NASA, SpaceX to Launch First Astronauts to Space Station from U.S. Since 2011

https://www.nasa.gov/specials/dm2/

It's scheduled for May 27th, 2020, though sometimes these things get postponed if the weather doesn't cooperate.

I think it's very important to have as many options as possible to send astronauts the the International Space Station.

I hope the launch goes off without a hitch, but I know that it's dangerous work.

I'm not a huge nationalist, however it will be great if the U.S. can do this sort of thing without having to heavily rely on other countries to get to space.

Looks like the launch has been postponed until Saturday, May 30 due to unfavorable weather.

This sort of thing happens all the time, so it's really no big deal.

Saturday at 3:33 pm EST for the next window, so fingers crossed and Godspeed!

Chris

Yep, being an astronaut is a very dangerous job, and I hope that they all will be safe.

The scientific advances made at the International Space Station help the rest of us on Earth in many ways, so I'm a big supporter of the space program.

Why did it look like thousands of dollars worth of space suit and 3 dollar local thrift store boots?

Also good job they aint sending them to the moon, as NASA stated they dont have the technology anymore.

Did someone leave the instructions on the train?

I think that your pic is of a new gen. ‘space suit’ and not the same thing as the other guys are wearing.

Chris

The new space suits were designed by a Hollywood film designer. Gloves are touchscreen sensitive.
The workers ’ men in black’ jumpsuits have big numbers on the back.
Transporters were gull winged Teslas.
Looks more like a movie set than a NASA space launch.

i wonder what flashlights they are using

This launch is a big deal. A really big deal. I can remember a time when our astronauts were famous. They would be bombarded with autograph seekers and people just wanting to meet a real astronaut. I remember when the space program was special. Teachers rolling in the AV cart to watch launches from Kennedy Space Center. School stopped, let me say that again, STOPPED, so everyone could watch what seemed like magic at that time. It was the thing that many young people wanted to be when they grew up. Not policemen, firemen, doctors or lawyers. Astronauts, they were posters on our walls and goals in our hearts.

Political nonsense cut NASA’s budget to the point of no longer being able to keep sending them up and bringing them back down. Sure a few programs were funded but, many many many were not. Well it is what it is and it’s nice to see them getting the spotlight again. They deserve it. Kids now days won’t have the same kind of awe that I had when I was young. They are always looking down at their phones and never looking up at the stars. They don’t know how special this is. Kennedy Space Center in Florida is hallowed ground my dear friends and, I have the feeling the young people now don’t even know that place exist. They need to, they are going to be the people running this country one day. It scares me to think about it sometimes.

I beg of you, if you have young children or grand children. Turn on NASA TV or go to NASA’s website and watch this launch as well as future launches. Teach them about this, they are our future. It would be a shame for the kids not to know just how special those launches are.

The launch happened earlier today!

I don't know if the astronauts have made it to the International Space Station yet, but this is very good news for the U.S., and the world.

With all the negative stuff in the news this week, this accomplishment has really made my day.

I think it’s tomorrow morning your time that they’re due to dock, iirc the journey time is around 19 hours. Looked like a good launch!

Hey the old Star Trek called—they want their space suits back.

Hey the pig farmer called—he wants his dollar store rubber muck boots back. Good catch on that one.

So a friend asked me if this was fiction? They are travelling at 17,000 mph and will dock with the Space Station at that speed.

That’s moving at 25,000 feet per second; a bullet from
a gun travels at 2,500 feet per second.

Space is hard

Seriously, that’s what the suits look like?

What?, did Tesla/Musk get in bed with Michelin for that whole Michelin Man look?

Ay-yi-yi…

That whole SpaceX team are American Heros today. :+1: :beer:

I watched the launch as it happened today and I didn’t see the 2 astronauts wearing anything that looked like that.
I was surprised at how the suit’s looked. They looked more slimmed down and comfortable.

I completely missed it. Thought it was gonna be later in the afternoon. :confounded:

Anyhoo, at least those suits aren’t the Robby The Robot look…

Just to clarify, the pictured hard suit has nothing to do with SpaceX and is instead an AX-5 experimental prototype from 1988. You can even see “AX-5” in the top-right of the image, as it was being tested at the Ames Space Center.

The real Tesla suits look like leftovers from a bad sci-fi film, imo, but with all of the SpaceX and NASA publicity campaigns it’s not hard to find photos like the one posted by Joshk. Google it.

Any suit that looks huge and cumbersome is an EVA suit, not a flight suit. The suits worn by Bob and Doug are rated for a vacuum for a short duration in some unforeseen emergency, but they could not be used for work outside the vehicle as they would literally fill up like a balloon and the astronauts couldn’t move their limbs even before they froze to death.

EVA suits are a fairly difficult problem as you need to pressurize and insulate the suit and make it highly robust while still allowing the astronaut to move around with ease for EVA’s that might last for many hours. Rigid shells can solve the strength and durability problem when combined with an air-tight inner liner, but tend to restrict movement. Joints are points of both failure for the inner layers and binding for the hard shell, however, so sliding joints as displayed on the AX-5 have been avoided in production U.S. suits to date.

With all of that said, not a single astronaut who spent the money and time to get 4 PhDs and 6 Master’s degrees and finally got a ticket to space and an EVA slot will care one iota whether their EVA suit looks silly or not; only the PR department and CR (Congressional Relations) folks at NASA will care.

The EVA suits actually used on the ISS are called Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMU’s) and are nearly 40 years old with some staying aboard the ISS for 6 years at a time because it’s so expensive to transport them back and forth. They have been upgraded over the years, but the existing suits were first used on the Space Shuttle. 2 EMUs were lost with Columbia, leaving NASA with 11 working suits last I heard. The ones used for training in the underwater neutral buoyancy tank are not full EMUs, but mock-ups not suitable for space.

So, when you see astronauts outside the ISS replacing batteries or repairing leaks, they are wearing the same suits first worn by astronauts in the 1980’s. Luckily, they’ve been cleaned every 6 years :wink: .

NASA got laughed at pretty badly when they first tried to have an all-female EVA crew for the first time in history only to realize that the EMUs aboard the ISS were too large for one of the astronauts. People saw this as obvious evidence of the sexism at NASA and while they indeed should have had the proper suits for the planned crew, it’s hard to swap sizes when you keep EMUs aboard the station for 6-year stints. The historic EVA waited for a couple of months until they could send up a smaller EMU on a cargo capsule.

Watched it with my wife and daughter, they were reluctant at first but when they saw the speeds they were traveling and the dinosaur they really got into it LOL.

It took a bedazzled brontosaurus floating around in zero gravity…but they loved it.