Elon Musk admits Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft is STRONGER than SpaceX’s Dragon in terms of time#STARSHIPFANS
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Just in one month, SpaceX successfully sent two crews to the ISS.
This is truly a great company effort!
More incredible, SpaceX’s Crew-4 astronaut mission took under 16 hours to reach the ISS.
This set a new record for its fastest Dragon astronaut trip yet.
However, it wasn’t the fastest crewed flight ever. That title is still held by Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft, which holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest time to the station with a 3-hour, 3-minute trip in October 2020.
The question is: Why does SpaceX take so long to dock with the ISS compared to Russia?
Let’s find for all in today’s episode of SpaceX Fans:
At the end of last month, Elon Musk’s spaceflight company launched four Crew-4 astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA in less than 16 hours, the shortest flight time since SpaceX began crewed flights in 2020.
“This is the fastest launch to dock that we’ve done,” Steve Stitch, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, told reporters after the launch early Wednesday. “It’s about the same time it takes to go from New York to Singapore, so it’s kind of interesting.”
For comparison, SpaceX’s first crewed flight for NASA, the Demo-2 mission in May 2020, took about 19 hours to reach the station, while its latest Crew-3 flight for NASA took nearly a full day.
“I’d say it’s sort of a little bit of luck as to how we would up in this,” said Jessica Jensen, SpaceX’s vice president of customer operations and integration, adding that any delay could have changed the flight time. “You can vary by 10 to 20 hours of phasing just you know in a day or two. It’s not really that we changed anything, it’s just the orbital mechanics of where the ISS is and where it’s coming over Florida.”
The shorter SpaceX flight came just ahead of a spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts outside the space station on Thursday, so getting the Dragon crew docked and settled in swiftly was a bonus, NASA officials said.
“This short rendezvous was pretty favorable for us,” Stitch said. “We can get to station a little quicker and we can do the preparations we need once we dock to get dragon ready for the EVA.”
While the Crew-4 Dragon flight was SpaceX’s fastest flight to the station, it wasn’t the fastest crewed flight ever. When the Russian Soyuz MS-17 mission went to the International Space Station in October 2020 it took about three hours to get there.
Does Russia space have better technology than SpaceX?
Let’s talk about this first:
Now, imagine being chased by a 925,000-pound machine traveling at 17,500 miles per hour.
That’s what happens when astronauts dock with the International Space Station. Surprisingly though, the process can take a lot longer than you’d think.
Although a rocket can transport astronauts into space in less than 10 minutes, it takes hours, and even days, to rendezvous with the International Space Station.
So why does it take so long to reach the ISS?
After all, once you’re already in space, the ISS is only miles away. And Earth’s gravitational pull is weak, which means a little power can take you a long way.
Despite being relatively close, the ISS is traveling at more than 17,000 miles per hour in a circular orbit around Earth. Anything moving that fast, whether in space or on the ground, is going to be hard to catch.
Elon Musk admits Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft is STRONGER than SpaceX’s Dragon in terms of time
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