SpaceX FRR And Friendly Ghosts From Apollo

Keith's note: NASA has completed its Flight Readiness Review (FRR) for the SpaceX Demo-1 fight of its crewed Dragon. The flight is scheduled for 2 March and will use a vehicle identical to the one which will eventually fly with humans with some sort of SpaceX dummy on board (think Starman in the Tesla). The only real issue that was mentioned had to do with software and one of the partners (Russia) wanted more work to done. Luckily the Russians did not detect any drilling mistakes ;-).

Listening to the NASA people talk at the press briefing today I could help but notice a certain weirdness. They all seemed to be pinching themsleves - either because this is the first time NASA has approached a human mission in a while or that the spacecraft was not built by NASA. Or maybe a little of both.

I had hoped to ask Bill Gertstenmaier about this weirdness but KSC PAO decided otherwise. Had I been allowed to ask a question it would have been this:

"Bill, you and I sat in the same design reviews 30 years ago for Space Station. Our bosses were old Apollo guys. We were looking to build something that was a paradigm shift from what they did. Every now and then however they'd say something that spoke of great wisdom. This SpaceX Review was being held in the same room where shuttle FRRs were held. And there was a capsule on the powerpoint slides - just like Apollo. I was wondering if there were any friendly ghosts in the room prompting you to be the guy offering the wisdom."

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