Progress Resupply Ship Docks with International Space Station
HOUSTON (NASA PR) — An uncrewed Russian Progress 81 spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station’s Zvezda service module at 9:02 a.m. EDT, two orbits after launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Progress is delivering almost three tons of food, fuel and supplies to the International Space Station for the Expedition 67 crew.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
Get weekly video highlights at: https://jscfeatures.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/
Get the latest from NASA delivered every week. Subscribe here: www.nasa.gov/subscribe
127 responses to “Progress Resupply Ship Docks with International Space Station”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Funny how nobody ever questions the need to regularly send tons of supplies at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to support half a dozen people for a few months at a time a couple hundred miles up. LEO is a dead end.
A “true” Space Station would need very little in the way of supplies as most of the calories would be grown on the station itself and the air would also be replenished with a closed loop life support system. That is what must happen if Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO) is going to happen. The minimum over-one-thousand-ton radiation shield and mass penalty of a spinning structure providing artificial gravity means chemical reactions are completely useless for propelling a “true” Spaceship. Multi-year missions to the outer solar system, even to the closest and worst exploration destination that is Mars, are a fantasy without massive constructs.
The prerequisites are obvious: a Near Sea Level Radiation One Gravity environment (NSLR1G) and Nuclear Propulsion an order of magnitude more efficient than Nuclear Thermal.
it is the only space program most nations are comfortable paying for
A shuttle with no payload could orbit an external tank but this was verboten to discuss, and congress took special measures to keep NASA from even talking about doing it. Why? Because with a couple big windows and mirror assemblies you could turn the inside into a greenhouse that would teach us how to support human beings for years without resupply missions. Too many people with agendas that did not support this kind of commitment to humans living in space were against it. Only what generates revenue for certain entities is allowed. Anything that disrupts these cash cows is NOT allowed. Space Solar is the perfect example of this in that there is nothing in it for any one and a great deal in it for everyone.
if you did Option C or Geode you did not have a big build
Spacex fanboys go apesh#t when you mention wet workshops because it is not possible with the hobby rocket. Nobody in congress wants anything to do with it either because in their view there is no political payoff involved. What do they get? Nothing.
And thanks for mentioning GEODE…I did not know about that. Something new every day! Even if it is old.
the next 5 years will be interesting Musk is going nuts
More like Howard Hughes every day. I have speculated he will melt down and be removed, Starlink and the shiny will go under, and spacex will continue under new management as a strictly satellite launch company. The ISS is not going to last much longer and the toxic dragon is a bad design anyway.
Yep, Musk is just like Howard Hughes – except for the long hair and fingernails and the living in the dark in a Vegas penthouse suite.
You have speculated a lot of odd things. Your track record of prophecy is unimpressive.
LOL!
You are Musk worshiping Trumpist and a laundry list of conspiracy theories. Climate denial, the big lie, and on and on.
You have been trolling me even though I had you blocked.
YOU SHOULD BE BANNED! Disgusting creep.
It will be interesting to see if President Biden scraps Artemis because Elon Musk has stated what every working person knows, the economy is horrible.
Musk is an idiot. a control freak and he wants to make the news. the economy is not horrible record jobs are being created unemployment is below 4 and money is being made. whats happening to the “rich” is that the stock market is reentering after decades of “silly exuberance” (my phrase0 and it has exaggerated Musk (and a lot of other people’s) wealth. Musk needs to shut his mouth and actually perform. he has got a wonderful group of fans who c heer him on every day…but folks like the DoD have figured Musk out.
Musk is anything but nuts. The U.S. GDP shrank in 1Q 2022 and will probably do so again in 2Q. That’s the textbook definition of a recession. All that “job creation” is simply employment trying to get back to something like it was before all the Covid idiocy. That process is a long way from complete. The labor force participation rate is still lousy as it also was under Obama. Musk knows a storm is coming and is just being prudent in battening down the hatches in advance.
Musk needs to keep speaking truth to power – and idiocy. By calling out Biden, he gets a two-fer.
Performance is hardly an issue. On exactly what is Musk not performing? Dragon has been single-handedly keeping the U.S. in space for two years while Starliner continues its long convalescence, punctuated by relapses. Tesla is the most profitable automaker on the planet, production and sales increase at 50% per year and waiting lists are months-long. SpaceX might well launch twice as many missions this year as its then-record total from last year. Starlink just got landing rights in three more big countries with a total population of close to 400 million. Hell, even the Starliner recovery crew at White Sands had a Starlink dish with them.
Folks like the DoD have, indeed, figured Musk out. And so have a lot of other Western militaries. They have figured out that Starlink scoffs at Russian jamming and EW. They all want Starlink – yesterday. The U.S. DoD has also figured out that Musk is the guy who’s going to launch all of their birds in the event ULA continues to fail to have a rocket.
we are no where near a recession…the economy is acting just like it did after WW2…when the civilian economy was shut down and then bang turned back on…Musk is babbling to his fan club…and trying to scare everyone at Tesla (everyone come back to work I need to control you)
“SpaceX might well launch twice as many missions this year as its then-record total from last year.”
the excess is starlink
“Folks like the DoD have, indeed, figured Musk out.” yeah he is underbidding civilian contracts and soaking the DOD
he is building a lot of scrap Al at Boca Chica
Are you denying that the U.S. economy shrank in 1Q 2022? That’s real near a recession. We probably are in one now, but won’t know for sure until the 2Q 2022 numbers come out in about 4 weeks.
17 of 31 SpaceX launches last year were Starlink missions, though two of them also carried rideshare payloads. Thus far this year, it’s 14 Starlink missions out of 22 total, though if June goes as currently scheduled, the numbers for the first 6 months will be 15 of 27. That’s about the same ratio as last year. Lots more of both revenue and Starlink launches this year. Not that Starlink launches aren’t for revenue, but they’re capital expenditure, like building a factory.
SpaceX has been routinely underbidding every other medium and heavy launch provider for more than a decade. SpaceX has also consistently underbid ULA for government launches – more NASA than DoD to this point, but DoD too. Is it your contention that SpaceX has been deliberately losing money on commercial and NASA launches in order to somehow “soak” DoD by also underbidding on those launches? My goodness, however does SpaceX make any money? Oh, that’s right, you don’t think it does make money – or ever has. As a lefty, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you entertain a lot of goofball ideas about money. But it seems your goofball ideas also extend to arithmetic. If SpaceX never makes any money on anything, what holds it up?
