Crew Dragon Astronauts Enter Space Station
HOUSTON (NASA PR) — NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley aboard the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour have arrived at the International Space Station to join Expedition 63 Commander and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
The crew members first opened the hatch between the space station and Dragon Endeavour at 1:02 p.m. EDT, allowing Hurley and Behnken to enter their new home in space as members of Expedition 63.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine will hold a news conference at 3:15 p.m. EDT from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to discuss the successful docking of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Johnson Center Director Mark Geyer, International Space Station Program Deputy Manager Kenneth Todd, NASA Commercial Crew Program Deputy Manager Steve Stich, and NASA Astronaut Kjell Lindgren also will participate in the live media briefing broadcast on NASA Television and the agency’s website.
It is the second arrival and autonomous docking to the International Space Station for a Crew Dragon spacecraft and the first time any commercially built spacecraft has delivered astronauts to the orbiting laboratory.
Known as NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2, the mission is an end-to-end test flight to validate the SpaceX crew transportation system, including launch, in-orbit, docking and landing operations and pave the way for its certification for regular crew flights to the station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
For operational missions, Crew Dragon will be able to launch as many as four crew members and carry more than 220 pounds of cargo, enabling the expansion of the inhabitants of the space station, increasing the time dedicated to research in the unique microgravity environment, and returning more science back to Earth.
Follow along with mission activities and get more information at: https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/. Learn more about commercial crew and space station activities by following @Commercial_Crew, @space_station, and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the Commercial Crew Facebook, ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts
33 responses to “Crew Dragon Astronauts Enter Space Station”
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Thus begins a new era in human spaceflight. The public/private partnerships are paying off in a big way. With a little bit of luck, the space economy will be self-sustaining in my lifetime.
It is time for the next generation of dreamers to steer a course into the future.
The ONLY way to make this self-sustaining is to get more nations involved. To do that, we need to put up multiple private space stations and then get other nations to put ppl on them. How can this be accomplished? Trivial.
Have Bigelow and 1 other put up their own space stations (or even dock them together), and then have SpaceX(SX) work with 1 and Blue Origin (BO) with the other. In each case, they will tell potential clients (nations, businesses, rich ppl) that they will be able to go to the moon on the SAME PRIORITY, of their going to these space stations. IOW, first nation to the space station gets to be first on SX’s lander on the moon. Likewise, same for BO/other.
Believe me, nations like Norway, UAE, Saudi Arabia, etc will be ALL over it.
the only way to make this more self sustaining is to somehow turn a profit on something.
Correct.
And that means for manned systems, we need more than 1 gov.-owned space station that only allows for 4 ppl to be there (Russia handles 3).
And how do we get more manned/cago launches? You put up 1-2 space stations that holds more ppl and then get these companies moving forward by having nations/businesses/ppl lease space on them.
Since ISS is already loaded, then we need OTHER nations/businesses/ppl.
And you have to give these other nations/rich ppl a reason to go up there.
The priority of being on the moon next in line is a HUGE one. Absolutely HUGE selling point.
How many nations want to go to the moon? Most of them.
How many nations want to be the last one there? NOT A ONE of these.
And before anybody goes to the moon, they really need to train IN LEO.
The last thing we need is for ppl to freak out while on missions.
so how do you pay to launch those stations?
That is what NASA i.e. CONgress, should have helped with.
Hell, Smart subsidies is where we have to be.:
NASA spent .5B getting SpaceX and Orbital Science to build inexpensive launch vehicles. What did we get? 1 company that has changed the launch industry. Many ppl blasted that as a waste, and yet, the savings to NASA/DoD has been multiple Billions. And not just to America, but all over the world. Yes, this cost ESA, and RUssia a lot in terms of their owning the launch system. And those launching with CHina do so either for political reasons, or because Chinese government has subsidized that launch for outside companies.
Commercial Crew will likely cost us a little over 10B. It was supposed to be less than 5B, but Boeing has sucked this egg heavily and NASA/CONgress gives them everything. My guess is that NASA/CONgress will continue to pay Boeing loads of $ under the table kind of thing.
Problem is, will this save us $? Yes and No. CC with SX is costing us something like $50M / seat. However, it will shortly be launching just 1-2x / year. That is NOT how you lower the cost, or increase quality. They need to launch at least every couple of months or ideally, 1x / month.
Then we have Boeing. They are apparently charging close to what Russia cost so some $80-90M. The only way to get their costs down, is to again, have multiple launches, approaching 1x/ month.
