Posted on 07/26/2022 7:16:41 AM PDT by Salman
It was good enough to 'shuttle' US too and fro.
Here's 20, but I really can't say if it's any better than inventing tang and the space pen. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/iss-20-years-20-breakthroughs
Then it became the "International Space Station" (ISS) because we and the Ruskies were going to be BFF. For a considerable period of time the neo-Soviets (excuse me "Russians") had a monopoly on launching personnel to the ISS. Fortunately SpaceX can now do the job and we call tell the neo-Soviets to go pound sand.
NASA and SpaceX Complete Certification of First Human-Rated Commercial Space System
Meanwhile, although they deny it, the legacy US rocket launch crowd United Launch Alliance (Lockheed Martin Space and Boeing Defense, Space & Security) and Northrop Grumman are in trouble because they've been buying rocket engines from the neo-Soviets.
Russian space chief says Russia will no longer sell rocket engines to the US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-3
Crew 4-9 are upcoming plus there’s Axios which are private funded
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon_2#Crew_Dragon_flights
Don’t let the door...
Yup—private space flight is the future—if they fully decouple from NASA.
NASA has become a woke zombie.
Well, it could be used as a practice target I guess.
Of interest.
Take it for what it is worth given each side, to include the Western/Anglo/NATO, has their own Ministry’s of Truth:
‘Exclusions And Sanctions Help ‘Enemies’ To Build Their Own Capabilities’
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/07/exclusions-and-sanctions-help-enemies-to-build-their-own-capabilities.html#more
SpaceX has the Crew Dragon which has completed four manned missions with a 5th going up at the end of September. Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner completed its OFT last month and will be joining the rotation with Crew Dragon near the end of this year. With two operational American capsules capable of reaching ISS, we are no longer reliant on Russia to shuttle our crews. Only issue is the Russians pull out in 2024 is the station keeping function provided by the Progress capsules in adjusting the ISS orbit. Neither Dragon nor Starliner are rated for this function but I do believe the Cygnus capsule has some capability to perform this function and NASA has ordered five more of them which would take them through 2026.
Thanks. Funny that someone would claim that only Russia is equipped to regularly transport astronauts to the ISS. SpaceX has certainly as good a capability, if not better, than the Russians. SpaceX brings back the booster. They have significantly lower launch costs than the Russians.
Unscrew the Russian half of the ISS and dump it on the Russian side of the Russia / Ukraine border.
“As of this writing, only Russia is set up to transport people to and from the ISS on a regular basis, though this is supposed to change soon.”
As of JAN 2022, SpaceX has regular cargo and manned service to IIS at a fixed cost per flight for 2023 lacking any incidents or political payback words musk. A good number of flights that were scheduled for non NASA flights can be provided on top of man rated SpaceX bosters to nasa if boeing project loses man rating per NASA.
If boeing gets their act together on manned flights there is 2 vendors to NASA with seats. 3 vendors for seats was putting pricing pressure on Russia on top of different political pressures.
BFD. We only use(d) Russian engines (The once excellent, but now nearly obsolete RD-180) on the Atlas-V, and then only as a favor to Russia (so their rocket engineers would have something to do other than work for Iran and North Korea). Atlas-V is now semi-retired. No new rockets will be built, and the remaining 22 have all been both built and sold. Russia can keep their engines.
SLS, if it ever launches, will do so with American engines.
The current workhorse for both manned and unmanned launches is the all American (and private sector-ish) Falcon 9.
And crew 4 in April 2021.
Also the Demo mission took two astronauts to the ISS.
That’s five SpaceX crewed launches to the ISS.
The next crewed launch is scheduled for September with a cosmonaut!
Try to keep up people. ;^)
The Space Station is a huge waste of money. Yes it does science. That same science can be done at a fraction of the cost with orbital packages that are not manned. The same can be said for going back to the moon.
Until we can lift large payloads to orbit cheaply this is a bad return on the cost of science.
A vision I never tire of seeing. Indeed, one of the great milestones of human scientific history.
Thanks for the update. SpaceX sends up rockets with such frequency that indeed it is hard to keep up. But I never miss one of their launches. Didn’t they recently accomplish three mission in the space of 2 days?
“That same science can be done at a fraction of the cost with orbital packages that are not manned. The same can be said for going back to the moon.”
Correct.
This is an artifact of government funded projects that require propaganda efforts to get public support for funding.
Private space companies can make moves that make economic sense.
Oh, and btw, this is a great web site that you will not like—but there is a lot to learn there:
https://www.aulis.com/investigation.htm
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.