SpaceX launches Axiom’s fourth commercial manned mission to ISS
SpaceX last night successfully launched Axiom’s fourth commercial manned mission to ISS, dubbed Ax-4, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The first stage completed its second flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The Dragon capsule, the newest and fifth ship in SpaceX’s fleet of manned capsule, was dubbed “Grace,” as announced by Axiom mission commander and former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson. The three paying passengers are government astronauts from India, Hungary, and Poland.
The capsule will dock with ISS tomorrow (Thursday) at 7 am (Eastern), where it and its crew will spend about one to two weeks before returning to Earth.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
79 SpaceX
35 China
8 Rocket Lab
7 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 79 to 58.
The overall lack of excitement about this manned space mission speaks directly to how successful SpaceX has become as a private commercial rocket company. Its rockets and capsules work routinely well, with almost no problems, making these manned space missions seem as boring as an airline trip from New York to Washington.
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SpaceX last night successfully launched Axiom’s fourth commercial manned mission to ISS, dubbed Ax-4, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The first stage completed its second flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The Dragon capsule, the newest and fifth ship in SpaceX’s fleet of manned capsule, was dubbed “Grace,” as announced by Axiom mission commander and former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson. The three paying passengers are government astronauts from India, Hungary, and Poland.
The capsule will dock with ISS tomorrow (Thursday) at 7 am (Eastern), where it and its crew will spend about one to two weeks before returning to Earth.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
79 SpaceX
35 China
8 Rocket Lab
7 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 79 to 58.
The overall lack of excitement about this manned space mission speaks directly to how successful SpaceX has become as a private commercial rocket company. Its rockets and capsules work routinely well, with almost no problems, making these manned space missions seem as boring as an airline trip from New York to Washington.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID 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. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
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.
Well, I stayed up to watch. After Mission Commander Peggy Whitson gave her speech after the launch, the other three gave speeches in their own languages, so I can only assume that they were saying good things about their mission, too, rather than complain about the noise and vibration of launch or that they had itchy noses from the moment that they closed their visors for launch.
The excitement was that they had some difficulty uploading weather information to Dragon for the abort programs, and if they didn’t solve the problem before it was time to arm the abort system then they would have to scrub the launch before fueling began. The upload problem was solved and the upload completed just in time to save the launch. I swear, if it had been a movie, there would have been tense music and lots of camera shots of worried faces and desperate ground controllers. It was almost like solving problems at the last minute is routine. Maybe SpaceX needs to take lessons from Hollywood to make their launches more exciting and worth watching.
I’d like to watch the docking, but then I would have to get up at an ungodly hour. It is yet another event that seems uneventful, even when a Starliner is having massive thruster problems and may strand its astronauts in space forever. Again, no music, no tense faces, no desperate ground controllers finding a solution at the last minute (reset the thruster controller, similar to “SCE to Aux”).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSN4MIsP_90 (4 minutes)
99+% of the drama at SpaceX now comes from the Starship side of the company. Falcon 9 has long since settled into metronomic near perfection. But we should not disparage dull and boring as an accomplishment in space launch. It’s definitely an accomplishment.
Has Musk or Shotwell sent anyone from Falcon to the Starship side of thing
One of the individuals I used to quarrel with over at NSF was Jim (Byeman/Charlie Murphy)–James Knauf judging from a rosy article about the Delta II upon its last days at The Space Review.
He is one of the most unpleasant, short-tempered individuals with usually curt responses and an acid tongue.
I *love* him for that.
When I called Delta II a crutch it set his teeth on edge. Once there was a typo (a decimal point shoved far, far over), I joked that if Hillary had her way, she’d spend a half trillion buying 10,000 weather sats all atop Delta IIs.
His response?
“What’s wrong with that?
At TSR, he said there is still room for expendables–where Mr. Eagleson said only missile weapons were where that was true.
He reminds me of the Star Trek TNG’s Jellico. And he really needs a few million to go to Boca.
Now Richard M talked about how ULA guys laughed at early SpaceX when they were at the dirt pile.
I don’t think Jim even knows how to smile.
Sending an Old Spacer like him to Boca might ruin the magical mojo that allowed the early SpaceX to go from dirt to orbit.
SuperHeavy seems alright for the most part.
I just don’t get the deal with Starship.
This has to be a cultural thing–I cannot think of anything else it could be.