I find the defendant not guilty! I think the NSF guy’s idea involved replacing the woman & her arms and the daughter with the tower & “chopstick” arms, and a Super Heavy rocket booster (which is in the process of being caught by the arms). Something like that?

The closest I’ve seen is this. Not great!

So I tried getting Chat GPT to do a better one for me. This did not go well 😂 But surely someone with experience should be able to cajole a suitable generative AI tool to do a good job of it?

Is it the end of days if NASA goes without a low-Earth orbit space station for several months or even years? One key commercial space official at the space agency, Phil McAlister, suggested that maybe it wouldn’t be.

He’s right, and I hate him for it :)

Expedition 1 arrived at the International Space Station on 2000-11-02. That’s 59-and-a-bit days before[1] the start of the 21st Century. So whatever disappointments people may have about the 21st Century compared to their expectations, at least we can (currently) say there has been a continuous human presence in outer space for the entirety of it. Pretty cool!

Strikingly, it could easily be the case that there will never again be a time with humans only living on Earth. If that’s because AGI kills us all in a decade, with any people in orbit / on the moon being the last to have their atoms repurposed, that’s not ideal. But if it’s because we spread out through the universe, and outlive our sun and even our galaxy, that could (potentially) be very cool indeed.

Perhaps everyone reading this either witnessed the start of, or was born during, humanity’s Second Age!

Or perhaps the current period of continuous off-Earth habitation will finish around 2030 and all my attempts at profundity were a waste of time! After all I’m not sure how much I’d want NASA to spend just to maintain it.

Of course, the ISS isn’t the only hope here. The Chinese space station might fill in any gaps after the ISS, although that would be a concern for other reasons (assuming China is still controlled by its communist party, with other parties banned). And then there’s the moon. The Artemis Program in its current form won’t bring about the start of a continuous presence on the moon by 2030. But I wouldn’t put it past SpaceX to shake things up in that regard.

[1] - If you thought the 21st Century started at the start of 2000, see this or even this.

What’s the ‘unique selling point’ of this compared to existing Earth re-entry systems? The parafoil giving 100 metre landing accuracy?

Were existing heavy duty systems all designed to ultimately be suitable for humans? And this? Could some future version be used for humans? If not, does ditching that criterion allow for massive efficiency improvements?

P.S. I thought they had a typo, but no. (Well, not really.) You learn something new every day.

first operational mission for August 2025. But the agency set that schedule before realizing Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne would need to redesign seals and perhaps other elements

Not sure this is correct. I had thought the slip from Feb 2025 to Aug 2025 was only announced quite recently. Say, a month ago?

(Not that I’m saying I think the Aug 2025 date will be achieved. I’m 75% sure it won’t.)

as far as I’m aware, they’ve done 1 EVA to look at the thing

Don’t think so.

They do have access to camera imagery, but as you say, most problems like this probably need much more intrusive investigation.

An alternative Starliner meme: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/boeing-will-try-to-fly-its-troubled-starliner-capsule-back-to-earth-next-week/?comments=1&post=43115393

How could I forget!

TBH, I mean that in the sense that you can’t forget something you never knew about in the first place ;)

I had never heard of this concept before. Is it something to do with this?

Departure will be televised.

(I looked it up because I was vaguely wondering whether broadcasting this would be too embarrassing!)

If the Boe-CFT mission had gone to plan, Crew-9 would have been scheduled to launch in mid August with Zena Cardman commanding. The article reports that she has just announced that her father died in August, perhaps about a week before what would have been the launch date.

Got me wondering how situations like that are handled. And what if a close family member dies just a day or two before launch? Or even less time than that?

On a related matter, I’ve also been wondering at what point the backup crews are ‘stood down’. I don’t think it’s the very last minute. I think there’s a window of time during which any serious issues to do with a member of a primary crew would just result in a scheduled launch not going ahead (as opposed to going ahead on schedule but with a crew member swapped out).

Damn, they should’ve collab’ed with the Marshall Mathers Space Flight Center, like I been sayin

(I sent two letters back in autumn, JAXA must not’ve got 'em. There prob’ly was a problem at the post office or somethin)

Plus the occasional ULA sniper wielding the SpaceXpelliarmus spell.

the company will likely need to redesign some elements in the spacecraft’s propulsion system to remedy the problems

I expect they’ll make a change to whatever is responsible for the helium leaks. But as for keeping the thrusters healthy, Steve Stich keeps talking about software/operational changes as a way to accomplish that, so we might not see much of a redesign (at least in the short/medium term).

Had the Starliner test flight ended as expected, with its crew inside, NASA targeted no earlier than August 2025 for Boeing to launch the first of its six operational crew rotation missions to the space station. In light of Saturday’s decision, there’s a high probability Starliner won’t fly with astronauts again until at least 2026.

Wasn’t it actually February 2025? With the delay to August 2025 only announced very recently, as a result of all these CFT problems?

And that might be all the extra time Boeing needs. Especially considering my previous point.

originally planned for an eight-day stay at the station

Well, yes, as a bare minimum.

the owners of a private space station will almost certainly go with the less expensive, flight-proven vehicle to transport people to and from orbit.

Will it be their decision, when the people being transported are NASA astronauts? I could easily see NASA wanting to continue their ‘dissimilar redundancy’ policy indefinitely.

Me too. I had thought we were talking about a 1% chance or something like that.

But at the press conference, one of the journalists seemed to be asking about the probability of disaster, and gave 10% as an example. None of the NASA people took the opportunity to say “no that’s far too high”, or “I’m very confident the uncrewed return of Starliner will be successful”, or anything like that.

