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FINALLY! SpaceX EVA Suit Press Conference · Elon Musk Podcast

0:00
All right, I'm Stu Teach. I'm the Vice President of Dragon
0:04
here at SpaceX. I've been at SpaceX for about 10
0:07
years, and I've led the Dragon program since 2021, and it's a
0:11
it's been a busy year for us this year.
0:13
In 2024, we launched the Axiom 3 mission back in January.
0:19
In February we launched the Crew 8 mission up to ISS and and
0:23
brought Crew Seven home and just earlier this week we had a
0:27
successful conclusion of the CRS 30 mission and a port relocation
0:31
of the Crew 8 Dragon capsule up on ISS.
0:35
With those operations concluded, I'm excited to announce that
0:39
Polaris Don is the next major operation for the Dragon
0:42
program. Right now the whole team is
0:45
driving towards a launch date in early summer of this year and
0:49
we're we're super excited to chat with you all about mission
0:51
design and overall objectives. We have the full crew and some
0:55
SpaceX folks on this event right now and want to turn it over to
0:59
them to introduce Jared if you maybe want to start.
1:03
Sure. Great to be here, Steve.
1:05
Big day for sure on May the 4th. And yeah, my name is Jared
1:09
Isaacman, Commander of Polaris. Dawn and looking forward to
1:13
speaking with you all today. And hey, my name is Chris Trigg.
1:23
I'm manager of the Space View team here at SpaceX.
1:29
Hey everyone, I am Anna Menon and I am a one of the mission
1:34
specialists as well as the medical officer on the players
1:37
on mission as well as a SpaceX engineer.
1:43
And hey folks, this is Sarah Gillis.
1:45
I am also engineer at SpaceX and the other missions specialist
1:48
for the players on flight. I think we're we know Kidd
1:56
Poteet, our mission pilot, is here with us in the spaces as
1:59
well. I think we're just trying to
2:00
designate him as as one of the speakers, but he says hi.
2:06
All right. Thanks, folks.
2:08
Yeah, let's dig in and start with a high level summary of the
2:11
Polaris program and Polaris Don as a mission and and the
2:15
objectives we're driving to. Jared, can you give us an
2:18
overview of those? Yeah, sure.
2:21
I mean just want to open up I mean this this space is is
2:24
really it's really all about you know the thousands of Spacexers
2:28
who spent the the last two years working on some really really
2:33
awesome objectives that we're going to, we're going to share
2:35
with you later today. I mean they're they pretty much
2:37
every day are are making history and we've got the next big
2:41
milestone coming up on that that that awesome vision to make life
2:46
multiplanetary. But just to zoom out for a
2:49
little bit talk on the Polaris program.
2:51
So first we named it Polaris after our North Star, which is
2:55
actually a constellation of three stars.
2:57
And as I think many of you know, the Polaris program contemplates
3:01
up to three missions, culminating with the first crude
3:05
flight of Starship, which is kind of our North Star that is
3:09
showing us the way, may very well be the 737 of human Space
3:13
Flight someday, but it's it's the planned vehicle to return
3:16
humans to the moon and then on to to Mars and beyond.
3:20
But that's in the future. Let's like drill in to Polaris
3:24
Dawn because that is that is the mission coming up.
3:26
So just to give a quick overview of some of those objectives and
3:29
then you know each of my, my crew members will kind of go
3:32
into a little bit more details, but it's a very ambitious
3:35
mission. Our first objective is to travel
3:39
farther from the Earth and the last time humans walked on the
3:42
moon with Apollo 17 more than 50 years ago.
3:45
So we target an apogee of 1400 kilometers.
3:49
That puts us just inside the the Van Allen radiation belt.
3:53
It's an awesome opportunity for us to get some data.
3:56
But really it's it's about kind of pushing beyond our, our
3:59
comfort zone and where we've been at for, you know the last
4:02
20 some odd years at an awesome orbiting laboratory, the space
4:06
station. But if we're, if we're going to
4:07
get to the moon, Mars and beyond, we got to, we got to
4:10
start venturing out a little bit farther.
4:12
After about 7-7 or so laps at our peak, Apogee will come down
4:19
to about 700 kilometers. And this is where the news of
4:22
the day kicks in and all the hard work from the SpaceX team
4:25
to produce an Eva suit and, you know, really the first of its
4:29
kind to be tested in more than 40 years in space.
4:32
And we'll vent the cabin down to vacuum.
4:35
And then we will undertake an Eva operation where we hope to
4:38
learn an awful lot about our suits and the operation
4:40
associated with it because it's the first commercial Eva.
4:43
It's the first time you don't have, you know, government
4:45
astronauts undertaking such a mission.
4:47
And that's important because we are going to get to the moon or
4:49
Mars someday. We're going to have to get out
4:50
of our vehicles, out of the safety of a habitat and explore
4:53
and build and repair things. And that means the knowledge for
4:57
space walks in and EVAS has to go beyond just the the few that
5:01
it exists with today. Third, we're going to test out
5:04
laser based communication over Starlink.
5:07
We have something super exciting planned for that.
5:10
It's a really big deal. And that also is about the
5:13
future of human spaceflight and reducing dependencies on, you
5:16
know, legacy ground stations or you know, overburdened teacher
5:19
satellites. But to take advantage of laser
5:21
based communications to kind of open up this world for
5:25
potentially hundreds of starships in the future.
5:28
And then we have 5 days of science and research, about 40
5:30
experiments that are our crew will talk to you about shortly.
5:33
But yeah, that's the Polaris Dawn and it's coming up really,
5:37
really fast. Back to you, Sue.
5:41
Sherrod Yeah, pretty badass mission profile.
5:44
Want to start off with Starlink? It's it's humbling to think that
5:48
we're going to leverage this incredible network of thousands
5:51
of satellites that SpaceX launches is growing, owns and
5:54
operates every single day on Dragon our our human rated
5:58
spacecraft. The the constellation itself is
6:03
going to talk directly to Dragon through the laser based comms as
6:06
as Jared mentioned. But I think kid is on audio now.
6:10
Wanted to hand it over to him to chat through how Starlink will
6:13
be used on Polaris Dawn and some of the the global outreach and
6:17
objectives you all have. Absolutely, thanks.
6:20
Do apologies for missing the intro, I'm a kid.
6:23
Poteet, the mission pilot. Just briefly background 20 years
6:27
flying F16's assignments with the Thunderbirds operational
6:32
task to grassroots weapons, school and combat tours.
6:35
But as far as Starlink, this is an amazing objective we have set
6:39
forth for this mission. As Jared had mentioned, you know
6:43
the Flares is a developmental program and it's designed to
6:46
help advance our our quest for space exploration.
