The first commercial astronaut mission to orbit Earth aboard Dragon | Hacker News Reader

The first commercial astronaut mission to orbit Earth aboard Dragon

spacex.com

223 pointsedward87 comments

Back when I worked on cargo dragon, there were definitely some coworkers crazy enough to ride C1 up for a few orbits if it were allowed. They would have been fine with just a couple seatbelt straps too...

> crazy enough

It's probably less risky than the first flight of the 1903 Wright Flyer. (The Flyer was highly unstable and could barely be controlled.) Modern notions of risk have changed quite a bit in the last century.

I dunno, I'd say it's rational for someone to be weary of joyriding in the first flight of a space capsule only designed to fly for three orbits.

It's pretty common to define risk as probability multiplied by severity.

The wright flyer flew about 30mph 8ft off the ground. Death would certainly have been possible, but unlikely. I could imagine someone walking away from a crash. Moderate probability of crash, moderate severity injury. Moderate risk.

C1 was the first flight of an early prototype (over a year before it was ready to fly a mission longer than 3 orbits). It was launched on a rocket with maybe half a dozen flights? Rocket fails: death. Payload separation fails: death. Pressure vessel fails: death. Propulsion system fails: death. Heat shield fails: death. Parachute fails: death. Moderate probability of failure, very high severity of injury. High risk.

> unlikely

The pilots laid prone and head first. An auger in meant they'd go head first into the ground. I don't think there was a harness or anything to prevent that.

The Wrights were actually terrified of a nosedive into the ground, which is why they put the stabilizer out front. This made it much more responsive to pitch commands. Ironically, this was also the source of the pitch instability, making an abrupt nosedive more likely.

Curtis started out making airplanes by copying the Wright designs, including putting a stabilizer in a fixed position in front. Amateurs would buy his airplanes and race them. One racer crashed into a fence and damaged the forward stabilizer. In a hurry to rejoin the race, he simply sawed it off and took off. He found the airplane flew faster and better without it.

He transmitted this to Curtis after the race, who promptly pulled the stabilizer off all his airplanes that were in production.

And thus, the forward stabilizer disappeared.

Honestly some straps inside the already pressurized capsule + some CO2 filtering and Crew Dragon 1 is probably much less risky than most of the early human space flights. We forget how many astronauts and cosmonauts died in the early days (especially if you include pilots of high altitude test flights which tested many concepts later used in the space programs). There were many additional close calls on either side, averted only by skilled test pilots, ground controllers, and luck.

Cargo Dragon 1 didn't have a Launch Escape System but was otherwise pretty safe. CRS-7 is an exception, and even then if the flight software had been written to deploy parachutes, probably survivable. CRS-2 had issues with thrusters but not life-threatening ones. Gemini and the Shuttle programs also didn't have LES - Gemini had simple ejector seats and the Shuttle had...nothing after the first test missions removed the ejector seats.

I'd argue Crew Dragon was safer than the first few Shuttle launches as well - the first flights had a 1 in 9 chance of failure. Landing the Shuttle wasn't difficult but had to be successful - other options were trying to ditch in the ocean or using ejection seats on the earliest flights. Some abort options were almost certainly hopeless. STS-1 had massive issues which could have lead to a safety problem. Losing only 2 flights in the STS program is somewhat of a miracle. Falcon 9 now has a higher reliability estimate than STS - 0.99 vs. 0.97 [0] Earlier on in the Falcon 9 program the point estimate was lower - but so too would have been STS's, especially right after Challenger.

[0] http://spacelaunchreport.com/log2020.html See ACTIVE LAUNCH VEHICLE RELIABILITY STATISTICS and RETIRED LAUNCH VEHICLE RELIABILITY STATISTICS

For sure. Cargo dragon on falcon 9 is a solid combo compared to the space shuttle. I wouldn't say that C1 was low risk (for a human to joyride in), though. Probably less risky than the first shuttle launch, but that's a pretty low bar based on how the shuttle was developed. C1 was designed, validated and launched for the purpose of flying a few orbits with a wheel of cheese in it. It was an early test flight long before cargo dragon was complete.