Scrap artificial intelligence at Boca Chica? Or did you mean aluminum? Not much of that at Starbase. That’s almost entirely a stainless steel shop.
I meant stainless steel. we got a bunch of it from the scrap yard to put a roof on the new barn and the ham shack. hoping to get a Tower from the Kitty Hawk as well as come wires…
It seems Kitty Hawk parts should start becoming available most any day now.
Cat Ballou…it will take them some time to take her apart…but I would like one of the HF towers and wow maybe the radar mast…although its a little tricky to ship it…and the last mast I got (off a TICO cruiser) really exceeded what I had planned to reconfigure it for long term use. but its all powder coated now and should last a really long time.
Many bankers/investment experts would disagree with you, as they have been stating in the business press. The market drop reflects the sentiment that Stagflation is going to generate a recession.
Elon is now a republican and they lie like the rest of us breathe. It will be interesting to see how much seditious garbage the spacex fanboys vomit onto these forums supporting the oligarch they have sworn allegiance to.
Biden won’t scrap Artemis over something Musk said for 2 reasons.
1 – Unlike Trump, he doesn’t implement policies based on tantrums.
2 – He’s too oblivious of what goes on in our society to be able to react to it (hence comments like “I agree, let’s go Brandon!”)
The next five years are going to be seriously impressive – not least due to Elon Musk.
sure and when they are not the next five after that will be…notice how he is cleverly pushing mars into the next decade…he is never going
You have a long stretch of disappointment coming up. Who’s never going to Mars is NASA and the PRC. NASA, because it can’t. The PRC, because it will soon cease to exist.
no one is going to Mars anytime soon with people. Biden is about to crush the Russian Federation but the PRC will be around a while longer. NASA isnt going because there is no support for the money it will take. thats the reason Musk isnt going. his big challenge for the next 10 years is going to be to make Starliner and link work. I will be curious to see how Tesla fares. they might have started the electric car revolution only to fade that seems to be what is happening Mars is what musk does for adulation
That depends upon one’s definition of “soon.” The second half of the decade is soon enough for me.
Thus far it would seem all the Russian Federation crushing is being done by Ukraine. Biden has been dilatory and indecisive about what he’ll dole out to Ukraine by way of weaponry – even more so than the Europeans. It’s embarrassing that a man who pretends to be a U.S. President should be a bigger panty-waist than any European head of state, but we live in strange times.
The PRC is having a no good, very bad horrible year. Rampant Covid lockdowns have foreign businesses heading for the exits. Those lockdowns have also seriously injured the PRC’s trade numbers and GDP, though on the injured GDP front the collapse of the PRC housing and construction markets may be outpacing even the Covid lockdowns.
Then there’s the Russo-Ukraine War, the fallout from which is adding to both the PRC’s energy and food insecurities.
Emperor Xi, a year ago, figured he was cruising to an easy 3rd five-year term. Now, there’s a decent chance he gets the boot at the upcoming 20th Party Congress. If that happens, the whole shebang may just fall down. Even if things don’t come terminally unstuck this year, there seems no way for the PRC to avoid continuing its steep slide toward oblivion during this decade even if the regime can somehow keep control of the place until it crashes on the rocks at the bottom.
The good times in the PRC are all now one with the beers of yesteryear and are never coming back. Even the Moon is a pipedream for the PRC. Mars? Not a chance.
Starship will be working in initial form within months. The variants needed for Moon missions will be in-hand two years hence – or less. Starlink works pretty well right now and will just get better as it goes along, especially after Starships start deploying the ver. 2.0 sats – which could start happening by Fall.
You don’t seem to be too conversant with Tesla. It sold a half-million cars in 2020, almost a million in 2021 and will likely sell 1.5 million or more this year. Some “fade.” Tesla, making nothing but EVs, was the most profitable car company in the world last year – admittedly not a high bar to get over as legacy internal combustion car makers all had flat or declining sales, made little or no money and lost money on what few EVs they managed to make. Both GM and Ford are, again, flirting with bankruptcy.
Thus far it would seem all the Russian Federation crushing is being done by Ukrain
had biden not mobilized the western alliance they would be done by now. it will likely be the first war we win in over 30 years (Bosnia was the last)
no one is going to mars in the second half of this decade. Musk has already said that
we will see about the PRC. as for STarship but I doubt it will be “months” anyway see what happens.
Biden didn’t “mobilize the Western alliance,” Wonder of wonders, it
mobilized itself, with Root Vegetable Joe being a decided backmarker.
Much of NATO was of the opinion that Russia wasn’t a thing to worry over
anymore. Then Putin treated them all to a nice, bracing bucket of
ice-cold water in the face. Now, they’re all scrambling to catch up
even faster than after Trump presciently administered some long-needed
boot leather to their backsides.
But that wouldn’t have happened had not the Ukrainians mauled the hapless Russians in the early going – and since – on their own. “We” will have had an important supporting role by the time all is said and done in Ukraine, but not because of NATO boots on the ground as was the case in Bosnia and vicinity in the late 90s.
Musk has said the first human expedition to Mars will now depart in 2028 and land in 2029. By my reckoning, that’s still the latter half of this decade.
Musk has said the first human expedition to Mars will now depart in 2028 and land in 2029. By my reckoning, that’s still the latter half of this decade.|
you folks are so wonderful. someone who tells you something that constantly turns out not to be true…but you like you will believe no matter what…If Musk had said “2029” when he start ed developing starship you might haave hope but gee he moves the time span constantly
nothing would have been possible in the Ukraine had they not held (and that surprised me)…but today nothing would be possible if Joe biden was not sending them near endless supplies. and what would make up man done? like he did on the phone call…try and get something for himself. what a jerk
why do you follow liars
Being aspirational isn’t lying. Musk has generally been clear that his timelines are aspirational – it’s only the people who take aspirations as ironclad promises (and those people come in all flavors) who somehow don’t recognize that.
nothing to disagree with there…well said.
“Aspirational” is Musk code for B.S.
