4 thoughts on “Another SpaceX Update”

  1. Yeah, the lack of glitches and drama seems to be driving the usual suspects a bit barmy. Andy Pasztor, of course, contributed his usual, “Well, okay, so far those SpaceX basement bombers haven’t smashed their toy rocket into the ISS, but just you wait ’til tomorrow when they have to get real close” article; I paraphrase in the interest of brevity. No one among the questioners in the press conference clip Clark put up seemed in quite the same mouth-foaming-and-snapping-at-sticks state of high dudgeon as Andy P., but it was still noteworthy how many of the questions seemed to be variants of “Isn’t it true you got indecently lucky today? Please describe all the ways you could screw the pooch tomorrow.”

    1. I didn’t see that as poking, more just looking for some way to make tomorrow’s articles a little more interesting for the readers.

      The only thing that made me raise an eyebrow was how the NASA administrator described the ISS crew as a consumable resource, which is a term and affliction that American management really needs to leave behind. “The crew gets tired” works just fine and everybody understands it.

  2. I wonder how well the astronauts on the ISS are trained to control the Dragon? Or how easy the controls are? It would be a real shame if human error outside of SpaceX control was introduced. Will they be able to get close enough to zero relative velocity for the arm to work?

    Indecent luck comes from indecent preparation. You make your own luck.

    Yay to all the employees that worked so hard at SpaceX.

    I also thought. What if the astronauts have so much fun playing with the capsule that they use up too much fuel for the later splashdown?… I’m like that.

  3. Found this glitch…

    The timeline was disrupted temporarily when one of three monitors in the station’s Cupola observation deck faltered. The monitors are used by Pettit and his colleagues to follow Dragon’s status with external cameras and operate the robot arm. The system responded to a reboot, and there is a backup Canadarm2 control post in the station’s U.S. lab.

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