Is the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission too risky? Let's talk about the first commercial space walk

Introduction Polaris Dawn launches on August 27th and it is the riskiest private spaceflight in history, with the first commercial spacewalk and the first EVA from a crew Dragon capsule. Let's break down the basics. Who's going? Why they're going? What is the deal with this spacewalk and how are they planning on accomplishing it? As well as the many risks. Fully venting a spacecraft with four people in it and opening the door to space. Traveling through the Van Allen belts and the associated radiation exposure. Flying at an altitude where micrometeorites and space junk are a hazard. Testing out brand new space suits. The list goes on and on and on. This flight is part of the Polaris program, which is three private space flights in partnership with SpaceX funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman. Polaris Dawn is the first of these flights. Overview and the crew The final flight will be the first crewed launch of Starship. This launch is scheduled for Tuesday, August 27th at 3 38 a.m. Eastern time. That's 7 38 GMT from Launch Complex 39A at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch window is four hours long and there is at least one backup launch opportunity. I know a lot of people don't like private space flight and that's fine. You don't have to, but I think this mission is really interesting because it's not your typical space tourist mission. As an aside, this was the series of missions that was potentially going to service and boost the Hubble Space Telescope. Jared Isaacman offered to do it at no cost to NASA, but at the end of the day NASA was worried about Polaris astronauts damaging the delicate observatory. So they are not moving forward with that mission. These Polaris flights conduct experiments on orbit, raise money for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, and the flights are designed to push the boundaries of private human space flight. So it makes sense that the first EVA or extravehicular activity from a private spacecraft would be part of this mission. It may seem risky and it is risky to be clear. I will get into that, but someone has to be first and they're volunteering or in Isaacman's case probably paying through the nose. The astronauts go through extensive training as well, which I will get into. And Isaacman himself is the commander of this mission, lest you think that the billionaire is risking other people's lives. This will be his second space flight after 2021's first all-civilian space mission, Inspiration 4, which Jared Isaacman also paid for. SpaceX also has two employees aboard Polaris Dawn, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, who are both lead space operations engineers at SpaceX. Sarah Gillis oversees SpaceX's astronaut training program. She trains the NASA Crew Dragon crews, while Anna Menon runs SpaceX mission control and manages the development of crew operations. She used to work at NASA supporting astronauts and her husband is a NASA astronaut. Pilot Scott Poteet, nicknamed Kidd, is a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. All crew members have undergone over two years of training for this mission. Now here's how the mission is supposed Mission schedule to go. It's scheduled for five days. Falcon 9 will drop it off in a lower orbit and the crew will put the Crew Dragon through its paces. This is a previously flown dragon used in fact for Inspiration 4. They're going to do some orbital maneuvers, which you can see here raising the orbit to 1400 kilometers and that will be the furthest humans have traveled since the moon landings. Then they'll drop back down. That 700 kilometer orbit is where they'll remain for the rest of the flight as well as the altitude at which they will conduct their spacewalk. Let's talk about the spacewalk. The crew will fully vent the air from Crew Dragon. After all, four members don spacesuits of course. They're going to test out maneuverability and really try and put these new suits through their paces to see how they perform. The entire endeavor is scheduled for about two hours, but the time spent outside the capsule will only just be like 15 or 20 minutes. They do recognize that this is risky and they want to mitigate those risks as much as possible. So that includes not spending unnecessary time outside the spacecraft. This will happen on flight day three, but they'll spend time on days one and two preparing for it. They will spend the rest of the time when they're not maneuvering, prepping, spacewalking or testing that is, conducting around 40 science and research experiments. There are a lot of cool experiments to be clear, but the one I'm most interested in as a supporter of human space flight and a fan of science fiction is artificial gravity. Basically, using spinning to create artificial gravity also creates severe motion sickness, but that might be mitigated in space and that is one thing that Polaris Dawn crew members will be testing. The crew will also be testing out what's called Starlink Laserlink, which basically is an experiment that uses beams of light to communicate with Starlink satellites. If it's successful, this could be a new way for SpaceX vehicles, but also satellites, telescopes, all kinds of things to communicate with Earth, assuming they're willing to pay for Starlink, of course. I'm not The many risks going to even pretend that this isn't risky. They're using brand new EVA suits that have never been tested in space. In order to do the spacewalk, they have to don these suits and depressurize the entire Crew Dragon spacecraft because there is no airlock. I talked to Dr. Dan Buckland, a space medicine researcher at Duke University, and he pointed out to me that this might also be the first four-person spacewalk in history because even though only two people are spacewalking, they're all four-functionally