And add to that, the fact that SNC has dream chaser coming in 2021, and will likely have manned version in 2022.
Going to 1 station, funded mostly by America, can not allow these companies to make enough profits/money.
These companies are going to have a rough time making money and being high quality UNLESS they can get their numbers up.
Since America can not afford to constantly subsidize everything and ISS partners do not want to pay for more, then we need other nations to want to go to space.
So, we need to spend $1-2B MORE to get 2 companies with space stations into orbit ASAP. Have NASA AND USSF put several ppl on for a year. After that time, it is all open to competition.
and when it cannot make enough money to survive? who picks up the tab
In America, we let society do it with bankruptcy.
They either make it, or lose it.
Simple as that.
If the numbers don’t work from the get-go, we tend not to do it at all.
Simple as that.
Did SpaceX, Tesla, Amazon, etc #s work from the git-go? Nope.
BA only issue is that they did not have a hook. If they had a hook, they would have had many customers.
Amazon sure worked from the get-go. Given that they both attracted enough outside capital to get them through the early bumps, so did SpaceX and Tesla. BA made too many dumb moves, especially at the end.
well that has not worked well so far but you really think we are going to put up massive platforms and then watch as they spin out of control
The numbers don’t work. This would not be sustainable as it would require continuing government subsidy. Going much bigger is the only path that stands any chance of making money.
The Feds dumped $ into Boeing/L-Mart who then went on to charge massive amounts of $ to US gov, insuring that private launches would not happen. So, when Boeing cheated (after they merged with McD and MBAs took over), Feds created ULA and subsidized them by 1B/year.
NASA helped SX get off the ground. After that, SX chased private launches. That way, they could lower their costs and make it SUSTAINABLE. Otherwise, SX would need subsidies just like the others.
Bigelow and Axiom can EASILY make it work with a bit of help. Axiom, is sadly, a SLS type project. They are depending on all the previous work that was done and like Boeing/ULA, will be heavily subsidized.
BA is NOT of the same material. They need help getting a unit up there & to work with SX or perhaps BO. As I suggested earlier, they can get other nations to jump on them, by simply having SX(or BO) require training in LEO, AND they will line up by the order in which they attended the ‘space camp’.
THAT is what makes the numbers work.
there is no data that there is a business plan that works here short of massive federal spending
I’m dubious about Axiom’s long-term prospects too – mainly for reasons of scale and expense. Those would be too little and too much, respectively.
And you need to accept that Bigelow is all but certainly gone for good this time and move on.
I don’t agree with Oler about much, but he’s right about this.
That will depend on how big a given station is and what it’s purpose is supposed to be. I don’t know what Axiom’s business plan is, but putting up the station modules it initially intends to add to ISS will probably involve some government funding – how much, I don’t know.
Personally, I don’t think the economics of small manned stations will be very good. Small, unmanned dedicated manufacturing stations visited only by robo-freighters that drop off raw materials and pick up finished goods could be another matter entirely.
But to make the economics of human orbital spaceflight work, the scale of habitation for LEO destinations needs to be at least a couple orders of magnitude larger than ISS. SH-Starship would make both the fabrication and occupant rotation costs low enough to make possible an orbital resort affordable, if infrequently, to the well-to-do and more frequently to those still better off.
I really think slim to no chance, on the robo-freighter. At least for now. It is too expensive. Businesses are even cheaper than the other items since they MUST turn a profit.
I think that a manned station that hold 6-12 ppl, can be profitable, again, as long as there is a reason for other nations to fly. The best way is to get ready for the moon. Simple as that.
A robo-freighter of any given size will be much cheaper than a manned crew vehicle of equivalent size. And it would be very possible to design a robo-freighter small enough to go up and down on a smallsat launcher that could never launch anything large enough to carry even a single human. The economics of notional robo-freighters would, in turn, depend upon just what was being manufactured in LEO. For ZBLAN oprical fiber or custom-fabricated human organs, for example, the value of even small cargoes could easily exceed the costs of operating robo-freighters.
Small manned stations, though, would be a much tougher proposition to make pay except for perhaps a modest number of nations wanting to put some people up for national prestige reasons. I don’t see that as likely to be either a large or a sustainable market.
Travel and recreation, though, are proven markets that are already very large. Build a large fractional-G space station-resort destination and transport vacationers up and down with SH-Starship and you’ve got a major human presence in space that actually pays for itself and turns a profit.
I’ve been looking forward to this day for a long time. Congratulations to everyone involved.