Likewise, crew dragon's first manned flight was likely way lower risk than probably any shuttle mission. It largely benefited from all the learnings from cargo dragon and a lot of practical testing though.

The difference would be public fallout in case of a death. That would be really crazy, not the risk for the person involved.

In 1903, there was no radio, no TV, people would not learn about someone killed in his own contraption or boarding a risky prototype. Maximally as a short notice on sixth page of a newspaper. There was also no competing industry.

In 2021, the outrage of seeing somebody killed on video because a new ship failed would be enough to stop the program for years. Musk detractors who hate his entire style and persona would feel instantly vindicated - "see, this abominable billionare finally killed somebody, as we prophecied since 2002!". THe competition (ULA) would do its utmost to bury SpaceX under tons of papers and years of investigation, because their cheap flights are eating into Boeing et al. sacred territory.

And I think that would happen even if that person on board was not just volunteer, but an illegal stowaway.

> see, this abominable billionare finally killed somebody, as we prophecied since 2002!"

Technically, Tesla's irresponsible so-called "autopilot" has already killed a handful of people, but generally the public has not been upset about it.

[Accounting here (not all were killed by autopilot): https://www.tesladeaths.com/]

This is true, but we are much more desensitized against carnage on the roads.

There is a fantastic line in Neil Gaiman's American Gods:

“There were car gods there: a powerful, serious-faced contingent, with blood on their black gloves and on their chrome teeth: recipients of human sacrifice on a scale undreamed-of since the Aztecs.”

NASA pegs the risk of loss of crew for the Dragon at 1 in 276 (https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-spacex-crew-dragon-loss... the demonstrated risk on the Shuttle over the lifetime of the program ended up being 1 in 68 (2 in 135 launches).

For comparison, the risk on a commercial airline flight is less than one in a million.

When I was in the military we would use the term "no move before xx:xx", to make it clear how much time people had for preparing kit, cooking up, down time, etc.

The first three man spaceflight - Voskhod 1 [0] in 1964 - was actually in a capsule designed for a crew of two. They didn't wear spacesuits so as to create room and make the additional weight more manageable. The third crewman - Georgy Katys - was actually an engineer rather than a cosmonaut, and was offered a seat for propaganda purposes. Allegedly his presence on the flight was a trade to buy his silence regarding the actual safety of the mission - he really wanted to get into space.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voskhod_1

I like how they say "no earlier than the forth quarter" in their announcement. Though it may not inspire confidence in a deliverable date, I might start trying to use the turn of phrase at my work.

haha, also, refuse to use any time increment smaller than quarters. "I need to go use the restroom, but I'll be back this quarter."

The Hacker's Dictionary says (by way of recommending The Soul of a New Machine by Tracey Kidder)

> This book (a 1982 Pulitzer Prize winner) documents the adventure of the design of a new Data General computer, the MV-8000 Eagle. It is an amazingly well-done portrait of the hacker mindset -- although largely the hardware hacker -- done by a complete outsider. It is a bit thin in spots, but with enough technical information to be entertaining to the serious hacker while providing non-technical people a view of what day-to-day life can be like -- the fun, the excitement, the disasters. During one period, when the microcode and logic were glitching at the nanosecond level, one of the overworked engineers departed the company, leaving behind a note on his terminal as his letter of resignation: "I am going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."

It's a common way of describing deadlines in the aerospace industry, since a lot can go wrong with large complex engineering projects in the physical world. It's usually abbreviated to NET.

This is perfect timing. I've just been told to communicate a significant project delay to a customer. 'Next quarter' sounds a lot better than 'months, not weeks'. Thanks heaps.

"slippage" possibly sounds better than "delay" also.

Due to unforeseen events impacting developer velocity, we experienced some slippage while burning down feature development on the critical path. Needless to say this will be reflected in our Sprint planning going forward and we’ve already added an Epic to track the remaining work needed to unblock the remaining tasks.

"shifted to the right" was the preferred euphemism when I used to work

In my work, that means a glue bond failed in fabrication. I like the direction you're going though. Thanks

it may not inspire confidence in a deliverable date.

