DIRTY HARRY Loc: Hartland, Michigan

Max's adventures at Space X

You might find this interesting... from a friend of mine who's son, Max, has worked for Space X since graduating college several years ago. Pete and I are envious as hell!

 

 
Hi Harry - Max is still at SpaceX where he works on Cargo Dragon.  He will be working on Cargo Dragon 2 soon.  One of the funniest stories I got from Max when he was lead integration engineer on CRS-12.  I met him in Florida to watch the launch, he had to be with the rocket up to where it went vertical in order to oversee the late load cargo.  That late cargo included live mice (happens a lot).  He was finishing up the cargo, the mice were some of the last items to be loaded. The scientist in charge  of the mice was there watching the loading when the team was told there was going to be a gas venting event which would make a lot of noise so to be prepared.  The scientist heard the announcement and expressed concern to Max about the loud noise and asked if there anything he could do to shield the mice from the noise.  Max said no but the venting would be brief.  After the scientist left the pad, Max and one of his buddies had a good laugh wondering out loud if the scientist knew what was about to happen to the mice in less than 12 hours!

More recently (last August) CRS-16 I think, was delayed a day because the mouse food was found to have mold in it.  I was in Florida with Max to watch the launch again and offered to go get fresh cheese from Kroger if needed.  He laughed and said he offered the same thing!  Apparently the cheese was special so they chartered a plane to quickly deliver the food to maintain the launch schedule, it didn't arrive in time.  Max had to unload a bunch of cargo because of the scrub only to put it back on the next day.  The rocket business is funny sometimes!

I plan to watch the launch tonight, I'm pretty sure Linda plans to sleep through it.

Hope all is well with you and your family!

On Friday, March 1, 2019, 5:17:17 PM EST,  Harry wrote...

Max at Space X... Any more story's of Max's adventures at Space X ? is he working on the "chute system" for the Dragon Spaceship.Sure would be great if this mission goes off without a hitch.About time we are capable of putting our guys in orbit.Bush 2 and Obama are both responsible for this situation.. We have a space station in orbit ans, without an old Russian rocker, we have no way of getting our people up to it... Just f ng stupid.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Interesting

Burtzy Loc: Bronx N.Y. & Simi Valley, CA

Frankly, I always wondered why we retired the shuttle fleet. I always felt that what they should have done was launch the shuttles up to the station and use them as additional modules. The were already adapted to the shuttle's hatches, they had additional robotic arms and could be used as service modules or escape vehicles as necessary. Further, they had both storage and scientific capabilities. We could have sent up refueling tankers for their engines if they were to be used for servicing low earth orbit satellites. There were lots of possibilities. This could have given them a longer service life, instead of being turned into museum pieces.

Glenn Harve

Maybe because America was too exceptional for some....

CaptainBobBrown

The shuttle program had to be terminated for lack of funding of development of next generation vehicles. There's always lots of blame to go around among politicians but critics of the space program asserted that manned space ventures were a waste of time and everything to be learned in space could be done robotically. I remember William Proxmire giving one of his "Golden Fleece" awards to the early shuttle program because it was advertised as a "trucking system for space".

It took Bush and Obama to move the dime forward by pushing the idea of privatization of launch capacity and the money tax payers would spend would in part come from savings of buying cheap Russian lift. To me it looks like ULA, SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Blue Origin and dozens of other private initiatives are finally getting us back in the game but much more robustly than would have been the case with a single player system (i.e. NASA) being the only game in town. Loss of shuttle capacity for a few years was a dear price to pay but the old shuttle systems were design decades ago, were incredibly fragile, and really had reached the end of useful life.

DIRTY HARRY Loc: Hartland, Michigan

However, it has taken the United State 10 years or more to, once again, be able to place a man on the very space station we initiated. Piss poor planning if you ask me. Some of this backward thinking like Proxmire is what allowed the Russians to beat us into space in the first place not to mention maned space flight.

wrangler5 Loc: Missouri

If by "beat us into space" you mean them launching Sputnik before we launched something into orbit, I've read (Invention and Technology magazine, early 2000's) that this was intentional on the part of the US. We had rockets ready to go, but the folks at Cape Canaveral were ordered NOT to launch anything until approved by the White House. The thinking being that if we launched first there would be years of objections by Russia about violation of their airspace without permission, etc., and as good world citizens we would have to go through all the international hoo hah that would follow, before launching anything of our own. DOD wanted to put up spy satellites, and sooner than later. So we let Russia launch first. With lots of the world dancing for joy that the bad ol' USA had been beaten (lots of that kind of thinking back in 1957, too) and NObody squawking about "air rights" or sovereignty in space and such, space was open to anybody who could get there.

