Mars will kill you

NASA Travel Posters!

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/

Images courtesy of NASA/JPL-Cal Tech

 

Kepler 16b is my favorite. I love the artwork they chose because it’s all reminiscent of the sci-fi art from the Golden Age.

 

The Crew Dragon capsule and its Falcon 9 booster passed their final pre-flight review and the mission is officially on for Saturday March 2 at 2:48 AM EST/Friday March 1, 11:48 PM PST. So it's to be a night launch, looks like. (They have launch windows since the Dragon has to catch the Space Station in orbit.) This flight will be the first for the Crew-Dragon and will be an unmanned supply mission much like those currently being flown by the Cargo-Dragons, except with a different capsule.

https://twitter.com/Commercial_Crew/status/1099058961540698112

It will be streamed live by NASA on NASA TV here (they will have informative commentary and briefings as well):

https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive

and by SpaceX at their website (I'm guessing that the SpaceX webcast will put more emphasis on the booster landing, NASA more on the capsule and its docking with the Station):

https://www.spacex.com/

NASA and SpaceX seem very excited about this milestone. (A big one for NASA's commercial crew program.)

Spacex Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability Hans Koenigsmann is hinting that the webcast of Crew Dragon's launch will be "something fairly spectacular". Everyone knows that Elon Musk is a showman and everyone saw how the Falcon Heavy spectacular with Starman caught the world's imagination. "According to Koenigsmann, Crew Dragon will be outfitted with a mannequin (effectively an aerospace-grade crash test dummy) dressed in one of SpaceX's in-house spacesuits, a globally-recognizable icon..." Probably interior and window cams at the very least. Plus the by-now-familiar booster landing. Despite it being the middle of the night US time, it's expected to attract lots of viewers around the world. (Including me.)

They are testing this new capsule model in preparation for manned flights starting in July, so sending up a fully instrumented mannequin to measure conditions that would be felt by an astronaut in the same acceleration seat actually makes practical as well as aesthetic sense.

I guess that the Crew-Dragon will depart the Space Station next week and will reenter and splash down in the Atlantic ocean off Florida. That will be a dry-run for a manned flight too.

Then assuming that all goes well with this mission, between now and July they will fly their in-flight abort test, when they shut off the booster at 'max-Q' (maximum aerodynamic pressure, the worst time for an abort) to simulate a loss-of-thrust accident and fire the capsule's abort rockets to separate the capsule from the booster. (Much like that Russian Soyuz capsule with two astronauts aboard did recently when its booster started to come apart.) NASA has to verify that the abort-escape system works and that the process is survivable by the capsule's occupants. Reportedly the used Crew Dragon from this upcoming Demo 1 flight will be used again for the inflight abort test.

Assuming that's successful, next step is sending up a new pristine capsule for a test flight ('Demo-2') with two human astronauts aboard (wearing the sleek and stylish black-and-white SpaceX spacesuits) in July.

Here's the mission objectives for the Demo 1 mission Friday/Saturday night.:

 

Yeah, they all had a retro-look. They kind of reminded me of those old steam-ship stickers that travelers would put on their luggage before WWII.

I liked the Jupiter one. I liked its color and it just seemed doable to me. We (almost) have the technology to send human beings to Jupiter now. A gas-giant planet like Jupiter has to be about as exotic an environment as one could imagine. If a traveler wants 'other-worldly', floating in a balloon in Jupiter's upper atmosphere would seem to be it. We know that it has huge auroras because of its outsized magnetic field. So it isn't as much of a stretch as visiting planets orbiting other stars.

 

They've named the test dummy "Ripley", after Ellen Ripley in the *Alien* movies. (Hopefully they aren't planning to deliver a face-hugger to the Space Station.)

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1101370880486076416



Much roomier than the interior of the Russian Soyuz

 

The Crew-Dragon and Ripley launched successfully. The capsule is in orbit, pursuing the space station. Meanwhile the booster landed successfully on its landing barge/drone ship in the Atlantic.

Next up is arrival and docking at the space station tomorrow.

Through it all, Ripley looked totally cool and collected, with the same nonchalant attitude as Starman. (She never moved once! Obviously the 'right stuff'.)

 

The Crew Dragon, flying in autonomous robot mode, has successfully docked with the Space Station. It was a slow and laborious process that took hours. There were several stations different distances from the station and the Dragon would move to each one, then back away to approach the next closer station. Through it all the astronauts on the Station, NASA and SpaceX were carefully monitoring the various rates and system statuses. Finally the Dragon just kind of nudged up to the docking port at a very low velocity in a "soft dock", and then clamps on the Space Station grabbed it and seals mated, in a "hard dock".