Maybe not, but it has other qualities. The prashing does seem to convey that if your boss really think about it, Q4 is very early. He's lucky that it isn't Q3 of the following year. Try it. Report back.

"The Inspiration4 crew will receive commercial astronaut training by SpaceX on the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft, orbital mechanics, operating in microgravity, zero gravity, and other forms of stress testing. They will go through emergency preparedness training, spacesuit and spacecraft ingress and egress exercises, as well as partial and full mission simulations"

I would give my

looks at limbs, then looks around

... PS5 ...

to be one of the chosen astronauts.

So you'd pay ~$500? I suspect you'd be outbid.

I wonder how expensive they'd have to make the training (just the training, not the actual trip to space) to break even on that, and whether that would be a viable commercial side project.

I would give my...Stadia...to be one!

From https://www.prizeo.com/campaigns/inspiration4/inspiration4/o... :

TO ENTER WITHOUT DONATING: To enter the Sweepstakes for free without donating to the Sponsor's campaign, visit the Sweepstakes Website and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the simple online entry form ("Form"). All fields must be completed. Incomplete entries are void. Each valid submission of the Form earns 100 entries. You may complete and submit the Form as many times as you wish, subject to the overall limit of 10,000 entries per person regardless of method of entry.

https://www.prizeo.com/campaigns/inspiration4/inspiration4/d...

(edited)

One subtlety is that you apparently get ten sweepstakes "entries" per dollar you donate, whereas I believe the free-of-charge entry method you linked to only gets you one entry. So your chances of winning would start out at 1% of those of a $10 donor.

Here in this thread we saw someone donate $1,000, so that person already has 10,000× the chance of winning of each person who uses the free sweepstakes entry method. :-)

Sorry, didn't include the whole text but you can get 10,000 entries for free too:

Oh, interesting! Well, that definitely makes free entrants a lot more competitive than they would otherwise be.

I don’t feel publicizing this part is beneficial. Especially on this site, where many people have both disposable income and scripting abilities.

That's weird. Does entering without donation option is required for tax reasons or something?

It's so that it's not classified as gambling.

Had never heard of Jared Isaacman or Shift4 Payments, but what a remarkable story and epic marketing campaign. Also goes to show that you can create a successful business in spaces that seem crowded or dominated by a few big players.

Really dig that he's bringing awareness to St. Jude and taking such a bold journey!

Non-US residents are out of luck for this one, unfortunately.

Otherwise, great initiative!

Also: "Participation in the Spaceflight is limited to individuals under six feet and six inches (6’6") in natural height and under two hundred fifty (250) pounds in natural body weight."

https://www.prizeo.com/campaigns/inspiration4/inspiration4/o...

Finally! My shortness is an advantage for once.

In the sweepstakes it says the Approximate Retail Value ("ARV") is $2.21 Million. That is one expensive ticket!

Should be closer to $50million I'm thinking

That's what NASA pays per seat to ferry astronauts to the ISS.

well if that isn't the fastest $50 i've ever donated...what a great idea :)

It is a great idea and supporting a good cause! However, does it sound like you have to open a store with them to be eligible?

No, that's one of several options to earn entries. You can just donate to St. Jude.

Where do you see that? The rules https://www.inspiration4.com/rules Say:

Rules Shift4Shop Inspiration4 Contest Official Rules Shift4Shop Inspiration4 Contest ("Contest") starts on February 1, 2021 at 4:00PM Eastern Time (“ET”) and ends on February 28, 2021 at 11:59 PM ET ("Contest Period").

