Reply to post: Re: Autonomous?

I'm sorry, Elon. I'm afraid I can't do that... SpaceX touts robo-rides for orbital vacations, lift-off in 2021-ish

Flocke Kroes Silver badge

Re: Autonomous?

There are good reasons for autonomous. Bob Behnken: "There were about 3,000 switches inside [the shuttle] and there was no situation that the astronauts couldn't make worse by touching the wrong switch at the wrong time" "We're grateful that the next vehicle we're going to fly [Dragon] on is going to be a little bit more automated."

I wanted to link to a picture the half assembled control console of Starliner, but I cannot find it again (or how much it weighed - lots). Instead, here is one fully assembled. Now imagine a cable harness behind all those buttons connecting each to the appropriate actuator - which is often outside the pressure hull. Some careful and detail oriented human has to check each connection on every Starliner.

Crew Dragon was not going to have any controls - exactly what I would want if I was going into orbit with three other tourists. NASA insisted and, as they are paying, SpaceX put in the minimum required controls. It only has physical buttons when NASA insisted. The touch screen shows the appropriate controls for the stage of the mission (and does not rely on a timer in the capsule set by querying the rocket before the rocket knows the launch time and which the rocket defaults to zero.) The flight suit finger tips have the correct capacitance to operate to touch screen and data moves between the control console and the rest of the vehicle through network cables. Except for those physical buttons the whole thing can be automatically tested with software not written by Boeing.

Would you rather fly in something that could get you there by itself but has redundant controls on the ground or something that will kill you if a fellow passenger presses the wrong button (or the right button connected to the wrong actuator)?

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