Ready to go in for docking but due to sunset shortly they are waiting for it for a better view without shadows. A few minutes. Light strobing is now visible and ready to move in. Soft capture complete. Hard capture complete. Home for the next 6 months. Hatch opening in about an hour.
Glad everything was nominal last night and crew is temporarily home safely. Have to say I only saw one previous thread poster as being online during this and had me wondering if SpaceX’s delivery to the station was so commonplace that people weren’t checking in here LOL.
I'm glad the launch and rendezvous went well! Congratulations all around! Also, the SpaceX rocket technology is interesting. I suspect they are looking into cleaner launches using only liquid oxygen. The rocket already uses liquid oxygen and kerosene, so I suspect it's just a matter of changing the engines to use liquid oxygen only. Additionally, it's really smart that they are recovering and reusing the components. The vertical rocket landings are amazing! I hope the rest of the mission goes well.
Somebody has sleep in chemistry class. What are the three necessities of the fire triangle. Oxygen, heat, and fuel Bonk you with the text book! Say with me: "Oxygen, heat, and fuel!"
Starship is cleaner with methane and LOX. True, for a typical combustion main rocket engine. On a tangent purely for tangent's sake, momentum/ thrust does not require combustion. LOX + electric/ solar heat = thrust (but not enough to be worth the trouble). More common non-combustion thrusters: Cold gas (N2) Hall effect (Starlink, Kr) Hypergolics (TEA/ TEB) do not require a heat/ ignition source. Monopropellants do not require a seperate oxidizer: hydrazine and Hydrogen Peroxide And really out there is FOOF which will react with most anything. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride
Xenon was the darling of EP until it got mad expensive. Last I saw (and this was probably 5-6 years ago) 6 K bottles for a GEO sat load was $800k. Krypton is the new kid in town, and I’ve seen proposals to use argon too, which is nice because it’s a solid. Mercury is in the mix too for EP. And momentus of course is working on h2o.
The ceremony they held onboard during the coast phase to give Victor his gold astronaut pin was pretty awesome. And am pretty sure his eyes get over-humidified a bit when coming aboard the ISS...
After completing almost three months in Space, Crew-1 Dragon capsule "Resilience" has set a new U.S. human spacecraft duration record. Quoting Soichi Noguchi on Twitter, "Historic "joint" crew photo! Today #Crew1 broke the record for longest US space capsule mission ever, Skylab 4's 84-day record in 1974. We were honored & thrilled to talk to #Skylab #astronaut Ed Gibson. Thanks @ASE_Astronauts!" Projected to splashdown in late March, Resilience will be refurbished for the launch of Inspiration4 later this year.