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ISS Captures SpaceX Dragon Capsule
Today at 9:56AM EDT (13:56 GMT) the robotic arm on the International Space Station successfully captured SpaceX's Dragon capsule. It's the first time a commercial craft has connected with the ISS, and the first time a spacecraft made in the U.S. has gone to the station since the retirement of the shuttle. The approach was delayed temporarily as engineers worked out bad sensor readings due to light reflected off the ISS's Kibo laboratory. "To work around the problem, SpaceX narrowed the field of view for the laser sensor so that it wouldn't pick up light from the offending reflector. Dragon then returned to the 30-meter checkpoint and moved in for the final approach." If all goes well today, the capsule will most likely be opened tomorrow. Video of the operation is being broadcast live on NASA TV.
That's it. Just hooray.
Can someone please post a recording of the approach and capture?
After all, we had to one-up the Commies!
It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. Dragons may not have much real use for all their wealth, but they know it to an ounce as a rule, especially after long possession...
Enterprise Intro (Rod Stewart Version) on the occasion...
Those in Western Washington may want to check to see if they have UWTV2, which for me, carried the broadcast (as NASA TV I guess). But I had to plug the coaxial (from Comcast) directly into a DTV, do a scan, in order to pick up the channel. And it could take a while to flip through and find the channel, especially if it needs to be rescanned. The channel might not be carried on the cable boxes themselves, as is the case for me. (I made a suggestion to Comcast. I hope they do add it to the cable boxes in the future since it already exists as a frequency.) The channel lies probably less than a dozen channels up from the EAS channel if that helps.
Today the ISS, tomorrow LV-426! ;) Gratz to SpaceX and the ISS crew.
Fucking awesome.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Now that Usenet is fading into history, is He monitoring the Slashdot feed? We'll see.
Everyone should be proud that their dream has come true.
Thank you for your hard work in providing a new capability for space flight.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Many have chased the dragon, few have actually caught it.
After half a century of unsustainable government space endeavors, we may finally see some progress toward receiving actual benefits from space flight, now that the profit motive of the private sector has been (at least partially) restored. The strive for profit will necessarily lead to advancements in space tech, as they have in all other industries where long-term profitability is the primary incentive (Silicon Valley being the prime modern example).
If it were me, I would just use the tractor beam and pull it into the hangar.
They captured a Dragon. I hope they don't hurt it. Also it had better be a capture and release program otherwise PETA will get involved!
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
Am I the only one who saw the guy in the 2nd row at Control pick his nose?
Didn't want to call it the Canada Arm 2? Had to go with the more generic Robotic Arm? :p Lame
Profit has always been a motive. Unfortunately, the big aerospace contractors made a profit whether or not they actually did what they were contracted to do. Now companies like SpaceX will profit for actually getting things done, which, as you say, should move things along in the right direction.
Nation of North Korea - 0
Company in America - 1
North Korea, I think you need to shift your focus back on things like feeding your starving masse and leave the heavens for those that are exporting food aide, not importing it.
So, how have the big traditional space contractors like the Rockwell, Boeing, Lockheed, etc., of old, and now United Space Alliance and United Launch Alliance not delivered on their contracts? Saying that it might cost too much by some measure is one thing, but in terms of space launch to LEO you don't get a better record than ULA. Note, too, that SpaceX is using a significant amount of government infrastructure and personnel to launch and manage its space systems — not to diminish what they're doing one bit.
If the money that's paying for it is coming from taxes, its not commercial.
NASA hardware has always been built primarily by private companies like Lockheed Martin.
In Washington jargon, when you give money to contractors instead of federal employees, its "commercial" or "free enterprise", so they can pretend to be in favor of freedom and against government. But one of the main reasons for it is its a way of evading controls on executive salaries. There's a revolving door where government program managers funnel lucrative contracts to private companies with ridiculously high overhead rates, then afterwards go to work at those companies. Its common to already have a hiring agreement with the company before awarding the contract.
I'm not suggesting what the situation is with SpaceX, I'm just commenting on "commercial" space development in general. Its commercial if its commercial activity, such as space tourism or putting up satellites that private companies pay for. Otherwise its double-speak.