I’ve been wondering why there’s such a big gap between Starliner’s expected departure (“early September”) and the launch of Crew-9 (no earlier than 2024-09-24).

My least bad guess is that NASA doesn’t see much difference in the risk of having Butch & Suni return as (little more than) cargo inside Crew-8’s Dragon capsule, and the risk of them returning in the actual standard/proper crew configuration in this Starliner capsule. In which case they might as well get Starliner back ASAP, while making no attempt to bring the Crew-9 date forward (which could have been doable given that the plan as of last month was to be ready by 2024-08-18).

Has anyone got a better guess?

I do know that a standard Starliner departure involves waiting for a suitable opportunity / time window. But there must be suitable opportunities much closer to the 24th, right? Why aren’t they waiting for the last possible (or maybe penultimate) opportunity? In the unlikely event of Starliner failing to undock or whatever, it’d be no big deal to delay Crew-9 again, so I don’t think that would be the reason.

I had been imagining a much greater level of dependency or ‘coupling’ between the two events. Perhaps with NASA looking at the Crew-9 launch weather forecasts before deciding whether to undock Starliner about 3 days earlier, or something. Or even (less seriously), the Crew-9 crew strapped into their Dragon, on the launchpad, and hearing on their comms system something like “Starliner has successfully exited the ISS’s Keep Out Sphere, so NASA is ‘go’ for propellant load on Falcon 9”.

I was hoping somebody would ask this question during the press conference, but they didn’t.

the host says they’re going to higher altitudes than the Apollo program

Ah, yes, well normally that would be my opportunity to remind people of Gell-Mann amnesia.

But this time it’s unfair to the host. Isaacman has made that mistake himself on (I think) multiple occasions. She might have got it from him. (Perhaps indirectly.) Here’s one: https://youtu.be/aASZ2rKdS6I?t=1m2s (He meant “since”, not “than”.)

this one doesn’t really have anything that makes it fundamentally unsafe.

You’re probably right, but we’ll see. The altitude and the spacewalk are the first big new initiatives for SpaceX’s human spaceflight work that haven’t been done under close NASA supervision. That’s probably a good thing but … I’m nervous.

Talking of the altitude, this is from the article:

The mission is scheduled to launch between 3:30 and 7 a.m. Eastern Aug. 26 in one of three instantaneous launch windows. Isaacman said the launch times were selected by SpaceX to minimize the micrometeoroid and orbital debris impact risk to the mission given its unconventional orbit.

He said it during the event (which is available to watch here), and I don’t think any further explanation was given for why certain launch times are better than others for MMOD. Does anyone understand why? Is it obvious? Any resources I could check out to learn more?

Talking of the article, they still haven’t fixed the first sentence!:

spacewalk on a is ready

If Jeff or anyone else from Space News is reading this, hire me as your proofreader!

Interesting title on the video about this, just uploaded to YT by CBS News: SpaceX sending private citizens on risky mission that includes spacewalk attempt

I find myself agreeing with the sentiment. I’m fairly nervous about this mission.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d jump at the chance to join it. I’d choose it over a routine trip on Starliner, but not for the reason you might be thinking. … I can’t help wondering if Polaris Dawn is both higher risk and reward than a routine trip on Starliner.

No, that’s this one, funded by a crypto billionaire, announced a week ago and launching in ~4 months.

Polaris Dawn is funded by a payments processing billionaire, announced 2.5 years ago, and launching this month.

That has to be a requirement regardless I guess since a depressurization could happen on any flight.

Yes, this has been pointed out by the crew (IIRC) in an interview about the mission. (Not to suggest that no work was needed on the issue, just less work than people might expect. Obviously it can be the case that taking an unlikely contingency scenario and making it a deliberate part of a mission, raises the level of assurance needed.)

Scenario 4

Well, consider various lesser versions of Scenario 1. What if the crew was only partially reduced in their capabilities?

Perhaps they were both suffering from the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning (including headaches, dizziness, and confusion). Or perhaps one was serously injured, and the other was fine but needed to focus all her attention on tending to her crewmate?

Then it would come down to the question of just how complex and time-consuming the required manual step(s) are. If there’s just a big red button that says “TAKE US HOME” then, it shouldn’t be a problem. But we don’t know.

And if there was just a big red button, couldn’t they try bypassing the current 4-week delay, by coming up with some ways of pressing it without humans on board? ;) Shove an astrobee in there and give it a try. If it doesn’t work, no harm done …

Aren’t there several realistic scenarios …

Scenario 1

Emergency on board ISS. 1) One aspect of the emergency (e.g. noxious air) has incapacitated many of the crew, including all the ones trained to operate Starliner. 2) Another aspect of the problem (e.g. electrical faults that are expected to lead to fire) leaves no doubt that evacuation is essential.

Those ISS crew who managed to don emergency breathing apparatus quickly enough now move the incapacitated Starliner crew to their seats, strap them in and exit Starliner (closing the hatches on their way out), before proceeding to their own vehicle(s).

Scenario 2

Serious MMOD strike upon a docked vehicle, causing damage that makes it very unlikely to be safe for its crew to return in, and also at significant risk of posing a danger to the ISS.

Wouldn’t the least bad option be to command an uncrewed undocking and hope for the best?

Scenario 3

During a flight test, a spacecraft is able to dock with ISS, but only after encountering significant problems. The first job of engineers is to consider whether it is sufficiently safe for the crew to return to Earth in, in the event of an emergency. Their decision is either ‘no’, or ‘barely’.

An alternative provider of crewed LEO access services, known for its proficiency and speed of operations, announces that they will be able ready to send a replacement vehicle by the time of a suitable launch opportunity in 4 days’ time.

There are no spare docking ports.