The fact that there is no airlock is a bit of an issue. Have to depressurize the whole vehicle, and everyone needs to suit up.
It was alright for testing back in the early days of Gemini, but seems a bit inconvenient now.
Maybe they can attach an inflatable airlock. I’m not that familiar with the capsule design so not sure if that’s a possibility but even if they go down that route I’m sure they’ll all have to suit up regardless.
No, they aren’t planning to do that. Basically, it’s what k9bfrender said, they will have to depressurize the whole thing. And the space to get out is tight, so they won’t even be able to have a backpack on for environmental, they will use a tether sort of like the old Gemini missions.
I think this mission is more for PR than practicality, just to demonstrate that they can do it. I’m just wondering if they will use the current mission capsule suits or have a suit for EVA to test out. The current suits are, gain, really not suited for EVA. The gloves are part of the suit and there aren’t any joints for easier movement in a vacuum or anything like that.
It will be cool to see Starship fly with a human crew though, and especially if they do a back-to-back refueling mission. There is some speculation that an Apollo 8 type moon flyby mission might be in the cards at some point in the next few years too.
The Polaris website says there will be new suits:
That is cool then. There hasn’t been a new suit design for EVA that’s actually been tested for a long time (at least by the US…fairly sure the Chinese have newer suits and they have done some EVAs with them).
Scott Manley thinks it might be the first new spacesuit design (not counting iterations to existing designs or a one off for a high altitude parachute jump) this century.
Haven’t seen that video yet, but I’ll definitely keep an eye out for it. I love his channel. 
This feels like a good stepping stone toward self-contained suits, which they’ll need for EVAs without an umbilical, both in space and on the moon (these two will likely have to be different from each other, but have some common needs). They’ll have to solve some problems for Polaris, like wrist mobility and general comfort while pressurized, but it’s an easier problem than the full-blown case. SpaceX is building a spacesuit team from scratch and I think it’s a good development model to gradually increase the complexity of their products.
SLS/Orion more than 4 billion a launch.
That’s absolutely shocking but reading the article makes me think that some of these NASA projects are used as a way of routing funding through to certain states and industries rather than to explore space.
Not so much rocket science as plain old ‘pork barrel’ politics.
A couple of related things:
But on Wednesday the chief of Russia’s space program, Dmitry Rogozin, issued two demands before acceding to the launch. One, he said, OneWeb must guarantee that its satellites will not be used for military purposes. And two, the UK government must give up its ownership of OneWeb.
Not gonna happen, obviously. Unfortunately for OneWeb, their latest batch of satellites is already in Russia, and they prepaid for a bunch of launches. Not likely that they’re getting that money back.
I expect that SpaceX would be happy to launch these for a reasonable price. They have a solid manifest, but have also demonstrated an impressive cadence. So they may be able to squeeze a few more launches in.
Rogozin has also been effectively threatening to drop the ISS out of orbit:
If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an uncontrolled de-orbit and fall into the United States or Europe? There is also the option of dropping a 500-ton structure to India and China. Do you want to threaten them with such a prospect? The ISS does not fly over Russia, so all the risks are yours.
It’s true that currently, Russia is responsible for reboosting the ISS to keep it in orbit. However, the procedure is not difficult and others are capable of doing so with only minor development effort.
Musk has said they’d be able to do it–he links to a Twitter thread explaining the details here:
Maybe I don’t understand Twitter, but I see a picture of what the ISS would look like sans Russia, Elon says, “Good Thread” and a bunch of random replies to all that. How do I get to the thread with details about SpaceX boosting the ISS? I tried digging through @Space_Pete’s posts and I’m not sure which you’re referring to (there’s a bunch of posts). Thanks in advance.
ETA: this?
Sorry, there’s not much more than what @Space_Pete posted. It would require attaching a Dragon-compatible International Docking adapter to the spot where the Russian segment is currently attached. Dragon isn’t the optimal choice here due to the engine placement–it would suffer cosine losses due to the angle. But workable in a pinch, especially as SpaceX’s launch costs are so cheap.
The Cygnus craft actually does better here, but launches on a Ukranian rocket. That could probably be changed to a Falcon 9, though.
Anyway, this is just a Twitter thread, not a NASA design study. It’s just a sketch of some possibilities.
OK, cool, appreciate the reply. It’s a conundrum what happens to ISS if Russia pulls out (and if we eject their modules 
), nice to know we have options but I’m super interested in how that might work.
It’s really sad that it’s come to this. The US and USSR were able to collaborate in space even during the depths of the Cold War. This is what the Russians are doing today:
That’s the head of the Russian space program tweeting a video of workers applying stickers over the flags of every country that has denounced their invasion. On a rocket that isn’t even really theirs (it’s the OneWeb launch they’re now holding hostage). What pathetic children they are. While I’m certain their astronauts are professionals, I have no real confidence that we can collaborate with their leadership as time goes on.
Given the state of readiness of their “invasion force”, I’m not sure that we really want them to continue to be responsible for maintenance on the ISS anymore anyway.
Holding their customer’s payload hostage and not delivering on launches already paid for is likely to be an effective sales tactic for Roscosmos’ commercial launch services. I predict that once the current hostilities are over Mr. Rogozin will have to fend off eager customers with a stick. Who doesn’t enjoy the thrill of gambling tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on the whim of an increasingly paranoid authoritarian dictator?
Indeed. Though SpaceX already ate Russia’s lunch with regard to the commercial market, this doesn’t seem an effective way of holding onto what’s left.
And it doesn’t stop there:
As a reminder, Russia does make very good kerosene-oxygen rocket engines. Unmatched for that fuel type even today. Multiple US launch providers use them. However, SpaceX only used their own engines (which are not quite as efficient, but do have excellent thrust and are cheap to make). And aside from that, the world is moving on–largely to methane-oxygen. ULA is counting on methane engines from Blue Origin to power their next vehicle. The current Atlas V uses the Russian RD-180, but they have a small stockpile in the US and that will be all they ever buy (this was true even before the Ukraine stuff). Russia has tried to hold ULA hostage in terms of technical support, but ULA says they don’t need it.
Anyway, the Antares rocket still uses the Russian RD-181 engine, and Northrop Grumman does not have a stockpile of the engines sufficient for all planned launches. So they are screwed and Antares will probably not fly again (well, maybe they have an engine or two to spare–but not many in any case).
I can’t see anyone bothering with Russian engines again. It was looking uncertain even before Ukraine, because they don’t seem to have an updated version burning methane. SpaceX certainly doesn’t need them, and for all their problems, Blue Origin will probably eventually make decent engines. Maybe China will buy some…
That was true even before seeing the invasion. There were the mysterious holes drilled in their module, badly patched with epoxy, that they blamed on a “psychological crisis” by an American astronaut. And then more recently, the new Nauka module had a thruster glitch that rotated the entire station by 540 degrees.
They have some modules that the US doesn’t have immediate replacements for, and right at this moment they are responsible for the reboosting. But they are not irreplaceable.