Glad to see everything worked well. 1 thruster was a little cold. There was trouble with the hard line comm. One announcer was saying 1st commercial built spacecraft to ISS. The Shuttles were built by Rockwell. 1st built and owned however. Don’t have to think about these people for maybe 120 days. When is the reflight of Starliner? Next CC mission. Will they risk docking with Dragon docked?
Shuttles were designed and owned by NASA, just like the SLS.
These are 100% private space.
OK. NASA did hire Rockwell, a commercial company, to assemble the Shuttles. They did not build the engines. They may have not made the tiles, but probably glued them on the 1st time. A lot of the structure they made, but may have hired sub contractors to make some parts and they installed them. All commercial. NASA just picked them up and flew them to KSC on the 747.
Up-vote for the technical details. I was watching live when they were having the hard line communications issues. I had not heard about one thruster running cold.
Out of curiosity, do you know why they have hard-line mics and not just simply wireless?
That was kind of weird.
I had the same question. Back up maybe.
I thought the issue was hard line communications between Dragon 2 and ISS, but I may have been mistaken. Searching. Cite:
https://www.nasa.gov/featur…
From above: “Once docked, data from the Crew Dragon is routed to the space station’s onboard communications system through a hardline umbilical connection.”
So I think the above was what they were having a problem with, so they were continuing to use the Dragon 2 to ground radio communications. I don’t know of they resolved the hardline communications issue.
I can not find the replay, but I thought that the NASA guy at SpaceX said during the broadcast that Doug and Bob would do what was needed to manually fly the capsule, but it would not actually do it. I am sure I heard wrong. As they keep saying they manually flew it.This was right after launch with the man. The replay shows a woman NASA person. The portion I wanted to check seems to have disappeared. Maybe he was just wrong.
The SpaceX woman did not correct him if he was wrong. I would think that the Crew would have noticed when the thrusters did not fire. The 2 announcers must be wrong. I recorded some of that show from NASA TV, but not that part and the spacex.com replay does not have that part. No different camera replays from NASA TV. I like those. Maybe next time.
Nobody really knows when Starliner will next fly. Even the OFT do-over mission isn’t likely to launch before quite late this year and could easily slip into next year. The first Starliner mission with Crew won’t launch until mid-to-late-2021 at the earliest and could slip into 2022. The next CC mission will be another Crew D2 with four crew aboard and it won’t go before 8-30-2020. If DM-2 stays at ISS four full months, that CC mission won’t launch before roughly Halloween. The DM-2 Crew D2 has to first come home, then about a month of reviews and other NASA rituals will be needed to sprinkle on the final bit of Holy Water before Crew D2 is formally declared operational and the USCV-1 mission, as it will be officially called, can depart for ISS.
If USCV-1 – a Crew D2 – launches at the end of August, it will be there at least through the end of Jan. It might even stay until sometime in Feb. If USCV-1 doesn’t launch until the end of Oct., it could still be there until the end of March or even sometime in April 2021. There is a small chance the Starliner OFT do-over mission will visit and depart ISS before USCV-1 ever gets there, but I don’t give that scenario much above maybe a 5% probability. So, way more than likely, the USCV-1 Crew D2 will get to ISS first and still be around when Starliner OFT-2 comes calling.
The two vehicles will not be docking to the same ports so I don’t see where any unusual risk is supposed to come from. The ISS has multiple visiting vehicles pretty much all the time. The only vehicles that have ever damaged a space station were some Progress freighters back in the day.
You seem to think there is some elevated risk to having another vehicle dock to ISS when a D2 is already there. What would that risk be?
No idea. NASA just tends to be over cautious. Exhaust from thrusters getting on solar cells and hurting efficiency. Collision with Dragon. Probably no problem. Boeing will have everything 100% I am sure. Like software. Unlike last time.
Even if Boeing doesn’t have everything 100%, visiting vehicles aren’t allowed to just zip right up to ISS and latch on. The approach maneuvers for Demo-2 were hours long and like watching paint dry. At docking, the vehicle’s relative motion was a few inches per second. Starliner, rest assured, is going to be getting even more of a fish eye than Crew D2. Given that Starliner won’t be docking all that close to where Dragon would be, I think the odds of a collision are about as close to zero as it’s possible to get.
Take a look at the replay. Dragon was moving faster than I thought it would. The docking port just stopped it. About the same speed as Soyuz. The spacex.com replays may have it.I think maybe .3m a sec. They did say, but I do not remember. I agree that it is close to zero of having a collision.
The docking port is designed to stop it. The ports used by Soyuz and Progress have to be hit harder in order to latch.