But it is OK because he is rocket jesus.
yeah
praise St. Elon
I do enjoy SLSFanboy’s messianic, religious view of spaceflight. It’s not one I share, but it’s entertaining.
Can’t say I actually enjoy Gary’s deranged maunderings, but, yeah, they are entertaining.
If 2030 rolls around without SpaceX having sent anyone to Mars, I’ll humbly beg your pardon – if I’m still around by then.
Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I’d rather believe things that haven’t happened will still do so than to disbelieve in things that have demonstrably happened. Your mileage obviously varies.
Trump was the one who started sending the Ukrainians significant quantities of weaponry. Biden dithered about whether to continue that. He still dithers about particular weapons every time Putin barks again despite all of his “Corn Pop” bravado when the cameras are running. The other NATO countries are actually sending Ukraine a lot more stuff, in total, than we are.
The stiff resistance of Ukraine to the invasion, when it came, was no real surprise to me. I knew that the Ukrainians, especially since 2014, had been training their military to operate in a far more NATO-esque way than were the Russians as part of their so-called “modernization” program. There was also the fact that the invadee is always better motivated, knows the country better and that the defense always has the advantage except in the face of truly overwhelming force. The forces the Russians marshaled for this invasion weren’t anywhere near overwhelming. The result was pretty much guaranteed to be, at the very least, an initial rude surprise for the Russians on the order of the rude surprise the Finns handed the Red Army in 1939.
Trump, on the infamous phone call, was not asking for anything for himself. He was trying to get a line on some corruption involving Americans – which actually took place. One of the perpetrators of same is now sitting, quite illegitimately, in the White House.
Why do you follow liars? Especially Root Vegetable Joe? The only time that man has ever told the truth it was because he made another of his famous mistakes.
The Europeans moved first, dragging Biden along when Biden’s handlers imagined Zelenskyy would want a ride.
thats not really true. they would not have moved without biden particularly after four years of trump hanging them out to dry. they cannot move without the US we are th epower. and that was how NATO was designed…by us.
one can just picture makeup man and his fake wife dealing with this much like he did with the virus…trying to talk it away. Like Abott did with the shooting. thats how they deal with incompetence
It’s entirely true. Biden was ready to write Ukraine off and just have Zelenskyy be a tragic exiled figure. Zelenskyy, famously, had different ideas.
Trump did not “hang them out to dry.” He applied some much-needed swift kicks to certain backsides that urgently needed kicking – especially the godawful Angela Merkel. The European NATO allies needed to make their minds up about either being a real alliance because Russia was actually a problem, or – if they thought Russia was a tame bear now – to just watch us pack up and leave. Their choice. Fortunately, they made the right one, helped by the fact that Merkel was on her way out anyway.
It’s Biden, not Trump, who seems to think talk is all he has to do. Trump, in his last 10 months in office, stiff-armed the medical bureaucracy out of the way so three new vaccines could be invented, tested and produced in quantity. Biden couldn’t even get Trump’s vaccines merely distributed for months. And he’s been squatting in the White House now for a year and half. How many new vaccines has he caused to be created?
Trump’s wife is authentically his wife, just not his first. Jill Biden isn’t Joe’s first wife either nor is he her first husband. Interestingly, both women were models, though Mrs. Trump had more success and a longer career in the field than Mrs. Biden.
On the fakery front, Jill Biden likes to be addressed as “Dr.” as she has a PhD in education from the University of Delaware. This is a credential that, in general, should probably be offered as a prize in boxes of Cracker Jack. Jill Biden’s degree is even more suspect as being of easy virtue as it was granted by a university in the state for which her husband was a sitting Senator at the time. Really, who in academe is going to do anything but stamp “approved” on a thesis by the wife of your state’s Senator? It is transparently obvious that Jill Biden’s insistence on the honorific is because she wants to give the impression she’s actually a physician. There’s fake for ya.
Don’t forget the emergence of the “Last Generation” movement among the young in China, basically declaring they will not have any kids so they won’t have to suffer under the regime like their generation is. It’s the ultimate protest by folks who are not allowed to protest freely.
One high point in the last year for China was getting Boeing, who doesn’t seem to care about their human rights record or military ambitions, to open a plant there to build jet airliners. According to sources over 10,000 Boeing aircraft components are made in China giving their aerospace industry quite a boost in technology to attack the USA, both economically now and militarily in the future.
Even the young Chinese who are not vocal about anything like Last Generation have been de facto signing on by not having kids for personal reasons. A common reason among many young men is the unavailability of wives owing to the PRC’s world-leading gender imbalance courtesy of four decades of the One Child Policy. A reason that will soon become widespread is the arrival of indefinite hard times. Lengthy economic depressions are conducive neither to family formation nor childbearing.
There is a recent horrendous counter-trend in the PRC of young men from the PRC interior provinces kidnapping young women off the streets in the coastal cities and taking them back home to be shared sex slaves and baby factories. This isn’t widespread enough to really move the population needle significantly, but is a real, and growing, thing. The regime gives the parents of the kidnappees no help, as to even acknowledge the problem would be to provide kindling for a sort of civil war between the coast and the interior.
I didn’t know about the Boeing thing, though I knew the company has been sourcing parts from the PRC for years. I would worry more about it if I thought the PRC would last long enough for any significant danger to develop. As things stand, Boeing seems to have made just one more in a long series of bad decisions.
Sinophobe. That hate goes with your Trumpist neoliberal ideology.
The end will come soon for the proto-fascist movement. They have convinced themselves they are some kind of AR-15 popular militia that will maga a utopia into being with a few days of violence.
Bizarre and a catastrophe in the making. That is not what is going to happen.
The PRC has long since gone on record as seeking to replace America as the world’s most powerful nation and to spread its particular brand of authoritarianism worldwide. Does that not scare you? If not, why not? That will frighten me until the PRC is gone and its successor state or states are incapable and/or disinclined to continue pursuing the PRC’s China Uber Alles project.
I hate things selectively for rational reasons. You, on the other hand, seem to hate nearly everything and everyone out of general orneriness.
Trump is not a neoliberal, he’s the enemy of neoliberalism. As you seem to have no actual comprehension of the meanings of the political words you throw around, perhaps you should have someone who does have such knowledge check your work for you before you post such embarrassing stuff.