In any case, congrats on the engineering achievement, I don't mean to detract from that.
Can you please tell me how the government was preventing the private sector from pursuing profit in space for the past fifty years?
--MyLongNickName
After half a century of unsustainable government space endeavors, we may finally see some progress toward receiving actual benefits from space flight, now that the profit motive of the private sector has been (at least partially) restored. The strive for profit will necessarily lead to advancements in space tech, as they have in all other industries where long-term profitability is the primary incentive (Silicon Valley being the prime modern example).
You do realize that if it wasn't for a government endeavour, there would be no space station for the dragon capsule to dock with?
Is using the robotic arm the only way the Dragon spacecraft will be allowed to dock with the ISS? It seems to be cumbersome and to take a long time.
Or is this only being done now for safety reasons and, with more experience, a direct approach and docking will be allowed?
I, for one, welcome an era of interplanetary robber-barons as long as they build us a economical & functional space infrastructure.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
No it wasn't run by NASA... NASA was the customer and gave a list of conditions to be met... However it was ran by Space X and not NASA
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
THIS!
The strive for profit will necessarily lead to advancements in space tech, as they have in all other industries where long-term profitability is the primary incentive (Silicon Valley being the prime modern example).
SpaceX, Virgin Galactic et. al. aren't going into space because they are private sector.
SpaceX, Virgin Galactic et. al. are going into space because they are run by individuals who have made shedloads of money in other ventures and, instead of being good capitalists and starting work on their next shedload, have decided instead to try and realise their childhood ambition of being an astronaut, if only vicariously (has Elon Musk been sighted since the launch? :-) )
Kudos to them of course - and they may even end up making money - but without that sort of motivation the private sector would, at most, look at ways of making a risk-free buck by launching comms satellites rather than trying to put people into space.
As others have pointed out, the real test will - unfortunately - come the first time someone gets killed. I'm not sure the private sector could afford a Challenger inquiry.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
(Disclaimer: I work in aerospace)
Private sector space exploration is a mixed blessing without regulatory oversight.
The FAA does wonders for ensuring consistent manufacturing and engineering policies, as do the various ISO industrial process certification programs for industrial centers.
Government sponsored engineering tends to be a total money and resource sink, and what comes out tends to look like the engineers went out of their way to make things needlessly cryptic and arcane to justify their bills.
Essentially, the equivalent of a 500 line "hello world!", which ignores normal OS window classes, allocates and frees its own memory, and has an integrated kernel runtime to make sure nobody is snooping on the secret sauce from outside of userspace.
Private designs tend to shy away from uniqueness, and toward stringent use of the KISS principle, but may excessively use protected engineering documentation and practices. (Imagine somebody writing their own application API on top of the perfectly functional standard one for their target, and locking that bitch down so tight that its like watching a snuff film, then using it religiously to keep people from "copying" their ideas. Nevermind that all their competitors are also working from the KISS handbook on the actual engineering, and that the differences are all almost entirely process related. Fit form and function is conserved.)
Oversight helps to keep these proprietary engineering toolbases under control, and helps ensure interoperability of critical systems, like runway boarding ramps on the aircraft's skin, type of fuel used, and standard cabin pressures.
Without the unifying influence of such oversight, no airplane in the sky would follow any standards except internal OEM ones. An airbus and a boeing offering would not use the same cabin pressure (just to throw something out there), because one of them would get the brightt idea to lower it 5psi so they could fly a little higher and reduce skin stresses as a competative edge.
Space vehicles, being radically new to private industry, would be especially vulnerable to marketing and PR drones dictating on the engineering so that the vehicle stands out from the crowd, even though that is a terrible thing for interoperability.
So, while I like the leaner design implementations that come out of private companies, I strongly advocate oversight and regulatory compliance for safety and interoperability reasons.
