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NASA desperately needs its own transport solution to send astronauts to and from the International Space Station. SpaceX and Boeing have paid huge sums of money to understand it and, although the two companies still have not met their manned space flight targets, SpaceX has successfully completed a (unmanned) trip in the United States. ISS with his Crew Dragon.
SpaceX would seem to be in the lead, which surprised many observers. Boeing, with seemingly endless resources at its disposal, has not yet launched its Starliner spacecraft, but a recent hearing of a House subcommittee revealed that a failure of SpaceX could having opened the door for Boeing to win the crewed mission race. space.
As CNET NASA's William Gerstenmaier said at the hearing that the SpaceX parachute system test was far from meeting expectations.
"It failed," Gerstenmaier said of the parachute system. "The parachutes did not work as expected."
This is not good news for SpaceX or NASA, and an investigation into why the falls have failed, but the test is still underway, but it's important to understand what kind of test it's taking was.
Under normal operating conditions, a series of four parachutes would deploy simultaneously, which would facilitate descent and bring the capsule (or in this case a large "sled" of metal used for testing) to a comfortable touch. However, NASA must be prepared for all circumstances that may arise during actual use. The parachute system was therefore tested with only three of its four parachutes deployed, simulating the failure of a single parachute.
Unfortunately, the three chutes did not work as expected and did not sufficiently reduce the speed of the test vehicle so that the landing could be considered safe. The vehicle's analogue was damaged during testing and the results were unacceptable for NASA.
Hilary, Boeing seems to have used this revelation as an opportunity to gain some public goodwill, tweeting that their own Starliner has performed "four out of five" major parachute tests. It's a nice topic for discussion, but until Starliner travels into space, it makes absolutely no sense in the SpaceX / Boeing race.
Image Source: Terry Renna / AP / REX / Shutterstock
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