is above this sort of thing either. Look at how the Russia investigators were went after, and when that did not pan out, the investigators were investigated, then that did not pan out …. I’m still waiting for the next round. What are you going to think if Bolton comes out and admits to it all? You’re only him, and a few court cases from having first person testimony confirming the policy of the charges. The movement of the money, and people told to execute the policy all gave their observations, and their testimony has not been refuted. History will view your side for what it is. The GOP has been one unending set of disasters for the USA since 2000
No, the stories don’t “check out.” That’s because the “stories” are lies. The gaggle of ex-Obama adminisration malefactors and their MSM cheerleaders have been peddling this line of crap since before Trump was even inaugurated and none of it has ever panned out.
The Durham investigation is still ongoing. Before it, and the resulting indictments and trials are complete, some pretty big names will be doing some very hard time in federal stir.
Nobody has seen Bolton’s notional book. All we have are “leaks” about its alleged contents from people who already have long histories of telling lies. I suspect the “major revelations” in the Bolton book – assuming there ever is such a thing – will be roughly as consequential as the “major revelations” in the Mueller Report that were teased and tub-thumped for months before they also proved to be swamp gas.
History will see your side for what it is – a nest of treasonous weasels.
You people are destroying the nation and undoing all the gains in world order from WWII and the Cold War. Whatever got into the GOP and the likes of you?
Gains in world order correspond pretty closely with the decline of communism and other leftist political dysfunctions around the world and the ascendance of the U.S. We’re just doing our best to keep the zombie hordes of domestic leftism from accomplishing what the Soviet Union couldn’t – the complete destruction of the United States.
It can be a fly-by-wire vehicle, but mainly for ISS docking and that is not on the agenda for this notional mission. FBW, in any case, is not Crew Dragon’s normative mode of operation. I don’t expect the four notional plutocrat passengers to be trained to use the FBW. Completely disabling the FBW, in fact, would likely constitute a considerable boost to the overall probability of success for this mission.
. FBW, in any case, is not Crew Dragon’s normative mode of operation.
yes it is…all the time it is the airbus of the space vehicles except controlled completely by the ground
Dragons are not “controlled completely by the ground.” They’re built to operate completely autonomously on-orbit. They can be contacted and overridden from the ground, but that’s not FBW. They are not like Predator drones with some guy in front of a screen in Nevada wiggling a little game controller.
Then everyone with a higher rank number on the Forbes 400 than the richest of the passengers moves up at least one notch.
SpaceX, at least at this point, has no “own people” to train for Crew Dragon. I suspect it never will.
DM-1 worked fine and this mission plan is a lot simpler in that it doesn’t even include docking at ISS.
It is certainly possible that something could go badly wrong, but that is also true of missions to take NASA astronauts to and from ISS.
Anyway, it’s a question of probabilities. On the evidence to date, I’d rate the chances of some life-threatening failure of Crew Dragon’s hardware to be several orders of magnitude less likely than the occurrence of some life-threatening medical issue afflicting one or more of the rich swells who will make this flight – if it actually flies at all. Here’s hoping none of the Billionaire Boy’s Club types looking to maybe go on this joyride is of advanced years or has any chronic medical condition.
Some more details would be nice. Price, for instance.
The putative schedule seems a tad “aspirational” too. But, if presented with a suitable pile of cash, I’m sure SpaceX could gin up such a mission before year’s end.
Given the mingy staffing level now contemplated for ISS over the coming year or so, I suppose accommodating four space tourists for a few days would not overload ISS’s facilities. And ISS is the only place to go in LEO until the Chinese get their next station up. I can’t think anyone would be too enthused about spending five days in a Crew Dragon with no bathroom facilities and no privacy.
Whether or not this sort of mission ever comes to pass, though, is unlikely to be of much importance to the development of routine, affordable human access to LEO. That needs to await the arrival of SHS and proof of its reliability. That’ll happen fairly soon, at which time I don’t expect any further non-NASA use of Crew Dragon assuming there’s ever any such use in the first place.
You do realize there is a toilet in the Dragon. And it will be easy to set up privacy curtains in the Dragon.
No, actually, I wasn’t aware that Crew Dragon had any toilet facilities. But Wikipedia says you’re right. I stand corrected.
My speculations anent ISS are also irrelevant as I see from coverage in other places that this mission intends to go for a human Earth-orbital altitude record and not visit the ISS at all. The video didn’t explicitly say any of that.
I still think the history – if any – of private human missions to LEO in Crew Dragon is likely to be quite short and sparse as it is a very expensive ride and the advent of Starship will render it uneconomical. Axiom seems to plan some ISS missions of this sort, but Axiom is basically ex-NASA people cashing in on their histories and connections more than it is an actual business. I regard Axiom as being nearly as much a pseudo-business as all those Chinese “private” launch companies.
Excellent! This is the kind of commercial tie in we need to create a working ecosystem.