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Commercialization

The Crew Dragon Has Arrived

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 3, 2019
Filed under , ,
The Crew Dragon Has Arrived

SpaceX Crew Dragon Arrives At The International Space Station
“International Space Station’s Harmony module forward port via “soft capture” at 5:51 a.m. EST while the station was traveling more than 250 miles over the Pacific Ocean, just north of New Zealand.”
Space Station Crew Opens Hatch to Crew Dragon After Docking
“Aboard the space station, NASA astronaut Anne McClain, David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency, and Russian cosmonaut and Expedition 58 commander Oleg Kononenko opened the hatch between the Crew Dragon and the orbital laboratory at 8:07 a.m. EST.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

10 responses to “The Crew Dragon Has Arrived”

  1. Michael Spencer says:
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    I have a sort of anti-climatic sense about this. We all knew it was coming: there was endless bitching about the Commercial Crew from beginning (where SX received less money per flight than Boeing, for instance, among others), to the many schedule slips; to additional costs and time, it was theorized, resulting from NASA’s fear of failure; and there has been endless pontification about which historical thread could properly claim, or blame, the CCP; on, and on, and on.

    Here we are, and the silence is deafening.

    For my own part, I can’t help but think of the 8 years that were to some extent mis-handled, mis-spent, and mis-placed, and just plain missed.

    So here we are. Finally. Ripley’s at ISS. And still, not a single claim of victory. Is this a case of Crash Test Dummy prejudice? No.

    In what was an obvious race, and with the presence of a clear winner – and a winner arriving first, not with refurbs, but with a brand new rocket, brand new engines, dramatic improvements to operating protocols, all in the same 8 years.

    In the face of so many ‘unknown unknowns’, American enterprise has achieved a stunning victory. And nobody wants to claim victory?

    • Chris Owen says:
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      I imagine (or hope) that when people are in it, the story will be different. Personally I found it to be a very exciting launch as there was a lot hanging on it.

    • james w barnard says:
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      The performance of the Dragon-2 in docking automatically with the ISS is truly cause for applause. But, like the story about the man who jumped off the 20 story building…where people heard him say as he passed each floor, “So far, so good…so far, so good…”, lets wait until undocking, reentry and landing five days from now! A successful landing and recovery will certainly be cause for jubilation! Of course, the next thing will be the Max-Q abort test, using this same spacecraft. Then, when the first NASA astronauts are safely launched to the ISS, SpaceX will have produced something nearly miraculous…not only in terms of engineering, but also in surmounting the bureaucratic obstacles that have been thrown in their way.
      All praise to SpaceX and Elon Musk, in particular, and best wishes for continued success in the future!
      Ad LEO! AD LUNA! Ad Ares! AD ASTRA!

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        James: I remembered your comments this morning when I came across a piece in The Space Review:

        In any event, the space launch business is overdue for a disruptive technology, perhaps long overdue. Railways superseded canals after 60 years, electric locomotives superseded steam ones after 50 years, and jet turbines were powering aircraft 40 years after the propeller-driven ones took to the air. We are now entering the biggest disruptive occurrence of our lifetimes: the replacement of the internal combustion engine by battery-driven electric motors (efficiency up from about 25 to more than 90 percent.) Seventy-odd years after the V-2, there may be a comparable surprise awaiting a vice president responsible for space launch operations. For the sake of the future of the industry, let us hope so.

        So, just as we finally reach a truly important milestone -or, pinnacle, perhaps – it’s time to move on. Maybe.

        The author fails to mention exactly what this disruptive tech might be. Mr. Musk’s little Texas project could be seen, by some, as more of the same, and it is in many ways; but it will prove to be the disruptive change we’ve needed.

    • Christopher Larkins says:
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      Because the special interests are still out there.

    • space1999 says:
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      I was surprised it didn’t get more coverage… but it’s been a pretty busy news cycle. I guess it’s about par for the course though… Chang’e 4 coverage has all but vanished, and there wasn’t that much coverage of the SpaceIL lander which will be the first commercial sector landing on the moon if all goes well.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        The coverage of SpaceIL should pick up when it lands and there are pictures to share. That is why Chang’e 4 disappeared so fast, no pictures to share.

        • fcrary says:
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          No sooner said than done.

          https://phys.org/news/2019-

          But Chang’e 4 is also sending plenty of pictures. They just aren’t terribly new or dramatic. NASA Mars rovers also have dry spells in press coverage. That’s just what geography is like. Even on Earth, a place like the Black Hills is something to write home about, but you can go a long way north or south of them, and the reaction to daily images would be “isn’t that the same one I saw yesterday?”

  2. fcrary says:
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    With Ms. Ripley onboard, is ISS now a suitable receiving laboratory for astrobiological sample returns?

  3. space1999 says:
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    Indeed… when I saw that crew dragon image I immediately thought of 2001. The pod image, and also the scene where the PanAm shuttle approaches the station came to mind. If there’s a video, someone should set it to music by the Strauss family…