CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Weather permitting, Wednesday marks the beginning of a new era for Americans in space. About 3:30 p.m. Central at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a brand new capsule will be launched to carry astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time since the last Space Shuttle flight in 2011.
It is also a historic partnership between NASA and a private corporation, SpaceX, which designed and built the Crew Dragon capsule. And it will mark a second place in history for the capsule’s commander, Col. Doug Hurley, a Tulane University graduate who was also the last Space Shuttle pilot.
In March, we traveled to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to talk to Hurley, a Tulane University graduate, about what he expects the flight to be like. He admitted that his critical role in the future of the space program is humbling.
“Some of it is just being in the right place at the right time, but I think some of it is you have to be somebody that they would want to do these things,” Hurley said.
Hurley is the commander of the SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission, the first flight to carry crew members to the Space Station, in a high-tech wonder of a capsule.
“There’s no hand controls of any sort, other than the abort handle. Everything we interface with the vehicle is through a touch screen,” he said.
Launch day begins long before blast-off for Hurley and his partner astronaut, Joint Operations Commander Bob Behnken.
“On launch day, we will likely get up roughly, similar to what we did for the Space Shuttle, four to five hours, six hours before launch.”
They’ll ride in Tesla sports cars out to Launch Complex 39-A, and then take an elevator 265 feet up to the Crew Access Arm which will take them to the Crew Dragon Capsule.
“The unique difference with Dragon and Falcon, compared to Shuttle, that’s when that last 35-ish minutes is when they fuel the rocket,“ he said.
As the Falcon 9 rocket is fueled, the capsule’s emergency abort engines are ready, just in case, and then the launch happens quickly. “The windows for launch with Dragon are instantaneous windows. We had roughly a five-minute window for Shuttle, Dragon is instantaneous.”
And the blast-off pressure will put tremendous force on their bodies. “We’re on the order of about, close to four-Gs each way, give or take,” he said.
The launch will be automatic, but Doug and Bob can fly the Crew Dragon if necessary, and they will do that on the way to the Space Station to test its capabilities. Then they’ll spend one to four months aboard the Space Station, where there will be lots of hard work, before they ride Crew Dragon through re-entry into the atmosphere, and parachute to land in the ocean. Will that make Doug seasick?
“We’re probably not going to feel great when we get back,” he said.
Doug says college in New Orleans changed his life, as he became an engineer, Marine, test pilot and astronaut, after New Orleans adopted a homesick kid.
“Coming from a very, very little teeny town in upstate New York to a huge metropolitan city in the south, coming from the north, and I was reminded very often that I was from the north, which I think is New Orleans tradition as well, but eventually was accepted as one of them,” he said.
Now Doug’s Crew Dragon flight may be a step down the road that leads to Mars, thanks to the $3 billion partnership between NASA and Space X.
“This public-private partnership is, has to happen in order to be successful to go to the Moon, and certainly if we go to Mars,” he said.
If NASA and SpaceX decide to postpone the launch because of weather, the mission has backup times set for Saturday and Sunday afternoon.
After the launch, it will take nearly a full day for the Crew Dragon to reach the Space Station, and dock with it.
As part of the mission, Class of 2020 students who missed graduation events will have their pictures included in a mosaic of Earth that will be delivered by the Crew Dragon to the Space Station.
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