ah, I misread the Orbital Parameters on the wiki. that day-night orbit is also a LEO which makes it even more possible to do a manned mission for upgrades. Oh, wait, we no longer have a shuttle for those types of missions.
Remember, it is passively cooled (a major design plus and, I assume, part of why it was able to achieve the cost it did). So there would be no need for a manned mission. And in fact, at that cost, it wouldn’t make sense anyway.
Dragon lacks a Remote Manipulator System (Robot Arm) and a airlock. things that make servicing objects in space a lot easier. Im sure somewhere at NASA or SpaceX there is rough set of specs on what a shuttle like starship would look like complete with payload bay, robot arm, and eva airlock.
If you're alluding to Russia, they've had them. They even failed in making their version of a shuttle. With what money would they do anything with now?
If you're alluding to China, they probably had the data from the Russians anyways.
> They even failed in making their version of a shuttle.
Nitpick: It was sort of successful. They built a shuttle, and it successfully flew a single (un-crewed) mission of a couple orbits. The collapse of the USSR / lack of funding killed it.
It's amazing how all it takes is a few threats of annexation, and for GOP thought-leaders like Ben Shapiro to start talking about enslaving you[1] to work on the Panama Canal to make another country rethink its relationship with you.
Absolute animals. As is anyone else carrying water for these politics. There's no excuse for it.
If you had anything at all to do with putting these clowns in power - reign them back in. They are supposed to work for you. Remind them of this.
I don't want to quibble just to be contrarian. Polaris Dawn was at the International Space Station's inclination, 52°, which is the most common destination for human astronauts. Isn't usually considered a polar orbit.
I want rather to clarify a really neat point, about what the other mission's doing. From KSC, you can conventionally only launch to inclinations below 62° [0] (constrained by populated landmasses). To get to a true polar orbit from Florida, that means they have to attempt a curved launch [1]—something that's pretty rare, and (to my knowledge) Falcon itself never tried before. (The parent comment was right to ask whether a polar orbit is possible: it does create interesting challenges).
