Jared Isaacman’s private spacewalk manned mission launches on Falcon 9
Early this morning SpaceX successfully launched its Resilience Dragon capsule carrying four passengers on Jared Isaacman’s mission to do the first entirely private spacewalk. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Resilience is flying its third flight. The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The spacewalk will take place on September 12, 2024. In between the crew will spend the next two days preparing for that, while flying in an orbit with a apogee of 870 miles, the highest any person has flown from Earth since Apollo. That orbit will be lowered slightly for the spacewalk itself.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
89 SpaceX
38 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 104 to 57, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 89 to 72.
Readers!
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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.
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Early this morning SpaceX successfully launched its Resilience Dragon capsule carrying four passengers on Jared Isaacman’s mission to do the first entirely private spacewalk. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Resilience is flying its third flight. The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The spacewalk will take place on September 12, 2024. In between the crew will spend the next two days preparing for that, while flying in an orbit with a apogee of 870 miles, the highest any person has flown from Earth since Apollo. That orbit will be lowered slightly for the spacewalk itself.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
89 SpaceX
38 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 104 to 57, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 89 to 72.
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.
Congratulations to all involved!!!
Tried to stay up for it. Weather delay finally forced me to bed. It seemed that the streaming of the broad cast was very rough and kept dropping out, almost always when they were going to show you or tell you something interesting. Going to watch the rebroadcast which I hope is complete.
Glad to see John Insprucker back as a commentator. The younger gals and guys are great, but I just like John and his focus on the comparative technical of historic space (Apollo, Shuttle, others) to SpaceX space.
Nice launch.
It is past the time to have a private space station.
I presume it was launched from Florida. Is Vandenberg rated for human launches as yet?
Michael McNeil: Yes, the launch was from Kennedy. I should have included that detail and have now added it.
I am sure SpaceX is well prepared to safely launch humans from Vandenberg. I am also fairly sure the FAA will object and demand new and very pointless paperwork before giving the okay.
Listened to the rebroadcast on X. It was still choppy
Michael McNeil:
To expand on Robert’s comment…
SpaceX currently has two “crew-capable” launch pads in active service: LC-39A at KSC, and a couple miles south, SLC-40 at CCSFS. SLC-40 just had its infrastructure for crew completed this summer, and NASA has just certified it this month for crew launch. The main improvement is the launch tower and crew access arm, though there are other things, like Draco and SuperDraco fueling… Anyhow, this gives SpaceX some redundancy now for crew launch which it did not have before, and that enables more schedule flexibility. Which SpaceX suddenly needs this month, because right now LC-39A is being reconfigured for the Europa Clipper launch on Oct. 10, and so that means that the Crew-9 launch is gonna need to make use of this brand new capability at SLC-40 for its Sept. 24 launch.
SpaceX has two pads at Vandenberg: SCL-4 and SLC-6. SLC 4 has been in operation for Falcon 9 launches for several years now; it does not have an access tower or Dragon processing facilities at present . . . SLC-6 was previously leased by ULA for Delta IV Heavy launches, and when it launched the last one in 2023, ULA chose not to renew the lease, and SpaceX picked it up. It is now being rebuilt for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, and is supposed to be ready sometime in the latter part of 2025. I’ve not heard anything about building in a crew launch capability. I suppose it would really depend on whether there was any market for it.
If there was a do-or-die-emergency, possibly they could improvise something at Vandy, but I don’t know how easy or quick that would be to do.
The view from sub-orbital flights isn’t that great…even ISS gives you more of a feeling that you are aboard some steampunk airship.
But the trunk separation video was high enough that the limb of the Earth matched the curve of the planets TOS Enterprise visited….it really looked like space.