Quote from: Jim on 02/03/2015 01:53 pmNASA really has no say. These are commercial space craft and it is the companies callThe companies will name the vehicles. NASA will designate them PCM-1, PCM-2 etc
NASA really has no say. These are commercial space craft and it is the companies call
We shall see if the SpaceX publicity machine (their CTO) will overwhelmed the NASA alpha-numeric designation.
When you have worked on MSL since 2003, it already has a personality and it is not nameless. MSL is just short for Emessel. Renaming spacecraft exasperates those who worked on the spacecraft.
I'm curious, did/do the people at Grumman take a similar stance about their beloved LM-5? Or do the guys that worked at North American still refer to CSM-107?
Even the engineering documentation for the Shuttle orbiters never referred to their names, they were OV-102, 103, 104, 105 and 099. And they were called by those designations.
This -- with the exception of Columbus (for some reason), nobody at JSC outside of PAO uses the fancy hardware names. Instead of Unity, Harmony, Tranquility, Destiny, Kibo, Quest, Zarya, Zvezda, Pirs, Poisk, Rassvet, Leonardo, Canadarm 2, and Nauka, they say Node 1, Node 2, Node 3, US Lab, JEM, Airlock, FGB, Service Module, DC1, MRM2, MRM1, SSRMS, and MLM.
What I'm talking about is, when the first crewed CST-100 or Dragon flies, they are not going to refer to themselves over the radio by the spacecraft's designated engineering model number. Neither are they likely to identify themselves as the official mission designation, a la STS-27 or AS-503.
Quote from: the_other_Doug on 02/17/2015 01:44 amWhat I'm talking about is, when the first crewed CST-100 or Dragon flies, they are not going to refer to themselves over the radio by the spacecraft's designated engineering model number. Neither are they likely to identify themselves as the official mission designation, a la STS-27 or AS-503.AS-503 call sign was Apollo 8 which is no different than STS-27.
Yep -- they sure could go with that. Nice, short, two-syllable callsign, easy to understand over even poor radio reception. But that doesn't answer what Boeing would want to do for the CST-100 flights.
Yep -- they sure could go with that. Nice, short, two-syllable callsign, easy to understand over even poor radio reception. But that doesn't answer what Boeing would want to do for the CST-100 flights.Also -- I wonder just how much say NASA will have (or at least will want to have) in this. As I understand it, the commercial crew flights to ISS will be controlled through the FCR at JSC, and as such NASA is the organization responsible for radio communications with the spacecraft. Does this automatically give NASA (and specifically, NASA PAO) any say in the matter? Or, if Elon decides to name his Dragons the same way he's naming the ASDS barges, will NASA PAO fight hard to keep him from naming one of them Funny, It Worked the Last Time... ?