Glenn Harve

To assume that NASA had to be crippled so that private firms could exist is odd, to say the least.

DIRTY HARRY Loc: Hartland, Michigan

Check again .. we had NOTHING like the Vostok spacecraft ICBM/Launch vehicle. The military was held off because we were involve in The International Geophysical Year (IGY; French: Année géophysique internationale) was an international scientific project that lasted from July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958. It marked the end of a long period during the Cold War when scientific interchange between East and West had been seriously interrupted.) And the Government didn't want our first steps into space to be a Military Venture so they waited for the ill fated Vanguard project to finally (after 18 failed attempts) to put a non military satellite into orbit. Von Braun and his Explorer I was a modified Redstone Rocket with a bunch of solid propellant off the shelf sounding rockets and short range missiles in that little basket on top of the Redstone... thrown together in less than 90 day to save face... and because we had NOTHING else that could RELIABLY do the job. The Explorer I satellite (and the Vanguard I satellites) were ALL much smaller and lighter than even the first Vostok spacecraft. All this was allowed to happen because our politicians were ignorant and short sighted. I can still remember riding in the car with my mother and hearing the announcement of the first earth satellite on the radio.

DIRTY HARRY Loc: Hartland, Michigan

No one in the Free World was happy that Russia beat us into space. The Atlas, Titan, etc. were NOT operational in 1957 and we had nothing "ready to go" let alone a payload. I'm not even sure Nikita Khrushchev knew about the Russian orbital attempt until it was in orbit.

Glenn Harve

America lost a lot of crucial time by crippling NASA. NASA put a man in space almost 58 years ago. SpaceX has yet to do that, let alone put men on the moon.. Lost time.....
I would much rather my tax dollars go into space than support evil agendas via abortion.

DIRTY HARRY Loc: Hartland, Michigan

After carrying two DEAD fetuses for over a month doctors at the University of Michigan Hospital (because everyone and their personal opinions, sticking their noses in where they don't belong, knew better what was best for my family OVER THE EXPERTISE of my doctors), saved my wife's (of now 54 years) life with an abortion (at the ripe old age of 24 & 4 years of marriage). She was within 24 hours of those 2 DEAD fetuses killing her before the doctors were ALLOWED by those people ,sticking their noses in where they don't belong, to perform the procedure. How would you like for your wife or daughter to go more than a month continuing with a pregnancy of a dead fetus, at the risk of wife or daughter's life. Every two days she had to go to the hospital and have a blood draw to see how close her life was in danger just to satisfy those people who were sticking their noses in where they don't belong. All the while KNOWING the fetus' could NOT be saved! I guess you could say this was "Just a convenience" on our part but the I would have had three graves in the Mesick, Michigan cemetery instead of just two. Lucky, she survived the emotional trauma of the experience and we are the parents of three adopted children and 3 granddaughters. No thanks to those people who stick their noses in where they don't belong. Unless you know the full story don't condemn all abortions. And I haven't even mention the total lack of respect, sympathy, or understanding we experienced from nearly everyone except the Hospital staff. And then we had to take apart and repaint a nursery....This was NOT a simple miscarriage.

Still married Dirty Harry.

photogeneralist Loc: Lopez Island Washington State

The original plan was to have a two week turn around between flights of each shuttle at a cost of $1 billion per flight. Events conspired to make that impossible and we ended up with 2 month turn around and 10 billion per flight. The shuttle program was not doing it's job so the program was canceled and Russian rockets were used as a lower cost stop gap while private industry was encouraged to develop to fill the void.

canarywood1 Loc: Sarasota,Florida

Never could understand why everyone in DC shakes in their boots when someone mentions offending Russia, should have finished the job at the end of WWII.

DIRTY HARRY Loc: Hartland, Michigan

We had plenty of boosters we could have "man-rated" in all that time.. the Titan III for instance. It has a pretty successful launch record and the technology is right there. Are you aware the current Atlas launch vehicle uses 2 Russian liquid rocket motors and no longer uses the stage and a half system used on the Atlas ICBM? Sorry about the rant on abortions... just a very sore spot in our life.