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Saturday's SpaceX Launch on May 30th!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed May 27, 2020 4:56 pm    Post subject: Saturday's SpaceX Launch on May 30th! Reply with quote

________________________________

Join us this Saturday in All Sci-Fi's Chatzy Room at 3:00 PM for a historic event! Very Happy

The SpaceX vehicles will (hopefully) carry American astronauts up to the INS, the first time in eleven years that an American has been launched from U.S. soil!

We've been dependent on the Russians for years. Frankly . . . that sucks. Sad

This might be the resurrection of the manned U.S. space program and the salvation of this country's bold commitment to explore the final frontier.

You know — that thing called "space".

Anyway, the image below shows what the SpaceX vehicle looks like on the launch pad.

Wow . . . Shocked

If this isn't inspiring, then maybe All Sci-Fi isn't the right message board for you. If so, I'm sure you'll be missed . . . Sad




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Eadie
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PostPosted: Wed May 27, 2020 6:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Does anyone remember the DC-X and the DC-Y, Macdonald — Douglas' Delta Clipper from the mid 1990s?


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed May 27, 2020 7:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Yes, I do!

Gord Green, Phantom, and I will be in the All Sci-Fi's Chatzy Room Saturday for the launch. We hope you and other members will join us! Cool

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat May 30, 2020 12:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I'll open All Sci-Fi's Chatzy Room about 2:45 for the 3:22 launch if it's still progressing at that time.

Here's three new screen grabs I just made about T-Minus 20 minutes. Is this thing a gorgeous spacecraft or what? Cool








Meanwhile, watch it live here!

_________________________ Crew Demo-2


__________

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat May 30, 2020 3:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

This is the SpaceX mission control.






Compare it to Mission Control during the Apollo program, with that huge control room filled with older electronic consoles and a big (blurry) screen at the front of the room.





Take note of the way each person in the SpaceX control room has a keyboard, a mouse, and two displays — with every person in the room able to look around and see almost all the other folks, without having their view blocked by the kind of equipment which was used back in the 1960s! :shock

Folks, if this isn't a clear illustration of how our technology has progressed in the last 50 years, I don't know what is!

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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sat May 30, 2020 4:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh, I don't know Bud…..Those old chairs sure do look more comfy!
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Eadie
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PostPosted: Sat May 30, 2020 5:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I, sadly, missed it. All TV, cable & satellite transmissions of every program was disrupted by extremely severe lightning storms from about 8:15 AM PDT to 2:10 PM PDT. HughesNet (Computer satellite) was gone as well!
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trekriffic
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PostPosted: Sat May 30, 2020 6:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Out my way they messed up the broadcast and showed the rocket already a few thousand feet off the ground racing skyward while the announcer was still counting down from 20!

Doh!

Fortunately they realized their mistake and went back and showed the liftoff later.
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sat May 30, 2020 6:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

We watched it in the chat room and it was not just a fun experience, but a very exhilarating one!

I hope some of the other members of the ASF crew could join us in the future!

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat May 30, 2020 7:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Don't miss Dragon's arrival at the ISS tomorrow morning! Cool
________________________________

If all goes according to plan, the SpaceX capsule will dock with the ISS on Sunday at 10:29 a.m. EDT (1429 GMT) to the Harmony module's International Docking Adapter.

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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sun May 31, 2020 12:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/crew-dragon-astronauts-spacex-spaceship-011135225.html

The two NASA astronauts who rode SpaceX’s first crew-carrying Dragon capsule to orbit today named their spacecraft, continuing a tradition that goes back to the earliest days of America’s space effort.



“I know most of you, at SpaceX especially, know it as Capsule 206,” Hurley said over a space-to-ground video link a few hours after launch. “But I think all of us thought that maybe we could do a little bit better than that. So, without further ado, we would like to welcome you aboard capsule Endeavour.”

‘Light this candle !

A rocket ship built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company thundered away from Earth with two Americans on Saturday, ushering in a new era in commercial space travel and putting the United States back in the business of launching astronauts into orbit from home soil for the first time in nearly a decade.

NASA’s Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken rode skyward aboard a white-and-black, bullet-shaped Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off at 3:22 p.m. from the same launch pad used to send Apollo crews to the moon a half-century ago. Minutes later, they slipped safely into orbit.

“Let's light this candle,” Hurley said just before ignition, borrowing the historic words used by Alan Shepard on America's first human spaceflight, in 1961.
The two men are scheduled to arrive Sunday at the International Space Station, 250 miles above Earth, for a stay of up to four months, after which they will come home with a Right Stuff-style splashdown at sea, something the world hasn't witnessed since the 1970s.

The mission unfolded amid the gloom of the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 100,000 Americans, and racial unrest across the U.S. over the case of George Floyd, the handcuffed black man who died at the hands of Minneapolis police.

NASA officials and others expressed hope the flight would lift American spirits and show the world what the U.S. can do.

“We are back in the game. It’s very satisfying,” said Doug Marshburn, of Deltona, Florida, who shouted, “USA! USA!" as he watched the 260-foot rocket climb skyward.
SpaceX becomes the first private company to launch people into orbit, a feat achieved previously by only three governments: the U.S., Russia and China.

