What's happening in space (that's interesting)

[Romalar]

About a month to get to the L2 point proper (the one on the far side of the Earth from the Sun.)

More info in the FAQs here:

FAQ Full General Public Webb Telescope/NASA

[jpinard]

Wow I’m surprised it will be fully deployed en route. Since it’ll have to do a major burn to stabilize its orbit when it reaches L2, I would have figured they’d want to wait until after that.

[Matt_W]

From what I gather, there’s no insertion burn for L2 transfers. It’s kind of like climbing a hill to the top; you give the rocket just enough energy to reach the summit without going over the other side. (For those of us with intuition honed by 100s of hours of KSP, this is hard to visualize.) There will be a major burn to 95% of the required energy 12 hours after launch (only 95% to prevent overshooting because there’s no recovery from overshooting and “rolling down the other side of the hill”), and then a small burn to make up the difference a couple of days later, and a very small burn to correct any accumulated errors just before reaching station 30 days after launch.

They have to deploy solar panels and the sun shield right away in order to start collecting energy and cooling down the systems. And I assume it will be good to test everything when the light delay is small. Round-trip light delay out to L2 is about 10 seconds. (L2 is a little over 4 times further from Earth than the moon is.)

[jpinard]

And to think… Russia had the gall to blame a female American astronaut for the holes in their stupid module. I think I see a pattern in Russian quality control:

Fire alarms sound at International Space Station

[BennyProfane]

“Russian” and “quality control” is an oxymoron. When you don’t care if your people die, why spend the extra money?

[Matt_W]

@BennyProfane

“Russian” and “quality control” is an oxymoron. When you don’t care if your people die, why spend the extra money?

Challenger and Columbia have just rolled in their graves.

[Jason_Levine]

@Matt_W

@BennyProfane

“Russian” and “quality control” is an oxymoron. When you don’t care if your people die, why spend the extra money?

Challenger and Columbia have just rolled in their graves.

Not to mention Apollo 1. Space is a risky business, and I’d say the Russians deserve some credit for how reliable the Soyuz launch system is.

[Perky_Goth]

The Russian Federation is no USSR in engineering.

[Strollen]

If you don’t want to spend many hours watching the Netflix puff piece, this is a pretty good background on the Inspiration4 flight.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/13/inspiration4-spacex-civlian-space-flight/

[Strollen]

Episodes 3 and 4 off Countdown were actually pretty decent. SpaceX has actually set up a mini-Johnson space center for training astronauts on how to fly the Dragon. Very interesting to watch and it was sort of fun to watch the crew bond.

[Skipper]

Anyone else watching the all private crew SpaceX launch right now?

SpaceX Inspiration4 Launch

[Skipper]

Falcon 9 is launching Inspiration4, the first all-private crewed mission to orbit. The five-hour launch window opens at 8:02 p.m. Eastern (00:02 UTC) from LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The mission is a fundraiser for St. Judes Children’s Research Hospital. In the spirit of the mission, NASASpaceflight is running a YouTube fundraiser during our launch livestream. Forum Coverage: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2021/… Fleetcam is made possible by Rusty’s Seafood and Oyster Bar: https://www.rustysseafood.com/

[lostcawz]

Thanks @Skipper ! Got in a minute before launch and caught the ‘Airplane’ reference, lol.

Which way is it heading? East or West?

East, I thought that. Got to see a shuttle landing in Florida from Dallas once. Couldn’t figure out what I was watching streak across the sky till I got home and saw what it was on the news. So freaking cool.

[Skipper]

I missed the direction but they mentioned, “into dawn,” making me think east. These re-entry jets of the first stage were beautiful.

[Skipper]

Now in orbit, separation of second stage.

This will be a three day trip for the 4 man private crew. The youngest American and second youngest person ever to reach space is part of the crew, she is 29 years-old.

[Jason_Levine]

All space launches from the Cape going back to the beginning in the 1950s head east over the Atlantic.

[abidingdude]

Super cool and super emotional launch

Supercluster

Supercluster

[Strollen]

SpaceX launches are always fun to watch. Looking forward to seeing what the couppala looks like.
14 people in orbits is pretty impressive.

Not quite enough to repopulate the earth, like in the 100, but making progress.

[Strollen]

Here is it what it looks like Wow indeed.

Christian Davenport

[CraigM]

And anyone who played Kerbal Space Program knows why! That extra free rotational velocity really helps getting into orbit.