6:50
However, based on what we learned and and accomplished
6:53
with inspiration for, we never wanted to lose sight of our
6:56
priority to stay focused on improving life here on Earth.
7:01
And that's exactly what SpaceX is doing with Starlink.
7:05
You know, it's a laser based communication that's truly
7:09
revolutionizing the way we communicate and connecting
7:11
people from around the world to include remote locations.
7:16
You know that. That's why we we continue this
7:18
partnership with Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital.
7:22
We had this unique opportunity to travel to other parts of the
7:26
world and through this collaboration we brought them
7:30
Starlink included hospitals and schools in the Philippines,
7:35
Chile, Brazil, Mozambique and these are providing services to
7:41
the people of these countries that otherwise wouldn't have
7:45
these resources. You know, when we went to the
7:47
Philippines, the hospitals, families that that lived in very
7:53
remote locations would have to travel hours just to get any
7:56
type of medical care. Now we brought them Starlink and
8:00
they're able to connect with these remote locations and
8:03
they're getting telemedicine, medical consultations,
8:07
diagnostics procedures. They can continue this education
8:13
while they're getting all this treatment and they can stay
8:17
connected with their families that are back in these remote
8:19
locations. So it's, you know, it's it's
8:21
absolutely amazing what's SpaceX is doing with Starlink and we're
8:27
going to test that from space for the very first time and and
8:31
stay tuned for how we're going to do that on orbit, but it's
8:35
going to be exciting to watch for sure.
8:38
Thanks. Good.
8:39
Yeah, it's going to be incredible.
8:40
Truly space based Internet used by people in space.
8:43
We're we're excited to make that happen.
8:46
Pivoting over to the research side of things.
8:48
I I know everyone refers to ISS as the orbiting laboratory and
8:52
it's incredible the amount of science and research that's done
8:55
up there by crew year round every single day 24/7 and we're
9:01
excited to turn Dragon into its own orbiting laboratory.
9:04
We bet on inspiration four. We're excited to grow the the
9:08
research program at SpaceX as we move forward and fly more people
9:12
on Starship farther and and continue to grow that industry.
9:17
Anna, can you maybe chat through some of the research goals and
9:20
activities planned for the Polaris Dawn mission?
9:24
Thanks, Stu. About two years ago we put out a
9:28
call for proposals all over the world to solicit research ideas
9:32
to run on this mission and we got back a ton of ideas.
9:36
We ultimately down selected to about 40 research experiments
9:40
and we down selected based on technical feasibility, technical
9:44
requirements, crew involvement, as well as the experiments
9:47
ability to take advantage of our unique mission profile.
9:52
We are going to be we. It's really important to us that
9:56
we take advantage of basically every moment of time while we're
9:59
in space. And so intermixed amongst those
10:01
other ambitious objectives, objectives that Jared was
10:04
talking about earlier, we will be filling our days with science
10:07
and research and I will highlight a few of the ones that
10:11
we're really excited about. But but there are just there's
10:13
so much to learn on this mission.
10:15
So, so one is that we will be taking advantage of our flying
10:19
at a really high altitude in order to better understand that
10:24
radiation environment. While we are up there, we will
10:26
be actually using a camera to try to harness the radiation
10:29
environment and see if we can perform kind of an initial test
10:33
of capturing X-ray images using that environment that we're
10:36
sitting in. This could be super beneficial
10:40
down the road if we're able to to perform initial
10:42
demonstrations and and if you envision you know going to Mars
10:46
one day, you would want to be able to have medical diagnostic
10:50
capabilities that are small and really agile to support the
10:53
humans living there. Other experiments that will
10:56
perform are ones on space motion sickness.
11:00
We will try to better understand what are the mechanisms and
11:03
causes causing this. If you when you when people fly
11:07
to space 60, about 60% of people get afflicted by space motion
11:12
sickness. And if you envision what that
11:15
looks like if you were to take a whole bunch of people into
11:17
space, that means that a whole bunch of people could be sick
11:19
and not feeling great during their initial adaptation to that
11:22
microgravity environment. So if we're better able to
11:24
understand this, we can make future astronauts lives way
11:28
better when they're going to space.
11:30
And finally, another experiment set of experiments we're really
11:32
excited about is a group all focusing on spaceflight
11:37
associated Neuro Ocular Syndrome.
11:39
We will be testing our eyes to better understand why vision
11:44
problems arise in long duration microgravity exposure.
11:47
A lot of astronauts face vision changes after extended duration
11:51
Space Flight. If you envision flying nine
11:53
months to Mars and you land there and you can't see well,
11:56
you're not going to be able to work well.
11:58
And so it's really important that we figure out what are the
12:00
mechanisms behind this and better arm our future astronauts
12:04
to do their work well in space. Thanks, Anna.
12:09
Yeah, it's going to be an action-packed five days up there
12:12
like Jared said, and I know the Van Allen belts and some of the
12:17
radiation ties to the research that you all will be doing.
12:21
But stepping back, can you also describe the unique trajectory
12:26
and and exactly where Dragon will be flying for this this
12:29
mission? Definitely.
12:34
So we will be essentially launching into a highly
12:39
elliptical orbit where our perigee is at about 190
12:43
kilometers, but our apogee is at about 1200 kilometers.
12:47
We will then, after a number of orbits, be raising our apogee up
12:51
to about 1400 kilometers. And this is the highest that any
12:55
human has flown in about 50 years since Apollo.
12:59
And the benefit of being at this high altitude is that we can
13:02
better understand the impacts of that that environment, that
13:05
higher radiation environment for example on both the human body
13:09
doing a lot of that research I mentioned earlier as well as the
13:11
the spacecraft. After a number of orbits there,
13:16
we will we'll complete all the research that we were intending
13:18
to do, intending to do, and then we will lower our apogee back
13:22
down to a nice coasting orbit around 700 kilometers, where we
13:26
will complete the rest of our mission objectives, including
13:28
the spacewalk. It's pretty amazing, yeah.
13:35
For folks that have been following along with SpaceX over
13:38
the last few years, the Falcon team has done an incredible job
13:41
of increasing performance of Falcon 9.
13:44
And what we're doing here essentially is leveraging
13:46
performance upgrades and truly using everything that Falcon can
13:50
provide to Dragon to get it to the highest energy insertion
13:54
orbit while still recovering the first stage.
13:57
And then Dragon takes it from there, gets up to Max apogee on,
14:01
continues the mission down to the the Eva altitude, and then
14:05
obviously return to Earth for splashdown, shifting gears to
14:11
the Eva. So we've had to make a lot of
14:13
changes to Dragon to facilitate an Eva.