Otherwise the specs on a private spaceship will be a countless mess of cross-referencing NDA laden proprietary internal standards docs, and as an engineer for a company that does outsourced work from the big boys, I only have so much goddam space on my desk for binders full of proprietary specifications so I can read somebody's engineering properly. "Torque bolts to LES####" is fine and dandy if you work for learjet. For the rest of us, I'm happy to get an AME or NAS number that I can look up instead of calling your support line, talking with a string of bobbleheads behind desks who are more concerned over weather or not I might discuss what's in a spec for tightening bolts with "unauthorized" people, and if I am indeed authorized to know the secret of the bolt tightening in the first place. I'm an engineer. Just give me the damn spec, your corporate crap smells up my day.
Regulatory oversight makes things magically simpler, because it forces LES#### to be compliant with a standard AMS#### or similar regulatory body that I don't have to suck a dick to get my hands on.
I'm thrilled that the dragon heavy lifter works. It opens all sorts of doors for much cheaper orbital deployments, and the soyouz capsules were starting to have unreliable failure rates from excessive use and improper maintenance downtimes. This will work wonders.
But for FSM's sake, institute some damned industry regulations!
If the money that's paying for it is coming from taxes, its not commercial.
You are correct in a sense. The current primary customer (NASA) happens to be a government agency and that agency does pay with tax dollars. Saying it is commercial is very much a short hand for a more complicated story. SpaceX also already has contracts with private sector companies as well. Furthermore its operations and R&D were funded privately initially to the tune of something like $400 million. Funding from NASA has come from progress payments on launch contracts. The fact that NASA is a government agency is somewhat incidental to the operations of SpaceX. Our company has had the government as a customer (we've sent products into space) in the past but that doesn't mean we aren't a private company or that what we do isn't commercial.
ME TOO!!!
It's not that they didn't (eventually) deliver. It's that those were done on a cost + basis of if we keep throwing money at it, eventually we'll get it done.
I believe SpaceX is working under a different model. NASA has said "if you can achieve this, we'll pay you $x for each of this many trips". So the costing is fixed up front. Yeah, here:
So SpaceX did their own development up front and are then selling the lift services for a fixed cost. Hell, I think that works out cheaper per flight that the shuttle was. And it sounds like they've created a more overall usable platform.
Someone like Boeing will spend a decade building it with you, spend a large amount of money, probably have cost overruns. They'll give you something, and it will probably be cool, but you don't really know what it's going to cost you.
SpaceX has just become the longest haul trucking company around. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Crew's reaction on opening the capsule:
"It's a smegging garbage pod!!"
. . . who hopes that there's an inflatable, spring-loaded Xenomorph puppet poised behind the capsule's hatch?
"Heh - heh. You'll find a complimentary set of new underwear for the crew in Bin 13."
I don't think it is fair to classify them based on who is paying for the ride.
Lockheed Martin never had a goal of standing on their own, they always relied on the government to pick up the tab.Space X seems to be going from the direction of "We take the risk" more so than true defense contractors.
Space X also can provide services to other commercial and national interests. They certainly do not have the cost structure the truly government funded launches used.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
By banning satellite launches on anything but the shuttle to increase the fly rate of the shuttle to meet their projections.
By the legal requirements a private company had to meet to launch (that were impossible to meet) that were waived on a NASA launch.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
I can see it now, white guys spend all their time doing finance stuff, Chinese spend their time doing technical stuff.
Oops, and here I was coding a student records system. My bad, I'll go find something financey to do, I guess.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
that comment correctly refers to the first porn they film in space, which hasn't happened yet, but will soon because some doofus just raised $40 million for the endeavour on kickstarter
priorities
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I hope you're joking.
You may want to check out Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC).
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
There is a reason every time something cool is done it's done in America first
First train? English.
First commercial train service? Manchester to Liverpool.
First car? German.
First TV? Invented by a Scotsman.
First TV broadcast service? English.
First freeway/motorway/autobahn? German.
First satellite? Russian.
First man in space? Russian.
First man to orbit the Earth? Russian.
First woman in space? Russian.
First moon rover? Russian.
First space walk? Russian.
First space station? Russian. (The ISS has a Salyut-derived core)
First probe to land on another planet? Russian.
Countless records broken for long duration stays in orbit? Russian.
Inventor of the jet engine? English.
Home of first electronic computer? Manchester, England.
First supersonic airliner? Anglo-French.
Inventor of the World Wide Web? An Englishman working in Switzerland.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
...Dude, "Chinaman" is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American... please.
