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Comment by jccooper | Hacker News Reader

Dragon has capability for a Hubble servicing mission. It would need more development than a Shuttle visit, but it's not a huge hurdle since the last visit installed a soft-capture mechanism. (It'd probably cost less than an equivalent Shuttle mission, just due to Shuttle's high launch costs.) SpaceX even prepared a proposal in a Space Act Agreement but NASA declined it recently. Sierra Nevada also has looked at doing it with Dream Chaser.

Sure, Hubble's way past its design lifetime, and it can probably limp along for another decade as is, and maybe something besides gyros will fail soon. But also there's no equivalent capability successor that's more than a study, and even if they manage to build HWO or something like it, it won't be operation for at least 20 years. A Hubble servicing mission would be a relatively cheap way to get a decade or two more time on a high-capability instrument.

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The Nancy Grace Roman telescope is a replacement in most respects, though it doesn't have the deep UV capabilities (HST could go down to 115 nm, Roman goes down to 480 nm). Not sure why UV isn't as important to newer telescopes, but if it was as critical to have high-spatial-resolution UV measurements, they'd probably have flown one in addition to Webb and Roman.

Servicing Hubble require EVA. Does Dragon has an airlock?

Old-school space-walks involved depressurising the capsule. Soyuz, Gemini.

Some of the Apollo missions had an EVA during the return transit to recover cameras on the exterior of the Command Module (CM).

Those spacewalks occurred on Apollo 15 (see: <https://www.space.com/20565-al-worden-apollo-15-astronaut.ht...>) and Apollo 9, which didn't land on the Moon (see: <https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_9/>).

According to this Stackexchange post, the entire CM was depressurised: <https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/38239/how-did-apol...>

During lunar landings, EVAs also required full depressurisation of the Lunar Module. Repressurisation took about two minutes:

<https://www.nasa.gov/history/alsj/alsj-ECSQuickRef.html>

Okay, can Dragon be depressurized and then repressurized back? Somehow I think it will require a lot of additions to its construction, and also alternative hatch instead of docking module (was already done with transparent dome for Inspiration4 mission.

SpaceX have announced an EVA suit, so they do apparently have plans to support such missions.

This article states that the entire capsule would be depressurised and repressurised, as there's no integrated airlock. It also specifically mentions the prospect of servicing Hubble (though with no details).

<https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/spacex-unveils-eva-spa...> (May 6, 2024)

That strikes me as both the most basic approach and a capability which would be useful for other reasons as well. Another option might be to carry along an airlock, perhaps stowed in Dragon's trunk, and mounted during flight, though that itself might require an initial (full-capsule-depressurisation) EVA.

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