The end will come soon for the protofascist movement. That would be the Biden regime, the Democratic Party and all of its Baker Street Irregulars like Antifa and BLM.
It’s funny how the Left is always blathering about right-wing violence when all the actual violence seems to come from either fellow leftists or crazy people the left has been preventing anything being done about for decades.
Yes, the PRC will be given the support firms like Boeing are giving it with the opening of their new factory there. As long firms that are seen as flagships like Boeing are supporting the government they will be able to keep moving forward with their policies of repression and aggression.
I dont speak for TBC on social media but in my opinion you are overstating that deal. in a couple of ways
first in its scope it is far less than say Airbus would have done had the USAF agreed to buy their airplane as a tanker. they were prepared to develop an entire plant in Mobile (red state values) to “finish” green airplanes …and this is that. China continues to buy a lot of Max and NG’s and as part of that deal thy have gotten commitment to “finish” them inside china. there is very little to no technology transfer here and Chinese airplanes are so unique it makes sense to do this (I assume) from a business standpoint
second Private companies cannot do what the US government is unwilling to do…ie bring regime change in foreign countries. I am not even sure that I think in non war situations regime change is something we as a country should be pushing. its turned out catastrophically every time we have just gotten the urge and in some fashion tried. if its going to come it will come internally and we will have little to do with it. so I dont see your point here
the Russian federation is a unique example of why we have to push regime change, they more or less declared war on Western civilization. so far the PRC has not done that
Last I heard the US government still had solid diplomatic relationships with China aka the PRC
the PRC government may collapse of its own mass. but thats an internal issue. I dont see that anytime soon.
I would think that you are the one with a long stretch of disappointment coming. See the post by gunsandrockets of your predictions in 2019 of what SH/SS would be doing by now. NONE of that has happened. In fact, none of your predictions have ever come true, at least in any sort of reasonable time frame. Time to hang it up, buttercup.
I’ll freely admit I didn’t foresee SpaceX shooting itself in the foot to the tune of at least a full year’s delay anent the Starbase GSE. That was a surprise. On the plus side, I was one of few predicting that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, if the Russkies were dumb enough to actually try it, would be Winter War 2.0, not a quick romp. As for predictions, your own always seem to be on the general theme that nothing new will ever succeed so why bother. Good luck with that – Buttercup.
and in a few years when Musk says “Mars 2036” the fan boys will all stand up and shout “YOU GOT TO BELIEVE” cue music somewhere
His bizarre celebrity seeking indicates he will be doing the perp walk soon.
I can’t wait. They should have marched Trump by the camera’s in cuffs long ago and that is something to look forward to also. If they incarcerate both of them I will throw a party.
we will see
We will see quite a bit, but nothing on Gary’s fantasy list. Fortunately, incurring the ire of Gary, or even of Joe Biden, is not yet an actionable offense in these United States – despite the best efforts of the Democratic Party to make it so.
Musk didn’t seek celebrity when he was an unknown Silicon Valley wonk and doesn’t much now either. He’s a subject of interest because his projects have gotten steadily bigger and more consequential. He deliberately courts attention for things that he feels are important, but is not, say, an habitue of the club scene or a vamp for paparazzi.
I don’t expect that he will get astronauts to Mars except as part of a NASA funded SpaceX mission for the purpose of flags and footsteps, when NASA gets around to funding it. Unfortunately he drank deeply from the work of Dr. Zubrin on Mars, the same work that Mike Griffin used as inspiration for Project Constellation.
The good news is that in developing the Starship as a launcher for Starlink Generation 2 satellites SpaceX will have the capability to create a system to deliver sufficient cargo to the lunar surface to establish a robust presence there, first for science and research applications, than for economic ones as technology matures and business models emerge. Note, I mentioned cargo and not passengers, as the small number of humans needed on the Moon to support such facilities could easily be delivered by Dragon or similar systems to orbit and just ride along on the cargo lunar landers or on a lander dedicated for transporting humans to the Moon.
IMO Mars is a vision to keep people motivated. The real value is in creating an economy closer to home, but that may not motivate the teams sufficiently.
that could be. for decades I thought and wrote that “the cost of lift” was the primary factor in the reality that there are no real business models for humans in space that close the loop economically. To me “its obvious” that “something” must be able to be done in micro gravity and good vaccumn that from a materials science point is a game changer. and I think I still believe that but its growing less clear nearly daily that this is true. now the reality could be that the infrastructure in space that humans are working with is “so limited” that it simply cannot compete with the innovation and infrastructure here on earth. hence things like the McDee experiments on shuttle and the Wake shiled programs simply are “out done” by development on earth. but so far they are
as for Starship. I reserve all judgment on it until it flies…except I do grow more skeptical 🙂 (a contradiction I know) . this current stack is very very heavy. it wont come anywhere near to the payload musk is claiming. it will be good to make 25 tons.
We will only know how it works when he gets to light the fire under it. I see the current one as simply Starship 1.0 with the goal being to just make it work. Then, like Henry Ford, he will make iterations of improvement to reach his goals for it. Henry Ford, whose personally was similar to Elon’s, started out with his Model A in 1903 and didn’t reach success until the Model T in 1908. Because of its complexity it will likely take longer for Starship to move through the iterations.
Dr. Zubrin mocked Musk for years until it looked like he might actually succeed, then started to suck up and is still trying to get Musk to scale back to the sort of mingy and useless expeditions Zubrin’s been spitballing for decades. He’s taken to doing the same thing anent the Moon too. Paul Spudis is dead and I guess nature abhors a vacuum.
I don’t think even Mike Griffin ever thought Constellation would be any real basis for going to Mars. Bush 43 wanted a Moon program and that’s what Constellation was.
A handful of people going too and fro on teensy little capsules like Dragon would never be able to do anything of consequence on the Moon. In fairly short order it will take hundreds, and then thousands, of people on the Moon to make it an economically viable and functional place.
I would argue he’s not going nuts, he is already there.
As heavily dependent as SpaceX is on his drive and direction, a personal collapse could easily heavily set back or destroy the possibility of reaching the company’s main goals.
