Space - The Final Frontier

[Gumby]

They are very curious and playful animals. Some of my fondest memories of being a Navy submariner are of our interactions with the dolphins.

 

[frayne]

When I first saw the video of the splashdown, I thought it was an AI generated clip. It was absolutely stunning beautiful, the four chutes, capsule against the light blue sky and dark blue gulf.

 

[Koolau]

When I first saw the video of the splashdown, I thought it was an AI generated clip. It was absolutely stunning beautiful, the four chutes, capsule against the light blue sky and dark blue gulf.

The pod of dolphins showing up to welcome the astronauts home was a nice touch. I wonder who arranged that!

 

[dixonge]

The pod of dolphins showing up to welcome the astronauts home was a nice touch. I wonder who arranged that!

well, whomever is running this simulation, obviously...

 

[Fermion]

well, whomever is running this simulation, obviously...

Always have thought how cool and shocking to be walking along, looking up at the sky, and for a second or two, see a tree, then a blank square, then back to clouds.

 

[Koolau]

well, whomever is running this simulation, obviously...

Or the folks who faked the moon landing?

 

[Koogie]

SpaceX sets rocket re-use record Friday with a nine-day turnaround​

"""March 21 (UPI) -- SpaceX has set a rocket re-use record for launch-turnaround by sending a Falcon 9 up twice within nine days early Friday morning. The previous record was 14 days."""

 

[Chuckanut]

This interview with a Starliner astronaut does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling though it starts well.

If you have the time, I recommend skipping the parts I quoted and reading the entire article.

Starliner’s flight to the space station was far wilder than most of us thought

“Hey, this is a very precarious situation we’re in.”…

arstechnica.com

After Starliner separated from the Atlas V rocket, Williams and Wilmore performed several maneuvering tests and put the vehicle through its paces. Starliner performed exceptionally well during these initial tests on day one.

But things turned sour:

Wilmore: "As we get closer to the V-bar, we lose our second thruster. So now we're single fault tolerance for the loss of 6DOF control. You understand that?"

Here things get a little more complicated if you've never piloted anything. When Wilmore refers to 6DOF control, he means six degrees of freedom—that is, the six different movements possible in three-dimensional space: forward/back, up/down, left/right, yaw, pitch, and roll. With Starliner's four doghouses and their various thrusters, a pilot is able to control the spacecraft's movement across these six degrees of freedom. But as Starliner got to within a few hundred meters of the station, a second thruster failed. The condition of being "single fault" tolerant means that the vehicle could sustain just one more thruster failure before being at risk of losing full control of Starliner's movement. This would necessitate a mandatory abort of the docking attempt.

Wilmore: "We're single fault tolerant, and I'm thinking, 'Wow, we're supposed to leave the space station.' Because I know the flight rules. I did not know that the flight directors were already in discussions about waiving the flight rule because we've lost two thrusters. We didn't know why. They just dropped."

Williams: "There was a lot of unsaid communication, like, 'Hey, this is a very precarious situation we're in.' I think both of us overwhelmingly felt like it would be really nice to dock to that space station that's right in front of us. We knew that they [Mission Control] were working really hard to be able to keep communication with us, and then be able to send commands. We were both thinking, what if we lose communication with the ground? So NORDO Con Ops (this means flying a vehicle without a radio), and we didn't talk about it too much, but we already had synced in our mind that we should go to the space station. This is our place that we need to probably go to, to have a conversation because we don't know exactly what is happening, why the thrusters are falling off, and what the solution would be."

 

[Koolau]

^^^^^^^

Thanks for sharing. Great interview. Yeah, sounds like it was worse than we ever heard.

 

[CaptTom]

Well, the capsule made it down safely without them, so it wasn't as bad as they feared. But yeah, it was the right decision to stay.

I'm still in favor of multiple US-based options to space. A monopoly, be it government or private, is never a good thing long-term. I still hope Boeing (or whoever buys the Starliner project from them) succeeds. And some of the others in that race.

 

[Chuckanut]

^^^^^^^

Thanks for sharing. Great interview. Yeah, sounds like it was worse than we ever heard.

Indeed.

One interesting part of the interview was the comments on how the ground team experts really shined in getting the Starliner safely to the ISS, and eventually back to Earth,

 

[Koolau]

Well, the capsule made it down safely without them, so it wasn't as bad as they feared. But yeah, it was the right decision to stay.

I'm still in favor of multiple US-based options to space. A monopoly, be it government or private, is never a good thing long-term. I still hope Boeing (or whoever buys the Starliner project from them) succeeds. And some of the others in that race.

Hear, hear!

We should never again be dependent on any other country - especially an adversary - for space travel.

 

[audreyh1]

This interview with a Starliner astronaut does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling though it starts well.

If you have the time, I recommend skipping the parts I quoted and reading the entire article.

Starliner’s flight to the space station was far wilder than most of us thought

“Hey, this is a very precarious situation we’re in.”…

arstechnica.com

But things turned sour:

DH read that. Talk about harrowing!!!

 

[Koogie]

That Ars Technica article was a great read. Honestly, some heads need to roll in the Boeing Starliner program. As the article imputed, the thruster thing was a known issue and still wasn't rectified.
It could easily have killed both astronauts. Possibly also had the capsule careen into the station or out into space.
I know space is hard but at some point, the buck has to stop....