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Elon Musk Shows off the Dragon Capsule, Back From Space (Video)
Elon Musk appeared Wednesday at SpaceX's testing facility in McGregor, Texas — not far from Waco — along with NASA administrator Charles Bolden, to show off the recovered Dragon capsule that recently launched from Cape Canaveral to the ISS. He says the SpaceX Grasshopper reusable lift vehicle will start testing in a few months, and that once it's in service the cost of a flight to orbit may cost as little as 1/100 as much as it costs today. According to Musk, fuel is only a tiny part of what a space launch costs; boosters and other expensive items that currently only get used once are the main budget-busters. (Note that the Scaled Composites Space Ship Two also relies on a reusable first stage — and that theirs saves both fuel and wear & tear by using aerodynamic lift, AKA wings, for the first 50,000 feet.)
Cost per kg to LEO:
This has been discussed many, many times. A handy reference for the [citation needed] crowd.
Cost per kg to LEO is, of course, the holy grail for SpaceX and other commercial companies. Drop if far enough and you open up LEO to more commercial activities.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
But SS2 isn't leading in that direction. I can't even see any technology developed for SS2 being of any relevance to an orbiter with an aerodynamic first stage.
Note that an aerodynamic booster for an orbiter will require either:
a) a hypersonic booster, or
b) a VERY LARGE orbiter.
Can't see any part of SS2 that points in either of those directions...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
To be honest, the audio from the interviews is so bad that even with the bits I blanked out (-ui-) because I know I can't make heads or tails of it, there's bound to be other errors in my transcription below. I'd go back and listen a bit more carefully, maybe try and kill some of the noisy frequencies, but at some point it's just time to say: get a good quality directional microphone, guys.. or tap into the sound system ;)
TItle: Elon Musk Shows off the SpaceX Dragon Space Capsule
00:00) TITLE
A view of a printout of the mission patch for "SPACE COTS - DEMO 2" "FALCON 9 - FALCON" appears with the SlashdotTV logo bar in the bottom reading "Timothy lord at the SpaceX facility in McGregor, Texas".
The view fades to a view of Timothy Lord, outside the SpaceX facilities.
00:00) Timothy
Elon Musk is having a really good couple of weeks.
He says he feels like a new dad when he looked at the space car Dragon capsule, [...]
00:07) TITLE
The view fades to a view of the Dragon capsule on the ground.
00:07) Timothy
[...] which just last month successfully reached the international space station.
00:10) TITLE
The view fades back to Timothy.
00:10) Timothy
Although the capsule itself remained closed while on display today, [...]
00:13) TITLE
The view fades to a bunch of deformed boxes.
00:13) Timothy
[...] we saw neat rows of cargo succesfully retrieved from the ISS.
00:16) TITLE
The view fades back to Timothy.
00:16) Timothy
Musk spoke today here in McGregor, Texas, home of SpaceX's testing facility.
He joined NASA chief Charlie Bolden, congratulating the works here in McGregor.
00:24) TITLE
The view changes to that of a large group of SpaceX employees with Elon Musk pointed out in center by a title. The group appears to be very elated, laughing and chattering, and starts walking off and out of the view.
00:40) TITLE
The view changes to that of NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, as identified by a title, peering into the Dragon capsule.
00:40) Charles
If I look inside it -ui- it's like a space habitation module. I've been in -ui-, which is really neat, because it's like a home away from home and you can live in there, you can sleep in there, you can do everything else.
One of the other things that's really neat about it is how clean it is.
In fact, I think Don Pettit(?) made the comment [on] orbit how pristine the vehicle was when he went inside, he talked about it smelling like a new car.
01:06) TITLE
The view changes to Elon Musk, speaking beside the Dragon capsule, with the title "Main launch operations will stay in Florida and California, but SpaceX may build a third launch site in S.W. Texas... fears of harassment lawsuits can be overcome".
01:06) Elon
In Florida and California, people are used to the launches, launches occur -ui-.
If it's a new place, people aren't used to it, then you can get some people that like, just, kind of file legal actions.
They don't have a lot of merit, but they can just, really, really grind things to a halt.
So we're just looking it to be considered.. a rocket launch should be considered on par with, say, with some of the protections that are all afforded to use of gunfire, and fireworks, and lawnmowers *laughs*
Literally, it's like, just add rockets to the list of -ui-
That seems like a reasonable request *laughs*
Like you can't sue someone 'cos somebody's got a lawnmower next door, right?
Rockets don't have that protection, so we gotta have a little -ui-
01:57) TITLE
The view fades back to Timothy.
01:58) Timothy
He emphasized that fuel is actually a very small part of each launch's cost, and that access to space actually gets considerably cheaper if SpaceX - or some other company - comes up with a reusable launch vehicle.
02:08) TITLE
The view fades back to Elon
02:08) Elon ... long term initiative that we have, the most important
No, but Air Launch does reduce several of the losses a regular rocket has at ground level, and approximately doubles the payload to orbit:
* Reduced gravity loss, when the rocket is flying vertical. Only horizontal velocity gets you in orbit. Horizontal launch avoids most of this
* Reduced aerodynamic drag on the rocket because it starts above most of the atmosphere
* Increased thrust, because at sea level rocket engines lose thrust due to fighting air pressure
* Velocity of the airplane takes about 3% off what the rocket needs to do
* Altitude of the airplane gives some potential energy
Those are in about the order of relative importance. The vertical part of a standard launch is incredibly inefficient. If you take off at a typical 1.5 gees, 2/3 is wasted simply fighting gravity.
When near empty, the stages are 10-30 times lighter, because they don't have much fuel, or in the case of lower stages, don't have the upper stages sitting on them. Most of the velocity is lost to a heat shield, so the landing thrust only has to take off 10% or less of the remaining velocity. So it doesn't take that much fuel to land. It takes less fuel than the weight of wings to land.