What makes you think Musk is nuts? I’m honestly curious as you do not seem a consumer of the same far-left Kool-Aid as Oler and Gary.
Scale back my definition of “nuts” from Gary’s as they aren’t in the same galaxy. Another major difference between Gary’s point of view and mine is that although you and I often have differing opinions – whether they be about Musk’s personal stability, the viability of cis-lunar economies, or whatever, I still respect your point of view and am happy to discuss it.
I think Musk’s behavior is erratic enough that it should be a serious point of concern for the corporations he leads.
Musk does not appear very self-aware of the ramifications of his actions. What the average Joe could get away with, or have little impact on their life, can be a serious impediment to any corporation that is dependent on him, from government contracts risked by using a Schedule 1 narcotic on YouTube to liabilities from defaming tweets and running afoul of the SEC.
If his manic/obsessive approach to work/life balance ends in a breakdown in which he can’t effectively work, I don’t expect SpaceX to maintain its pace of development in his absence.
Elon Musk has repeatedly said that he is interested in building things, not running organizations. The latter is just a necessary evil in order to build what he wants to build.
its aspirational
Like the nazis…necessary evil. Riiight.
The Nazis weren’t necessary and Musk is not evil.
Okay, got it. You’re a paid-up member of the “What Will the Neighbors Think?” Club.
Compared to the shenanigans a lot of far less successful corporate chieftains have gotten up to over the years, Musk is pretty small beer.
The pot thing was ludicrous. It reminds one of nothing quite so much as the famous anecdote about Lincoln in which some lackey was whining that U.S. Grant drank too much whiskey. Lincoln is said to have replied, “Find out what brand he drinks and I’ll have a case of it sent to each of my other generals.” The real scandal is that weed is still a Schedule 1 “narcotic.” This is a legacy of the Treasury Department needing something to continue justifying the employment of the agents it had added to enforce Prohibition once that was repealed in 1932.
When it comes to actual crazy, Howard Hughes was much nuttier than Elon Musk, but that didn’t prevent him from both getting and completing government contracts.
The defamation case was decided in Musk’s favor. The jury – correctly – concluded that what transpired was not defamation so much as a garden-variety smack talk throw-down which was started by the plaintiff in the case.
Musk’s workaholism is of longstanding, starting in childhood. He’s been at it for over 40 years and seems, to me, no worse the wear for it. Musk has, frankly, been under far more stress than at present a number of times in his life. If he didn’t break then, it’s hard to see why he would do so now out of a clear blue sky.
SpaceX might well lose some of its edge once Musk passes, but that is hardly a unique circumstance in American business history. Musk is, personally, irreplaceable. But he has built his companies to a particular design and that design should continue to produce superior performance for at least some considerable period of time post-Musk. Beyond that, who knows?
For the record, I think we are very much of the same opinion on how ludicrous the federal prohibition on pot is, while having a different take on the importance of a federal contractor’s leadership anent compliance with federal contracting regulations related to it.
The pot incident on Rogan’s show was a long time ago. As I recall, there was some pro forma “inquiry” into “safety culture” or some such. The government tight-asses having gotten their desired headlines, the whole matter was quietly dropped. The stick-up-the-arse brigade doesn’t get a second bite at that particular apple.
Yes. While SX was enduring the NASA Safety Culture Enema, Boeing was running amok, and is still suffering from the lack of adult supervision to this day. Ironic.
Says the far-right Trumpist whackjob.
I’m of the right, but not “far” by my reckoning. And I am a Trump fan. You, of course, are so far left it’s unsurprising that everything even vaguely right seems so distant.
There are many lefties routinely commenting here, but the only genuine wackjob is you – though RGO certainly has his moments.
More like dissolve in helpless mirth than go apesh#t.
That is a neat trick replying to me after I blocked you. How do you do that?
You disgusting creep. I see a small group of trolls visiting me here more and more often. You just cannot stand someone with a different view.
The most toxic bunch of A-holes on the internet- the spacex fanboys.
And everyone knows it.
Sometimes I can see your stuff and sometimes I can’t. The Disqus giveth and the Disqus taketh away. Mysterious are the ways of the Disqus.
So the government is never going to do any of your pet projects, and yet the government – according to you – is the only entity that can do any of your pet projects. Public works and all that. You, sir, would seem to be neatly impaled on the horns of a dilemma.
Your government is a Cult whose leader is getting crazier by the day.
No dilemma for me….unlike you, I am not living in a far-right climate denier big lie Trumpist-Musk worshiping bubble. The insane freaks who are about to try and end democracy and install fascism are not going to succeed.
Not anymore than rocket jesus will rule as the true and rightful king of Mars.
The usual insults as deflection I see. It is the current putschist regime in DC that is attempting to install fascism in the U.S. Fortunately, it seems they are not going to succeed. Ordinary Americans are jumping off the Crazy Train in droves. We “insane freaks” are there to welcome them back to the land of sanity.
Uh-huh. Classic Orwellian propaganda technique- calling the anti-fascists the fascists. “Ordinary” being your white grievance code for Trumpists.
Everyone knows what they are doing. Ignoring and perverting the truth, waiting to stage the next coup. Tucker endlessly promoting civil war on his white power hour.
Insane.
A corpse flower by any other name would still smell.
I’m curious about your sudden obsession with race. I’ve been reading your rants for years, but all the race talk is fairly recent. So, for that matter, is most of the woke catch-phraseology you have lately taken to spouting. Were your self-made delusions so insufficient you felt compelled to acquire others? What is your own racial/ethnic background? My guess would be self-hating white if only because the “community” of space nerds tends to be normatively quite pallorous in its epidermal pigmentation – or lack of same.
NASA had done most of the paying for the ISS as a tool of foreign policy. It basic function since the Russians were invited has been political. It should really come out of the State Department’s budget.