I suspect that operational docking will be more straight-forward, but this is test-flight mode.



This image shows the first Space Station astronaut (a Canadian!) inside the Dragon, wearing a stylish breathing mask, checking to make sure the atmosphere inside was breathable and not filled with some kind of noxious gas. The open hatch is above. He must have already reported that the air is breathable (I bet that it has that new-car smell, Tesla in this case) since another astronaut seems to be squirming through.

Ripley is still in her seat and is paying no attention.



Ripley inside the Crew Dragon

 

Russian Space Station cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko took a cool series of photos of the Crew Dragon arriving at the Space Station.









Before the flight, Elon Musk announced that the capsule would be carrying a "super high tech" zero-G indicator device. It turned out to be a little children's plush-toy Earth with arms and legs, nicknamed "Little Earth".

Presumably Little Earth will be returning along with Ripley when the Crew Dragon departs the Station on Friday.

Astroannimal (astronaut Ann McClain) has been showing it around the space station. Here it is enjoying the cupola (the Space Station's viewing turret).



Here's Little Earth enjoying morning coffee with the other astronauts.

 

Looks like they've put Little Earth to work.

Little Earth helps David St. Jacques work on a 'constituent analyzer' (an automated chemical analysis machine, I'm guessing).
Edit: It seems to be a mass-spectrograph based device that analyzes the chemical composition of the air inside the station. It's how they know the O2 and CO2 levels and so on. Apparently it can be cranky and can break down and various parts need periodic change-outs.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120010634.pdf



David familiarizes Little Earth with the gas masks that astronauts use in the unlikely chance there is an ammonia leak



Astroannimal and Little Earth work on the station's plumbing. (I think that's the urine recycler behind the zero-G toilet. An 'eww job' for Little Earth.)



Little Earth is amazed by the laptops that they seemingly use to control everything!



Besides it being fun, I think that they want to appeal to little children by including Little Earth in their activities. Little Earth is kind of a symbolic proxy for the kids making it easier for them to imagine themselves up there in those scenes. Astroannimal is asking for suggestions on what Little Earth should do tomorrow on her twitter page.

 

Astroannimal and Little Earth working out with the Space Station's treadmill. All the astronauts have a physical fitness program designed to prevent them from losing muscle mass and bone density in zero G.



The Crew Dragon, Ripley and Little Earth (who has really been the life of the party) are scheduled to depart the Space Station at 2:31 AM Friday EST/11:31 PM Thursday PST. NASA TV live coverage will begin 2:00 AM EST Friday/11:00 PM Thursday PST.

Deorbit burn will come at about 7:50 AM EST/4:50 AM PST. NASA TV will cover it live along with splashdown.

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/schedule.html

 

They've sealed the hatch on the Crew Dragon in preparation for its departure tonight and I didn't see Little Earth inside!

https://twitter.com/Commercial_Crew/status/1103715168322797568

Perhaps Little Earth and the astronauts have grown so attached that Little Earth decided to remain on the Station and return when they do. Or maybe Little Earth and Astroannimal have eloped! To Mars!



NASA/SpaceX might not have foreseen that millions of little pre-school minds (like mine!) all around the world would be worrying about Little Earth's whereabouts.

https://www.space.com/astronaut-anne-mcclain-loves-celestial-buddy-earth.html

 

NASA TV has announced that Little Earth will be remaining on the Space Station.

 

For a mere $9.5 million this vacation can be yours (oops! don't trip over the waiting list!)

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190306-would-you-want-to-stay-in-a-space-hotel?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

 

The Crew Dragon has returned safely to Earth (the big one), splashed down in the Atlantic and has been recovered by SpaceX's recovery ship.

Speaking of the little one, the people narrating the live feed spoke to one of the human astronauts who is going up this summer and he said that the plan is for Little Earth to return along with them.

This is a big step for the commercial crew program. Everything went absolutely flawlessly with SpaceX's Dragon. Next up is Boeing's Starliner which hopefully does as well. (Boeing has lots of experience with this stuff.)

A NASA tracking shot of the incandescent Dragon capsule reentering the atmosphere like a bolide.



And here it is splashing down at sea

 

It's definitely scorched. While it was pristine white when it launched and was at the Space Station, now it's toasted.



One wonders what kind of damage it's sustained. Just superficial, nothing that a new exterior paint-job won't fix? Or something more fundamental that might impact reusability or even crew safety? That's stuff that the engineers will have to examine very carefully.

 

Astroannimal does more on the Space Station than flirt with Little Earth. She changes batteries. A much harder job than you thought.

