Commercial Manned Space Flights II: Galactic Boogaloo

[Blumf]

Oh, and here's the planned first civilian Crewed Dragon launch team:
https://inspiration4.com/

Some fucking Captain Planet shit here!

The First All-Civilian Crew

Leadership	Hope
Generosity	Prosperity

See what I mean, about Americans. Weirdos, the lot of 'em!

[seepage]

Did Jared insist on that Photoshop?

[Blumf]

You know how Bond villains are really good at recruiting loyal henchmen? Well, babby Hugo Drax, not so much...

https://gizmodo.com/blue-origin-employees-are-jumping-ship-1847537805

Jeff Bezos's spaceflight company has lost "at least 17" high-ranking staffers in recent months, reports say.

Jeff Bezos might have felt triumphant when he rocketed toward the edge of space last month, but apparently the same can't be said about other employees at Blue Origin. On Friday, CNBC was first to report that over a dozen engineers had left Bezos's company in recent weeks, with some departing for high-ranking roles at rival spaceflight outfits.

[Blumf]

Oh, and here's the planned first civilian Crewed Dragon launch team:
https://inspiration4.com/

Launch today (well early tomorrow, our time), 00:02h UTC (0102h BST)

https://inspiration4.com/press/weather-conditions-70-favorable-for-launch-of-inspiration4

Teams from SpaceX and Inspiration4 are now targeting a five-hour launch window for the Inspiration4 mission opening at 8:02 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, September 15. If needed for any reason, a backup window is available opening at 8:05 p.m. EDT on Thursday, September 16.

Watch them go splat here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pv01sSq44w

[Blumf]

T -10mins

LOX loaded. Weather looks good.

[Blumf]

And they're up, safe and sound.

If I understand correctly, they'll end up orbiting higher than the ISS and Hubble, so further than any human has been since Apollo.

[Blumf]

Coming back now, splashdown scheduled for 23:06h UTC (00:06h BST)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpFKNNl47AM

They had a Ukulele up there. Twats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E71ffwc13y4?t=949

[touchingcloth]

Going to do a 9/11 in one of these.

[Blumf]

Back, safe and sound. Be a while before the capsule is secured and they can get out of their farty air.

[Alberon]

Been a while since I did a proper space thread, must get back to one. But here's what's been happening in the meantime.

The SpaceX Dragon capsules are flying as usual. The latest crew returned recently shortly before their replacements blasted off. All quite routine and barely noteworthy, just as it should be.

Meanhwile SpaceX's latest Starship has been performing static fires. The first flight to orbit can't happen until a regulatory review is completed, but I'd expect it to be attempted in the next few months.

Boeing Starliner won't fly its second unmanned flight until next year. The whole thing is hugely embarrasing mess for the aviation giant.

NASA's return to the moon has been officially put back a year to 2025. This is officially at least partly due to Bezos' suing NASA over giving the moon lander program to SpaceX. That's been thrown out now, but it has meant a delay of some months to the work. To be honest, 2024 was already impossible due to the moon spacesuits not going to be ready by that date. NASA isn't getting the money it needs to properly fund its program and, as usual, most of what it is getting is funnelled to pork barrel stuff of varying usefulness. The imaginatively named Space Launch System will get it's first test flight - an unmanned flight around the moon - around February.

Frankly though, even to a space nut like me the whole SLS thing looks utterly pointless. It costs somewhere around $2b per launch while Starship looks like it's about to upend the whole rocket launch model. The current plan will use the SLS system to put men in moon orbit and then a modified SpaceX Starship to actually land on the moon. The question over why you don't cut SLS and just use Starship for the whole journey is getting harder and harder to ignore. Some people are already worrying that China will beat the US to put the next human on the moon. It's far from impossible.

[Blumf]

NASA asking for a price cut on the SLS

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/nasa-wants-to-buy-sls-rockets-at-half-price-fly-them-into-the-2050s/

NASA has asked the US aerospace industry how it would go about "maximizing the long-term efficiency and sustainability" of the Space Launch System rocket and its associated ground systems.
...
How does one make a system that has been anything but affordable and sustainable into something that is affordable and sustainable? NASA says it wants to transition ownership of rocket production and ground services to the private industry. In return, this private contractor should build and launch the SLS at a substantial savings of 50 percent or more off of the current industry "baseline per flight cost."

[Alberon]

Even at $1billion per launch it is still a fucking dinosaur.