You should write the State Department a letter about that.
there would not be a space station if the Russians were not involved. under Bush and Reagan NASA mismanaged it one year after the next
Which is why it should not have been built in its present form, as politics determined it’s design, not engineering needs.
oh comeon…you are a smart guy what you are surprised at this? human space flight has nothing NOTHING that justifies it other then “mythic heroes”, “flags and foot prints” blah blah ie all politics. so what is surprising that politics drove the design of ISS as it is driving SLS ? the only thing unique about Musk world is that what is driving Starship is the economics of deploying Starlink. Nothing else other than Musk ego is driving it. It is all about deploying Starlink and if Starlink fails then well for whatever reason Falcon 9 and H have failed to secure a business plan to just launch things int o space. Now musk is a better show man than that and he can get everyday astronaut etc all hyped up about a trip to mars…but that is his ego talking
there is no reason to go back to the Moon other than politics…and that just barely. and Musk doesnt have enough money and is unwilling to risk what money he has to go to Mars. until there is an economic reason for humans in space in large numbers…they wont be there
Have you really considered the implications of that? If there really is no economic reason to go into space and it’s only function is flags, footsteps and a bit of science than human society is condemned to staying on the Earth. This means that it is condemned to extinction in the near term as it uses up the resources of this planet, engages in a nuclear war or is destroyed by some natural event like an asteroid impact or super volcano. In short there is no sustainable future for humanity.
The “economic reason” is not for-profit. As the solution to climate change Space Solar Power could enable human expansion into the solar system, as the true prophet of space colonization, Gerard K. O’Neill, foresaw in the 1970s. But the oligarchs and corporations have no way to cash out of fossil fuels and cash into space so….here we are. Your market-as-god is wrecking planet Earth and is on course to murder billions. You and your Ayn-Rand-in-space libertarian whackjob buddies are partly responsible for that. You sold your soul to the emperor of Mars and I despise all NewSpace shills for that. And rightfully so.
Your “rocket jesus” is the anti-christ.
But go ahead and blather endlessly your market B.S.
Have you really considered the implications of that? If there really is no economic reason to go into space and it’s only function is flags, footsteps and a bit of science than human society is condemned to staying on the Earth”
and the end of that sentence is “for this and a few more generations”
or it could be “Period”. we have made zero real progress on living on the sea bed or there is no real movement (although we are considering buying a summer place ….LOL) to Alaska or northern Canada or the jungles of South Africa.
there was a LONG time between the primitive ability to sail from Europe to the “North america’s” came and humans moved in great waves to it.
a lot of those factors are technology, economics, and cultures maturing…we just may not be there. We have metriced what we think is likely to happen by science fiction …but the SF never answers the hard questions
whats the economic reason for it? the technology is frequently “hand waving” (we are no where near to space suits like the Martian movie) and our culture justs may not not have matured in the correct direction enough
we have regressed as a culture in the US hte last oh 25 years. its unlikely that a culture which cannot deal with guns in schools will go to the stars. we are just dragging along to much dead weight
this is not to say it never happens…but there are no cities on the sea floor, there is not a massive movement of people to Alaska, or northern Canada, Africa and the Mideast are a worse mess …
Human spaceflight has simply not found an economic reason…and that alone dooms it
do we survive to get to there? 21 people were butchered because we cannot control guns. that did not happen in my childhood. yikes
In your childhood, and in mine, the obviously mentally ill were put in institutions, not allowed to run loose. There is also the matter of schoolboys of our respective generations not being routinely dosed with powerful psychoactives because they are more fidgety than girls. Guns were far easier to get before 1968 than they are now. Whatever the school shooting key variable is, it isn’t guns.
it was Reagan who started releasing people from mental institutions and cutting funding for mental health, Greg Abbott dumped 100 million out of the Texas budget for mental health
when we were chlidren you could not go down and buy the kinds of weapons that we have today and walk around openly with them, nor was there the cult of gus that permeates the right wing of the GOP few to none walked around in camo gear, had “proud boys” all over them or learned that “it takes a good guy with a gun…to blah blah blah”
the rise in shootings has followed the arming of America. you need to face that or just admit like 1/2 of republicans did recently that the 21 kids and teachers are to folks like you the cost ofyour way of life. why do you need a military grade weapon?
Emptying the asylums was part of what came to be called the “deinstitutionalization movement.” It was not a Republican project. To quote from Wikipedia – hardly a right-wing source:
“The United States has experienced two waves of deinstitutionalization, the process of replacing long-stay psychiatric hospitals with less isolated community mental health services for those diagnosed with a mental disorder or developmental disability.
The first wave began in the 1950s and targeted people with mental illness. The second wave began roughly 15 years later and focused on individuals who had been diagnosed with a developmental disability. Deinstitutionalization continues today, though the movements are growing smaller as fewer people are sent to institutions.
Numerous social forces led to a move for deinstitutionalization; researchers generally give credit to six main factors: criticisms of public mental hospitals, incorporation of mind-altering drugs in treatment, support from President Kennedy for federal policy changes, shifts to community-based care, changes in public perception, and individual states’ desires to reduce costs from mental hospitals.”
When I was a boy, I could have ordered an M-1 Garand, an M-1 Carbine or a .45 cal. sub-machine gun – Thompson or “Grease Gun” – which had been altered to fire only semi-automatically, from any number of providers who advertised in the numerous hunting and fishing magazines of the era. I could also have gotten a bolt-action, magazine-fed Springfield, Enfield, Mauser or Mannlicher-Carcano. Semi-auto handguns and revolvers too. Even civilian semi-auto versions of the AR-15 in various calibers, though, not being “war surplus,” these were much more expensive. That didn’t end until the Gun Control Act of 1968 made mail-order gun sales illegal in the U.S.
And yet we did not have school shootings in those days despite schoolboys having far easier access to guns than at present. As I noted before, the key variable is definitely something other than guns.
“The arming of America” is hardly a recent development. Americans have been armed since well before they were even Americans. Where and when I grew up – in the woodsy and lakeside Upper Peninsula of Michigan – there were guns in nearly every home. The various hunting seasons were big deals in which nearly every male from tweens on up participated. I was not a hunter, though my dad had been for five decades until declining health forced him to quit.
The only “cult” around guns in the U.S. is the semi-deranged cult of fear of guns that is pervasive on much of the U.S. left and essentially universal among white, left urbanites – though its most extreme elements are notable exceptions.
There is, to be sure, a definite culture of guns that has been normative in rural America since the Colonial era.
