NASA selects SpaceX as its sole provider for a lunar lander

[cubby]

Great write up on the differences, the stark differences, between the two amateur hour billionaires skips into the upper atmosphere vs the profession, who sent four people into space for three days.

To put it another way, the Virgin Galactic flight reached a peak altitude of 53.5 miles and lasted about an hour. Blue Origin’s voyage reached an altitude of 66 miles but lasted just 11 minutes.

SpaceX’s all-civilian flight, which launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida late Wednesday, reached a 363 mile altitude within hours and the lucky crew will spend three whole days in space. SpaceX is doing more for the sector too, pioneering the use of reusable rockets and ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.

[Nerraw]

The official one on YouTube had this.

I found the one on Youtube yea that was the official one.
It was surprisingly bad.

If it was the SpaceX one, the people cheering in the background was actually the workers who have been working on making this mission happen for months and finally got to see their hard work pay off.

Incidentally, this was also the first high-profile launch since the vaccines started becoming more readily available, which means this was the first time they've been able to come by the control center and cheer for a launch in a very long time. Cheering for launches was the norm for a long time for them before COVID.

(Fun fact: The SpaceX control center is located in a corner on the factory floor where they build all the rockets and capsules)

[Easo]

If it was the SpaceX one, the people cheering in the background was actually the workers who have been working on making this mission happen for months and finally got to see their hard work pay off.

Incidentally, this was also the first high-profile launch since the vaccines started becoming more readily available, which means this was the first time they've been able to come by the control center and cheer for a launch in a very long time. Cheering for launches was the norm for a long time for them before COVID.

(Fun fact: The SpaceX control center is located in a corner on the factory floor where they build all the rockets and capsules)

I know, they simply could have led the coverage from different place. The overlaps became annoying, especially together with checkmarks from flight control, leading to basically constant interruptions.

[Nerraw]

I know, they simply could have led the coverage from different place. The overlaps became annoying, especially together with checkmarks from flight control, leading to basically constant interruptions.

They do provide a Mission Control Audio-only stream for almost all their flights if you're not interested in all the other stuff. No idea why they don't have any actual footage in this one. They usually show the same footage as the main stream, just without the hosts.

[Hollycakes]

Yea it was just too many people all trying to talk at once.
Between them pausing for cheers and interrupting each other it was kind of a mess.

Did anyone watch the crypto stream with Elon last nite?
Was on youtube for me but then I couldn't find anything about it on Spacex site.

[Edge-]

Yea it was just too many people all trying to talk at once.
Between them pausing for cheers and interrupting each other it was kind of a mess.

A bit louder than usual, but that's also kinda the charm of it. You can hear the excitement of the SpaceX folks in the background, cheering at every successful stage no matter how many times they've successfully launched and landed rockets nowadays.

[Nerraw]

Live in-flight update with the crew at 5pm Eastern/2pm Pacific/2300 CEST:

[Hollycakes]

A bit louder than usual, but that's also kinda the charm of it. You can hear the excitement of the SpaceX folks in the background, cheering at every successful stage no matter how many times they've successfully launched and landed rockets nowadays.

True, and honestly I'd love to work for them.
Or Tesla.
Seems like a fun team to part of.

[Nerraw]

Live in-flight update with the crew at 5pm Eastern/2pm Pacific/2300 CEST:

[video=youtube_share;E71ffwc13y4]https://youtu.be/E71ffwc13y4[video]

Short event due to capsule only being in downlink range for a short time, but...

I am so fucking jelly.

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Splashdown around 406pm Pacific/706pm Eastern/0106 CEST. Coverage expected to start an hour before that.

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Splashdown! Recovery crews on the way out to the capsule now.

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Crew has been extracted from the capsule and pretty much danced their way out. Mission successful!

[Hollycakes]

I have to admit Nerraw the cupola was pretty cool too.
The fact it's interchangeable with the docking node or whatever it was is neat.
And yea lol they were pretty happy.
They qualify as actual astronauts for the wings I think.

[plz delete account]

VIPER landing site will be announced tomorrow.

[Nerraw]

First look out the cupola.