ELIGIBILITY: The Sponsor of this Contest is Inspiration4, LLC (“Sponsor”) a wholly owned subsidiary of Shift4 Payments, LLC (“Shift4”). Contest is open to businesses who are legally domiciled in the United States that are current Shift4 e-commerce hosting and merchant acquiring customers of Shift4 or that are eligible to become customers of Shift4 (“Merchant”). If the Merchant is not a current customer of Shift4, in order to be eligible such Merchant must sign-up for Shift4 e-commerce hosting and merchant acquiring services prior to entry and maintain its status as a customer through the end of the Contest. Sponsor and Shift4 reserve the right to allow certain prospective customers to be eligible for the Contest if the prospective customer makes a substantial effort to complete the sign-up process for Shift4 e-commerce hosting and merchant acquiring during the Contest Period; provided, however, that Sponsor shall notify such prospective customer in writing of their eligibility and prospective customer meets all other requirements of entry as set forth herein. The individual who enters on behalf of the Merchant must be a designated representative employed by the Merchant who is also a U.S. Person as defined under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) 22 C.F.R § 120.15, and 18 years of age or older and will take the space flight if Merchant is determined to be the winner (“Designated Representative”). Designated Representative must be physically and psychologically fit for training and spaceflight, and must meet the requirements to be admitted into related government facilities. Note: Merchants with a main source of revenue that is the sale of marijuana, online pharmacies, or any otherproducts or services which in Sponsor’s reasonable discretion be viewed in a negative light are not eligible. Void where prohibited by law. Contest is subject to all applicable federal, state and local laws. By participating, each Designated Representative, on behalf of the Merchant, agrees to abide by these Official Rules and agrees that Article VII of the Merchant Processing Agreement Terms and Conditions apply to any dispute between Merchant and Sponsor relating to Merchant’s participation in the Contest, available at www.shift4.com/terms. Article VII REQUIRES ALL DISPUTES TO BE RESOLVED IN BINDING INDIVIDUAL ARBITRATION—NOT IN A CLASS ACTION, AND NOT IN COURT BEFORE A JUDGE OR JURY.

HOW TO ENTER: During the Contest Period, to enter:

Utilize the e-commerce tools at Shift4Shop to build your business website, offer products and services for online purchase, and go-live with your store so that third parties can purchase goods and services on the website (unless otherwise provided an exception by Sponsor);

Create a video of no more than 140 seconds that tells us your inspirational entrepreneurial story and why your business should be elevated to the stars (“Video”), then post the Video on Twitter including the URL to your Shift4Shop online store and tag #inspiration4contest (“Entry”). Entry should include no individuals other than Merchant’s Designated Representative and Merchant’s employees. Video cannot include music. If another individual records the Video for you or is recognizable in the Video, you must obtain his/her permission to submit the Video and grant the rights set forth herein.

Complete the entry form sent to the email address used to sign-up for your Shift4Shop account to verify your entry, including a link to the video posted on Twitter.

Keep reading the rest of the (very) long document that you linked, it describes two additional ways to enter.

Multiple contests, the St. Jude one is https://www.prizeo.com/campaigns/inspiration4/inspiration4/o...

I wonder how this would all work though. Surely not everyone who joins the raffle has the sort of good health/natural athleticism as a typical astronaut.

You can look at the rules: you can be disqualified for not meeting medical standards or not passing the training. Certain forms and times of disqualification seem to come with monetary compensation, but others not.

Super cool that this is all-civilian, and I love the charitable aspect of it. it's not just some vain rich guy and his buddies, kudos to them

Not very 'inspirational' to exclude 95% of the World's population from entering.

I can't see that it's based on ITAR requirements.

Maybe just eases the paperwork.

It would be some next-level-up trolling to send up some Americans with Taiwanese and Hong Kong ancestry, although NASA already has form in this regard with Taylor Wang (ROC-born) and I note Iranian-born American Anousheh Ansari self-funded her way up too.

They should just send up Tom Hanks, some volunteers, and a lot of cameras.

Never in my life have I donated $1k so fast

It's a sweepstakes??

Thank you Elon, Very Cool!

How much??

I wish we had the green house gas quotas to smoother the rich people that do this for no benefit.

Hate to be that guy but what's the environmental impact of flying folks to orbit "just for kicks" if this were to become a business

Per capita, a lot. In absolute terms, effectively zero.

Do you know roughly how many "car-hours" this flight would be in terms of green house emissions?

Not car-hours, but a Falcon 9 launch apparently has similar impact to a 777 crossing the Atlantic. Not nothing, but surprisingly little all things considered.

https://www.treehugger.com/spacex-launch-puts-out-much-co-fl...

