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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.
This is fantastic news. I don't care what you think of space policy or anything, this is a good day for everybody.
Now, let's see NASA make good on their promise to hand over LEO to the private sector so they can think about Mars and beyond!
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
In digging around various information sources on Dragon, I noticed something odd: It appears in thisphoto that the capsule is equipped with standard red/green navigation lights. Are these actual nav lights? Are they an FAA requirement?
Have gnu, will travel.
SpaceX has several flights of dragon and one sat coming later this year. The question becomes does SpaceX have their QA in line to handle these without errors. Likewise, can they launch the dragons on-time (in august and dec)? If they get it on-time, then I have little doubt that they will succeed next year.
Do note that SpaceX is suppose to launch a sat on the F9 in Oct. I would not be surprised to see them carry that through to next year. The reason is that they will have to make sure that sat release is decent. However, I will be impressed if they DO get all 3 off the ground and without any real errors.
Finally, note that Falcon Heavy is coming. It is 'suppose' to launch this year, but that is not likely. SpaceX will be doing checks and re-checks (even spaceX says that there is little chance of it launching this year). If SpaceX can get that off the ground in the first half of next year again without major errors, SpaceX OWNS the industry.
Windbourne
It would be interesting to see if the human expansion into space eventually ushers in further extension of the extremes of inequality, with the first trillionaires (as measured in today's currency, adjusted for inflation) being, say, asteroid mining tycoons. I don't yet have much of an opinion here; I'm more interested on reading others' thoughts on this.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
The Death Star was built by government labor, as was the Enterprise.
You can clearly see that it splashed down about a minute earlier than their estimate in the following video. They quickly took the time down and never mentioned it again... A minute's worth of miscalculation at 1000km/s could be a big fast mistake.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWBFeZv5Kvw
I read your post and immediately thought "How did he link to the Wikipedia article and not see where it mentions piloted spacecraft?" only to find out someone deleted all references to spacecraft in January with no explanation.
You can see the previous version here.
My understanding is that manned, piloted spacecraft are supposed to have nav lights on them. The Shuttle didn't have them because the FAA gave them a waiver and special airspace.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
The chute opened basically exactly on schedule. That's where you go from precise de-orbit calculations to dealing with localized weather. The chute was open for about 5 minutes, travel speed was about 12 mph with the chutes open. If they had expected a 2-3 mph updraft but didn't get one, then that explains the water landing being a minute or so early. Really no concern here.
Actually, what I saw in that photo makes perfect sense after I saw pictures of the other side of the capsule. It was just part of the parachute deployment stuff. Whew!!!