[cubby]

Cool. Even if this mission is a couple years off.

Did you see the moon mission is getting held up because not-yet-an-astronaut Bezo's adorable Blue Origin, while it's also planning on sending Shatner up to 11-minutes-in-sub-orbital-space, is contending the decision of NASA to use brought-ISS-access-back-to-the-U.S. Musk's Space Company's award of the moon lander?

Fucking tourists man....

[cubby]

And now we're seeing possible safety concerns, raised by internal employees, at Blue Origin. Can the fucking hobbyists stop holding up progress?

[PACOX]

And now we're seeing possible safety concerns, raised by internal employees, at Blue Origin. Can the fucking hobbyists stop holding up progress?

You know employees, ex-employees, and contractors have said similar things about SpaceX? Both are headed by egotistical sociopaths who expect employees to lay down everything for the company. SpaceX doesn't have fast turnaround times because they respect work-life balance. The FAA has been bumping shoulders with SpaceX for a while now.

[s_bushido]

Both are headed by egotistical sociopaths who expect employees to lay down everything for the company.

You dare impugn the honor of Daddy Musk? This insult shall not stand, good sir!

[cubby]

You know employees, ex-employees, and contractors have said similar things about SpaceX? Both are headed by egotistical sociopaths who expect employees to lay down everything for the company. SpaceX doesn't have fast turnaround times because they respect work-life balance. The FAA has been bumping shoulders with SpaceX for a while now.

Oh sure, I would be worried if there weren't safety issues being brought up. IIRC at the start of SpaceX, on the last flight to make or break them, one of the engineers did something totally insane/"unsafe", which made the launch work - but could have easily gotten him killed. Of course they are sometimes unsafe - that's what most corporations do, push the limits to succeed/profit. But that's not the issue.

The issue for me is that if we assume the same behavior from both said sociopaths, then the pretend space-tourist ought to just STFO and get out of the way. Blue Dipshits puts people into "space" for several minutes. SpaceX reconnected the United States to the ISS, and did it while pioneering self landing rockets.

There isn't even a discussion to be had on who should be heading up the private portion of the moon landing effort.

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You dare impugn the honor of Daddy Musk? This insult shall not stand, good sir!

Impugn him all you want - he's got plenty to be strung up about. But the quality and success of SpaceX is objective at this point. The other two space tourists are just play acting.

[caervek]

Personally I don't see the problem in using a single contractor on something, as long as you don't use that contractor for everything.

I.E let SpaceX build the lunar lander and let another company build the next space station or shuttle.

A good point here being, if the moon landers and command modules of the Apollo program had both been designed by the same company Instead of Grumman and.... somebody else. Then they would have both used the same air filters, and the Apollo 13 astronauts wouldn't have nearly died of CO2 poisoning while trying to duct tape together a bodge to make them interchangeable.

[plz delete account]

Personally I don't see the problem in using a single contractor on something, as long as you don't use that contractor for everything.

I.E let SpaceX build the lunar lander and let another company build the next space station or shuttle.

A good point here being, if the moon landers and command modules of the Apollo program had both been designed by the same company Instead of Grumman and.... somebody else. Then they would have both used the same air filters, and the Apollo 13 astronauts wouldn't have nearly died of CO2 poisoning while trying to duct tape together a hodge to make them interchangeable.

Actually, if they'd just required that the air filters be the same shape and size they would've been fine.

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Impugn him all you want - he's got plenty to be strung up about. But the quality and success of SpaceX is objective at this point. The other two space tourists are just play acting.

can we discuss how inspiration 4 lasted several days where as both tourism missions from VG and BO lasted minutes, maybe hours

Don't get me wrong, I've got bones to pick with SpaceX, mostly their fanbase, but SpaceX has earned it's wings recently. National Team and others have not.

[Easo]

can we discuss how inspiration 4 lasted several days where as both tourism missions from VG and BO lasted minutes, maybe hours

Don't get me wrong, I've got bones to pick with SpaceX, mostly their fanbase, but SpaceX has earned it's wings recently. National Team and others have not.

Minutes, literally. Like 15 minutes, IIRC.