“This is something that should really get people right in the heart of anyone who has any spirit of exploration,” Musk, the visionary also behind the Tesla electric car company, said after liftoff, pounding his chest with his fist.

The flight also ended a nine-year launch drought for NASA. Ever since it retired the space shuttle in 2011, NASA has relied on Russian spaceships launched from Kazakhstan to take U.S. astronauts to and from the space station.

Over the past few years, NASA outsourced the job of designing and building its next generation of spaceships to SpaceX and Boeing, awarding them $7 billion in contracts in a public-private partnership aimed at driving down costs and spurring innovation. Boeing’s spaceship, the Starliner capsule, is not expected to fly astronauts until early 2021.

NASA plans to rely in part on commercial partners as it pursues it next goals: sending astronauts back to the moon within a few years, and on to Mars in the 2030s.

At a post-liftoff rally held at NASA's massive 525-foot-high Vehicle Assembly Building, President Donald Trump commended Musk and proclaimed:

“Today we once again proudly launch American astronauts on American rockets, the best in the world, from right here on American soil.”

He vowed the U.S. will be the first to land on Mars, promising a “future of American dominance in space.”
Vice President Mike Pence, who also witnessed the launch, said that as the nation deals with the coronavirus and racial strife, "I believe with all my heart that millions of Americans today will find the same inspiration and unity of purpose that we found in those days in the 1960s” during Apollo.

The first attempt to launch the rocket, on Wednesday, was called off with less than 17 minutes to go in the countdown because of lightning. On Saturday, stormy weather threatened another postponement for most of the day, but the skies began to clear just in the time.

The astronauts set out for the launch pad in a gull-wing Tesla SUV after Behnken pantomimed a hug of his 6-year-old son, Theo, and said: “Are you going to listen to Mommy and make her life easy?” Hurley blew kisses to his 10-year-old son and wife.

Nine minutes after liftoff, the rocket's first-stage booster landed, as designed, on a barge a few hundred miles off the Florida coast, to be reused on another flight.

“Thanks for the great ride to space,” Hurley told SpaceX ground control. The two crewmates batted around a floating blue dinosaur plush toy doubling as a dragon, demonstrating that they had reached zero gravity.
SpaceX controllers at Hawthorne, California, cheered and applauded wildly, and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine declared: "This is everything that America has to offer in its purest form.”

Attendance inside Kennedy Space Center was strictly limited because of the coronavirus, and the crowd amounted to only a few thousand. By NASA’s count, over 3 million viewers tuned in online.

Despite NASA’s insistence that the public stay safe by staying home, spectators flocked to beaches and roads, some of them not wearing masks or keeping 6 feet from others.

Among the spectators was Neil Wight, a machinist from Buffalo, New York.

“With everything that’s going on in this country right now, it’s important that we do things extraordinary in life,” he said. "We’ve been bombarded with doom and gloom for the last six, eight weeks, whatever it is, and this is awesome. It brings a lot of people together.”

Hurley, a 53-year-old retired Marine, and Behnken, 49, an Air Force colonel, are veterans of two space shuttle flights each.

Because of the coronavirus, the astronauts were kept in quasi-quarantine for more than two months. The SpaceX technicians who helped them get into their spacesuits wore masks and gloves that made them look like black-clad ninjas. And the SpaceX controllers had masks and were seated far apart.

In keeping with Musk’s penchant for futuristic flash, the astronauts wore angular white uniforms with black trim. Instead of the usual multitude of dials, knobs and switches, the Dragon capsule has three large touchscreens.
Once settled in orbit, Hurley disclosed that the capsule has been christened Endeavour, a storied name in the history of exploration.

Hurley said the name was chosen to recognize the “incredible endeavor” that SpaceX and NASA have taken on in the wake of the space shuttle fleet’s retirement in 2011.

He and his crewmate, Bob Behnken, also have a personal connection to the name. “We both had our first flights on shuttle Endeavour, and it just meant so much to us to carry on that name,” Hurley explained.

The space shuttle Endeavour, now on exhibit at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, isn’t the only precedent for the Crew Dragon’s new name: Apollo 15’s command module, which went to the moon in 1971, was named Endeavour as well. Apollo 15 commander David Scott said that name was chosen in honor of the HMS Endeavour, British explorer James Cook’s 18th-century research vessel.

There was another pet name revealed today. It’s traditional for spacefliers to bring a plush toy or trinket aboard their spacecraft to serve as a zero-G indicator when weightlessness kicks in during spaceflight. Behnken said that his son and Hurley’s son settled on a sequined plush dinosaur named Tremor to become the mission’s zero-G stowaway.

It’s no surprise that Tremor quickly sold out on Amazon: The same thing happened last year when a plush Planet Earth was tucked aboard a robotic Crew Dragon as a zero-G indicator for an uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station and back. Endeavour is due to dock with the space station on Sunday.