Yea that is surprisingly low, if accurate.

I mean, they're both 200 foot long tubes full of fuel that gets used up by the end of the flight. Only so much carbon you can fit into a set volume.

Agreed, though without considering it as such if someone asked me to compare to an airliner I would have placed it between 10-100x the emissions, and would not have been surprised at more!

Remember 3/4 of the rocket is just the oxygen for combustion!

Difference being the per person emissions. 4 people, vs upwards for 250. But still not nearly as bad as I thought it might be.

per capita, sure. Another way to think about it is this capsule is flying what, twice a year? One 777 will do 2 trips in 24 hrs, 365 days a year. Then add up the thousands of planes doing that a day. I'd be worried if we ALL had a reason (and the means) to take frivolous space flights. Which may come some day out of all this, who knows anymore!?!

About 8.4 car seconds of fuel.

Data: Us burns about 390,000,000 gallons of gas per day.

SpaceX Falcon9 uses about 38,000 gallons of RP-1.

390000000/86400 = 4513 (gallons per second of fuel in the US).

38,000/4500 = 8.4 seconds.

On the day this launches, it will represent about 0.0097% of the fuel used for that day in the US.

There are about 280 cars in this photo: https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/ibimg/hgm/450x253-1/100/226/parking-...

If you printed out this image 40 times, you could delete ONE car from this image for one day. That's the difference that this launch will make.

This caused me to look up largest parking lots. You can fit approximately that many cars in the parking lots at Disney in Florida on any given day (11k+ spots). Though I don't know how full they actually get.

Depends a lot on the fuel used. Solid boosters are terrible. Kerosene, like on the Falcon not too bad, but not great. Methane is better, it can in theory be made carbon neutral. Hydrogen is the best because it only produces water, but it’s not great as a first stage.

> Methane is better, it can in theory be made carbon neutral.

Methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than the amount of CO2 you get when you burn it. Most sources/uses of it are a net positive in terms of greenhouse effect.

Becoming space faring could allow us to have a trillion humans and have the planet be effectively a nature preserve. So long term net positive environmental impact I expect.

There's no need for a specific number of humans larger than what's necessary to continue the species indefinitely. We can easily become sustainable on Earth as we were for thousands of years with or without space colonization.

There's no need for a specific number of humans larger than what's necessary to continue the species indefinitely.

"continuation of the species" is an arbitrary, and arguably pointless, goal though. I think we should be aiming higher than that. If exploring the universe is a possibility then a trillion people might well be necessary - the universe is a big space. Heck, we'll probably need a trillion times that number.

A trillion would need a decent amount of automation that has not yet been invented, and that same automation would make quintillions possible even just in this solar system.

Here's some back of the envelope calculations.

The Raptor engine uses a propellant mixture (methalox = liquid methane + liquid oxygen) that is slightly fuel rich. In other words, the reaction resultants are not just CO2 and H2O, but CH4 as well. Since CH4 is a very potent greenhouse gas (the EPA says it's 25 times more potent than CO2), this makes a difference.

Anyway, here's the numbers: the mass of the propellant is about 500 tons, and the mass of the equivalent CO2 emissions is about 650 tons per flight.

For comparison, the humankind puts about 30 billion tons of CO2 in the air every year. A Boeing 777 flight puts about 500 tons on a long haul trip.

The Falcon 9 is equipped with Merlin engines which burn Kerosene fuel.

Can someone help me understand why I was down voted. Is there anything wrong about thinking of the impact of something like this becoming a commonplace luxury.

Most likely because we're not anywhere remotely close to this becoming a commonplace luxury, and the impact of this happening twice a year is essentially zero.

Also on an tangent, advances in launch industry = moving industries to space. This could reduce pollution drastically on Earth. So the net carbon footprint of the launch industry could even become negative.

Starting with

> Hate to be that guy but

will give some readers immediate negative connotations (i.e. that you are in fact 'that guy'). Asking the question without the 'that guy' preamble might still be seen as an off-topic downer but may have raised fewer hackles amongst the downvoters.

Perhaps.

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