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SpaceX's Dragon Module Successfully Re-Enters
Zitchas writes "Following the news of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon module on-board, and its arrival on orbit, we now have the news that is has successfully re-entered the atmosphere and splashed down in the Pacific. As their website proudly claims, this is the first time a private corporation has recovered a spacecraft they orbited, joining the ranks of a few space nations and the EU space agency. A great step forward for space travel. Hopefully everything continues to go well for them."
but wasnt this already reported in the launch thread? it only did two orbits, so the total flight time was a few hours.
Two days news turn-around is something one would expect from a news-paper in the good old telex days, not a website in 2010
Back on topic, awesome achievement! kudos to the SpaceX guys
People, what a bunch of bastards
Agree completely. Buchenwald, for example.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
The POIC (and probably every other NASA center with a TV) had the launch up on the big screen. Scott Kelly, the USOS crew on the ISS right now, took a break and watched it live on the feed we sent up to him between LOS's.
Scott asked CAPCOM to give the SpaceX team his congratulations on a successful launch. We in the ISS community are doubly excited: not only is it great to see such a flawless launch, but the Dragon/Falcon 9 is key to our future logistics and science return!
Well done, SpaceX.
The achievements themselves (launch, orbit, reentry) are not nearly as significant as the COST to perform these operations. Apollo and the shuttle cost many billions to develop. This company developed 2 rockets, a capsule, launch operations and production lines for roughly $600 Million. Barring a major Earth catastrophe, cost reduction is the only way to accelerate our reach into the stars.
Double-check your facts. It's helium-3 that's in abundance on the Moon, not tritium. Helium-3 is a byproduct of tritium decay. Tritium has a short halflife and doesn't accumulate over geological timescales.
Tritium can be manufactured on Earth. Future fusion reactors (at least the magnetic confinement type, like ITER), will almost certainly test or operate lithium breeding blankets that'll produce tritium in abundance, and it'll hardly be worth millions of dollars a kilogram to ship a bulky product all the way back to Earth.
Plus, they have the advantage that they are bound to protect you. In the US, the Supreme Court has ruled that police have no duty to protect any individual, only "society," a few special people, and those imprisoned by them. Even if you have a restraining order that commands the police to take action, you are not considered special enough. (See Warren vs. DC, Hartzler vs City of San Jose, Riss vs. New York, DeShaney vs. Winnebago County Department of Social Services; there are plenty of other)
SSC
Our scientific missions seemed a lot more important and interesting on the moon with Apollo 17 in 1972.
The moon landings weren't really about science, they were about engineering and national pride. The Russians launched the first satellite, the first man in space, and the first man in orbit; we needed to beat them to the moon and prove that we could keep going there.
We've gotten far more and better science with unmanned space missions.
Free Martian Whores!
The point, I think, is to get the government institutions (who are the ones who don't have to make money at things) OUT of the business of doing repetitious, potentially profitable things. Like putting satellites into orbit, doing ISS supply runs, and other generic things that are pretty much routine these days.
If they are barred from doing easy stuff, maybe they will take their budget where it is supposed to go: into exploration and the development of new things, things that the the private industry won't do because there is no profit there yet.
Z
The summary seems to indicate that there is an European Union (EU) space agency. Although many members of EU are members of the ESA, not all EU members are members of ESA, and there are members of the ESA that are not members of the EU (Norway and Switzerland).
I don't see the incremental steps between low earth orbit and serious interplanetary travel. The jump between them is huge, both literally in the distance you must travel, and figuratively, in the types of engineering challenges that need to be solved. And there's not many places worth stopping on the way.
Let's just look at the incremental possibilities just from a space tourism point of view:
1) Suborbital space tourism - a few minutes of zero gravity. Can be grown into a new, faster alternative to air flight.
2) Orbital space tourism - hours to weeks to years in orbit. Also, provides a big opportunity for zero gravity space science.
3) Lunar orbit - relatively easy once you've mastered Earth orbit. Swing some tourists on a trip around around the Moon and back.
4) Lunar trips to surface - the first trips might be a few hours, but eventually extending to stays of weeks or longer.
5) Trips to near Earth asteroids - these targets have relatively low delta-v. Once you've mastered living in deep space (outside of Earth's magnetic field) for weeks and have rockets that can get you to lunar orbit and back, you're pretty much ready for a trip to one of the many nearby asteroids.
At this point, you can start trying in situ resource utilization, that is, living off the land. Both the Moon and asteroids provide raw materials that a hotel or outpost could use to replace some m0aterial shipped from Earth. You've also have figured out radiation shielding, closed life support, and other issues of long term living in deep space.
6) Mars orbit - even if you can't figure out how to land safely, you can still reach Mars orbit and visit the Martian moons.
7) Mars landing - land and live on another world.
8) Asteroid belt - only marginally more difficult than Mars to reach. Trojan asteroids are a bit harder again.
At this point, you should be able to fly by all the major planets out to Jupiter or perhaps Saturn. With fission power, you probably can visit any point currently known in the Solar System.
There are a series of incremental steps taking tourists to the Moon, Mars, NEAs, and beyond. The really hard part is just getting established in low Earth orbit and figuring out how to live indefinitely in space without immediate access to Earth supply.