As the good book says: "Don't let the screen door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya."

How do we know they were Texas employees? The main design office is still in Hawthorne, CA...

Maximus_Meridius said:

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How do we know they were Texas employees? The main design office is still in Hawthorne, CA...

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Because they'd still be employed and Musk would be legally obligated to create safe spaces for them to scream at the sky and badmouth the company with impunity

Yup. Criticizing the boss like this means you're probably better off working elsewhere. You and everybody else will be a lot happier.

Falcon 9’s first stage has landed on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship – marking SpaceX’s first 13th flight of a first stage booster and 100th successful mission with a flight proven orbital class rocket! pic.twitter.com/6XjfcOPuUh

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 17, 2022

Ag_of_08 said:

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More the "at will employment" than right to work.

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Yes. Fixed.

Sierra Space announces Astronaut Academy, some timelines. Still stinks they are basically married up with Blue Origin now, but I do hope they launch the first cargo version on a centaur Vulcan in Jan/Feb. Shooting for manned flight in 2026 as of now.

I'm hoping they will make the crewed version compatible with falcon. It should be much simple, as it appears to be dependent on an adapted, not enclosed in a fairing. That will make cross provide usage much simpler.

I worry that they may never man rate vulcan.... nasa didn't buy more starliner launches, and they have already contracted with spacex for enough flights to finish out the current need for ISS. If ULA/Boeing can finish out the launches on Atlas, there will be no need for Vulcan to BE man rated.

I see what you did there at the end.

*facepalm* I didn't even catch it at first

There's still a need to have two man-rated launchers, imho. Nasa isn't planning to give up human spaceflight with the ISS. It's tough to say what it will look like in the mid-2030's, post whatever debacle finally ends SLS, but it's safe to say ULA as a political-industrial conglomerate wants to stay as involved as possible in gov't space flight.

Starship (a) is still the same contractor as Falcon and (b) won't be human rated by Nasa anytime soon for launching people.

Now, if Rocketlab or another disruptor manages to pull it all together and go after/win a human rating for their new, affordable competitor to the F9 (not sure the dreamchaser could fit with their new, basically single stage/fully enclosed second stage concept), I could see ULA just giving up as I don't think they could compete with Vulcan on a cost basis, but they have a lot of senators on their side, so actual costs may not matter, yet again.

nortex97 said:

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There's still a need to have two man-rated launchers, imho. Nasa isn't planning to give up human spaceflight with the ISS. It's tough to say what it will look like in the mid-2030's, post whatever debacle finally ends SLS, but it's safe to say ULA as a political-industrial conglomerate wants to stay as involved as possible in gov't space flight.

Starship (a) is still the same contractor as Falcon and (b) won't be human rated by Nasa anytime soon for launching people.

Now, if Rocketlab or another disruptor manages to pull it all together and go after/win a human rating for their new, affordable competitor to the F9 (not sure the dreamchaser could fit with their new, basically single stage/fully enclosed second stage concept), I could see ULA just giving up as I don't think they could compete with Vulcan on a cost basis, but they have a lot of senators on their side, so actual costs may not matter, yet again.

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Why do we need two man rated launchers? Fine if they are similar in cost and reliability. But one is 10x as reliable and 1/10th the cost of the other, why would there be a need for the other one? Why not just make more copies of the cheaper and more reliable one?

I'm not really trying to make this argument, fwiw, but Nasa basically started the commercial crew program under the W Admin, knowing Boeing/ULA would be one entrant, and then select another. Surprisingly, thanks to a lot of very aggressive bidding/development, SpaceX got the other. The capsules yes are different but let's keep in mind that's not really true independence/safety from one system breaking and then the whole thing is grounded/we beg the Russians for help again. We need two launchers for that.

Imagine a scenario where an F9 (even a commercial launch) blows up a hundred feet off the pad in 2025. Not saying it's likely, but it's not a statistical impossibility by any stretch.

How long would an investigation take, for Nasa to sign off and put astronauts on it again, regardless of the capsule sitting atop? Putting all the eggs in one basket a la space shuttle again is exactly what they don't want to do, and the SLS is...well, I am not sure that is ever really a backup plan, it's a 2 launches a year for 5 years boondoggle, to put it charitably.

nortex97 said:

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I'm not really trying to make this argument, fwiw, but Nasa basically started the commercial crew program under the W Admin, knowing Boeing/ULA would be one entrant, and then select another. Surprisingly, thanks to a lot of very aggressive bidding/development, SpaceX got the other. The capsules yes are different but let's keep in mind that's not really true independence/safety from one system breaking and then the whole thing is grounded/we beg the Russians for help again. We need two launchers for that.

