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SpaceX Tries Out Its New SuperDraco Rocket Engine
cylonlover writes "SpaceX, the California company that is developing the reusable Dragon spacecraft, recently test-fired its new SuperDraco engine. Presently, the Dragon capsule is equipped with less-advanced Draco engines, which are designed for maneuvering the spacecraft while in orbit and during reentry. The SuperDraco, however, is intended to allow the astronauts to escape if an emergency occurs during the launch."
Seems like several times a year now we are hearing about SpaceX successes - and few if any failures. They are scheduled to begin testing and then delivering cargo to the Space Station within the next year. It will be able to launch cargo to the space station at about 1/10th the cost (around $50 million as opposed to nearly $500 million) as the space shuttle.
Perhaps all that talk of a moon base, trips to Mars, etc. aren't that far-fetched after all.
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
My dad works at the airforce base where they are going to try to launch and land this thing, apparently the goal is to land it right back onto the launch pad it started from, or at least thats what they guys on base are saying.
Summary misses the point... yes, they need a launch-abort system to meet NASA's human-rating specs, but the real goal of the SuperDraco engines is to enable propulsive landings with pinpoint accuracy. They claim that a Dragon capsule so-equipped will be able to land on "any surface" in the solar system.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
This is like watching Civil War re-enactments by the society for modern anachronisms. Isn't the Space Age as dead as a 19th century coal locomotive? Would anyone get excited if a "private" company was building a large coal-fired boiler and saying "wow, one day we'll be able to do what we did in the past! Glory days!"
I'm pretty sure I heard them testing the SuperDracos last night. It was loud enough to make me stop what I was doing and stare blankly in the general direction of McGregor, but not loud enough to rattle windows and set off car alarms like the falcons.
Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I'm not impressed by names like SuperDraco which sound like somebody I'd find on Twitter expounding upon their amazing Pokemon collection.
Can we go back to decent rocket names? Something like A-1 or Z-2?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's really interesting that if you look at the arguably real shot of the test firing, it seems to look almost like a rendering from a game! It probably means that fire/smoke rendering in games is getting good, or perhaps nature is just recently slacking in presenting itself to us :)
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The British Royals keep trying to persuade the American people how a bigger government is bad, so a smaller government which would be incapable of regulating those evil corporations is good. And to privatize all aspects of governing to the NeoCons, so tax dollars are funneled to these Royal family controlled companies. Go Tea Party, Go NeoCons, Go British Royals, Go Patriots, Go Romney, Go Over-Lords, Go Lords, tax the shit out of those stupid peasants.
Did anyone notice more than usual? Wow. Maybe I should have tried for the more expensive Tesla instead of my more versatile Volt. Chevy makes great cars, but ain't doing much for my "want space" jones.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Given the proven false claims Tesla made about the range of their over priced golf carts, I have zero trust in any unaudited (and that's all it has been) claims of low cost of any SpaceX products.
No way you can win now Harry! Best hide, because SuperDraco is out to get you!
*grin*
Anyone else see this as bad? I mean I'm all for space innovation, but the further other companies get into ultra expensive areas the less likely we'll ever see competition or good prices. SpaceX will turn into a monopoly that will have no competition. Not only that, but our government will no longer be able to take over such a role as is with ISPs in the US. People will argue it's socialism, that it'll put people out of jobs, and it's un-american like. Essentially this is giving birth to a corporation that we will never be able to dispute.
Of course what they have is an amazingly good price, but our space program is essentially crippled. It has been for quite a long time funding wise. When you jerry-rig everything to work it intrinsically becomes very expensive to keep it up, that's why you don't hodge podge everything. NASA doesn't have the funds to do real R&D anymore or do anything other then the hodge podge mess. All they can do is dream up ideas they can never reach as congress will inevitably give them some sort of goal they can't reach, but they have to follow instead on what little funding they have.
SpaceX IS a company, their primary goal is to turn a profit. Do not believe they're riding up there on their white horse while horns play in the background signaling a new age for man kind.
