- Hi it's me, Tim Dodd,
The Everyday Astronaut.
I'm here in SpaceX headquarters
to show you guys
something really exciting.
(upbeat pop music)
SpaceX allowed us an
extremely rare opportunity
to actually film inside their headquarters
for a chance to check out
how they're training
NASA's next generation
of astronauts for the
Commercial Crew Program.
Now they didn't let us just
shoot willy-nilly anywhere,
but we did get some really
cool behind-the-scenes look
of some amazing things.
In case you missed it,
we already gave you a mini tour
of SpaceX's awesome spacesuit,
but as promised,
today we're gonna show
you a Crew Dragon mock-up,
the software trainer, the
Ingress-Egress trainer,
and even one of the first
crew Dragon capsules
that will have astronauts on board.
So first up, let's check out this mock-up.
Now, keep in mind, this is
just a high fidelity mock-up
to give you a sense of
scale, but unlike, say,
a concept car, the mock-up
looks a lot less cool
than the actual flight hardware.
Nevertheless, let's hop inside.
Alright, so, I'm here in
SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule.
Looking up at the view here,
there's a couple touch screens,
about three of them, and
there's very few buttons,
this thing looks basically
like a set of iPads,
about three of 'em, and then there's only
two knobs on this whole thing,
and about 40 buttons or so.
This is a very minimalistic design,
it's a pretty big change
from, say, the Soyuz capsule,
and right now from where I'm sitting,
I don't see the need for
any of those poking sticks,
like they need on the Soyuz capsule.
So, this is a pretty good
look here, it feels great,
it's nice to see what this is really gonna
actually look like in the future.
There's a lot more to check out.
(smooth rock music)
So, next up, we went inside
to see the flight trainer
where astronauts learn the
Dragon software inside and out.
This is actually where the astronauts
are training how to ride
in the Dragon capsule.
I'm gonna hesitate to
say they're gonna fly
the Dragon capsule,
because if all goes well,
they're kind of out of a
job, as far as pilots go
because, really this
whole thing is autonomous,
and all the screens here and
all the buttons are basically
for information about, they
could actually see things
like where's the next
ground tracking station,
are we going to actually
have communications
with the ground?
So you could see where
upcoming blackouts periods
with mission control would be.
But they can even see
things like upcoming events,
they can scroll up and
actually see a tab of,
"Oh, we're going to jettison
"the nose cone here in a second."
and they can actually get planning
on where they're at in the
mission, which is really cool.
It kinda looks almost
Kerbal Space Program-esque,
if I dare say that word.
It's just as you'd kind of expect,
it's nice and simple and intuitive.
And then there's of course manual controls
for some of the things that you
would want manual control
over as a contingency
because, of course, in
a nominal situation,
and as we hope to go,
the astronauts pretty
much just get to hang out.
This is their autonomous ride to space,
and for the most part, the only reason
they even are trained is a contingency,
because otherwise this thing is
just gonna take care of itself,
which is a very 21st Century
way of having a space ship.
(smooth rock music)
Then we popped over to
the Ingress-Egress trainer
where crew is trained on how to get in,
buckle up and generally move
around in the Dragon capsule,
and, believe it or not, this
is how it will actually look.
So, come on down here,
this is actually where
crew is really training, as well.
So this is all real test articles
that is currently
configured with four seats.
Obviously it'll fly
first on the demo mission
and then, the next two NASA missions
will only have two seats, but
there is room on the floor,
there's a lotta room down there,
there's actually up to
three cargo pallets as well,
which is kind of a good thing
cause you can get multi
use out of it as well.
Might as well haul a bunch of cargo
while you're putting crew up as well.
These seats are not
stationary, believe it or not,
they actually move up to the screen
and to the controls, which is really cool.
I know when the Dragon
was revealed, at first,
Elon pulled the screens down,
but this is a little different
so the seats were actually way up,
getting you closer to the screen,
which is, I never thought of doing that,
it's a really cool way to do things.
It's got that quintessential,
stark beauty that is SpaceX
and it's just really cool to
see it actually in person,
because this is as
close to flight hardware
as I'm probably ever gonna get.
So, it's really cool to see it
up close and personal like this.
Obviously you have, this is the main hatch
where they're going to get in and out of
from the white room on
39-A, and then up top
there is actually a separate docking port
and a separate way to get through that
in through the International
Docking Adapter
when it's docked to The
International Space Station.
It's really cool to see
it up close and personal
and it sounds like the
seats are kind of constantly
being tweaked and revised,
even, which is great
because they look phenomenal now,
so, I don't know how
you'd improve upon it but,
you can really get a sense for what
it's gonna be like to fly in this thing.
(laughs) It's stunning.
(smooth rock music)
And with that, we wrapped up our time
with the Egress-Ingress trainer,
and then went down on the factory floor
to actually see where the Dragons
are being manufactured
inside the clean room.
Wait, are Dragons
manufactured, or hatched?
Let's just call this The
Hatchery, just to be safe.
So, I'm here at the clean room
where they process a Dragon
and Crew Dragon, and behind me
is the pressure vessel for Crew Dragon.
Now the exciting thing
here, is you can really see
why they're so adamant about wanting
to refurbish these things, 'cause,
can you imagine throwing all this away?
There's a lot of really high end,
expensive hardware on that thing,
so it does make sense they
they're going to be re-flying
the Dragon capsules as well.
Although, it does sound like they won't
be re-flying dragon
capsules for human use,
it does sounds like they'll tear
these Crew Dragon capsules down
for re-use as cargo vessels,
kinda like how they're
doing that right now
with their current Dragon capsules.
But, this is all different from Boeing,
who'll be trying to use their
Starliners up to ten times.
Mostly because they actually land on land.
But, SpaceX will be reusing
it, but just not for humans.
So you can see down
below, on the bottom side,
those are where the skirts kind of end up,
they hide all of the fuel tanks,
so there's actually life
support systems, and fuel tanks
for those SuperDracos that hide in there
and the regular RCS, the
Reaction Control Systems,
they have these Draco engines,
and so all of the tanks
actually go around the bottom of it,
and then they put these cool lookin'
aerodynamic cones, the
skirts over top of that,
but this is a good shot of it in process,
which, you don't always get to see.
(smooth rock music)
So this is all happening, finally,
we know the first four NASA astronauts
who'll ride the first Dragon capsules,
we see the hardware, the
rockets are getting ready,
the launch pads are getting ready,
are you getting ready?
Seriously, this is going to be
an exciting chapter in
spaceflight history.
Stick around for more and more videos
to get you ready for these exciting times.
If you have any spaceflight questions,
be sure to let me know
in the comments below.
Special thanks to my Patreon supporters
for helping make trips
like this attainable.
If you wanna see more videos like this,
head on over to
Patreon.com/EveryDayAstronaut.
And, a huge shout-out to
my friend Patrick Lawler
for coming out and shooting
this incredible footage
with his 6K RED DRAGON camera.
And while you're on the internet,
pop on over to my web store,
EveryDayAstronaut.com,
to get your own awesomely
nerdy space shirts.
Thanks everybody, that's
gonna do it for me,
I'm Tim Dodd, The Every Day Astronaut,
bringing space down to
earth, for everyday people.
(smooth rock music)
