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After Trip to ISS, SpaceX's Dragon Capsule Returns Safely To Earth
thomas.kane writes "SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft has successfully reentered and is now safely in the waters of the Pacific Ocean after more than 9 days in space. The Dragon capsule became the first commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station on May 25; SpaceX is contracted by NASA for at least 12 more flights in the coming months bringing supplies to the space station and returning science done on board back to Earth."
Reader MightyMartian adds a link to coverage at the BBC.
I believe they've already recovered a large cheese intact from the previous Dragon launch. Re-entry has already been tested, and fishing stuff out of the water isn't exactly an experimental process.
Details:
On July 21, 1961, Grissom was pilot of the second Project Mercury flight, Mercury-Redstone 4, popularly known as Liberty Bell 7. This was a suborbital flight which lasted 15 minutes and 37 seconds. After splashdown, emergency explosive bolts unexpectedly fired and blew the hatch off, causing water to flood into the spacecraft. Quickly exiting through the open hatch and into the ocean, Grissom was nearly drowned as water began filling his spacesuit. A nearby helicopter tried to lift and recover the spacecraft, but the flooding spacecraft became too heavy, and it was ultimately cut loose before sinking.
Grissom asserted he had done nothing to cause the hatch to blow, and NASA officials eventually concluded that he was correct. Initiating the explosive egress system required hitting a metal trigger with the side of a closed fist, which unavoidably left a large, obvious bruise on the astronaut's hand,[citation needed] but Grissom was found not to have any of the tell-tale bruising. Still, controversy remained, and fellow Mercury astronaut Wally Schirra, at the end of his October 3, 1962 flight, remained inside his spacecraft until it was safely aboard the recovery ship, and made a point of deliberately blowing the hatch to get out, bruising his hand.[26]
Free Martian Whores!
I'm not sure about the navigation lights themselves, but Dragon did have a strobe light that the ISS crew could turn on and off. It served the dual purpose of allowing them to find the craft, and it acted as a confirmation that the Dragon was receiving and processing commands from the ISS.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Also if the stuff they sent back is smashed to bits from a hard landing, then well they have lots of work to do before sending humans.
The thing landed at 17 feet per second, about 11.5 miles per hour. Future missions call for a touchdown on a launchpad on land with the assistance of rockets, not even a water landing.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Then again, a minutes worth of miscalculation while dangling from a *parachute* might not be as much "mistake" as "acceptable margin of error"
+1 Disagree
Had to be the video of the astronauts opening up the space capsule with the required safety goggles and masks.
In microgravity, loose things float around. If something sharp came loose inside the Dragon, you don't want it to get in your eye. In an environment that's been entirely sealed for days, material outgassing or particulate breakdown can cause hazards which wouldn't be a problem on Earth because air movement would carry it away. So goggles and masks make sense.
Its great to see private enterprise enter the space race now, maybe NASA will stop billing $20k for a toilet seat and $30k for a hammer because SpaceX can get them at Walmart for $5 a piece.
Which is fine until the toxic outgassing from your $5 Chinese toilet seat poisons the atmosphere over the next month and kills the crew.
One of the reasons space is legitimately expensive is because many things become complex when you don't have any gravity and are living in a sealed environment.
Elon just answered that they were off by a few seconds because of wind. He said that if it weren't for wind, they could land Dragon in someone's backyard.
It is hypocrisy but the aerospace companies that have dominated U.S. space access are also defense contractors and the Republican's are completely in thrall to defense contractors. Lockheed and Boeing help run the Republican party alongside big banks, big pharma and big fossil fuels.
The American manned space program hasn't been about space exploration since Apollo ended. Its been about creating contracts for Lockheed and Boeing and creating jobs in the states of powerful Senators like Hatch in Utah, Shelby in Alabama, Hutchinson in Texas and Nelson in Florida(he is a Democrat).
You can tell Lockheed has bought out Congress and the DOD because they've received back to back gigantic contracts for fighter jets both of which are staggeringly expensive and neither of which work, the F-22 and the F-35. The U.S. is currently committed to spending over $1 trillion we don't have on F-35's which have proven to be deeply flawed and are entering production without even being half way through flight test. F-22's have such serious oxygen system issues pilots are refusing to fly them and have never been used in combat. When a pilot blacked out and crashed an F-22, the DOD and Lockheed somehow managed to blame the pilot even when they new the Oxygen system was failing which shows how morally contemptible they are.
@de_machina