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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.