Imagine a scenario where an F9 (even a commercial launch) blows up a hundred feet off the pad in 2025. Not saying it's likely, but it's not a statistical impossibility by any stretch.

How long would an investigation take, for Nasa to sign off and put astronauts on it again, regardless of the capsule sitting atop? Putting all the eggs in one basket a la space shuttle again is exactly what they don't want to do, and the SLS is...well, I am not sure that is ever really a backup plan, it's a 2 launches a year for 5 years boondoggle, to put it charitably.

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"One system breaking?" Like some unfixable flaw is discovered and all units are grounded like 737 Max or something? Seems far fetched. Not worth 4 billion dollars per launch. SpaceX could design and fly another 3 blank sheet designs for that.

Don't forget, there are 6 flights already payed for and contracted with starliner, and the capsules are allegedly reusable. At this point they're not going to magically discover a flaw in the design of falcon 9.... even if one blows 100ft off the pad, unless the LES fails, the investigation will be into why that one failed, not a full blown investigation into if the system is safe.

Unless NASA pulls the contract from spacex, Boeing only get the 6 launches. I'm not sure, without suckering nasa out of more money, how they're going to justify man rating Vulcan, unless NASA flat insists, or Sieras Nevada foots the bill.

So now NASA is having a hiss that starship can't launch from Florida because it might damage the pad at lc39. They're apparently proposing to build a back up crew tower at slc40

Government regulators just don't have much incentive to approve of private sector space projects. The bureaucracy is just not designed to accommodate things that haven't been done before.

They've already awarded them a contract to launch super heavy/ lunar starship. The only way Artemis ever lands is with LSS.

This has more to.do with the DNC being anti-space, and anti Musk by the look of it. Every regulatory agency that can has thrown up roadblocks

Sweet! Good luck to him!

japantiger said:

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My youngest is interviewing for an engineering job with Space X tomorrow...wish him luck!

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Good luck to him!

japantiger said:

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My youngest is interviewing for an engineering job with Space X tomorrow...wish him luck!

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Good luck to him. As a SpaceX customer, I've spent quite a bit of time in hawthorn. It's Disneyland (minus the grooming) for engineers.

https://iss-sim.spacex.com

Dock the Dragon 2...

It's harder than flying a helicopter for me...

You want to really piss yourself off.... kerbal space program with realism overhaul and real solar system. Rendezvous and docking is a nightmare....

Need to work on the time... That was about 10 minutes...

Ag with kids said:

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https://iss-sim.spacex.com

Dock the Dragon 2...

It's harder than flying a helicopter for me...

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It's a piece of cake but you can't fly it like an aircraft and fly right at the runway and stomp on the rudder to slip your way down against the crosswind.

Instead you have to translate to in front of the ISS, then correct roll, pitch and yaw. Then finally approach the ISS. It's basically 3 discrete steps.

Controls are a bit punchy on the fine side, I'd think the rcs has finer proportion when not on a phone screen

At least you don't have to do a hand fly around maneuver, and there's good telemetry.

It's tough on a phone to read all the rates so you don't overshoot. I've talked with several astronauts that wanted an actual stick to fly the approach. They were even willing accept a USB game pad as an optional means of control.

Get ready to rumble !🔥

Booster 7 rollout Tuesday pic.twitter.com/uKsDQhdi29

— SPadre (@SpacePadreIsle) June 20, 2022

Perhaps the most-terrifying space photograph to date. Astronaut Bruce McCandless II floats completely untethered, away from the safety of the space shuttle, with nothing but his Manned Maneuvering Unit keeping him alive. The first person in history to do so.
Credit: NASA pic.twitter.com/uapVOFwS2u

— Curiosity (@Sciencenature14) June 20, 2022

lb3 said:

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It's tough on a phone to read all the rates so you don't overshoot. I've talked with several astronauts that wanted an actual stick to fly the approach. They were even willing accept a USB game pad as an optional means of control.

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When I was at NASA we experimented with a brain interface to dock using the sim. It actually worked

TexAgs91 said:

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lb3 said:

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It's tough on a phone to read all the rates so you don't overshoot. I've talked with several astronauts that wanted an actual stick to fly the approach. They were even willing accept a USB game pad as an optional means of control.

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When I was at NASA we experimented with a brain interface to dock using the sim. It actually worked

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Which lab? I've been a test subject for many of those types of things and missed seeing that one.

lb3 said:

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TexAgs91 said:

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lb3 said:

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It's tough on a phone to read all the rates so you don't overshoot. I've talked with several astronauts that wanted an actual stick to fly the approach. They were even willing accept a USB game pad as an optional means of control.

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When I was at NASA we experimented with a brain interface to dock using the sim. It actually worked

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Which lab? I've been a test subject for many of those types of things and missed seeing that one.

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It was a lab in bld 16 back around 2010