Daily Beast by Clive Irving 9/18/2021
The mission was Silicon Valley utopianism—role models for a nicer, fairer, more inclusive version of American life that we can all look up to.Many thousands of people touch down in Florida every day. But no other civilians have ever done it the way that Jared Isaacman, Haley Arceneaux, Chris Sembroski and Sian Proctor did at precisely 7:06 p.m. on Saturday, splashing down from space into the Atlantic. They were the crew aboard SpaceX flight Inspiration4, the first non-professionals to orbit the Earth for three days, and at a height of 366 miles, higher than the International Space Station. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth in 1962, reached a height of just 162 miles.
On its descent the capsule decelerated from 17,500 mph to 350mph, including the usual heart-stopping minutes when, because of high friction heat, communication is lost between it and mission control. Then there was an outbreak of applause from control as the braking parachutes popped out and, swinging gently under them, the capsule was visible.
This was a rare moment of live drama because everybody following this gravity-free trip has been frustrated by how little of it has actually been shared with the public. All the epic NASA voyages featured regular and well staged appearances by the astronauts. Even when limited to relatively primitive, flickering and grainy black-and-white videos these messages were followed by millions around the world.
The blackouts on this mission began early. Only minutes into orbital flight, just as the space cadets were about to get their first view of space, the SpaceX video feed went dark. The same thing happened when the crew did a video engagement with kids in a hospital, obviously an emotional high. We didn’t see it.
That’s because the most dramatic stuff is being held back until it appears in the finale of the Netflix documentary series about the voyage, to be aired on Sept. 30.
In truth, the gripping scenes here were not about how the hardware all worked, as amazing as it was. What we really wanted to see, what was dramatically new, was seeing how people other than career astronauts came through it.
So how did they measure up by the lights of an actual astronaut? I consulted Andy Thomas, a NASA veteran who logged 177 days in space on both American and Russian missions.
He was impressed. “It was a tough flight for the crew, in the confined space of the capsule for three days, that is tough duty. I’m also impressed by what SpaceX has done. They have developed a completely autonomous vehicle that can fly in low earth orbit and return safely without crew intervention. That is quite an achievement from where we were just 20 years ago with the shuttle.”
More:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/spacexs-inspiration4-mission-just-upended-space-history
