Space

Watch: World's first private spacewalk

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Leaving the Dragon capsule
SpaceX
This marks the first private spacewalk in history
SpaceX
The Polaris Dawn crew in orbit
SpaceX
Earth as seen from the Polaris Dawn mission
SpaceX
Leaving the Dragon capsule
SpaceX
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The world's first private spacewalk has been completed. On September 12, 2024 at 7:58 am EDT, two of the four-person crew of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft Resilience returned after a 106-minute tethered EVA 732 km (455 miles) above the Earth.

There have been any number of spacewalks since Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov left his Voskhod 2 capsule in 1965 and they are, for want of a better word, a routine operation aboard the International Space Station (ISS). However, until today this activity has been a government monopoly carried out on government missions using government spacecraft.

That changed at 6:12 am EDT today when Polaris Dawn Mission Commander (and billionaire founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments) Jared Isaacman, Mission Specialist Sarah Gillis, Mission Pilot Kidd Poteet, and Mission Specialist Anna Menon put on their specially made EVA space suits, pressurized them and 'stepped outside'. It marks the first time a spacewalk has been attempted by a private crew on a privately chartered commercial spacecraft.

Though they look very similar to the standard emergency suits used by SpaceX astronauts, the spacewalk suits differ in that they are more robust with more thermal protection. The limbs have special joints that allow for greater mobility, and the new helmets have a head-up display (HUD) and camera.

Contrary to science fiction movies, a spacewalk isn't just a matter of slapping on a pair of silver coveralls and a goldfish bowl. Using a space suit is more like a mixed-gas deep-sea diving operation and requires about as much preparation.

When the Polaris Dawn crew pressurized their suits, they then had to complete the process they'd begun the day before when they lowered the pressure of the cabin to about half an atmosphere and increased the oxygen concentration. This was to make it both possible to move in the suits and to purge the nitrogen from the astronauts' bloodstreams to prevent the bends.

This marks the first private spacewalk in history
SpaceX

Once in their suits and the cabin was depressurized, the purge was completed as pure oxygen was fed to them through umbilical tubes attaching them to the capsule's life support system. Meanwhile, a secondary oxygen loop provided them with cooling.

After completing all suit checks and turning the nose of the craft toward the Sun, Isaacman opened the motorized hatch, releasing the last of the air. Isaacman then left the craft using a special ladder for hand and foot holds. He then returned inside and was replaced by Gillis. Poteet and Menon remained in their seats during the entire EVA while the ship's environmental sensing suite monitored the crew.

When the spacewalk was completed, the hatch was closed and the cabin pressurized to one atmosphere using a specially installed nitrogen repressurizer system.

Polaris Dawn is scheduled to return to Earth after a planned five days in space with Resilience splashing down at one of several ocean landing zones off the coast of Florida.

Source: SpaceX

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3 comments
Username
Space walk? More like space stand.
Nelson
Things are going to change, they are really, really going to change, but that change will only be for the worse if humanity is allowed to swell by billions more. If over a twenty-year period a human activity's impact is reduced by 25% on account of technology or conservation on a per capita basis but on account of population gain and bringing the poor out of poverty the per capita grows by 50% what has been gained? Nothing, it is a net loss. An example being Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, which uses 20% less fuel per passenger mile; it takes the commercial aviation fleet twenty years to overturn, so let’s say every airliner is using 25% less fuel per passenger mile in 2050, but with the middle class growing in third world countries and trends continue the airlines will be flying 300% of the air miles they fly today, so even though each airplane will be more efficient, many more of them than there are today will still be spewing 225% of what they are spewing into the environment of what they are spewing today, which is better than the 300% they could be spewing. And to add to that, our wealthy have already started flying into space, and it takes a hundred times the amount of energy to put a pound into orbit as it does to take it to 30,000 feet.
Christian
The only reason we can accomplish these kinds of feats is because there are billions of us interconnected and working together with the abundance of food, resources, technology, TIME, and LABOR. We can only advance in technology as there are more people on this planet to support it.

This is a tremendous feat requiring the efforts and skills of billions of people, all the way from the mine workers, the engineers who designed the mining equipment, the manufacturers who built the mining equipment, the people who built the factories to build the mining equipment, the shipping, the logistics of transporting it, the refining, the storing, the schools who trained the engineers and other companies and organizations who gave the experience to those engineers, the management, the HR to help everyone work together, and on and on. Not to mention the amount of FOOD and SHELTER and clean water all these people need, and the work involved in just sustaining all these people.

We can only do these kinds of things because there are so many people on this planet. Imagine what we'll be able to accomplish when there's even more of us working together.