Commercial Human Spaceflight Takes Another Big Step
Polaris Program Announced – Human Dragon And Starship Missions
“Today Jared Isaacman, founder and CEO of Shift4 (NYSE: FOUR), announced the Polaris Program, a first-of-its-kind effort to rapidly advance human spaceflight capabilities, while continuing to raise funds and awareness for important causes here on Earth. The program will consist of up to three human spaceflight missions that will demonstrate new technologies, conduct extensive research, and ultimately culminate in the first flight of SpaceX’s Starship with humans on board. The first mission, Polaris Dawn, is targeted for no earlier than the fourth quarter of this year and will be commanded by Isaacman, an accomplished pilot and astronaut who led Inspiration4, the world’s first all-civilian mission to orbit that helped raise over $240 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital®.”
The EVA planned is for me the most exciting aspect of this flight. There is much to be considered to carry that off but very doable.
This is, IMHO, how things should be done in future. NASA defines a mission and gets out of the way whilst others do it. NASA of course retains a role in specialised sensors and mission equipment, and possibly overall mission control, similar to Crewed Dragon.
I’d say that NASA should have a role in describing needed improvements and then they need to actively research how to introduce and develop those improvements. NASA might also have a role in ‘inherently governmental’ activities, like educating the public.
Those efforts would mirror what NACA did for aviation.
However such activities are in direct contrast to what NASA has been doing for the last 50 years and especially through the Shuttle era. NASA got the strange idea, from its astronauts mainly, that they were somehow responsible for operating an operational flight system to accomplish ‘routine’ missions. Afterall NASA thought it had a great system that required no improvement. NASA’s management was wrong on all counts. NASA was never needed to operate already established systems. The systems NASA were operating were not that great-they were far too expensive, did not meet the goals that had been set, killed crews, and yet NASA spent nothing to try and improve them.
Not that great.
We will not see a vehicle as capable as the Space Shuttle for 50 years.
But just think, if instead of expending all those billions of dollars to run 135 ‘routine’ missions, if NASA had found a lower cost operator and invested some of those billions to make the Shuttle safer, more reliable, and less expensive to operate. They never tried to do any of these. At the end they shut it down and overnight lost whatever expertise they might have had.
Apparently NASA did lose its expertise over the years. We see it now with SLS and Orion. These are a direct adaptation of Shuttle technology. Besides shear power, a lesser capability than Shuttle; not nearly the mission capabilities that Shuttle offered. Yet 15 years in the making, about ten years longer than anticipated, and billions of dollars over what they should have cost. We still have not seen them fly-even now its a month by month delay. And given the Boeing CST experience, no telling what might happen when it actually flies.
Unless you’re counting the Shuttle orbiter’s mass, SLS has much more payload capacity than the Shuttle. And it can (just barely) get a capsule to a very high lunar orbit. Well, I suppose a L1 halo orbit isn’t technically lunar orbit, but it’s a lot closer to it than the Shuttle could manage. Not that SLS isn’t a disaster, but when and if it flies, it’ll be superior to the Shuttle in several important respects.
I’m not sure why NASA would have a lead role in overall mission control. Crew Dragon mission control is out of Hawthorn, CA. NASA’s job has been ISS. Launch operations and control is a Space X function out of KSC until Hawthorn takes over. NASA doesnt have a leadership role.
One of the reasons Shuttle and ISS have been so expensive has been flight control teams that are unnecessarily large, often with positions duplicated between NASA and contractor. The NASA flight control operation took over in the first years of Shuttle. They took over on the NASA side and on the contractor side with people lile Kraft and Lunney managing USA, Inc operations. They successfully eliminated much of the NASA human space flight engineering organization and function, and yet depite the fact nothing was being designed, built, modified-all the things engineering did, the programs got more expensive.
For 50 years we’ve watched a government-contractor industrial complex suck the taxpayers dry while demonstrating they were incapable of innovation or improved performance. Musk saw through this. He said it can’t be as difficult as they’re making it out to be and now he is demonstrating it.
some bold plans, but that helps push commercial spaceflight forward. I wonder if this EVA suit they will use is what they will bid for the NASA contract for lunar surface suit. this is probably the first husband/wife race to space with Anne more likely to beat her NASA ascan husband. while the starship flight probably wont land on the moon it is interesting that private astronauts will beat NASA astronauts to flying it.