After half a century of unsustainable government diversions of funding away from space endeavors, we may finally see faster progress toward receiving more benefits from space flight, now that the risk to the private sector has been (at least partially) removed. The strive for profit will necessarily lead to advancements in space tech but perhaps at the expense of going to space for scientific advancement and the long-term survival of our species, as they have in all other industries where short-term profitability is the primary incentive (Silicon Valley being the prime modern example).
FTFY and FU for not acknowledging the giant shoulders private space flight stands upon
Maybe we need to change this? It's a rather sad statement that profit trumps all and is the only valid motivation for expanding our horizons.
Please remember that the profit motive includes charitable donations, such as the X prize and the Bigelow prize.
Between space tourism, commercial satellites, research performed by private universities and private companies, charitable donations, (in the future) space mining and (farther in the future) space colonisation, we have plenty of profit motive to fund space exploration.
Running a voluntary economy simply means that we respect people's property rights, instead of taking tax money from them by force and spending on projects that often turn out to be inefficient, or corrupt, or boondogles, or simply not worth the cost.
Many projects that today are performed by the government would, in a freer society, be performed by private organisations, if the government wasn't undercutting them through the use of tax money taken by force. Others wouldn't be performed, because they simply wouldn't be worth the cost.
I am not a libertarian anarcho-capitalist, and, in particular, I don't think right now that the government should completely step out of space exploration. But I do think that the government needs shrinking. And I do think that much of the American space exploration could be done voluntarily (instead of by force) and that, among that portion of space exploration that needs government involvement, some part of it simply is not worth the cost right now (but probably would be in the future).
Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_debt#CBO_long-term_scenarios
From a comment in latimes:
From the comments, a lot of people have been wondering exactly what "private" means here. With most "non-private" NASA contracts, NASA has direct control over the overall design of the vehicle and uses cost-plus contracts with companies (with massive amounts of red tape) to actually build it; cost-effectiveness is actually undesirable for contractors under those contracts since it means they get less money and there's a strong desire to funnel out work to politically-important congressional districts to maintain political support when cost overruns occur. In this new "private" paradigm NASA pays fixed-cost for the cargo delivered and it's up to the company to determine the best way to meet those goals, and the company is also permitted to commercially sell their services to other customers. It sounds like a small difference to some, but as we've seen it ends up being a one or two orders-of-magnitude more cost-effective for the taxpayer.
The point is not about how it was funded, but about who is in charge.
In America, that’s the whole difference.
When private companies can decide what to do, how to do it, and are able, through the system, to get the money to do what ever they want, then you get extraordinary things.
The computer, airplane, ipdas, the internet as we know it, are what they are because private visionaries. Maybe the government funded the initial idea, or maybe it has funded the whole thing, but the problem is that governments can not innovate and run risks when you have a congress, senate or soviet on top. It will always end-up with a bloated mess (ie the shuttle, the initial interne etc.. ) and un even funding.
Now that control is in private (commercial) hands there are no barriers or limits, only Musk's imagination. As incredible as it might seem, now there's little to stop him from going to the moon.
Surely all the socialists here will defend the father government, and the waste of so many millions with so many hungry in the world, but humanity is not about feeding the other, but about excelling in what we do. So be it.
v max
You do realize that if it wasn't for a government endeavour, there would be no space station for the dragon capsule to dock with?
Until it starts flying to Bigelow's space stations.
Cost per shuttle flight was $450 million, not including initial build cost of about 6 billion. This is about 1/4 that. Even if you say it takes 2 flights (1 cargo, 1 people) to do the same work as the shuttle in terms of getting payload to the ISS, it's still half price.
Elon Musk is THE MAN. So very impressed with him and his team. If I could buy shares I would do, and not expect a dividend, just reinvestment.
This sig is encrypted
The saving grace is that the every North Koreans man woman and child don't owe $50000 in national debt.
Quite right.
They're just starving.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
From the article:
SpaceX's unmanned Dragon spacecraft was captured by the space station's 58-foot robotic arm by astronaut Don Pettit aboard the space station. The linkup took place about 250 miles above northwest Australia at 6:56 a.m. PDT.