She and Nick Hague were outside for hours today replacing batteries. Apparently the station's solar panels charge batteries and then the station draws on them, giving it a constant power supply day and night. But they get tired and every so often they need replacement with newer and better batteries.

Here's Astroannimal at the battery boxes. Each of the white boxes contains a battery. As Jonathan McDowell notes, these are not AAA's! (I'm guessing they are high power lithium ion batteries.)

NASA photos:



Here's Astroannimal (the one at the bottom) holding what looks like the lid to a battery box.



Here's the station's robot arm delivering the new batteries. Luckily they are weightless. They still have mass and momentum though and no doubt have to be wrestled around (while wearing a space suit).



And here's a photo taken from the space station cupola of Astroannimal (visible in the middle left) removing a small piece of debris that had gotten into some mechanism.



And you thought that replacing old batteries at your house was a pain!

 

SpaceX's Starhopper propulsive landing test article is scheduled to make its first flights (one or more very short hops) from Boca Chica TX early next week. If you want to watch, there's a 24/7 livestream cam here:



The Starhopper is the same diameter but only about half as tall as the finished Starship planned for Lunar and Mars flights. In concert with the Falcon Super-Heavy booster and orbital refueling, those promise to be big flights, capable of delivering 100 people to the Moon plus something like 100 tons of cargo.

(You wanted Moon cities, Moon mines, Moon factories... well, here you go. Science Fiction made reality!) Then next stop Mars.

The FAA has the latest official scoop on the Starhopper hops .

It's a 'NOTAM' (Notice to Airmen') issued at 1:22 pm Friday Texas time, warning fliers of "Space Operations" by SpaceX from Boca Chica beginning at 0900 CDT Monday 3/25 and extending until 1800 CDT Wednesday 3/27.

Radius: 1.1 nautical miles
Altitude: From the surface up to and including 1000 feet AGL
Operating Restrictions and Requirements: No pilots may operate an aircraft in the area covered by this NOTAM
Reason for NOTAM: To provide a safe environment for rocket launch and recovery pursuant to 14 CFR Section 91

I don't know if the 1,000 feet is just an abundance of caution, or whether they really do intend for this thing to fly more than just a few feet in its first tests. Nor do I know if they plan more than one hop over these three days.

https://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_9_1046.html

Adding a bit of intrigue, word is swirling that SpaceX has begun fabricating what they call an "orbital prototype" of the full-sized Starship in a different part of the Boca Chica site. A big tentlike structure is visible. Photos of very shiny tapering hull segments have been posted online.

Apparently Elon Musk is saying that the orbital test vehicle should be completed this June.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1083575233423003648

That may be Elon time, which is probably more aspirational than real, reflecting what he wants to do.

Elon's saying that they are manufacturing least part of the "orbital prototype's" components at SpaceX's second plant in San Pedro (the repurposed former shipyard at the Port of LA). The LA components will apparently be shipped to Boca Chica and assembled there. (That seems to already be happening, which is generating the talk.)

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1076611280700530688

By the way, if they plan to fly this "orbital prototype" to orbit without the Super-Heavy (formerly BFR) booster, it will be the first Single-Stage To Orbit (SSTO) flight in history. Engineers talk about SSTO a lot, but it's never been done. It probably will only have a small payload if they do it that way, but still, it would be yet another SpaceX engineering first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-stage-to-orbit

 

The local sheriff is manning roadblocks keeping people from driving too close. Talk that if anything happens today, it might be a static rocket fire with the Starhopper clamped to the ground and not a flight. So... is anything happening today? I haven't seen anything much on the live-feed, but some observers on the internet are saying that they've seen gases venting from the vehicle earlier and believe that they are fueling it.

Edit: I just saw a big plume of vapor coming from the vehicle on the live-cam, so they are right. It appears to be fueled. Something should happen soon.

Edit 2: Methane flame is flaring from the storage tanks suggesting that they are detanking fuel from the vehicle back to the storage tanks. And some people say that they have seen ground vehicles moving toward the Starhopper. So the preponderance of the evidence seems to be moving towards the conclusion that today was either another tanking and pressurization test or a scrub.

Long distance (6 mile) telephoto shot from South Padre here:



Very well informed and technically savvy discussion board at NasaSpaceflight forums

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=47120.360

Best located livecam from Everyday Astronaut here:

 

The geeks seem to be coming around to the conclusion that what happened today was a 'preburner test'. Basically, it's the system that powers the turbopumps that feed the rocket engines. So SpaceX's engineers wanted to spin up the pumps and test the system that does that.

Or at least that's the latest space-geek speculation about what was observed today (not much, outwardly). Many of these space-geeks appear to be engineers and may know what they are talking about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staged_combustion_cycle