The astronauts have already boarded their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and are preparing for a launch on Saturday afternoon at 3:22 ET. So far, everything is going well, with preparations underway to begin fueling the rocket, with weather looking good for a successful launch. The Falcon-9 rocket, also from SpaceX, has a significant safety record with 85 successful launches, though there was also one launch in which an engine failed and a Falcon-9 was completely destroyed on the launchpad in 2016.
This will be the first time that American astronauts have flown on an American rocket since the end of the Space Shuttle program nine years ago, and the success of this mission is critical to NASA’s plans for sending crews to the International Space Station, and for other opportunities in Earth orbit.
Meanwhile, across the Gulf of Mexico, SpaceX suffered a spectacular loss on Friday evening, one that’s been widely seen and all too easily confused with what’s happening on Saturday afternoon at Kennedy.
While the Falcon-9 has become a reliable workhorse for carrying satellites into orbit and taking cargo to the International Space Station, SpaceX has pinned it’s future to a radically different vehicle. That vehicle, known by various names, but most recently as “Starship,” is a huge, completely reusuable vessel that would allow SpaceX to take passengers to the Moon and even Mars.
But Starship isn’t just a larger rocket, it involves wholly new technologies, like a never-before-used type of methane-based rocket engine, and a structure that discards high tech alloys and carbon fiber for stainless steel. For months, SpaceX has been engaged in building a series of test vehicles, starting with a fire-plug shapped “Star Hopper” and working through a series of Starship prototypes as it attempts to learn how to weld the steel in ways that can stand up to the necessary pressures, temperatures, and flight stress. And, again and again, these test vehicles have exploded, imploded, or plain old collapsed.
That’s the case with “SN4,” the latest prototype which was rolled out to the test pad at Boca Chica, Texas two weeks ago and which has since been going through a series of pressurization tests and short firings of one of SpaceX’s new “raptor” engines. There seems little doubt that SpaceX was hustling on SN/4, possibly in hopes of making a short “hop” flight in advance of the crewed launch on Saturday. But after a short engine test on Friday afternoon, there was a methane leak and … well …
Yeah. That happened. It’s definitely not the image that SpaceX wanted spreading across the nation in advance of Saturday’s launch, but it should be understood that the technology and approach on the Falcon-9 is much more traditional, much better tested, and much more safe than the devices being tested in Texas.
And now … let’s go watch a launch.
Saturday, May 30, 2020 · 6:42:34 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
They’re preparing to load the propellants. One of the big differences between the Falcon-9 and other rockets is that it uses super-cooled propellants to make a gain on volume and energy. That requires that the rocket be fueled after the astronauts are on-board, which generated serious concerns about safety in the early stages as SpaceX attempted to get NASA to make it part of the Commercial Crew program.
In advance of fueling, the abort system has been armed. If something happens, the astronauts can actually blast free of the Falcon-9 at this point.