14:16
It's always possible for our traditional ISS missions that
14:20
Dragon was built for, to vent the cabin down to vacuum in a
14:24
contingency. It was built for that case, but
14:27
in the Eva we're nominally taking the four crew members to
14:31
vacuum for this this spacewalk. So Sarah, curious if you can
14:35
chat us through some of the modifications made to Dragon and
14:39
and really what it takes to to make this happen.
14:44
Definitely Stu. Yeah.
14:46
You know, you you described it so well, there is a chance on a
14:50
a nominal NASA mission that the the spacecraft could end up at
14:54
vacuum in an emergency. But for this mission, we're
14:57
intentionally taking the spacecraft to vacuum.
14:59
And this comes with a whole set of challenges that the SpaceX
15:02
team has been tackling over the last two years.
15:07
Fundamentally, when Dragon was made, this kind of wasn't what
15:11
the interior was designed for. And so there's so many different
15:15
aspects that you need to consider when we don't have an
15:19
airlock on Dragons. So in order to perform a
15:21
spacewalk we have to take the entire interior down to vacuum.
15:26
So just from thinking through all the things on the interior,
15:29
we need to now take a look at every material.
15:32
As you start exposing things to vacuum, you're going to have
15:35
things that off gas. So you need to understand what
15:38
all of the materials, literally everything in the vehicle is
15:41
going to do in that environment. I would say some of the the big
15:45
changes though are once we vent the atmosphere for the
15:49
spacewalk, we also need to repressurize the spacecraft.
15:52
So there's going to be a brand new nitrogen repressurization
15:55
system that flies with us that will be used at the conclusion
16:00
of the Eva to then repressurize the spacecraft.
16:04
Similarly, in order to facilitate the spacewalk, we
16:07
also had to go and assess what are all of the mobility aids and
16:12
footholds that you need in order to actually be able to move and
16:18
perform this space walk safely inside the spacecraft.
16:21
So I think that the interior is going to look a little different
16:24
when we, you know, when you see pictures of a sitting in the
16:28
spacecraft, there is some really, really cool new hardware
16:31
both mobility aids and this nitrogen system.
16:34
But it's, you know, it's been a a really integrated team effort
16:38
to understand what the spacecraft is going to do when
16:41
we expose the interior to vacuum.
16:44
I think the maybe last change for mobility aids is instead of
16:47
the beautiful cupola window that was flown on Inspiration 4, now
16:53
we will have this, what we're calling the Skywalker, but a new
16:58
structure outside the top of the forward hatch that allows a
17:03
suited crew member to have a structure to interface with
17:06
almost hand holds as you climb out the top of the spacecraft.
17:10
But it's been really cool to see that hardware all come together
17:13
in our our flight spacecraft. Yeah, the the structure that'll
17:18
be out front of Dragon as a a mobility aid.
17:21
We we call it the Skywalker as Sarah mentioned it.
17:25
It has to withstand a pretty extreme environment.
17:27
It's close to the forward bulkhead Dracos that perform
17:30
Delta V maneuvers and so it gets hot during those burns.
17:35
And then it also has to be able to withstand the cold of
17:38
pointing if it's oriented towards deep space.
17:42
So it's a metallic structure, but it also has a thermal
17:46
barrier coating on it and is quite quite advanced to to
17:50
facilitate the the mobility aid that the crews are going to
17:52
utilize when they're out front of Dragon.
17:55
Want to pivot over to the Eva suit itself.
17:58
For every ISS mission inspiration for every Crew
18:03
Dragon flight to date we produce 4 intra vehicular suits that
18:09
pressurize and and keep the crew safe in case of a contingency.
18:13
But it is a step change to go intentionally do that and go out
18:17
into the vacuum of space and the human themselves is looking at
18:21
deep space or or the sun or various thermal extremes.
18:25
So Chris Trigg on the line, want to hand it off to you to talk
18:30
through some of the modifications to the suit and
18:33
and really what it took to create the the EPA suit revealed
18:36
this morning. Yeah, sure.
18:39
So as you mentioned Sue, we kind of started with the IBA suit
18:43
that we have on our missions currently as our baseline and
18:46
kind of took it from there, what would we need to change in order
18:49
to support an EBA. And and one challenge actually
18:51
was to make sure that we kept all the functionality of the IBA
18:55
suit in addition to adding the Eva capability.
18:58
So we're we're using a single suit on the player stawn
19:01
mission, so the crew will be wearing it out to the pad all
19:03
the way through splashdown. So we wanted to make sure that
19:05
everything the current IBA suit could do, we maintain that
19:08
functionality but then also made it Eva capable as well.
19:12
So one big item out of the gate was mobility.
19:15
We've done a lot of work on joints across the suit to make
19:18
the suit more mobile and now that the crew will be getting
19:21
out of their seats and moving outside of the capsule onto
19:23
Skywalker. So a lot of new joint design
19:26
across the entire body. One of the the joints that we
19:29
worked really hard on, other rotators on the arms and the
19:31
shoulders and the wrists which allow the the rotation of those
19:35
joints. And they're unique in that when
19:37
they're unpressurized, they stay soft and flexible so that during
19:40
dynamic phases of flight like launch or re entry, you don't
19:44
have hard metallic objects that are kind of loading into the
19:46
body of the crew members, but they stay soft.
19:49
And then when you pressurize the suit, they rigidize it and give
19:52
you that mobility that you need. Another big element was the
19:55
thermal side of the suit. So obviously much larger thermal
19:59
extremes that the suit will see when it goes outside of Dragon
20:01
versus what it sees inside. So there's a lot of work on both
20:04
the materials of the suit. Developing a whole new layer
20:07
that we needed to add for thermal management, as well as
20:10
looking at the thermal condition for the crew members themselves
20:12
and making sure that they were at a comfortable temperature
20:15
inside the suit. And one of the things that we
20:17
added to their umbilical was a cooling knob that they'll be
20:19
able to turn on or off to get cooling as they needed.
20:24
Another big element was somatic functionality in the helmet.
20:28
Jared and Sarah will have cameras in their helmet, so
20:31
we'll have a kind of first person view of what they're
20:32
seeing through their visor throughout the Eva.
20:34
And then all the crew members have a HUD, a heads up display
20:37
in their helmet as well, which is displaying the real time
20:40
pressure, temperature and humidity inside their suit as
20:43
well as a timer so they can keep track of the time of the overall
20:45
Eva. And so those are just some of
20:47
the bigger ones, but really a kind of total overhaul of the
20:50
design when we got to the end of it here in terms of revisiting
20:53
everything that we could to make the suit safer and more robust
20:55
given that we now know that we're going to vacuum for the,
20:58
for the. Eva, thanks, Chris.
