Here’s Elon Musk’s Vision for the First Manned SpaceX Flight

[Buster's Uncle]

Here’s Elon Musk’s Vision for the First Manned SpaceX Flight
Fortune
Kirsten Korosec  September 8, 2017



Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is sharing a little more about a spacesuit his company SpaceX has developed. In a photo posted Friday on Instagram, Musk shows off the SpaceX spacesuit next to Crew Dragon, the next-generation spacecraft designed to carry astronauts into space.

Crew Dragon will be a fully autonomous spacecraft that can also be monitored and controlled by on-board astronauts and SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, Calif., according to the company.

SpaceX received a $2.6 billion contract from NASA to build spacecraft to carry astronauts to the International Space Station. also received a contract. Launch plans are scheduled for 2018. SpaceX is developing the Dragon 2 spacecraft and Boeing is building the CST-100 Starliner.

SpaceX is planning a demonstration mission in February 2018, followed by test in the following June that will have two crew members aboard, according to NASA.



Instagram Photo


Last month, Musk posted the first photo of the spacesuit on Instagram, noting that it wasn’t a “mockup,” but a tested version that “actually works.” At the time, Musk promised “more in the days to follow.”

SpaceX has focused its efforts on unmanned spaceflights and reusable rocket technology. However, Musk’s intent for the company was to reduce the cost of space travel, which includes sending humans--not just launching satellites and delivering cargo--to the International Space Station.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-vision-first-manned-225631011.html

[Geo]

Makes me wonder when we'll first see the core of a 'corporate' space station being launched.

[Buster's Uncle]

Dunno - I s'pose that would be a sign that the human race had quit playing at Space, and gone for it, though.

[Geo]

Well, not the human race particularly. Only some elements of the enterprizing part of it.

[Buster's Uncle]

It's never going to come to much until somebody's actually making money and people actually live up there...

[Green1]

It's never going to come to much until somebody's actually making money and people actually live up there...

You mean making money other than through fundraisers aimed at rich neckbeards or thinly veiled "pre-purchase" deals that are actually fundraisers that serve to do nothing but pay a few directors and never touch any actual space flight equipment?

Or government subsidies like COTS like Elon gets that are moot the day they ever decide to decommission the ISS - THE ONLY destination in space currently? That is, unless you are talking 10 minute suborbital joy rides or trips around the moon or Mars reality TV show that is largely vaporware?

I am glad at least some folks are doing something. But, there are no destinations.

All I see when we talk human spaceflight are overpriced "vacations" for multi billionaires where you have to train 6 months not to screw things up and cannot even drink a beer up there, hard as hell to get government astronaut employment that takes half a lifetime and 50 Phds and a squeaky clean record, and outright -IMO- ripoff fundraisers who have about as much chance of getting into orbit as I have if I get on the roof of my house and start flapping my arms singing "Major Tom" while imbibing certain herbs and spices and hitting orbit.

I hope one day to be proven wrong.

[Buster's Uncle]

It's an inimical environment for us, so there has to be money to pay the overhead and make it worth moving to the worst possible sort of company store to live...

Joy rides for gadzillionaires is just part of the process; the rich, as I once read a fictional character somewhere saying, serve as beta-testers for the rest of us while the bugs get shaken out and the mass production tools up and brings the price down to something reasonable - eventually.  They're funding the ongoing R&D.