doing the EVA because they're all exposed to the near vacuum of space. Space is notoriously hard to maneuver in and none of these astronauts have ever done an EVA before. Only one, Jared Isaacman, has ever even flown in space. There's a lot going on here and as I discussed in my previous video on NASA's evaluation of risk for Boeing Starliner, space is inherently risky because it is actively always trying to kill you and they're going to open the door and just let it into the capsule. Not to mention that this flight will be the furthest away humans have been from the Earth since the end of Apollo. They won't be at their highest altitude for long, but that environment has a much higher incidence of space debris and micrometeorites. And if that's not enough, there's the increased radiation risk. Polaris Dawn will orbit through the inner parts of the Van Allen belt, which are zones of energetic charged particles surrounding the Earth. Basically, the Earth's magnetosphere traps radiation from solar storms, cosmic rays, and solar wind in these belts, which protects us on Earth from these harmful particles. But in order for humans to explore the solar system, we need to know how to safely travel through these belts. Polaris Dawn will be oriented to minimize the astronauts' radiation exposure, but also the data they gather will be important. If this sounds absolutely bizarre and way too risky, just remember, the astronauts know it's a risk. Dr. Buckland said something to me that was really interesting. This is a quote, "A government mission has to consider appropriate use of taxpayer funds, and NASA astronauts as federal employees can't actually accept some kinds of individual risk due to employment rules. It has to be accepted on their behalf by NASA." On the other hand, private missions don't have those limitations. The Polaris Dawn crew members as private citizens can, if properly informed of the risk, accept whatever they feel comfortable with. Same with SpaceX. And it's important to note, we have done this kind of EVA before. On the ISS, when astronauts do spacewalks, there are airlocks. These allow astronauts to venture outside space station without having to expose the entire ISS to the near vacuum of space. The space shuttle also had an airlock on its mid-deck. But airlocks haven't always been the case in U.S. spaceflight. The first spacewalk in history came from cosmonaut Alexei Leonov in March 1965, but the Soviet spacecraft had airlocks. The U.S. didn't. There were spacewalks without an airlock that involved venting the entire spacecraft on Gemini 4, 9-12, Apollo 9, and all of the successful lunar landing missions. The lunar module was fully depressurized when the astronauts ventured out onto the surface of the moon. There is quite a bit of precedent here, but that doesn't mean there's not a lot of risk. So let's talk about the spacesuits, the spacecraft, and the training. The spacesuit and spacecraft This is the first time that crew members will don the first-generation EVA suit, not to be confused with SpaceX's launch and entry suit, though they look similar. These pressure suits are notoriously hard to move in. They become rigid when pressurized to protect the human body from space. So it will be really interesting to see the reports on how these work, especially because SpaceX completely redesigned the joints from the ground up to make them more mobile. There's also a heads-up display helmet camera, thermal insulation, solar protection, all of it. They seem a lot more advanced than the current spacesuits NASA uses for spacewalks, the advanced EMU. For more on the issues with that, check out my video. There were also modifications made to this Crew Dragon for the EVA. SpaceX had to significantly increase the life support capacity to be able to supply the four suits with oxygen. They've also upgraded the sensors within the spacecraft to be able to better monitor conditions before depressurizing, during exposure to space, and after everyone's come back in. SpaceX also added a motor to assist with the hatch opening and closing. There is also a nitrogen repress system to help repressurize the spacecraft after the EVA, as well as mobility aids to make sure the crew members can move around within the spacecraft in their spacesuits. SpaceX also added handholds and footholds outside the forward hatch, as well as new camera views. So hopefully we'll have a good view because of course the entire thing will be live streamed. They have tested all of this fully in a vacuum chamber to make sure it works. So then, what about the training? This crew has been working Crew training together for the last two and a half years, helping develop the spacesuit, working on protocols for pre-breathing air before the spacewalk to reduce the risk of decompression sickness. They spent hundreds of hours in simulators in the suits. A lot of the training they underwent is taken directly from what NASA does with their astronauts. A centrifuge, human rated altitude chambers, scuba diving, medical training, mountain climbing, skydiving, the list goes on and on. And if you're wondering why Jared Isaacman wants to do this, well he has made it clear that he wants to further human exploration into the solar system. To do that we need to know how humans do at this kind of orbit, in this kind of radiation environment. NASA is doing amazing work, but they're limited by their budgets and there's a lot of things they couldn't do. They couldn't do a mission like this. A quote from Dan Buckland, "As a space medicine researcher, I am glad private citizens and private companies are trying new things so I can get more data points on how humans who haven't gone through NASA astronaut selection and training deal with the hazards of space. And as a taxpayer, I am glad that I'm not funding it." I plan on having another update on Polaris Dawn after the spacewalk, but for now, thank you for watching. I am Swapna Krishna and this is Ad Astra.