21:02
Yeah. So with the the new suit in mind
21:04
and obviously an Eva is an austere environment that you all
21:08
will be going into. Sarah, can you explain to us how
21:11
do you train for an Eva? That's a great question.
21:19
I think you know, typically when you hear EBA, the first thought
21:23
is build a pool, use mutual buoyancy as a means of
21:27
simulating the microgravity environment.
21:30
We've been on obviously a much shorter development cycle and
21:33
putting a suit into the pool has its own challenges.
21:38
And so the SpaceX team really approached it from a different
21:41
and new direction of finding a means of doing that outside of
21:46
water. And so we actually have at our
21:50
facilities in Hawthorne and our our vertical capsule simulator,
21:55
they they figured out a way to put in a suspension system that
21:58
has really cool controls such that if you, you know, tap
22:03
something with your finger, you move very similarly to what you
22:06
would experience in microgravity.
22:10
So picture a pressurized suit in a suspension system that can go
22:14
through kind of the the transition out of the
22:17
spacecraft, but you're on suspension cables and so you
22:21
have those cables that would go through the Hatch.
22:23
So when we were starting to think through how do you train
22:25
hatch operations, the team, you know, over a weekend pull
22:28
together this incredible simulator that actually takes
22:31
that and turns on its side. So now you can suspend a crew
22:34
member sideways and practice hatch operations in a very high
22:38
fidelity microgravity environment simulation.
22:41
So it's been, it's been a ton of fun over the last couple years
22:44
to iterate with the team. You know the suit gets a certain
22:48
change to it. We put that into our test
22:51
facilities, we run the operation, we see what works or
22:53
what we might need to change from a hardware perspective for
22:56
mobility aids or from architecture changes to the
23:00
suit. And it's been this really cool
23:02
iterative test cycle over the last couple years.
23:07
Hey if Steve, if you don't mind I I just want to jump in on on
23:10
this too and and give like a shout out to Chris Trigg and and
23:13
his his whole suit design team. Chris just spoke before
23:19
regarding the suit development. But I have to say, going back to
23:22
like inspiration for when I first got introduced, SpaceX, I
23:26
was like, you know, they have all these ambitious goals.
23:28
They're reusing rockets, they catch on ships, they're trying
23:31
to build spaceships to take us back to moon or Mars.
23:34
Why have like why don't you just buy somebody else's suit and
23:37
then like maybe on the surface you're like, well it's really
23:39
it's like the aesthetics, you know, looking very cool and
23:41
inspiring about the future is important and and I'm sure
23:44
there's a component to that. But like it's this vertical
23:47
integration desire to like control all the pieces necessary
23:50
to eventually get to that like self-sustaining kind of Mars
23:53
civilization. And and we were able to see it
23:56
in practice over the last two years.
23:58
I mean just so cool from where we started to where we are now.
24:02
And it's like all in house and every, you know, every week or
24:05
two you come back and Chris and his team, you know, figured out
24:08
a new joint or you know, a new approach to the visor coding or
24:12
new ways to have redundancy on like the life support system.
24:15
I mean you know aesthetically it may look similar to the IBA but
24:18
what they did under the hood is extraordinary and they do it in
24:22
two years was only possible based on like SpaceX
24:25
philosophies and what it like in what's in house that Chris and
24:29
his team oversee it. It's just been like such a
24:31
pleasure to watch and really today's as an as an unveil is
24:34
like a far bigger moment for you and your team Chris, than than
24:38
it is for us who who are fortunate enough to wear these
24:40
suits. Yeah, Jared, I really appreciate
24:43
that. And obviously this has been
24:45
really a dream project for the whole team.
24:47
A lot of people here have worked on suits since really really on
24:50
at SpaceX and got to develop IBA suits leading up to Demo 2.
24:54
So it's been extremely exciting for all of us to get to kind of
24:57
developed Spacex's first Eva suit as well with with the
25:00
Polaris program. Yeah I want to pile on really
25:04
great job to the suits team and and Chris, I agree it's been
25:08
amazing watching this machine evolve over the last couple
25:12
years of development. But also want to point out it's
25:14
an extremely multidisciplinary problem to create an Eva suit
25:19
the the heads up display that Chris mentioned that was a
25:22
project partnered with the avionics team within SpaceX.
25:26
There's some pretty intense optical challenges to to make
25:30
that work and make sure the field of view is correct without
25:32
blocking the center of the suit. The coating on the visor for the
25:37
Eva suit was actually partnered with some of the folks at SpaceX
25:41
that work to coat the cupola on inspiration for.
25:45
It's a very similar spray process and and actually the
25:48
same Indium tin oxide coating is used on both the cupola and the
25:54
the Eva suit visor in order to to get thermal correct there.
25:58
So yeah, it's been been an amazing project and and journey
26:03
there and we're super excited to see this this suit come to life
26:06
during the Polaris on mission. The last thing we wanted to
26:11
touch on is just other crew training.
26:14
Sarah talked a lot about suspended training and and how
26:16
we've trained for the Eva. But there's a lot of other
26:19
aspects of this mission that we just walked through.
26:21
And curious kid, if you can touch on some of the other
26:25
training activities going into the austere environments that
26:29
you and the Crew have have done over the last couple of years.
26:33
Yeah, you bet. You know and we we kind of piled
26:36
on to to what NASA has done over generations as far as you know,
26:41
identifying environments and situations that are stressful
26:45
that we be able to deal with and learn not only strengthen
26:50
weaknesses of your teammates but learning about yourself and how
26:53
you handle those stressful situations.
26:56
So for example you know we've we've done SCUBA training we've
27:01
climbed several mountains we've done skydiving, we fly fighter
27:06
jets and and all these environments you know they they
27:11
induce a level of stress that allows us to get comfortable in
27:17
these uncomfortable scenarios. You know the fighter jets for
27:23
example Jared and I will send the front seat Nana and Sarah in
27:27
the back seat and and we're working together as a team going
27:30
through checklist procedures working on levels of trust,
27:35
flying in close proximity to each other in formation.
27:39
You know, you're strapped into this aircraft, you're dealing
27:43
with weather, all different types of scenarios and and it
27:47
just allows us these opportunities to get comfortable
27:51
together because these are similar situations that we're
27:54
going to experience on orbit and we got to be able to handle
27:58
these stressful environments. Climbing a mountain you're
28:00
you're on side of a mountain it takes days to get towards the
28:03
summit. You're dealing with dehydration,
28:05
lack of sleep, food's not that great and and you have this
28:11
opportunity to learn a lot about each other as well as yourself.
28:15
So those are some of the things that we've gone through the
28:17
centrifuge, the altitude chamber put us in in a similar
28:21
environment pulling G slightly different axis but similar
28:25
nonetheless. All to prepare us and and we've
28:28
done this over the last couple years, we've we've had some
28:32
great experiences and we're just looking forward to putting it to
28:36
to the real thing come launch. Thanks kid.
