Jared Isaacman is the guy who hired a Crew Dragon last year for the first all private civilian orbital spaceflight. Well, he isn't done with spaceflight yet.
For the last few days he has been buzzing Starbase in Boca Chica in his personal jet fighters. So people suspected that something was up with Isaacman. Then at the Starship presentation Elon said that SpaceX has inked some cool contracts, but didn't want to steal anyone's thunder by prematurely revealing them.
Photo by Jack Beyer of nasaspaceflight.com
Well today, one of those shoes dropped. It was the announcement of Jared Isaacman's Polaris Program. He proposes to hire three spaceflights from SpaceX. The first two will be Crew Dragon flights, and the third will be a crewed Starship flight.
https://polarisprogram.com/
https://polarisprogram.com/dawn/
The first Crew Dragon flight is penciled in for Q4 this year. It will feature four astronauts, who have already been chosen. (Two men, one of whom is Jared himself, and two women). They are being fully trained and these flights won't be stunts.
One of the biggest scientific objectives is to put the Crew Dragon in a highly eliptical orbit that carries it up into the Van Allen belt, to measure radiation and its biological effects on crew. The engineering objective is to completely depressurize the capsule in flight, open a hatch and conduct the first all-private spacewalk. This will feature use of a new SpaceX EVA (extravehicular activity) suit, which is modified from the existing black and white pressure suits. Artemis has been having trouble producing its own government Moon-suits, so Elon said earlier that he'd produce the necessary suits for them if they wanted. They didnt take him up on it, but it seems that his remark wasn't just sarcasm, SpaceX was really developing their own EVA suits for their own use. The spacewalk will also require modifications to the Crew Dragon life support to enable depressurization and repressurization. So there will be some major engineering developments.
https://polarisprogram.com/science-research/
Another bit of news is the revelation that SpaceX has started their own astronaut corps of company astronauts. Everyone expected it to happen and here it is. Some of the Polaris astronauts will be SpaceX employees.
The second Polaris mission will be another Crew Dragon flight, perhaps for next year sometime. Its scientific/engineering objective are still undecided.
The third Polaris flight is the real headliner, the first Starship crewed mission. Unclear when it will happen. This is big news since it indicates that work is proceeding behind the scenes on crewed Starships, including internal layout, life support and so on. We kind of knew it from the HLS contract, but again here it is.
Interview with Jared and the pilot for the first Crew Dragon mission, conducted at SpaceX Hawthorne.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8IVogVkx-G0
For the last few days he has been buzzing Starbase in Boca Chica in his personal jet fighters. So people suspected that something was up with Isaacman. Then at the Starship presentation Elon said that SpaceX has inked some cool contracts, but didn't want to steal anyone's thunder by prematurely revealing them.
Photo by Jack Beyer of nasaspaceflight.com
Well today, one of those shoes dropped. It was the announcement of Jared Isaacman's Polaris Program. He proposes to hire three spaceflights from SpaceX. The first two will be Crew Dragon flights, and the third will be a crewed Starship flight.
https://polarisprogram.com/
https://polarisprogram.com/dawn/
The first Crew Dragon flight is penciled in for Q4 this year. It will feature four astronauts, who have already been chosen. (Two men, one of whom is Jared himself, and two women). They are being fully trained and these flights won't be stunts.
One of the biggest scientific objectives is to put the Crew Dragon in a highly eliptical orbit that carries it up into the Van Allen belt, to measure radiation and its biological effects on crew. The engineering objective is to completely depressurize the capsule in flight, open a hatch and conduct the first all-private spacewalk. This will feature use of a new SpaceX EVA (extravehicular activity) suit, which is modified from the existing black and white pressure suits. Artemis has been having trouble producing its own government Moon-suits, so Elon said earlier that he'd produce the necessary suits for them if they wanted. They didnt take him up on it, but it seems that his remark wasn't just sarcasm, SpaceX was really developing their own EVA suits for their own use. The spacewalk will also require modifications to the Crew Dragon life support to enable depressurization and repressurization. So there will be some major engineering developments.
https://polarisprogram.com/science-research/
Another bit of news is the revelation that SpaceX has started their own astronaut corps of company astronauts. Everyone expected it to happen and here it is. Some of the Polaris astronauts will be SpaceX employees.
The second Polaris mission will be another Crew Dragon flight, perhaps for next year sometime. Its scientific/engineering objective are still undecided.
The third Polaris flight is the real headliner, the first Starship crewed mission. Unclear when it will happen. This is big news since it indicates that work is proceeding behind the scenes on crewed Starships, including internal layout, life support and so on. We kind of knew it from the HLS contract, but again here it is.
Interview with Jared and the pilot for the first Crew Dragon mission, conducted at SpaceX Hawthorne.