How do you do a 4+ hour webcast this coming Wednesday for the Falcon 9/Crew Demo 2 mission? Practice! Lots of moving parts and pieces. Today gave us a chance to do it in parallel with crew rehearsal.
Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken plan to reveal a name for their Crew Dragon spaceship on the day they launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, reclaiming a tradition that dates back to the dawn of the Space Age.FULL STORY: spaceflightnow.com/2020/05/23/ast…
OCISLY headed out in support of Wed's #SpaceX DM-2 launch, towed by former lead tug Hawk, with Christine S pushing. Weather forecast is not looking good right now for Wed & even some clouds building in the background of this mornings departure of #OCISLY #NASA #SpaceXFleet
Arriving in Florida with a flyby of your dad’s spaceship on the launch pad... Priceless. #LaunchAmerica #CrewDragon
Riskiest part of #CrewDragon #Demo2 says @elonmusk, from upcoming interview @Aviationweek "The part that I would worry most about would be reentry, which won’t happen, hopefully, for a few months from now. 1/3
"With Dragon 1, we have a simple conic on the leeward side—essentially the back shell—of the spacecraft, so it’s really quite symmetrical, with no particular protuberances or anything. Whereas with Crew Dragon, because we have the escape thrusters side-mounted into the 2/3
the back shell that creates an asymmetry. If you rotate too much then you could potentially catch the plasma in the super Draco escape thruster pods and could potentially cause either control disturbance or potentially overheat things. We’ve looked at this six ways to 3/4
"Sunday, so it’s not that I think this will fail. It’s just that I worry a bit that it is asymmetric on the backshell & you could have a strange sort or roll coupling as you come in if you turn too much. I think this is low risk, but that’s what I would put as my biggest concern.