28:42
I wanted to pivot over to some QA.
28:44
We've pulled some questions off of X from the posts from earlier
28:48
today, and then I believe the moderators are gonna let certain
28:51
folks in to ask their questions live.
28:54
But to kick it off wanna start with the the pre breathe
28:58
protocol. So you obviously have to do a
29:01
pre breathe protocol before going down to lower pressure
29:04
pure oxygen in the space suit. Jerry, can you explain what the
29:07
pre breathe is going to look like on Polaris Dawn and and why
29:10
is it important to iterate on this and and make improvements
29:13
as we look towards the moon and Mars and and beyond?
29:18
Yeah, sure Stu. So I think best best way to
29:21
describe this is to think about a you know a can of soda, right.
29:25
So we have a lot of nitrogen in our system and you know
29:29
generally, generally speaking you add high pressure, you add
29:32
more of it then you go to low pressure, it can come out of
29:35
solution and that's what essentially creates like the
29:38
bends or if for those familiar with like diving or or even you
29:42
know worst scenarios. Now this is not something new
29:46
for our mission. You know this is had to have
29:49
been dealt with with high altitude flying like U2, Sr. 71
29:52
or certainly all the Evas on the International Space Station.
29:56
Now the difference though is, is that they they will often just
30:00
breathe 100% oxygen for a very prolonged period of time.
30:04
Or they can even do an exercise routine, you know, to try and
30:09
purge the nitrogen from their system, in which case you've
30:13
less concerned about experiencing, you know,
30:17
decompression sickness. Now the problem is we don't have
30:19
an airlock on dragon, so we can't just sit in there for
30:22
hours on end breathing 100% oxygen to to rid ourselves of
30:26
that that nitrogen. We have to take a different
30:29
approach to it and the way we do that over several days is we
30:34
lower the pressure in the vehicle very slowly and then we
30:38
compensate by increasing you know oxygen PPO two.
30:42
So you're really it's it's it's kind of like the equivalency of
30:47
maybe like going to Denver or visiting like a mountain town.
30:51
So it's not bad at all. But over that time period of
30:54
being at what what our body thinks, the higher elevation
30:56
we're slowly purging nitrogen from our system and then we will
31:02
switch to 100% O2 in our suits, you know for a period of time
31:07
when we are venting down the capsule and then we will conduct
31:11
the entire operation at 100% O2. So it's it is it is interesting
31:17
because in the long term goal like in the movies of being able
31:20
to throw on your your space suit and helmet and just run outside
31:23
and do an Eva you have to account for this and you know
31:28
this pre breathe protocol that we're working with could help
31:30
get us in a step in that direction if your entire mission
31:34
was essentially in that environment and then perhaps at
31:36
some point you could just put on a helmet with 100% O2 maybe go
31:41
outside in a in a similar manner.
31:42
So that's a pre breathe. We've tested this all on the
31:45
ground at a NASA chamber about a year and a half ago actually
31:49
under you know you know conditions that could that would
31:54
be like worse than what's expected to be encountered from
31:56
our pre breathe and Eva. Meaning that we have a bunch of
31:59
safety margin built on top of it and and we know it works pretty
32:03
well. Back to you, Stu.
32:07
Cool. Thanks Jared.
32:08
Yeah, lots of lots of modifications for that.
32:11
But obviously important when we get to the Moon and Mars, the
32:14
goal would be that zero pre breathe suit to be to be agile
32:18
on a different surface you have to just be able to put your suit
32:21
on and and go outside And we're excited to take a step towards
32:25
that with this previous protocol that works with the the Dragon
32:28
architecture. The next question is about the
32:33
visor. So I I briefly mentioned the
32:35
Indian tin oxide coating and how it was similar to what we used
32:39
on the cupola on inspiration for, but we had a question
32:43
earlier today about how it it looks tinted, it definitely
32:47
looks like an optical filter. Chris Trigg, can you walk us
32:51
through how that was selected and kind of the iteration to get
32:54
to the the current visor design? Yeah, sure.
32:57
So the visor is is serving a lot of functions.
33:00
It's helping to seal the suit and retain pressure.
33:03
It's obviously the optical porthole for the crew to see
33:06
outside. It has to manage the thermal
33:09
environment as well and then of course it also has to protect
33:12
just like a pair of sunglasses from preventing too much light
33:15
and and harmful wavelengths of light from from entering the
33:19
suit. So we reiterated a lot as Stu
33:21
mentioned kind of building on what had been developed for the
33:24
Cupola which shares a lot of this similar technical
33:27
challenges that was developed for inspiration for and the tint
33:31
of the visor is actually copper that is sputter deposited onto
33:35
the visor. So we got to that by iterating
33:37
through lots of different potential options looking at not
33:41
just the performance and making sure it met all of our
33:43
requirements, but also thinking forward to what is something
33:46
that we could scale economically in the future.
33:48
We have to go make a lot of these.
33:49
So that was something that you know throughout the suit design
33:52
we were thinking about and and this is one example where it
33:54
helped kind of drive us to where we got to with this copper coat
33:57
advisor. Awesome.
34:01
Wanna jump to some live questions?
34:04
I believe the first person will be Felix from space-time.
34:07
Are you let in? Seems like we're connecting
34:16
right now. All
34:27
right, Felix, looks like you're a speaker.
34:29
You wanna ask your question? How are you doing?
34:36
My name is Felix Gatfield with the Felix space-time YouTube
34:39
channel. So great to be able to talk to
34:41
the crew again. Once again, thank you for taking
34:43
my question. Creating a new space suit is no
34:46
small feat, so a huge congratulations to the SpaceX
34:50
team. As Jared said on X earlier
34:52
today, it took two plus years to get to this final product.
34:55
I'm guessing there were many iterations before you got to
34:57
this final refined product. What were some of the biggest
35:01
design challenges along the way? Thanks again.
35:08
I think that's a great question, Chris.
35:10
You want to start with that one. Yeah, sure.
35:14
I think one thing that makes all space hardware challenging and
35:18
certainly space suits too, is just the integrated nature of
35:21
the number of problems that you're trying to solve.
35:23
And so any one solution for a particular challenge may make
35:27
another challenge more difficult.
35:30
So the visor is a great example. You know you can adjust
35:33
attention of the visor to help your thermal considerations but
35:37
obviously that and then impairs the crew and their ability to
35:40
see what they need to see. So you're kind of trading that
35:42
back and forth. So I think the the challenge on
35:46
the suit was you know because we approached it from the idea that
35:49
like everything was fair game and we could go in and redesign
35:51
anything If it made sense to go redesign it from where we were
35:54
starting. There was you're often kind of
35:56
having to review all of the different kind of challenges
35:58
that you were up against and make sure that anyone solution
36:00
wasn't impacting the other one. Cool, yeah.