The losses of life in school shootings are regrettable, but will not be ended or even diminished by any of the venerable “common sense solutions” repeatedly trotted out by virtue-signalling lefties. Most of those “solutions” are already in force within most U.S. cities, yet school shootings and street violence continue and are now increasing once again due to Democratic “social justice reforms” such as bail elimination.
It would be nice to have an actual military-grade weapon. But we U.S. civilians must merely make do with semi-auto look-alikes. People in rural areas need guns because wild animals are more common and, when the “animals” in question are human, getting a quick response to a 911 call is often not a possibility.
As an urbanite, myself, I feel I need weapons to violently resist not only criminals, but also the American Left, should it continue to be successful in continuing its campaign of election-stealing, arbitrary extra-constitutional rule-by-decree and the bringing of spurious legal charges against its political enemies. I won’t be bending my knee if one, or many, of your political compadres decides I’m an “enemy of the people’s revolution” – except perhaps to better brace my stance as I shoot back. And there are millions of others who would do likewise – most of them more effectively.
wiki is not a right or left wing source it is no source, and the junk you wrote is either intentional disinformation, outright lies or both and frankly I am tired of this from people who support the liar trump
we grew up in the same span and I grew up in the country side and thats just babble
we have a gun culture in this country of losers who have taken a great hobby and turned it into proud boys, oath keepers and just nuts. and then there are the people who defend that
“The losses of life in school shootings are regrettable” no its not regrettable it is preventable and ridiculous that we tolerate the gun wing of the american right at the cost of public safety all so they can play militia or cop or tough guy
you trump people are the greatest liars this century
“SLSFanboy • 8 hours ago •
A shuttle with no payload could orbit an external tank but this was verboten to discuss, and congress took special measures to keep NASA from even talking about doing it. Why?”
Good lord SLSBilgamesh is an ignorant, blathering nitwit
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
They recommended reexamining in 1986. And that was it. Dunce.
I blocked you. Why are you cyberstalking me….for years? Are you planning on attacking me in some other way since you cannot stop me here?
What are your plans?
Leave me alone you sick creep. Stop bullying me. I blocked you and you keep trolling me. Stop cyberstalking me.
They -meaning NASA, issued $ millions in study contracts on ET use on orbit, including the UCAR studies.
Never used in orbit. What is wrong with you? Stop harassing me. Leave me alone you sick creep. Stop bullying me. I blocked you and you keep trolling me. Stop cyberstalking me.
SLSFanboy
“A shuttle with no payload could orbit an external tank…”
Incidentally, you’re even wrong about that Gary.
A shuttle would’ve paid no appreciable payload penalty from circularizing the ET into orbit, because you’d burn the high Isp SSMEs longer instead of the storable prop OMS engines, for the final push uphill.
As a “wet workshop” the shuttle tank would be heavier and have windows, airlocks, etc.
Dunce. YOU NEED TO BE BANNED!
I blocked you. Stop cyberstalking me.
You didn’t say anything about a “wet workshop” you clown, you said “external tank”.
One of my first jobs out of college, was working on ET Aft Cargo Carrier and Fuel Scavenger Module. And, the nearby UCAR team working on External Tank Corporation were friends of mine. This leads me to having tons of reference material, including scale models I built for my team.
See…if you weren’t such an obnoxious A-hole, with malignant Dunning-Kruger effect, we could talk about ET projects, SDHLVs and such, with you possibly learning something. But that’ll NEVER happen, because you gain more psychological satisfaction from sh*tting on everything than learning.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Now the Block 2 SLS, might that also be used for a wet workshop—not just Skylab 2:
https://www.space.com/20444…
Here you may need to cut the payload a bit after all…but a wet workshop needs no chopsticks or TPS.
In some alternate universe, Musk’s simple SLS is all the rage with NASA’s expensive rocket being the much more complex Starship/SuperHeavy.
It would seem to make more sense.
Anything that NASA touches is going to be expensive, it is the nature of the cost plus contracts used and the paperwork trail needed to demonstrate performance and fulfillment. Then add in all of the costs associated with the time needed to perform the specific tasks in an environment where every failure, even when learning and experimenting, is investigated to establish blame.
COST PLUS! COST PLUS! COST PLUS!
NASA IS EVIL! NASA IS EVIL! NASA IS EVIL!
ONLY ELON CAN SAVE US! ONLY ELON CAN SAVE US!
PRAISE ROCKET JESUS!!!
SLS is such a perverse mess that saving us from it hardly required a “Rocket Jesus.” But, as long we have a “Rocket Jesus,” I’m just fine with him doing a few minor miracles and getting us out from under the Bad Orange Rocket.
No, but it does need on-orbit refurbishment to be useful, and it generally only makes sense in a world where space launch is limited and expensive. The less that situation holds, the less sense wet workshops make versus modules launched from the ground, or on-orbit construction/assembly. It would also be difficult (if not impossible) to use the SLS’s core stage as a wet workshop.
Here’s a scenario, publiusr: NASA has two options for building a new station. The first is launching a workshop via SLS, using something replacing the Block II’s fairing (so 33 feet in diameter, and 90 feet tall, due to encapsulation limitations), which gives you a habitat with some 300,000 cubic feet. That is likely to cost NASA in excess of four billion dollars (if not more) for the overall mission. The second option is launching a smaller set of modules aboard Starship, artificially limiting ourselves to a cylinder 26.4×26.4feet in height and diameter, which is about 56,000 cubic feet. Let’s then assume that NASA pays SpaceX $200 million per mission to dock a number of them together. Which is the better option? Starship, despite having much less volume, because the cost differential is so high ($200 million, by the way, is assuming that NASA’s $2.9 billion for HLS is exclusively for launches, which it is not, so in reality it would be even less). We’d get more than double the total usable volume for half the price.
Assuming Starship works. SLS could be made cheaper…the problem rests on the suits.
If Musk had hydrolox rockets and those lent themselves to wet stage…with Boeing being methalox, you would have no argument from me.
The SLS could theoretically be made cheaper, yes, but because of the contracts already signed, that’s unlikely to happen before Artemis IX, which essentially means never at this point. Assuming Starship works, why would we bother?
Yes, you love hydrogen rocketry uncritically. I don’t understand why, it isn’t magic or suitable for all situations. Nor are wet workshops a panacea. You approach spaceflight the way you would approach the first girl you ever had a crush on.
