Who will win the "return to space" race?

Eh, people go to and from ISS all the time. Where have you been?

SpaceX has flight suits already because they are not flying it, NASA astronaughts are flying it who have their own suits.

>Doesn't count

Moron.

All of us wins

Not sure, but I do know it won't be NASA since they've become grossly incompetent.

>The NASA Orion

is delayed yet again

my money is on SpaceX and Blue Origin

What qualifies as a "private space organization?"
The suit developed for Red Bull Stratos was privately-designed but that was a bit of a deathtrap.

Orion is far, far behind the others for actually carrying crew.

As for Dragon 2 vs. CST-100, that could go either way. NASA oversight is major obstacle to either of them. Neither is likely to tell NASA to fuck off and give back their money, but according to the contract, NASA needs to review and approve a lot of things and they're taking much longer to do it than they were supposed to.

So it's really out of either SpaceX's or Boeing's hands. NASA can delay either of them to an arbitrary extent.

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SpaceX can launch the private Moon mission and not listen to Nasa.

They can't finalize (and at many stages, can't progress with) the Dragon 2 design without NASA's approval unless they want out of the NASA contract that's paying for it.

NASA doesn't even have flight suits or EVA suits these days. They have to use russian flight suits and all their EVA suits are up in the ISS.

meme on mars dan

Both Orion and Dragon have already been to space.

What will be the first American spacecraft to put Americans back into space?
New Shepard, obviously.

NASA's waste is so disgusting

What do you mean?

That's like saying you don't have a Pc or smartphone because you got it from a company instead of making it yourself.

Hurr.

>Both Orion and Dragon have already been to space.
Dragon 2 isn't Dragon. Different shape and everything. The Orion test unit, while far from being identical to a real Orion that wlil carry passengers, was at least designed to validate the aerodynamics of the final product.

The original plan for Dragon after proving it on cargo was to just add seats and life support and stick a conventional escape rocket on top (or a disposable pusher underneath), but they went for a radical redesign instead, with the escape rocket built in, protected by the heat shield, and usable for propulsive landings.

>New Shepard, obviously.
Does a Suborbital jaunt really count as a true return?

Aerodynamics of capsules don't really need to be "validated", thats the whole point of these blunt shaped capsules

It's not that simple. They are lifting bodies. They steer them and adjust lift during entry using thrusters. The aerodynamics are much simpler than a spaceplane, but they still need to be understood and tested.

Dragon 2's shape is quite different from Dragon's. It's a taller capsule without being wider.

Could you elaborate the deathtrap part?

I'm not the guy you're asking, but didn't a glove fail on it, causing the diver's hand to swell up grotesquely due to the low pressure?

if Blue Origin got into the race right now they'd probably beat lockheed orion.

They designed it to operate at dangerously-low pressures for the sake of mobility. At sea level, air is 14.7 psi absolute and is only about 20% oxygen by volume. A typical space suit uses a MUCH lower operating pressure - typically 4.7-5 psia - for the sake of mobility, and makes up for this by eliminating nitrogen and other dilutents from the gas mix and increasing oxygen concentration to 100%, which provides sea-level equivalent physiological oxygen availability after alveolar dilution by water vapor and CO2 within the lungs is taken into account (about 1.5 psi partial pressure worth of dilution - which has quite a pronounced impact at these low absolute pressures). Red Bull Stratos pushed this even further, to just 3-3.5 psia, which is BARELY enough to maintain consciousness on 100% oxygen (I almost feel like the designer may have just completely ignored alveolar dilution and went "oxygen's partial pressure at sea level is 3 psi, right? It'll be fine."). Nobody wanted to acknowledge it at the time, but Baumgartner was showing clear signs of hypoxia at the time of his jump, including failure to acknowledge communications and checklist callouts from ground crew, and poor judgement during the fall (refusing/neglecting to deploy the drogue chute during his violent spin).

That was Kissenger's jump, the previous record-holder. Different guy, different decade, though he participated with the ground crew during Stratos.

Are they going with black on the Orion, or is this just some artistic freedom?