36:10
Thanks Trig. Maybe another question written
36:14
into X this morning. The space suit incorporates some
36:18
materials from Falcon and Dragon hardware furthering the
36:22
collaboration across the company required to to make this Eva
36:25
suit happen. Chris, can you quickly talk
36:28
through how it was working with those teams and and what
36:31
specifically were were utilizing from these other programs to to
36:35
make this soft good suit happen? Yeah, sure.
36:39
So you know, we're here in Hawthorne and it's pretty
36:43
remarkable how many teams are under one roof.
36:45
We build suits in the same building that we integrate
36:49
Dragon that we integrate Falcon. It's same building that we do
36:52
all of our Vibe and thermal testing of avionics.
36:54
So we have a lot of different resources at our disposal here,
36:58
which is great. There's some thermal material
37:00
that we ended up using on the boot, which was developed
37:02
actually for Falcon and Dragon. It's used on the inner stage on
37:05
Falcon and on the trunk of Dragon as well.
37:08
We were kind of iterating through different materials
37:11
trying to thread the needle of the thermal requirements while
37:14
being light enough to kind of wear and and easy to manufacture
37:18
with. And we actually the soup
37:20
production team is located right next to where they actually
37:22
integrate inner stages. So as a pretty funny story in
37:26
that one day we were kind of walking and saw some of this
37:28
material out and it needed to just like started talking to the
37:31
materials engineers on the inner stage team made some prototypes
37:35
and have now kind of gotten that material into the flight suits.
37:39
So we'll be using that on the boots.
37:46
Awesome. Thanks, Chris.
37:49
I believe we next wanted to bring in Will Robinson Smith and
37:54
we'll we'll bring him in to to ask a question.
37:56
All right. Hey, Will, can you hear us?
38:05
Yes, I can. And thanks for taking some of
38:06
our live questions. Really appreciate it.
38:08
No. Problem.
38:10
Wanted to ask about the development process specifically
38:14
with the wet versus dry testing you mentioned sort of
38:18
historically space suits go into a massive.
38:21
Pool like the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at JPL or the Johnson Space
38:26
Center. Was there a thought to do that
38:29
type of testing with this suit at some point down the road or
38:33
has that already been done? What's kind of the collaboration
38:35
with NASA and some of the the centers that you've been to?
38:38
Thanks. Yeah.
38:39
I think that's a great question. Jared, do you want to answer
38:42
that with some of the training and trades that we made early on
38:45
for EBA training? Sure.
38:48
And certainly welcome the rest of the crew to to chime in.
38:52
Look that's what I thought was going to happen day one.
38:54
Right now I was like this is just how you train for an Eva is
38:57
underwater. So SpaceX better start digging a
38:59
pool and you know good SpaceX fashion kind of zoomed out and
39:04
said you know is there a better way to go about doing this.
39:06
Like we certainly don't want to submerge our our good Dragon
39:10
simulator into a into a swimming pool and and we also need to
39:13
work quickly and learn quickly. So they developed as Sarah
39:18
mentioned before like the the Argos type system of using an
39:22
offloading hoist to replicate microgravity.
39:24
So we could conduct you know joint simulations and training
39:29
environments in our simulator and do Eva work you know
39:34
essentially at the same time without putting anything into a
39:37
into a swimming pool. And all that said there there's
39:39
been a ton of collaboration with NASA from like subject matter
39:42
expertise that have you know provided inputs.
39:45
We've we've had some NASA astronauts come out and observe
39:48
some of our Eva training to provide input.
39:52
We we that that pre breathe protocol that was tested in a a
39:55
pressure chamber over over 2 days that I mentioned before was
39:59
was that JSC and our ATP test. Which is kind of the, you know,
40:05
graduation exercise for these suits where we we go into a
40:08
thermal vac chamber. We'll also be at NASA.
40:12
So I I think, you know, as much as we've done, you know, scuba
40:16
training and you know, practice in that environment, it really
40:19
wasn't necessary for what we're trying to accomplish with this
40:22
suit. Yeah.
40:27
Thanks, Jared. I I think maybe another way to
40:30
think about it, to do underwater training, you actually have to
40:33
modify the suit to facilitate that.
40:36
You have to add mass to the suit to get it to truly neutral
40:41
buoyancy. You also have to flow gas at a
40:43
different flow rate because you're actually going to
40:46
positive pressure. You're going to higher than one
40:49
atmosphere versus just training in one atmosphere.
40:52
We can we can flow at the standard just ground training
40:57
that we use for pressurization and suit mobility testing.
41:01
So the the suspended training really was a a simplification
41:06
and we went into it with an open mind.
41:07
We want to make sure you know that you can test every single
41:10
aspect of the Eva and every single motion that the crew has
41:14
to make. And we created a checklist and
41:16
just like how you qualify a piece of metallic hardware by
41:20
pushing and pulling on it in each different direction.
41:23
We made sure we truly qualified the Eva operation and that we
41:26
can demonstrate margin with the the crew members doing the
41:31
actual translation and and hatch operations with with certain
41:38
pieces added on to make sure that when you actually get into
41:41
the the operation itself that we're we're super confident that
41:44
it will it will go as planned. Maybe to jump to to another pre
41:50
asked question from X earlier today.
41:53
Sarah, can you talk about how long will the spacewalk be and
41:58
and what sort of activities are you going to do during it?
42:05
Sure. So the kind of.
42:09
I don't know if this has been said explicitly, but the suits
42:13
themselves are fed by the vehicle.
42:16
So all of our life support is going to be coming from the
42:18
vehicle oxygen tanks inside the spacecraft fed.
42:21
They're an umbilical to our suits.
42:23
The umbilicals provide, you know, our electronics, our life
42:28
support and that that is really our connection to the vehicle.
42:33
We effectively have to fly all of those consumables.
42:35
And so in order to both account for the full mission duration
42:39
and make sure we can test this out, the operation is going to
42:42
be scoped to about two hours end to end and that includes venting
42:47
the capsule, external operations and then re pressurizing the
42:52
capsule as well. Outside the spacecraft, 2 crew
42:56
movers will go through the kind of like a test matrix
43:00
effectively to get SpaceX the data that they're hoping to see.
43:03
And this is looking at mobility movement in this microgravity
43:07
environment, how the suit is performing.
43:10
And there's a kind of a whole series of test questions that
43:13
will be stepped through for the time outside the spacecraft.
43:20
But it'll be kind of the first opportunity.
