Live: SpaceX to launch four civilians to orbit in mission known as Inspiration4
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Who cares if the passengers are some random billionaire and a group of people carefully chosen purely as a publicity stunt, let him have his attention/marketing that he gets on the side of paying for this trip... the real story is the actual actions that happened:
This is the first time a group of civilians have gone into (proper orbital) space on a re-usable launch system as paying tourists.
This is a MASSIVE moment for space travel in general, and has absolutely proven that SpaceX is onto something really special here with their systems and people.
I also like the fundraising component, such as auctioning one of the seats via charitable lottery and deliberately choosing a peds cancer survivor.
The other interesting thing to note is that SpaceX needed to use pad 39A for this but they are actively building a launch facility in Boca Chica. So this will force the issue of launch air traffic control which appears fairly primitive given that the US only has 2 launch locations.
And finally there is the whole, 3 days in orbit vs the 3 minutes of free fall that Virgin and Blue Origin offer. Certainly there is an interesting value proposition there. I don't know if it covers the $62M which is the 'cost to LEO' that SpaceX nominally charges. Let's say it did, then a tourist flight with a ticket price of $20M[1] each would have a nominal gross margin of nearly 30% suggests a pretty viable business model.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscosmos#:~:text=Roscosmos%20....
I reminded one of my adult children that when I was their age I paid nearly $5,000 for a computer that had specs that were not even close to one that you can buy for $35 today. Perhaps more comparable air travel became 10x cheaper over the first 40 years.
The thing that excites me most about this is that Congress isn't the one funding this work[1]. As a result SpaceX is motivated to make it more economical and more efficient. What I read about as a kid in the 70's about moon bases and orbital hotels, SpaceX is actually on a path to make real. I only hope that before I die I can ride into orbit.
[1] Yes they buy launch services from SpaceX, but they have been buying such services for decades, SpaceX was the first company that decided to be commercial rocket company from the start, AFAICT.
Apparently they will be researching human body fluid distribution in microgravity using ultrasound.
I learned this from the Livestream.
It's at least three, is it not? Vandenberg, Wallops, the Cape?
Edit: there's also Kodiak.
What is really interesting is that if Dragon may fly beyond the Moon. That would be a completely outstandig feat for SpaceX.
Musk created multi-day orbital space journeys going further out than any human has gone in many decades.
We've finally realized it's very important, & have setup systems similar to what exists in the US. Hopefully there'll be more & increasingly tighter collaboration, as the decades pass.
Also Scott Manley summarizes it well on YouTube https://youtu.be/ATxOQCDeL3Y
> Specifically, data will be collected on the crew members' ECG activity, movement, sleep, heart rate and rhythm, blood oxygen levels as well as the light and sound levels within the Crew Dragon cabin, according to the statement. The research will also monitor both behavioral and cognitive performance using an app called Cognition, organ systems using an artificial intelligence-powered ultrasound device designed for use by non-experts to assess the crew's balance and perception before and after the flight.
Doing some blood sampling too. Very few people have been to space, so glad to see they’re adding themselves to these studies.
https://www.space.com/inspiration4-spacex-mission-research-h...
First human in space was in 1961. We are some decades behind this time.
Well, launching these 4 people does take over a ~~million gallons of kerosene~~ (edit: million lbs of CO2 emissions), so for the environment it is probably good that it isn't as common as jet travel yet. It will probably take fusion energy or mass solar, plus hydrogen rockets (emit only water).
Yeah but will it be? As it stands no rocket fuel is made in a clean way. As someone who very much intends to stay on Earth for the rest of my life, I feel well within my rights to be concerned that unneeded space travel is making stuff worse for us down here. Going into orbit is environmentally expensive, and society should use this technology judiciously.
This is also assuming that there's no value in small, safe, steps on a path to socially acceptable space travel. Right now there's a perception of a lot of risk in going to space which is valid. If technology becomes safer over night no one will know it is safer. These incremental "we can launch", "we can reuse", "we can send a person", "we can send 4 people", etc messages are broadcasting to people that we can do this and that we are doing it. It's no longer science fiction.
Per Elon, yes, eventually [1].
