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  Commander positions on NASA SpaceX flights

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Author Topic:   Commander positions on NASA SpaceX flights
SpaceBram
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Posts: 10
From: Belgium
Registered: Mar 2017

posted 02-04-2024 10:59 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for SpaceBram   Click Here to Email SpaceBram     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
For NASA flights with SpaceX, the commander of the mission is sometimes a rookie astronaut (like Zena Cardman for Crew 9), even when a more experienced astronaut is on the same crew. How does NASA select on commander positions nowadays? Anybody has any inside on this?

Tom
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Posts: 1730
From: New York
Registered: Nov 2000

posted 02-04-2024 11:50 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Tom   Click Here to Email Tom     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
While NASA manned flights always seemed to have the most "experienced" crew member assigned as mission commander (from Gemini through space shuttle), SpaceX has more often than not had a crew member assigned as commander that had less flight experience than other crew members. I believe it's because the Dragon spacecraft is more automated than previous spacecraft flown with a crew.

Robert Pearlman
Editor

Posts: 51809
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 02-04-2024 11:57 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I have raised this question a few times during interviews with the SpaceX crews and it seems to come down to several common factors:
  1. NASA's perspective about the value (or maybe importance) of prior flight experience has changed by seeing first-time fliers live and work well aboard the space station, as well as conduct successful spacewalks together.

  2. [On edit, as Tom wrote] SpaceX designed the Dragon to be flown primarily by the on board computers and by the ground. The commander and other crew members only get involved in the case the other two systems fail, and even then their ability to take action is limited. Thus, the role of the commander is more focused on managing the crew (or as Raja Chari put it, coaching the crew), which is a skill that can be learned, if not mastered, on the ground.

  3. Some experienced astronauts would rather not serve as commander in favor of devoting more time to leading science, robotics or EVA tasks aboard the space station. So being passed over for command by someone with less spaceflight experience than you is not necessarily seen as a slight, but an opportunity.

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