43:24
You know, we have this this ground validated system for
43:26
training, but we're also equally validating that training method
43:30
in the microgravity environment to see what we if there are
43:35
nuances we didn't quite capture in our simulated environment.
43:39
So getting all of that data to provide back to the SpaceX team
43:42
for for future Eva operations development and training.
43:47
Yeah, I think Sarah, that's a super important point.
43:50
The, the goal of this suit is to be our first design of the Eva
43:55
suit. And then just like all other
43:57
SpaceX products, we're going to continue through block upgrades
44:00
as we go forward and and learn. And so understanding the
44:05
similarity between space activities during the Eva and
44:09
ground training is very important because we want to
44:12
make sure that the the ground training is validated and we can
44:15
continue to make improvements and and block upgrades and and
44:19
be confident that they're going to scale correctly when you get
44:22
to a surface activity on the Moon or Mars or other
44:26
microgravity Evas in Earth orbit.
44:32
The next question is for Chris Trigg folks on X earlier today.
44:37
We're curious we we now have our IVA product and then the Eva
44:41
suit product. But is there a goal to make
44:44
these Eva suits the standard flight suit or or what does that
44:47
vision look like? Yeah.
44:50
So we definitely are working towards a point at which we kind
44:54
of have a single suit architecture that's capable of
44:57
all the things that SpaceX might want to do, you know wherever
45:00
those missions may go. And so currently as you you know
45:04
have we've been talking about we have this new combination EVAIVA
45:07
suit and then we have the standard suit but that we flag
45:10
on commercial commissions. But we are, we do plan to kind
45:14
of merge and those designs and incorporate all of the things
45:17
that we've learned in Eva suit development.
45:20
And in fact we've already started doing that as I think
45:22
our first mission was cruise 6 / a year ago now, where we
45:25
introduced some changes to the IBA suits based off of things
45:29
that we have learned and developed from the Eva suit
45:33
program. And so we've already been kind
45:35
of starting to do that and implement changes into our
45:38
standard IBA suits. Thanks, Chris.
45:43
The next question I wanted to go to Eric Burger, who is getting
45:48
let in right now. Hey, Eric, looks like you're in.
45:53
Can you hear us? Eric, can you hear us?
46:07
It looks like you're a speaker now.
46:20
All right. Maybe while we're waiting for
46:23
that, we can come back to Eric. We'll go to another question
46:25
from X from earlier today. Folks wanted to know about the
46:29
heads up display. What does the HUD look like?
46:33
Maybe Sarah, you can chat through what the the HUD looks
46:37
like and what information are you all going to be monitoring
46:39
during the EBA. Sure, yeah.
46:44
I think I just love the, I love the Hud's up display.
46:49
It's such a futuristic part of this suit, being able to have
46:54
situational awareness about what your suit is doing when you're
46:58
actually wearing it and outside the spacecraft there's some kind
47:01
of key pieces of telemetry we'll be looking at the the big and
47:04
most important one is obviously your suit pressure, so you have
47:07
insight into how it is performing if pressure is
47:09
holding and stable. And then there's some additional
47:13
supplementary information like the amount of time you've spent
47:16
on oxygen, so the timer keeping track of your your allocation
47:20
and as well as temperature data and humidity in your in your
47:25
suit. So it's it kind of sits below
47:28
your left jaw and it is, it's really cool.
47:32
You can still see the world through the visor and through
47:35
the the display itself, but then you have those pieces of of
47:40
information available to you when you need them.
47:43
And hey, maybe you just jump in again here is another awesome
47:46
opportunity to you know highlight the the SpaceX
47:49
performance here. You know Kit and I have flown
47:52
aircraft with with heads up displays in them and and also
47:56
you know sadly you know overseeing efforts to try and
47:58
upgrade aircraft with heads up displays and these are like 3
48:03
year efforts. So bear in mind the SpaceX team
48:05
built an Eva suit in less time than that.
48:07
But I I can tell you we we were in SpaceX leaving on a Friday.
48:12
We come back on a Monday, there's a heads up display in
48:15
the suits now. The first version of it that
48:18
didn't look anywhere here as sleek and refined as our current
48:21
flight hardware, but they did it in the weekend.
48:23
It was like a weekend project because they knew that we needed
48:25
this type of information so we did so we could have good
48:29
situational awareness when we're away from the displays and
48:32
needed insights into to the health of our our suits.
48:35
And they continue to iterate on it until it's what it is today.
48:38
But it's not hard to look out into the future and where this
48:40
is going. Will it incorporate, you know
48:42
checklist on more complex operations or Evas years from
48:47
now? We'll use augmented reality when
48:49
exploring, you know, perhaps another planet.
48:51
It's it's pretty exciting. You know the seeds were planted
48:54
not that long ago, and it's already, you know, with with
48:56
respect to these avionics integrations into the suit
48:58
already moving in such a cool direction.
49:05
Thanks Sharon. It looks like Eric Berger's back
49:09
in. Want to do a quick quick chom
49:11
check and we'll we'll let you ask your question.
49:15
Yeah. Hi, Can you hear me?
49:16
Yeah, we got you. Go ahead.
49:18
Great. Sorry about that.
49:19
I'm just wondering what the risk profile.
49:22
Is for Stuart, Jared on this. You're obviously going to a
49:25
higher altitudes, there's less debris, but your MMOD risk
49:30
probably presumably, but you're doing you know venting and Eva.
49:33
So I'm just curious like you know when you compare this to
49:37
flights to the space station, you know, is this a higher risk
49:40
mission is about the same, is it less?
49:42
Just curious about your thoughts on that.
49:45
Yeah, Jared, do you want to start with that And then I'll,
49:47
I'll fill in after. Yeah, I I mean Eric it's a good
49:51
question. I mean it's a different risk and
49:54
it's it's a different risk going returning to the moon.
49:57
It's a different risk going to Mars.
49:58
I mean it's kind of the point you know we've we've gotten
50:01
really comfortable going from from point A to B to an
50:05
extraordinary not you know floating international
50:07
laboratory but I think humankind's ambitions are are
50:10
beyond that. So for sure like we're going to
50:12
encounter different things than what we've had for, you know, up
50:16
till now there is far greater mmod risk, you know at 1000
50:21
kilometers for example, and there is, you know, 400
50:24
kilometers. But then there's an awful lot
50:26
less of it when we start getting out there even even farther.
50:29
Certainly the risk is different when you vent the vehicle down
50:32
to vacuum and you're in a space suit than when when you're not.
50:36
But I think these are all like positive steps and you know
50:39
again in the direction of goodness towards, you know
50:42
humankind's interest to explore our solar system and beyond.
