The first all-European commercial crew is on its way to the International Space Station after an early evening SpaceX launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Unlike a NASA mission, this one is paid for by Axiom Space, a Houston-based company flying its third group of paying passengers to the I.S.S. It contracts with SpaceX to get to and from the orbital laboratory. Axiom plans to build its own space station in orbit one day and it’s using these missions to help in its planning and designs.
An attempt to launch the mission Wednesday was called off several hours before its scheduled flight. SpaceX and Axiom said they needed additional time “to complete pre-launch checkouts and data analysis, including the parachute system energy modulator.” The next day SpaceX said, “all systems are looking good for today’s launch” without elaborating further.
The capsule will take the next 36 hours racing to catch up to the I.S.S. as it circles about 250 miles above Earth. After docking, the crew will spend two weeks on the orbital laboratory performing about 30 experiments, including “microgravity research, technology demonstrations, and outreach engagements,” according to Axiom.
This mission, called Ax-3, is flying a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft named Freedom. The capsule has flown in space twice previously and gone to the International Space Station each time (Crew-4 in 2022 and Ax-2 in 2023). Freedom has spent a total of 179 days in space.
The Ax-3 crew is led by Axiom chief astronaut Michael López-Alegría (A dual U.S.-Spanish citizen and former NASA astronaut and ISS commander). He’ll serve as the Ax-3 commander and is joined by three paying passengers: Pilot Walter Villadei of the Italian Air Force, and mission specialists Alper Gezeravcı of Turkey and Marcus Wandt of Sweden and the European Space Agency.
Comment: I didn’t even know about this launch until I heard it announced on the car radio today. What’s far more disheartening is that I didn’t hear it mentioned on the national evening news broadcasts. Granted SpaceX launches are getting pretty common, but this a first. A completely commercial mission from rocket to capsule to the all European crew. And it’s a successful good news story. This is a far cry from the early days of the space race and the first manned Moon landing, although the luster wore off towards the end of the Apollo missions, too.
TTG
Much bitter hatred for Musk in the IT community. I read Hacker News and anything Musk they line up with pitch forks on articles about him. Strange because they love EVs. Very spooky love hate relationship. I didn’t even know this was possible on the left of loving what they once hated but also loving what they once loved while still hating it. Very very strange indeed and downright frightening if you really think about it. They can love and hate people someone at the same time meaning they could hold back some during a bolshevik revolution but maybe not so much.
Babeltuap,
What’s so hard to understand? They like what he’s doing for rockets and space exploration, like what he did for the EV industry, but hate what he’s doing to twitter and his fascination with all things fascist.
exactly. billionaire tech-bros (& big time industrialists) can be kinda like creative artists… best to distinguish & analyze works from personalities.
Musk is irredeemable at this point… we’re just watching how far he’ll be able to coast on the fumes. the visionary tech dude buys twitter when it’s already gone about as far as it can? seriously? he’s regressing to irrelevance. given the nature of ginormous (if heavily leveraged) wealth there is in being hyper-wealthy these days, I’d say pretty far… but to no constructive end.
the visionary
TTG,
Which fascist things are those?
Fred,
His written statement (on X) that conspiracy theories claiming Jewish people want to bring in minorities to weaken and replace White majorities is “the actual truth.” He also promotes neo-nazi and fascist content while simultaneously throttling “woke” content on X. That’s not exactly promoting free speech as he claims to be doing.
Cheaper, but ignoring future problems?
https://spacenews.com/access-space-line-us-eating-seed-corn/
“An unforeseen consequence of this success is that
the Space Force, the Air Force, and NASA
have deprioritized rocket research and development efforts
that would foster continued independent space access.
Some programmatic officers would suggest
there is no need for the government to continue to pursue rocket science. SpaceX is doing the required R&D,
so why spend money on anything other than what’s needed for deep space?”
For me, an old guy,
the gold standard for corporate responsibility was the pre-breakup AT&T.
Divided into three parts:
The regional Bell companies, which actually operated the network.
Western Electric, which built the components of the network, right here in America.
Bell Labs, which had a wise and forward-looking view towards the future.
Resulting in things like Unix, the C programming language, the transistor, lasers, 10 Nobel prizes, and so on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs
What broke up that AT&T? See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._AT%26T
For the results, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
This is a complex issue, just a few of my thoughts.
Probably no one right answer.
The article quoted initially has some good points, and is worth reading.
“One more battleship wouldn’t have helped at Pearl Harbor;
10 more bombers wouldn’t have helped at Clark Field.
WWII was won instead by the investment in infrastructure, industrial base, and the R&D that produced the proximity fuse, electronic computers, and the nuclear bomb.”
Keith,
“Tim Kyger is a former Congressional staffer and Pat Bahn is CEO of TGV Rockets, a small advanced propulsion company.”
They are both trying to sell you something. They are wrong about “industrial base” investment as it wasn’t government that did that it was the private sector that created all that before the great depression, which got extended a couple of years by FDRs policies. (Many of which were unconstitutional).