Unlikely the Dragon spacewalk EVA suit will be the same as the Lunar surface exclusion EVA suit. Different environmental conditions.
There are several husband and wife pairs in the NASA Astronaut corps. The most recent pair going to space is Bob Behnken and Megan McArthur. Amusingly Megan get the same seat on the same capsule that her husband flown in previously.
The Starship flight will likely be going to a high Earth elliptic orbit. To shakeout the systems for later SpaceX crewed flights to the Moon.
Re: 1st husband/wife race to space.
There have been a number of married couples who were both astronauts and flew sequentially. [One couple flew together on the same mission.] These don’t count?
They were all NASA astronaut so totally different than one flying commercial vs having to wait for a slot doled out by crew office at JSC.
A lunar suit might evolve from this, but the one planned for this mission doesn’t have a portable life support system. It uses an umbilical to connect it to the Dragon.
It seems to me that a portable backpack could easily attach to the SpaceX EVA suit using the same thigh port as the IVA suit.
This is good news, but the Biden open hostility towards Elon Musk continues. I just received the below email as one of the commenters on the draft PEA. I hope it is fake, but it appears to be real. If fake, feel free to delete. If real then I would like to read Keith Cowing’s opinion. Why should SLS get all the breaks and Space X get the heartaches?
“All,
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) published the Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Launch Vehicle Program at the SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Site in Cameron County, Texas (Draft PEA) on September 17, 2021, for public review and comment.
The FAA received over 19,000 comments on the Draft PEA and will post the comments on the project website by February 18th. The project website can be found here:
https://www.faa.gov/space/s….
SpaceX recently provided draft responses for these public comments received on the Draft PEA to the FAA for its review. SpaceX is also finalizing the Final PEA for the FAA’s review, acceptance, and coordination with the cooperating agencies. In addition, the FAA is continuing consultation and coordination with other agencies.
The FAA is updating the anticipated release date for the Final PEA on the Federal Infrastructure Permitting Dashboard (Permitting Dashboard) and project website. The FAA intended to release the Final PEA on February 28, 2022. The FAA now plans to release the Final PEA on March 28, 2022 to account for further comment review and ongoing interagency consultations. A notice will be sent to individuals and organizations on the project distribution list when the Final PEA is available.
Thank you for your interest in the environmental review process.
The FAA SpaceX Boca Chica Project Team”
‘Open hostility’ is not a good description. Biden has been a supporter of commercial space throughout. He’s also a strong supporter of unions to protect workers’ rights. To the extent that Musk is hostile toward unions, it puts them at odds, at times. Beyond that, I’m not aware of any issues.
I’m not sure what your point is in posting this text about the FAA’s review process. It seems all very standard. Do you mean to imply that the current administration is using this run-of-the-mill FAA review as some sort of weapon against SpaceX? Any such assertion would seem patently ludicrous. That might have been a game played by the previous administration, but that’s not the way the current administration rolls.
”Musk is hostile toward unions,”
It was a rather blatant slap having an EV summit without Tesla there The administration couldn’t bring itself to even say the word Tesla until recently. Workers are probably not bringing in UAW for two reasons
Stock options
The last three generations of UAW leadership being convicted of corruption in federal court, including the theft and misuse of Union funds. The Union is now under several years of Court supervision.
I give them a side eye too.
How is that a display of “open hostility”? What control does Biden have over when the FAA issues that report? Further, what state is the FAA in after years of understaffing? Has that understaffing issue suddenly been resolved?
Thank goodness for billionaires. The US government industrial complex was too selfish and too stupid to be able support the expansion of an industry and an economy. They had us mired in the past, looking backward for the last 50 years. Its the billionaires boys club of people like Musk and Isaacman who are making the future.
It was good to see Kathy Lueders chime in with her support: https://twitter.com/KathyLu…
Fortunately Isaacman seems to have avoided most of the public criticism that Musk and others have experienced. Making the first mission a charity fundraiser certainly helped. Musk’s recent astronomical charitable donation might have a similar effect.
The Matthew McConaughey Super Bowl commercial seemed to take a swipe mainly at the metaverse, but also apparently Musk, “While the others look to the metaverse and Mars, let’s stay here and restore ours”. I wonder if McConaughey plans to donate his income from the movie Interstellar to charity?