from Hacker News

NASA, SpaceX set May 27 as target date for first crew launch

by whiskers on 4/17/20, 4:10 PM with 71 comments

• by skunkworker on 4/17/20, 4:58 PM

  It looks like SpaceX will gain the pride of having the 8 by 12 inch American flag left by the last shuttle mission.

  "The shuttle replica accompanied an expected presentation of a U.S. flag that was flown on the first and last shuttle missions. The 8- by 12-inch flag, which was revealed by President Barack Obama during his call to the astronauts last week, will stay on board the station until the shuttle's successor arrives.

  "This flag represents not just a symbol of our national pride and honor, but in this particular case, it represents a goal," Ferguson said. "This flag will be flown prominently here by the forward hatch of Node 2, to be returned to Earth once again by an astronaut that launches on a U.S. vehicle, hopefully in just a few years." [9 Weird Things That Flew On NASA's Shuttles]

  Both the model and flag were hung near and on the hatch where 35 space shuttle crews have entered the station and where the STS-135 astronauts exited for a final time soon after presenting the mementos."

  https://www.space.com/12335-shuttle-astronauts-flag-model-sp...

• by dgritsko on 4/17/20, 4:42 PM

  This is incredibly exciting. Watching SpaceX over the last few years has made me feel like a kid again (watching the livestream of the first Falcon Heavy launch, culminating with footage of Elon's Tesla in orbit, is a memory I won't soon forget). I wish them nothing but continued success, they are an inspiration to many.

• by nickik on 4/17/20, 4:49 PM

  > American astronauts on American rockets from American soil Jim Bridenstine

  Jim Bridenstine really knows how to talk politics. I must say I very impressed with his tenure so far, the NASA Administrator is not really all that powerful of a position but given how much opposition there was to him being a Trump selection he does do well.

  This is such a vital step to make LEO a commercial domain. NASA is spending way to much money on LEO and to make any moon/mars future possible that needs to be commercial. NASA only want to launch max. 4 people per ship, but it can take 7. So the price could really be cheap pretty cheap to allow a fair amount of non-NASA groups to send up people.

  Axiom Space got the contract extending the ISS and a more commercial ISS could operate more efficiently in the longer run.

  Eventually, with the cost of Cargo Space transportation coming down, we could actually build Space Stations in Space and make them way bigger.

• by BiasRegularizer on 4/17/20, 4:36 PM

  Another loss for Boeing on top of the 737MAX debacle and Covid-19. I would hate to be their CEO right now.

• by mrfusion on 4/17/20, 8:53 PM

  It’s a shame no one will be allowed to watch it :-(

• by croh on 4/17/20, 5:36 PM

  Isn't it the stupidest thing to do in current situation ? Endangering lives of crews, operations and families.