Soyuz takes people to the space station every few months, has done for years.
Why is this specific mission new?
Why is this specific mission new?
- This will be one of the first vehicles developed by a private entity to launch people into space, rather than a nation. That represents a huge step "down" the ladder of who has access to space. First, it's only nations. Later, it's large companies and entities. Down the line a little bit medium-sized companies will have access to space and wealthy individuals. Then we'll get down to small companies and fairly well-off individuals. Finally, we'll reach a point where everyone can afford to make trips to or through space. This is a huge first step on the ladder.
- The first stage of this vehicle was a booster that autonomously landed itself on a drone-ship, allowing it to be recovered and refurbished quickly and cheaply. Re-use of this first stage has the potential to drastically lower the cost to get humans (and stuff) into space. SpaceX has already pretty radically altered the launch provider scene by causing all players to lower costs across the board. And they can do that while maintaining very healthy margins if they get re-use right. Eventually, as other competitors (like Blue Origin) enter the market with re-usable launchers the price will fall further toward the new marginal cost, which is drastically lower.
Both of these things have the power to be the first steps into a world where there's a radically expanded access to space for people and companies. All this is happening at the same time that there are a number of other exciting developments in the space industry (NASA planning to start the Lunar Gateway; SpaceX thinking about how to plan to colonize mars; Bigelow planning to launch commercial space stations; Blue Origin about to enter the scene with a very exciting new launch vehicle), it feels (to me, anyway) like we're on the cusp of another big leap forward.
Just because something is a natural development doesn't mean we don't get to be excited when it happens.
I think airplanes becoming a mode of mass transit were a natural development. It probably seemed like a pretty exciting development as that transition was happening.
Similarly, once you have computers it seems natural to develop a global interconnected network of them. I was pretty excited when that was taking off!
Also, just because the ordering is natural doesn't mean the timing is natural. We've expected these kinds of developments to happen in space for a long time. But we didn't know when they would happen. It was thought that this change might happen in the 70's or 80's. Others thought it might be as far off as 2040 or 2050.
The fact that we're seeing some real tangible evidence of progress _now_ is super exciting.
Nor have they actually put anyone in space.
The first stage landing is great, but again it's not new -- SpaceX have been doing this for a few years now. Last year's Falcon Heavy, especially the two rockets landing simultaneously on live tv, felt very futuristic. This isn't anywhere near as impressive as that from a "wow" perspective . The MaxQ abort test probably will be, especially if live-streamed.
Scientifically, in the last 10 years we've landed on comets, brought bits of asteroids back to earth, driven a rover on an asteroid, landed on the far side of the moon, explored rocks billions of miles away.
Any 'new commercial space age' started at least 7 years ago when spacex started being paid for these types of launches - a commercially developed rocket being used for commercial purposes, but companies have had access to space for decades - everytime I point a BGAN at the sky to get communications in the desert I'm using a private company's infrastructure.
If you're just talking about a new crewed space exploration age, SpaceX has immense promise, but that's all it is - promise. Once it is delivering people to orbit, which a 50 year old technology currently does, and hopefully progresses further, then that's great. But this is just another minor step on the road.
If America was still launching people to the ISS on Apollo, and a Chinese company did a test flight to the ISS using SpaceX technology, I very much doubt there would be as much excitement as there is for this launch.
If dearMoon puts private people round the moon, the first people to leave LEO for 50 years, I'll be ecstatic. But I'm also cautious -- SpaceX announced a crewed lunar flyby for launch in 2018.
We can easily, within few years forget how hard is a particular achievement. Remember how fast Apollo flights started to be considered boring. Or we may turn to those who work on complex problems as we speak, imagine how hard would it be for ourselves doing that and appreciate and honor actual work which leads to these demonstrations. The choice is definitely ours to make.
Cool! I agree, but did anyone claim it was the first step?
Magellan or Captain Cook weren't the first steps of their day, either. Nor were the Apollo missions first steps. The Mercury missions had come first!
Why can't we be exciting, and have that feeling of exploration for each step? Why should only the first step be exciting? I reject the notion and would argue that every step in pushing our boundaries further out is exciting.
> The first stage landing is great, but again it's not new -- SpaceX have been doing this for a few years now
I feel like you and I have different time-horizons for what counts as "the dawn of a new space age". When areoform said we were at that dawn I didn't take it to mean on this day we are at that dawn.
The dawn of a new age takes a while. This decade is the dawn of a new space age, not necessarily this specific day. At least, that's how I interpreted the comments.
Yes, the person I responded to said
"This is a huge first step on the ladder."
This is a tiny step. Come summer when there's actual people on board then yes, it's a significant step towards forward movement, having being going pretty much nowhere since the 70s.
I think the biggest step recently, beyond landings or space flight or even a lunar return mission, is the live streaming of launches on youtube. SpaceX feels more futuristic and accessible because they drive that engagement, something not seen since the days of Challenger in 86.
I disagree about the dawn. The dawn of the space age was October 4th 1957.
> "This is a huge first step on the ladder."
Ha! Fair enough! The person you responded to was me, and I did write that.
I guess "first step" was not actually an important part of my claim, so I didn't think about it as I was writing it.
I'd agree that I should have written "this is a huge next step on the ladder", and not claimed it as the first step.