"Looks like we got us a Dragon by the tail," Pettit confirmed.
It seems that the Dragon capsule was pulled in to the ISS by the robotic arm. So, should we call it the "Dragon capsule" or the "Drag-in capsule"?
Fuck Yeah!
-- you know the tune to sing...
Seriously, and for the record, I hope more countries get into the space game. Eventually someone is going to develop something really cool.
But none of those things were cool until we did them in the US.
I thought this comment from Buzz Aldrin was pretty cool:
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/25/11881043-space-milestone-sparks-high-praise?lite
"This weekâ(TM)s successful launch and delivery of logistics supplies to the International Space Station by a U.S. commercial space company reminds us that where the entrepreneurial interests of the private sector are aligned with NASAâ(TM)s mission to explore, America wins. Falcon 9â(TM)s maiden flight to ISS â" and the other commercial space launches that lie ahead â" represent the dawn of a new era in space exploration. Nearly 43 years after we first walked on the moon, we have taken another step in demonstrating continued American leadership in space."
Mod parent up! Private companies have been sucking the NASA teat (and, by extension, the taxpayer teat) the whole time. It's competition that has been introduced -- we'll see how long SpaceX continues to offer cheap lift rates. I'll bet some of the old fat cats approach Elon for some price fixing very soon.
And, I'm not typically in favor of Republican ideals (I mean the G.O.P. here) but I do truly love the way SpaceX represents a extremely lean alternative to the layers and layers and layers of bureacracy and congressional nepotism that appear to be cooked into the traditional NASA model. I look forward to more competition for SpaceX from Blue Origin and others.
Ah, but America probably had the first financial weapon of mass destruction, the credit default swap. Can't beat that!
You have to remember why you have these "United" "Alliances"...
Once upon a time, by a Republican President of a far far land, it was decided that competition was good and the capitalist would say prices would come down so he said "Hear unto me, from now on, all launches private will have to go through a bidding process with the lowest cost". The Giants were shocked and shocked. The big brothers, Rockwell, Boeing and Lockheed looked at each other and say "you know what, let's not bid against each other and create an Alliance and put a single bid". And then they kept raking the money.
Then the hero came to the play and said "you know what, my name is Elon and I can play with Giants and fuck them". And the rest is history.
We're all waiting for the bad ending where Elon betrays us all.
Only culture to set foot on another celestial body, ever? American.
We Win.
P.S. Only posting anonymous because login is borked. UID is BJ_Covert_Action
Television was invented by Philo Farnsworth, an American born in Utah.
Forgive the self reply, but this would have been a bit off topic to the other sub comments: Here's just further evidence via news article I saw today from NASA, to support my claim that they're "Not Dead Yet!" (tm)
J-2X Engine Continues to Set Standards
...
Testing of the next-generation J-2X rocket engine continues to set standards. Last fall, the engine attained 100 percent power in just its fourth test and became the fastest U.S. rocket engine to achieve a full-flight duration test, hitting that 500-second mark in its eighth test.
The J-2X engine is the first human-rated liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen rocket engine to be developed in four decades. It will power the upper stage of NASA's Space Launch System, an advanced heavy-lift rocket that will provide an entirely new national capability for human exploration beyond Earth's orbit.
(boldness mine.... for now)
Dead? I think not. Though I LOVE the previously proposed idea of space pirates, I just can't bring myself to ignore evidence to the contrary... Long Live "publicly" funded space exploration!
You have to figure SpaceX, at least initially, could only attract the sloppy seconds after the cream of the crop have been picked over by Boeing, Lockheed, NASA, etc.
Even now, would somebody rather work at Boeing, or SpaceX?
Minor correction - the first supersonic airliner was Russian, the Tu-144.
Anyone know who the first programmer was, and when/where they where born?
Hint: Not America!
Actually it seems it was a DC-8 in 1961, but it was in a controlled dive so not really too sustainable...
http://www.dc8.org/library/supersonic/index.php
http://www.dc-8jet.com/0-dc8-sst-flight.htm
The GP probably means 'First supersonic airliner passenger service' in which case we're back to the Anglo-French Concorde.