Assuming Starship works. Which I do. And I think I’ve got better grounds for thinking that it will than you have for assuming SLS will work, as you very much seem to. SLS may or may not function as expected, but it will never “work.”
“SLS could be made cheaper…” Not really. The problem is the design, the slow production and the expendability. Even shooting all the suits wouldn’t fix a bit of that.
That last would make me feel better. Only four engines of size. By rights it should be cheaper.
The SLS isn’t simple. Its limited production cadence is almost entirely due to the use of ortho-grid structure for the core stage tankage. This requires gigantic gantry mills and huge roll formers, plus tricky thick-section friction-stir welding on giant combo fixtures/machines to fabricate and assemble. Starships, in contrast, are made of much thinner stainless steel strip that is formed and welded by vastly smaller and cheaper robot equipment.
You are doing all the sh*tting and it is scary.
You are a malicious dunce, with the imagination of a brick. That you spend so much time here cred bragging is evidence. I am sick of you, just like most of the people in your life probably.
Stop cyberstalking me. Stop bullying me. Leave me alone. Does your Dunning-Kruger sociopath brain not get what I am saying you sick creep?
Go back to your toad stool at the spacex news and squat there.
se jones • 8 hours ago
“SLSFanboy • 8 hours ago •
A shuttle with no payload could orbit an external tank but this was verboten to discuss, and congress took special measures to keep NASA from even talking about doing it. Why?”
Good lord SLSBilgamesh is an ignorant, blathering nitwit
Cyberstalking me again I see, you creepy sociopath. The blocking feature is there to keep you from reading my comments and me yours. But you cannot stop yourself and that is a red flag you are dangerous. Your years of bullying me are leading up to you resolving your hatred and harassment of me. I want everyone to know.
Your sickness is obvious…if you cannot troll me into oblivion you are going to do something.
I am scared.
I see you’ve been taking acting lessons from Amber Heard.
You are another one that has trolled me for years. The spacex fanboys are the worst creeps on the internet. Everyone knows it.
I am not acting. You and sejones are f-ing sick. I tried blocking you and you still cyberstalk and harass me.
YOU BOTH NEED TO BE BANNED!!
I was referring to the “I am scared” part. Your line reading wasn’t very convincing.
As for the rest, it is pretty much axiomatic that the genuinely deranged think they’re the only sane ones and that it’s everyone else who’s loony.
I will just keep exposing you for what you are: Trumpist, climate denier, big lie proponent, Musk worshiper….and cyberstalking borderline sociopath. You don’t have all the markers like sejones but you are probably over the line and dangerous.
Transparent is what you are.
Capt. Queeg is what you are. “They was all against me. I tried to reason with them but they wouldn’t listen.”
LOL!
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
and now soothing music…remain calm…its just space policy for humans which affects nothing
It is two sadistic demented sociopaths getting their jollies. Nothing to do with space policy- you are right.
But it does have to do with why there is almost no one except spacex fanboys commenting on these forums. I have watched them bully and chase everyone else away for over ten years now. They are the most toxic bunch of creeps I have ever interacted with.
The worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration.
It just does not seem right.
The legacy space huggers are getting desperate because if Starship succeeds it will end their looting of taxpayers with their expensive cost plus contract rockets like SLS.
So far the cost to the average tax paying household of the SLS is around $188, or around $23 billion wasted.
The B.S. you come up with Thomas. Shameless. What a fool.
Screaming COST PLUS! to rocket jesus and damning all except his genius.
Anton Lavey is what you are. “I give people Ayn Rand with trappings.”
Not really a Randian. She was a lot like you, actually – it was always her very detailed and specific way or the highway. Someone once, fairly accurately, described Objectivism as a cult of personality populated by slavish “individualists.”
Rand was like you in other ways too. For example she never exhibited any detectable sense of humor. She was also, as are you, completely lacking in any self-awareness.
You differ from her mainly in being completely uncharismatic and in exhibiting a complete lack of any talent for attracting acolytes.
Anton LaVey? LaVey was a sort of far-less-talented L. Ron Hubbard-style grifter. There have been a lot of crackpot religions cooked up here in sunny California during the past century. There have been even more – and generally more successful – con artists milking the faithful in the name of already-extant religions.
As a long-time atheist, I’d be a poor prospect for ginning up a phony religion for profit – not that LaVey ever made much from the Church of Satan. He was irretrievably small-time.
My negligible acting skills would, I’m afraid, be sadly unequal to the task of pretending a belief in Satan when I don’t believe in any deities or supernatural beings, or their supposed supernatural opponents.
“SLSFanboy • 8 hours ago •
A shuttle with no payload could orbit an external tank but this was verboten to discuss, and congress took special measures to keep NASA from even talking about doing it. Why?”
verboten to discuss
…verboten to discuss
congress took special measures to keep NASA from even talking about doing it
You just make things up.
Oh I see…the Report mentions “ingenuity and the profit motive”
Ok, there’s your problem right there, if it’s not top-down communist, state controlled and mandated, it doesn’t exist in SLSFanboyBilgameshGary land.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
I am not a communist you disgusting lying whackjob. Actually, it was non-profit corporations that were most involved in proposals to keep the tanks in orbit. Dunce. Malicious creepy sociopathic cyberstalking…dunce.
From the LA Times 1987:
Asked why NASA did not incorporate the tanks into the design of its own station, NASA’s Culbertson said: “We don’t have any real need for that kind of volume.” He added that the tanks are so massive that they could cause problems in controlling the kind of station NASA wants to build.
Concerning the kinds of large space station project these non-profits proposed:
But financial support has not been forthcoming from the huge aerospace companies that would be expected to make the most use of the space station.
Leave me alone. That you are spending so much time bullying me is scary. Really.
You need to stop cyberstalking me.
Oh I see, Martin Marietta was a non-profit.
Guess I was lucky the paychecks didn’t bounce.
The UCAR group and Space Phoenix were non-profits funded through NASA grants -which was forbidden according to BilgameshSLSfanish inc.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Now you are babbling about what only you are sure of. Go away dunce.
The resident sociopath is on drugs today. What a bunch of twisted sick creeps.
So, what drugs are you on?