> This is a tiny step. Come summer when there's actual people on board then yes, it's a significant step towards forward movement, having being going pretty much nowhere since the 70s.
Eh, I think of the launch today, the in-flight abort, and DM-2 as all part of the same step. Fair enough if you don't consider it "done" until DM-2. I probably won't consider the step "done" for a couple of years (when commercial crew is as routinized as commercial cargo and booster re-use), but I would definitely consider today a major milestone.
It's the first operational flight of the hardware!
> The dawn of the space age was October 4th 1957.
Sure, that's true. I mean, it's pretty semantic at this point, but areoform had originally written: "We're at the dawn of a new space age."
I was using that as my reference for being at dawn. I think it's pretty reasonable to say we're right at the cusp of an exciting decade of development in space, in a way that we haven't been for half a century.
I'm not going to stop being excited about that!
Not to mention that it's increasing the number of countries and rocket designs that can send people to and from the ISS. Without alternate launch providers, if some flaw were to be found in Soyuz or political issues begin to get in the way of launches, then the US could find itself unable to get astronauts to and from the ISS safely.
Boeing is also in this race, and will be sending up humans to space in their Starliner soon as well, it's still up in the air which will get to the with humans on board ISS first.
I think people are making it larger than it is because doing something and commercializing something are completely different things.
The first flight in a plane was awesome, but not if we just stopped there. Currently SpaceX is somewhere along the line between the Wright Brothers and the Boeing 707. It may be "only price reductions", but once those price reductions hit a critical mass, it enables a whole world of possibilities. SpaceX is already talking about using their next rocket in a similar way to airlines now. Launching a bunch of people from one place into orbit, then landing in another place on the same planet for extremely fast flights across the world. They are talking about creating Moon and Mars bases. Those are things that won't ever happen if we keep spending hundreds of millions of dollars per launch, because the economics of it just won't ever work out.
They still aren't done, and it's no guarantee that they will be able to ever get prices down low enough, but at least they are trying, and making good headway toward it.
Supposedly[1], it was $23 million in 2007. but Russia raised the prices since then. The cost of the Soyuz to the Russians could well be lower than SpaceX still.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090604111935/http://www.kommer...
Of course what SpaceX does is not the same thing as Magellan's trip around the Earth, but it's absolutely an important milestone. It reduces costs on something very expensive, it reuses rockets in a way that wasn't possible before (this is the part that makes it arguably more innovative than Magellan), and it finally gives the US its own capability to go to space again. It was a bit embarrassing how dependent the US had become on Russia since the Space Shuttle's retirement.
But the Soyuz was absolutely also a fantastic feat. It may be small, but it's been the world's primary workhorse for manned space travel to LEO. It's far more reliable than the Space Shuttle (2 lost crews vs none for the Soyus on far more flights, I believe). And the US has nothing remotely comparable. Until now.
I had not heard of this 80-person shuttle-bus, that sounds pretty crazy!
I wonder how much was a serious proposal, and how much was an artist allowed to daydream.
Rather than ditching in the sea, the rocket landed back on earth and could in theory take up another payload a few days later, which is much cheaper and more efficient. It opens up space to a lot of other uses.
Compared to the cost and use of the shuttle (nominally reusable but not so much in practice), or other disposable rockets, this is a large step forward in reliability and efficiency, which will enable things like travel to Mars at low cost (by refuelling in orbit with multiple reusable vehicle launches for one mission).
Also, increasing the diversity of crew transfer vehicles is very helpful. Right now there are 4 different varieties of cargo vehicles that visit the station (Progress, HTV, Cargo Dragon, and Cygnus). This diversity means that delays or periods of downtime with any one of the cargo delivery systems can be made up for via the others, as has happened in the past. The same resiliency has not existed for some time in regards to crew transfer vehicles. Given that there was a failure during an attempt to launch a Soyuz capsule last year which put a serious strain on the station (potentially putting it in jeopardy of being left uncrewed for some time) you can see that this is a serious issue.
Additionally, Crew Dragon is the first new crewed spacecraft to visit the station that was designed within the last decade, or, indeed that was designed this century. Soyuz is reliable but it has a great many constraints and shortcomings, many of which can't be alleviated without moving to a new design. It's refreshing to see that we as a species still have the capability to build new crewed vehicles with new capabilities and new designs rather than simply shuffling about as custodians of legacy vehicles designed and built by previous generations.
Even more excitingly, the Crew Dragon was launched by a vehicle which landed the first stage, and will have its first stage be reused on a future flight. The Soyuz rocket/capsule is a remarkably inexpensive way for crew to get to orbit, but those low costs are due mainly to sticking with an old design (all the R&D has long been amortized) and reliance on inexpensive Russian labor. Falcon 9 is already cost competitive with the Soyuz and has the potential to be even cheaper as Falcon 9 first stage reuse becomes more common. As reusable rockets become more common and familiar, and as their design improves with increasing use and follow-on generations (Blue Origin's New Glenn, SpaceX's BFR/Starship, etc.) costs will continue to fall and access to space will open up. Which will bring about a new space age where many more people visit orbit per year, space stations become much larger and more advanced, and our capabilities in spaceflight are in general much greater than they are today.
All of this creates this overblown achievement feeling. This has been done 40 years ago!
What private company was sending people into space on reusable rockets 40 years ago?