Heading back to California for a few days. I’ll be dropping the car at PBI, taking a shuttle to the West Palm Tri-Rail station, and then a couple-hour train ride to MIA for a flight back to LA this evening. So open thread, and play nicely.
[Friday-morning update]
Trip went fairly smoothly, other than tight connection between train and MIA that resulted in my having to check my carry on. But I scored a window seat, with empty center, and beautiful woman from Marina Del Rey in the aisle seat, so flight was quite pleasant. Unfortunately, I have to go back on Tuesday.
Rand,
A couple of days ago I saw in my newsfeed a story about the crew Dragon, and there were some renders in there showing the nose cone popping up and what looked like an APAS for station docking, and that got me wondering, why not use CBM? Are there issues with it beyond “the capsule may have to dock at an APAS port?”
The CBM requires crew on-board station to both berth and unberth. One of the requirements for both Dragon and Starliner is to act as a lifeboat, so they use the new standard docking adaptor, which is derived from APAS.
Also note that SpaceX’s award under CRS2 (the second phase of Commercial Resupply Services) is for a cargo version of their Dragon 2, which like the crew version, will also dock. This means that larger cargo items which can only pass through the CBM will have to fly on a Cygnus or a Dream Chaser. (I’m not sure how many, if any, such items have flown on a Dragon 1 to date.)
(I thought CRS2 flights were supposed to begin in 2019, but the current pace suggests CRS SpX-20 won’t fly until near the end of 2019, suggesting CRS2 SpX-21 in 2020.)
So that is another good reason to have two International Docking Adapters installed. Recall that IDA-1 was lost with CRS SpX-7 in June 2015 and IDA-2 was successfully delivered by CRS SpX-9 in July 2016. IDA-3 was scheduled to be carried on CRS SpX-16 in November, but with delays in the Commercial Crew program, they have prioritized science payloads and shifted the IDA to a later flight. When asked recently, Kirk Shireman said he wasn’t sure, but though it would fly on CRS SpX-18 (~ May 2019).
I have heard conflicting answers to how important it is to have IDA-3 installed prior to crewed test flights. Only one IDA is required, but if for some reason it failed, the backup could be used to save aborting the mission.