SpaceX is launching civilians into the Van Allen belt as part of the first commercial spacewalk.
It seems daring, and may break a few records. Will it do more? Is this anything?
Try to damp down your enthusiasm!
My prediction is that one will come back stretchy, one will get covered with rocks, one will be able to catch on fire, and one will turn invisible.
As long as they don’t come back super intelligent.
(Swivels around in chair. Adopts Eton accent.)
“No, we won’t be telling them that.”
I hope it doesn’t cause advertising mascots to come to life.
It’s not particularly daring compared to, say, Apollo. But that was 50 years ago, and NASA hasn’t done anything comparable since.
This is a purely commercial venture (though it depends on a capsule developed partly with NASA funds). And indeed it’s a significant step for commercial spaceflight even if it’s not particularly daring with respect to the whole history of spaceflight.
Are we on the cusp of a golden age of commercial spaceflight, with space hotels and lunar colonies and all that? Impossible to say. So maybe the current mission is a blip or maybe it’s one in a long chain of developments until we get there.
This mission is almost entirely driven by Jared Isaacman, in any case. SpaceX is providing the services and is deeply involved, but Isaacman is the one footing the bill and he’s been (and will continue to be) on all the flights. There’s a bit of billionaire joyride to be sure, but they’re doing real science and it’s helping to develop SpaceX’s EVA suits. They’re a significant step beyond the previous flight suits, though it will take much more development for lunar/Mars suits.
Of course there is always video footage.
https://www.cnn.com/shorts/events-mw-cnn-shorts?iid=vertical-video_entry
And more lauding.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/15/spacex-polaris-dawn-mission-spacewalk/
The violin piece was pretty damn cool:
Some cool video of the splashdown:
I timestamped it to the parachute deployment but the rest is fairly interesting as well.
The recovery ops are quite beautiful with the lights. Though the glowing bunny ear hats are amusing. I’m gonna guess that’s in case someone is lost in the dark. It’s a finely-tuned operation, in any case.