It makes sense for them to do this too. They need the technology to be ready for mars. Positive PR is worth a lot in an industry heavily constrained by government regulations. The cost isn't likely to be that high compared to the rest of the costs involved in launching a rocket. If they're really lucky it will even help with the environmental regulators.
The Wikipedia article [2] says 38,570 US gallons of RP-1 in the first stage and 4,500 US gallons in the second.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170201135344/http://www.nmfs.n...
With Starship being methane based (higher H to C ratio) and at bigger scale hopefully it gets that number down a lot.
This lists it at 1.1 million lbs fuel+oxygen and shows it being used with Dragon (did they use this or similar?): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_Full_Thrust#Block_3
I find that NASA streams tend to be just far too loaded with spokesholes jabbering.... like a big infomercial.... and don't even get me started on Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic.
Sergei Propopyev apparently commanded that mission, and per NSF immediately before becoming a cosmonaut he was the commander of an aviation group of strategic bombers with the 121st Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment in the Saratov region.
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/06/soyuz-ms-09-crew-art...
Bear in mind that at this point in the video, the spacecraft is in direct sunlight and the background is pitch-black, so it doesn't take much to reflect enough light to be visible.
I know they took along "guests" but I can't imagine there's any significant science in this.
Isaacman could have taken 3 fishing buddies along and just made it a joyride. Instead he put all this work into promoting this mission as a fundraiser for St. Jude's.
I do not understand how some people can be such a wet blanket. This is history. Civilians, further out from Earth than anyone has been in 20 years...and they were able to buy a ride. This is the beginning of commercial space flight.
It's the equivalent of driving a gold spike in the Transcontinental Railway across the USA when it was completed. Now it can be used.
Edit: Also, hello Hacker News. I have been a lurker for about 5 years and it was this comment that made me angry enough to make an account.
Wow. Well, you're welcome? Or, sorry? Welcome to HN. :)
Space felt like a great reaching out of humanity, a huge vast problem all mankind was venturing towards. Even amid the colossal commercialization of satellite imagery & commsats, it still felt like humanity was expanding some kind of net overall potential.
This feels so lacking in the bonhomie. It further accenuates our class differences, rather than making me excited for humanity. And it feels frivolous, like we have touched greatness, begun a great journey, but have no idea what to do now, no vision remaining.
The end of the "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" era.
But I'm somewhat inspired by regular people going to orbit without any professional astronauts on board.
It feels more like the 1927 Charles Lindbergh flight than Apollo 11. A publicity stunt in one sense, but also the beginning of a new era of flight.
If it had just been billionaires (and a token scientist or aspirational astronaut), I may have agreed with your jaded opinion.
I don’t understand why being done by a very successful person detracts from the achievement. Isaacman has built a business that provides valuable services and employs a thousand people paying them a decent wage to do useful work. There’s nothing bad about that, but he’s talked about as if he was a criminal or had done something shameful.
There are plenty that believe the very existence of billionaires suggests an obscene imbalance in our system of capital. (I happen to agree.)
Let's take Isaacman as a fairly randomly selected example. At age 16 he identified poor practices in the payments processing market and started a business. Instead of having to wait a month for card processing to be set up for a business, he would have them up and running in 1 day. How much money has that saved the US economy? Apart from the company itself, how many jobs at other companies has that cumulatively supported?
Aside from that, through his control of the company, Isaacman has steered it to greater and greater success, supporting every more jobs and customer businesses. Clearly he knows what he's doing and is the right person to run the company. So what's the sense in confiscating his share of the company? Who should it be given to, and therefore who instead of Isaacman should run it?
Marxism says Isaacman shouldn't have had the opportunity to start the company in the first place. All capital allocation should be controlled by the state, putting bureaucrats in charge of everything. Collectivists say the employees should own it, but employees don't want to assume the risks that owners and investors do. They generally don't want to have to assume the responsibilities either. There's nothing to stop employee owned companies thriving in most developed countries, that doesn't happen because the dynamics of such enterprises just don't work in practice. Yes of course there are exceptions, great, but why are they so desperately few?
I'm not against employees having a say in company affairs, they're legitimate stakeholders and should rightly have a voice, but control and ownership must be earned and it must come with responsibility and acceptance of risk.
Whether you find inspiration or not is more a reflection of your current internal state than anything :).