Here are a few other tidbits from the Crew Dragon’s launch day:

⦁ During a post-launch news briefing, Kathy Lueders, NASA’s program manager for commercial crew noted that Hurley and Behnken have been nicknamed the Dads. That “may have something to do with their age,” she said. “I can say that because they’re on orbit,” she added. “It’ll be a few months before they come back and kick me.”

⦁ SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was asked when his company’s ⦁ Starship super-rocket, which is currently under development, could be expected to make its first flight around the moon. Musk replied that he wants it to happen, but acknowledged that he tends to have trouble sticking to deadlines. “I would be surprised if it took more than four” years, he said. SpaceX is ⦁ receiving $135 million from NASA to support the first phase of Starship’s development as a potential lunar lander, to be used on NASA Artemis missions by as early as 2024.

⦁ Musk noted that SpaceX was founded 18 years ago to fly people into space, and said that goal has now been achieved. But he also said the company’s ultimate goal is to make humanity a multiplanet species by making it possible to establish a city on Mars. “We must make life interplanetary,” Musk said. “I call upon the public to support this goal, and to think about this goal. … We’ve got to get it done.”

After the SpaceX launch, Trump delivered remarks at NASA’s cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building with VIPs, launch team members and journalists in the audience.

“We were filled with the sense of pride and unity that brings us together as Americans,” Trump said. “That same spirit which powered our astronauts to the moon has also helped lift our country to ever-greater heights of justice and opportunity throughout our history.”

“The same spirit of American determination that sends our people into space will conquer this disease on Earth [that] should’ve never happened.” he said. “Nothing, not even gravity itself, can hold Americans down or keep America back.”

The president also referred to the unrest that has roiled many of the nation’s cities after police in Minneapolis killed a black resident named George Floyd during a streetside encounter.

Trump said “we will stand with the family of George Floyd, with the peaceful protesters and with every law-abiding citizen who wants decency, civility, safety and security.” But he also said “my administration will stop mob violence.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee to run against Trump in November, took issue with that view. In a statement, Biden noted that NASA’s commercial crew program was started up during the Obama administration.

“This mission represents the culmination of work begun years ago, and which President Obama and I fought hard to ensure would become a reality,” Biden said.

Today, Bridenstine noted that Rogozin sent out a statement that was “overwhelmingly congratulatory towards NASA and SpaceX.”

“The trampoline is working,” Musk quipped. “Inside joke.”

The joke is....Rogozin, the head of the Russian Space Agency said" The only way America will get back into space is if they can make a BIG trampoline!!"

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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sun May 31, 2020 12:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/spacex-crew-dragon-international-space-station-docking-youtube-live-webcast-2020-5-1029265729

Endeavour is supposed to latch on to the ISS at 10:39 a.m. ET. Most of the operation is automated, though Behnken and Hurley, being on a test flight, will try flying the vehicle themselves for a moment.

During the docking, the ship will stop about 400 meters below the space station, then slowly pull up to about 220 meters ahead of the forward Node 2 of the football field-size, $150 billion orbiting laboratory. The astronauts will then override the autopilot to try out some maneuvers. Assuming all goes well, the crew will hand control back to the ship's autopilot and let it inch forward toward the ISS.

Just before docking operations, as the astronauts donned their spacesuits — just in case the docking goes awry — mission control in Hawthorne reminded the astronauts to finish setting up the cabin for the operation.

"Friendly reminder to please unlatch the toilet button before you get back in your seat," a SpaceX ground controller said from the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

"Ok, we'll unlatch the toilet button," Hurley said.

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun May 31, 2020 1:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

During today's docking maneuver I heard the voice of the cap com operator who was communicating with the astronauts, and I was delighted by the fact that it was a pleasant female voice!

I did a bit of online research and quickly learned that it was Anna Melon, the wife of astronaut candidate Anil Melon.






I swear, when one of the guys in the capsule called down to mission control and asked if Anna was reading him, she replied in slow, seductive voice —

"I'm here . . . and I'm ready to receive . . . "

— I had a hot flash! Shocked

Geez, who knew a space program could be so sexy! Wink

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Mon Jun 01, 2020 12:07 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sun May 31, 2020 11:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

For some truly astounding videos from the journey to the ISS and a day in space...Check out this video from YouTube of the ENDEVOUR's roomy, truly futuristic interior as well as views from the spacecraft!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmOsmstAebg
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 01, 2020 11:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Yesterday I notice that a few moments after Douglas Hurley entered the ISS (the second guy with the lighter hair) he start dabbing his temple with his finger and glancing at it, as if he'd bumped his head floating through the hatch, and it was bleeding.

Oddly enough, when he first floated in, he went down below the camera for a moment and off to the right, then he came back into the frame and kept his right temple turned away from the camera while still touching his temple and glancing at this finger.

A few minutes later, during the interview with mission control, someone must have handed him a tissue, because I say him dab it against his temple as well.

Oddly enough, the great video which Gord posted has edited out all the shots of Doug touching his temple with either his finger or the tissue! Shocked

Another NASA cover up! "Astronaut Sustains Head Wound — Government Hides Images!"

Actually, I found an article about this on line called Doug Hurley head injury: Did the astronaut hit his head?

It includes this video.


_____________ Doug Hurley hits head on hatch


__________

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