50:45
So what what I'd say is like the SpaceX team is incredibly aware
50:52
of these risks. You know you got 15,000 really
50:54
bright people all focused on a common vision and and they know
50:59
any missteps along the way can can delay that that grand goal.
51:02
So we certainly are briefed constantly on where the
51:05
differences are between our mission and normal profile feel
51:08
really comfortable they're they've been addressed.
51:12
Yeah Jared I I agree. So maybe quantitatively to
51:16
answer your question we assess total radiation exposure.
51:20
We assess total MMOD risk throughout the mission profile
51:24
and it specifically looks at the orbit you're in, the apogee, the
51:27
perigee, the semi major axis, what beta angle you're at, the
51:31
pointing mode of the Dragon spacecraft and and we make sure
51:36
it's within our risk tolerance. And so the Polaris Don mission
51:41
for both of those will be within the risk that we accept for a
51:46
six month ISS mission and that's important to us.
51:50
We want to make sure we're not unnecessarily taking risks, but
51:53
you do have to expand the envelope and and do it
51:56
methodically and that's exactly the purpose of this mission.
51:59
Here I will say maybe one anecdote.
52:03
Venting the capsule down to vacuum as as Sarah mentioned, is
52:06
something only planned in a contingency for the original
52:09
Dragon spacecraft design and and we've made modifications to
52:13
facilitate that for Polaris Dawn.
52:16
But one thing that we did last month was we sent the capsule to
52:19
a vacuum chamber. We vented the vacuum chamber
52:22
down and then vented Dragon through its vent system that it
52:27
will use on orbit during the mission.
52:29
Prior to the Eva, we sat there at vacuum for an hour to
52:33
represent the time of the Eva. We were flowing pure oxygen
52:37
through 4 space suit simulators and then pressurized the capsule
52:41
back up using the flight repressurization system, the
52:45
oxygen and and new nitrogen repress system as Sarah
52:48
described and that all worked as expected.
52:51
The team got great data and the way we were thinking about that
52:56
is that's equivalent to the uncrewed demo one flight that
53:00
occurred before the crude Demo 2 flight.
53:03
We want to make sure we do the full scale end to end test
53:06
before exposing the crew to those conditions and and
53:09
ultimately the successful test gives us the confidence we need
53:12
to to step into the mission. All right, that's all we wanted
53:18
to cover for the QA. Maybe one last question for each
53:22
of the crew members. I'd like to go kind of 1 by 1
53:26
and just let folks know what's the aspect of the mission you're
53:30
most excited for. And maybe we'll start with Anna.
53:35
Thanks Stu. Just first wanted to say thanks
53:37
everybody for joining today. There is so much on this mission
53:40
that I'm excited for. We have 5 action-packed days and
53:43
hope to learn a tremendous amount to bring back to SpaceX
53:46
and and make future astronauts lives better.
53:48
But I think one one of the many moments that I think stands out
53:51
to me is an opportunity that I will have to read a book to my
53:55
two kids from space as well as some of the brave patients of
53:59
Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital.
54:01
This book is raising money for the hospital and and I think it
54:05
will be just a connection moment between our beautiful Earth and
54:10
our crew in space that I will cherish and really remember all.
54:20
Right. Maybe.
54:21
Jared, what are you most excited for?
54:26
Yeah, sure. I I have to tell you, I mean I'm
54:28
like like like Anna mentioned like we have so much exciting
54:32
stuff that we're looking to accomplish.
54:33
But for me particularly I'm really excited to see the
54:36
reaction on my crew members faces when we when we arrive
54:40
into orbit. I'm going with three like
54:43
incredible human beings that have worked so hard throughout
54:46
their lives to to get to this, to get to this moment.
54:50
And I know what a special feeling it is when you when that
54:55
engine cuts off and and you have arrived.
54:58
And this time I'm going to be paying particular attention to
55:01
my crew mates next to me just to take in that awesome moment.
55:07
Thanks. Jared, how about Sarah next?
55:13
I think I I completely agree with Anna and Jared with so many
55:18
moments to capture. You know, I I think it is
55:23
incredible to see what Starlink can do for the world with
55:27
respect to connectivity, seeing some of the hospitals we've been
55:32
connecting around the world for Saint Jude to bring their
55:35
treatments, you know, to so many more kids around the globe is
55:38
incredible. And the ability to, you know,
55:42
use this network for such good. I'm really excited for getting
55:47
to see what this can do for vehicles in space.
55:50
You can kind of change functionality entirely for how
55:54
you communicate with spacecraft with this this high bandwidth
55:57
capacity. So I'm I think I'm personally
56:01
really excited to share some some moments from orbit with you
56:05
guys over that compact. Thanks, Sarah.
56:12
Ted, what are you most excited about?
56:14
Man, I I struggle with this question every time we get asked
56:17
because there's so many awesome dynamic aspects of this mission
56:22
that that we're all looking forward to.
56:24
You know with 20 years of flying fighters I'm I'm definitely
56:27
looking forward to the launch itself going from 1G and 0 knots
56:34
to 17,500 miles an hour. And you know seeing what the
56:38
Earth looks like especially at those lower perigee's cruising
56:43
along and then seeing the Earth from 1400 kilometers and then
56:49
you know just just seeing what Starlink is going to provide via
56:54
communication. We've been using ground based
56:56
facilities and teacher satellites for so long we we got
57:01
high expectations for what Starlink can bring to the fight.
57:05
And then lastly, you know the the, the reentry and splashdown
57:10
and and reuniting with families, they've sacrificed so much over
57:14
the last couple years and we definitely couldn't do it
57:18
without the support of family and friends and the and the
57:21
Polaris team and obviously all the dedicated men and women of
57:25
SpaceX. So it's going to be a great
57:27
journey that we're going to share with the public.
57:32
Awesome. Thanks kid.
57:34
Well that wraps it up for today. I really appreciate everyone for
57:38
calling in. We we love the support.
57:42
We obviously love what we do here at SpaceX and and working
57:45
on the Polaris Don mission here and it's just exciting to
57:49
release the Eva suit and talk about the mission and the suit
57:52
design with all of you live. It makes everything worth it to
57:57
have moments like this and then get ready for the mission and
58:01
for sure go make history with this ambitious mission.
58:05
The Dragon spacecraft for this flight is currently in Florida.
58:09
It's going through its pre launch processing phase and and
58:12
the hardware is moving forward and on track for that early
58:16
summer launch. Really wanted to thank the
58:19
Polaris on crew, Chris Trig everyone from the SpaceX side
58:23
for for joining and talking through this today.
58:27
And yeah, overall, really excited to make history for the
58:30
Polaris program. Take a huge step for SpaceX and
58:33
the industry as a whole. Thanks everyone for calling in.
58:37
Thank you.