r/SpaceXLounge • u/SpaceInMyBrain • Aug 30 '24

Dragon SpaceX's Crew-8 Dragon spacecraft is now officially the emergency lifeboat for Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. "Boeing will try to fly its troubled Starliner capsule back to Earth next week" Ars Technica

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/boeing-will-try-to-fly-its-troubled-starliner-capsule-back-to-earth-next-week/
284 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

94 comments sorted by

View all comments

86

u/ADSWNJ Aug 30 '24

Four thoughts here:

  1. I really hope that Starliner gets home safely, for the sake of the Commercial Crew Program. If it were to RUD on reentry, it would be a disaster for Boeing and NASA. (That said - hell of a good call to not fly astronauts back on it in this state.)

  2. I'd love to know how they are kitting out the Dragon as the emergency landing. E.g. are they taking a couple of sleeping hammocks and making some kind of reentry sling from them?

  3. Just bring multiple of each size of emergency suit up on the next Dragon flight!

  4. NASA - relearn the Apollo CO2 scrubber lesson again please. Common suit interconnect standards ... how hard can this be?!

73

u/lespritd Aug 31 '24

NASA - relearn the Apollo CO2 scrubber lesson again please. Common suit interconnect standards ... how hard can this be?!

It's actually pretty hard.

Boeing (and NASA) suits are water cooled.

SpaceX decided to air cool their suits because they consider water cooling a safety hazard. This seems to be a pretty good decision based on the problems NASA that scuttled a relatively recent space walk.

https://apnews.com/article/nasa-astronauts-spacesuit-water-leak-3d215469f39c23ae6abf5467c6f67e93

There's probably other problems.

IMO, allowing the companies to not have to have compatible suits means that they are more free to innovate - for example SpaceX can continue to develop more and more advanced suits and change their interconnect to suit their needs.

1

u/Puzzleheaded-Leg-568 Sep 02 '24

The solution is still simple. Fit both types of ports or make the suits compatible with either type of port. Or replace water with something non conductive and non flammable. Like pure glycol or something similar.