Why NASA’s launch with Space-X is such a big deal for America
This was the first launch in a decade from the American Soil
On May 30th, two astronauts, Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken left for the International Space Station(ISS) onboard the SpaceX’s Falcon-9 rocket.
This was the first-ever manned space mission on a commercial rocket.
SpaceX flavor to the launch
The astronauts were seated in a completely modern Crew Dragon capsule, which is a further rendition of the Cargo Dragon capsule. This capsule has all the modern control systems including the touch screen controls and auto-docking. This enables the spacecraft to dock with the international space station using advanced cameras and sensors without any human intervention.
SpaceX also developed an ultra modern launch suits for the Crew Dragon astronauts. The new launch suits are called the Space Suits and designed by the famous costume designer Jose Fernandez. His works have featured in various DC and Marvel comic adaptations.
The suits are designed to get the look right first — and then reverse-engineered the design to meet the utilitarian demands of protecting space-bound astronauts.
As per the New York Times article, the spacesuit design was primarily focused on to make astronauts look good. According to Jose Fernandez, Elon Musk kept on reiterating one thing:
Anyone looks better in a tuxedo, no matter what size or shape they are.
He wanted the astronauts wearing the space suit to look better than anything they were before, just like after wearing a tuxedo. The space suit combines many high tech materials and technology incorporated to serve the astronauts. The suit is not bulky as it is not meant for the space walk, but it looks better than all the previous iterations of space suits.
The suit has touch screen friendly gloves, and inculcates bendable technology offering a greater range of unrestricted motion.
This is by far one of the most advanced space suits ever.
Even the astronauts are very happy with the suit performance and rated them the best in service.
However many of you might be thinking, why this launch was such a big deal.
United States have been launching humans into the space since a very long time and have a great track record.
There were two major reasons behind this:
- It was first manned mission from the US soil in almost a decade.
- The Mission was hosted and managed by a private company.
NASA Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle was the beginning of an era of reusable rockets. The Space Transport System(STS) was the official program name for the Space Shuttle. The STS commissioned five space shuttles and successfully launched 135 missions in its lifetime from 1981–2011.
The program retired in 2011. The last time NASA launched humans into space, using an American rocket was using the Atlantis Space Shuttle on July 8th in 2011.
Following the retirement of Space Shuttle, Americans had no other spacecraft to launch humans into the orbit. NASA has relied on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft for movement to and from the International Space Station.
The Russians charged NASA approximately $90 million per seat on their Soyuz rocket. This amount is too big for a spaceflight mission and has been increasing over the past years.
NASA wanted to abolish the reliance on the Russian Spacecraft and hence commissioned some private companies to develop space capsules intended for manned space missions.
NASA Commercial Crew Program
The Commercial Crew Program is NASA’s solution to finding a suitable partner for future space missions.
This time around NASA is not building their rockets, instead they have assigned contracts to other companies to develop the rockets and launch them for NASA. Until now, NASA was in charge to develop the launch vehicle as well as manufacture it, now transferring the onus onto the commercial companies.
The companies will develop both the rocket and the capsule for the space flight, and NASA will pay them to carry the astronauts into space. This is like the deal with the Russians, but this time around the companies are American. This way the Commercial Crew Program supports American business and brings space flight back to American soil. The current American Government loves this.
There was a huge applause and appreciation from the American leaders, when NASA advisor Jim Bridenstine announced this in his speech at the program launch event
We are going to launch American Astronauts in American Rockets from the American Soil.
NASA is a partial investor in the development of these capsules for the spaceflight. Once successfully launched the developer companies can use the capsules to launch subsequent missions.
NASA selected two private companies to design and manufacture space capsules for the trips to ISS. The reason behind multiple contracts is to decrease the delay in launches. If one developer faces some hurdles, others continue to develop their capsule. In the past, the space missions have faced years of delays due to nominal errors. This strategy paid off, with the Boeing Starliner still in development, Crew Dragon launched two astronauts to the International Space Station.
The mission to launch astronauts to the space encountered many challenges before the final launch. The mission faced years of delays due to hurdles in the development of the space capsule.
NASA awarded contracts to both SpaceX and Boeing to bring up their capsules. Both the companies faced hurdles and lost their demo capsules at least once.
The safety of the astronauts was of the utmost importance, hence the testing phase took longer than expected. The Crew Dragon capsule underwent harsh testing, even exploded a few months ago. This way the capsule was error-free for its maiden spaceflight.
NASA is planning to develop its moon lander using the same Commercial approach. This way, NASA can focus completely on the research, and let the private companies do hardware development for them.
This could be the pathway to all future NASA missions and unleash the new age of Space Travel.
Space Travel
The successful launch of Crew Dragon means a lot for the private space travel.
The Astronauts have described the vehicle to be phenomenal and if the development continues at such scale the commercial flight experiences will be much more like a plane ride with much higher G’s and a lot of adrenaline rush.
