SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is officially the longest-lived American astronaut ever built, beating an 84-day record set nearly half a century ago by the Apollo-era Skylab-4 mission.
Crew Dragon was able to beat the record so quickly because NASA finally chose to have its existing Saturn rocket and Apollo CSM spacecraft, production capabilities and budget cannibalized to take it all in on the Space Shuttle program. Intended to be quickly and cheaply reusable, a wide range of compromises, budget deficits and faulty design-by-committee ultimately resulted in a shuttle that was terribly complex, unsafe, only partially reusable, suboptimal for most tasks, and more expensive to start than Saturn V.
The spacecraft was ultimately an animal to overhaul and “reuse”, often requiring almost complete disassembly and assembly and extensive reprocessing of most propulsion components. Partly due to the extreme shortcomings and a catastrophic fatal launch failure just five years after its debut, the Shuttle could never come close to realizing its limited but still strong potential, including a maximum longevity of just two or so weeks.
As a result, NASA went from Saturn I, Saturn V, and CSM – a combination that enabled one-time space stations, space flight crews with more than one month, and the Apollo program – to the Space Shuttle, an anchor that rocked the human space agency has. agency ambitions back to low earth orbit (LEO). In defense of the Space Shuttle, NASA has finally joined an international initiative to build the International Space Station (ISS), a program that supported the Shuttle with several dozen launched important modules, components and supply missions.
However, if NASA could continue the Skylab program with Saturn and CSM, a space station with a habitable volume similar to the ISS of 2021 could be completed in just three launches, compared to no less than 30 launches to build the ISS.
Regardless, after an unfortunate and unnecessary break of 47 years, SpaceX – with NASA funding – has given the space agency and the US back to the legacy of envelope pushing. On the heels of 20 successful unmanned Cargo Dragon missions to and from the ISS over the past 9 years, all of which spent about a month in orbit, SpaceX’s third Crew Dragon launch already holds the U.S. record for long-term crew of spacecraft on a runway. finally ready to double it before the end of the mission.
Crew Dragon’s Crew-1 astronauts even celebrate the milestone in orbit with (albeit virtually) Ed Gibson, one of the three astronauts who set Skylab-4’s record 47 years earlier. In addition, Skylab-4 and SpaceX Crew-1 were launched on the same day in a pleasant coincidence, which means that tomorrow (February 8) is the true 47th anniversary of the Skylab-4 mission’s relocation and extravagance.
All in all, all operational Crew Dragon missions – of which Crew-1 is the first – will spend approximately 180 days in orbit between launch and re-entry. As the first American spacecraft (and first private spacecraft) to attempt such a long space flight there is of course some uncertainty and there is no guarantee that this first attempt will not be cut short, but the chances are in SpaceX’s favor that the Crew Dragon Capsule C207 will leave the ISS without problems and its four astronaut crew will safely return. somewhere in May 2021 to earth.
