Isaacman’s Polaris Dawn mission to launch July 31, 2024
Jared Isaacman
According to a short notice on the Polaris Dawn webpage, Jared Isaacman’s manned orbital mission where he will do the first spacewalk by a private citizen is now targeting a launch date of July 31, 2024.
The four-person mission is planned to spend five days in orbit in SpaceX’s Resilience Dragon capsule, during which it will fly to as high as 870 miles, the highest orbit flown since Gemini 11 in 1966, and the farthest any human has flown from Earth since the Apollo lunar missions. That orbit will make possible some new radiation research:
[T]his is high enough to penetrate the inner band of the radioactive Van Allen Belts that encircle the Earth. This isn’t good for the crew consisting of Mission Commander Jared Isaacman, Mission Pilot Scott Poteet, Mission Specialist Sarah Gillis, and Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Anna Menon, but their initial orbit will be highly elliptical with a lower altitude of 120 miles (190 km), so their exposure will be minimal.
The purpose of this radiological game of chicken is to conduct 38 science experiments to study the effects of spaceflight and space radiation on human health. When these are completed, the altitude for the remainder of the five days in orbit will be reduced to 430 miles (700 km).
Isaacman will then attempt his spacewalk, opening a hatch on Resilience that replaced its docking port. While Isaacman will be the only one to exit the capsule, all four crew members will be in comparable spacesuits, since the capsule has no airlock and thus its entire atmosphere will escape during these activities.
If this mission is successful, I expect Isaacman will renew his push at NASA for making the goal of his next Polaris mission to replace the gyros on the Hubble Space Telescope. At the moment agency officials have expressed skepticism and seem uninterested. That might change however.
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Jared Isaacman
According to a short notice on the Polaris Dawn webpage, Jared Isaacman’s manned orbital mission where he will do the first spacewalk by a private citizen is now targeting a launch date of July 31, 2024.
The four-person mission is planned to spend five days in orbit in SpaceX’s Resilience Dragon capsule, during which it will fly to as high as 870 miles, the highest orbit flown since Gemini 11 in 1966, and the farthest any human has flown from Earth since the Apollo lunar missions. That orbit will make possible some new radiation research:
[T]his is high enough to penetrate the inner band of the radioactive Van Allen Belts that encircle the Earth. This isn’t good for the crew consisting of Mission Commander Jared Isaacman, Mission Pilot Scott Poteet, Mission Specialist Sarah Gillis, and Mission Specialist and Medical Officer Anna Menon, but their initial orbit will be highly elliptical with a lower altitude of 120 miles (190 km), so their exposure will be minimal.
The purpose of this radiological game of chicken is to conduct 38 science experiments to study the effects of spaceflight and space radiation on human health. When these are completed, the altitude for the remainder of the five days in orbit will be reduced to 430 miles (700 km).
Isaacman will then attempt his spacewalk, opening a hatch on Resilience that replaced its docking port. While Isaacman will be the only one to exit the capsule, all four crew members will be in comparable spacesuits, since the capsule has no airlock and thus its entire atmosphere will escape during these activities.
If this mission is successful, I expect Isaacman will renew his push at NASA for making the goal of his next Polaris mission to replace the gyros on the Hubble Space Telescope. At the moment agency officials have expressed skepticism and seem uninterested. That might change however.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
I’v often wondered why spacecraft don’t use a vacuum pump to save the air in a spacecraft and/or airlock in an accumulator. Sure, there’s a mass penalty, but if there are a lot of EVAs, it might be worth it. Small diaphragm pumps are both light and quite efficient these days.
Michicaunuck
I found a few references to a scavenger pump that gets it down to about 3% of the normal pressure. The rest is vented to equalize the pressure before opening the hatch.
However, I cannot find any technical references that back that up. It is a good question. In addition, a good question is the Polaris Dragon capsule also modified with such a scavenger pump.
In an interview on the Ellie in Space YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCd6hvmEJ2U Isaacman indicated that both he and Sarah Gillis will participate in the space walk. (Around 11:10 in the video) Sarah Gillis works for SpaceX and was the trainer for the Inspiration4 mission that Isaacman previously led.
Another informative video on the Everyday Astronaut YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWJA_zH5Nvg confirmed (around 27:40) that although all are essentially participating due to the planned removal of all pressure from the spacecraft, there are two doing the actual spacewalk. Isaacman will exit and return followed by Gillis doing the same.
Will he have any way of orienting himself once free of the capsule? Ed White on Gemini 4 carried a small compressed gas wand that allowed him to control his attitude. With nothing to push against, Isaacman is just going to be tumbling until he reaches the end of his umbilical, and even then trying to orient himself will be near impossible, and all he’ll be able to do is pull himself back in (or Gillis will reel him in). Unless they’ve installed outside handholds and/or footholds on the Dragon, it’s just going to be an exercise in floating around out there. I suppose the goal at that point will be to fully prove out the suit’s protection against the harsh space environment.
Hubble needs those new gyros
and Hubble has been successfully fixed before.
NASA seems inadequate for this task,
but Elon’s friend Isaacman is creative,
aggressive and rich enough to carry this forward.
Rather exciting.
The story of man in space is starting to pickup again.
Tim,
Thank you for those two links. I will watch more of Ellie in Space.
Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, is one of my two current sources. He isn’t an engineer, but he turned that into a huge advantage, because he must research his topics very thoroughly, making his explanatory videos some of the best. His interviews and tours with Elon Musk are so wonderful because he is already intimately familiar with the concepts of spaceflight and rocketry (from all that research) so that he asks good extemporaneous questions.