Well, if that Coal-Fired Burner is producing Power at 1/10th the price everyone else (producing it using Nuclear, or whatever they have), I would damn well be impressed. Of course we've been to the Moon already, shot stuff to Orbit a quadrillion times over.. but if we can do it again, affordable this time..
Take for example travel.. sure we could do London - New York in a single trip 50,100, 200 Years ago.. only difference is, 2hundred years ago, it took 2 weeks, cost a fortune, and was not very safe. 100 Years ago, it took four days, still cost a fortune, was safer, but still. Today it takes roughly eight hours, and I can actually pay for a return ticket with two weeks of my pay - if I wanted to, I could do that trip easily every two months and possibly survive every one of them.
SpaceX is currently not doing something new - they are trying to build and improve upon what has been done in the past - namely getting stuff and people from A (Earth) to B (LEO, GEO, GSO), and at the same time build the foundation for much more ambitious missions. Like it says in the Article - if the SuperDraco system works as intended, you have a pinpoint-accurate lander that can touch down and - depending refuelling and the gravity of the body - launch again on it's own, without any expendable stages. also, Falcon 9 and Falcon 9 Heavy are only stepping stones on the way to something bigger - Falcon X, XX, XX Heavy are all on the drawing boards already. And with that much lifting power - and that at more or less affordable prices - building a structure in orbit for manufacturing larger crafts which in turn can be serviced, piloted, and left/rejoined with one and the same capsule: Dragon.
As soon as you have a cheap means of getting stuff up there, you can really start looking at persistence - NASA is planning for developing "Space Tug" Systems, that can take stuff in LEO, and shuffle it to higher orbits, even GSO at little to no extra cost, since it is in all possibility a system based on VASIMR and solar power.. and if you actually have a means of getting fuel, repair crews and the crafts themselves up at a cost that actually makes making them reusable and not "one-shots" feasible, you suddenly have a complete infrastructure up there, actually gaining manufacturing capabilities after a few years of building.. Imagine if you have a Launcher like Falcon X/XX, a standardised Flottila of Crafts like Dragon..and the means to actually build ships in space instead of just one-shots that you partially drop piece by piece on your way and then throw away. Want to go to the Moon? Build a ship, fuel it, fly it, do your mission, return it, refuel it, refly it..
Of course this is all more or less science fiction right now, but it all is technically doable - the only things blocking us from actually doing them with what we have now is cost and effort, since most stuff for spaceflight is designed from the ground up for each specific mission - if you start having a reliable, high-volume and cost efficient base to bring stuff up, a lot of other stuff will follow.. and SpaceX is doing it's babysteps right now of course - hell, that Company is only a few years old and already on the edge of being the first gig that launches a 21st century man-rated Space Transportation System - hell it is a capsule, it looks retro, apollo did it, yadda yadda. But with thar Argument take your Ford Model T and your Ford Fusion 2012.. they both still look like cars no? Somewhere along the way we figured out that "four wheels and an enclosed capsule for the people inside" is a more or less optimal form for a car, so we stuck with it. I want my Spaceplanes as much as everyone else (REL, go on with Skylon, quickly!) - but for now SpaceX is doing a darn good job at what they do. I've seen their plans for powered ascent for 1st/2nd Level rocket stages - and I'm highly sceptical it will ever work. But oh boy, if they would make it work, that would be one of the sweetest feats I've ever seen launched from a Launchpad..
I'm glad Elon Musk is such an inventive individual, but I'm worried that new promises come flying out of his mouth faster than he delivers on existing commitments. Sometimes it seems like he has ADHD.
It seems like it would be more credible if he were to slow down on the new promises, and give his organization time to fufill existing commitments.
I knew that it would be bigger, but not this big:
Estimated thrust of 15,000 pounds-force (67,000 N) makes this second most powerful engine developed by SpaceX, more than 200x[4] more powerful than regular Dracos. By comparison it is more than 2x more powerful than Kestrel engine, and about more than 1/9 of Merlin 1D engine.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.