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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.)
Not sure why TFS includes the comment about Spaceship Two having wings, since SS2 is not intended to reach orbit.
Nor is it intended to lead to an orbital vehicle.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
At no point were space shuttles the only way to get something in orbit, even if you exclude countries other than the USA.
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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!
At the end of the presentation, Elon took the time to add, "Just to make it clear, Congress, we're going into space whether you like it or not, so you can get NASA's funding back in order and try to follow us, or y'all can just stay down on earth and suck it" before flipping off the CSPAN camera.
He's just taking a cue from Heinlein's old playbook. Nothing new here.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"Elon Musk" is a much better Bond villain name than "Richard Branson". The rest of your argument is superfluous.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Except CSPAN wasn't on hand, as far as I could tell ;)
Various other networks local guys were, though, and for all I know CSPAN is happy to buy footage from any of them.
One thing that was funny to me: the stereo in the Fox van that pulled up next to my car was blasting Rush Limbaugh ... that somehow seemed like an intentionally in-character thing for them to blast.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Actually, what it sounds like is that the cost of hurling more space junk up there will go down by a factor of a hundred. For better or for worse, humanity doesn't seem to have it's act together yet for it to be cheap to drag more litter up into orbit.
Comparing Space Ship Two with the Dragon capsule is not an even comparison. Putting a craft into orbit and retrieving it safely are not equally hard. Putting something into orbit requires much more energy than a sub-orbital flight. Recovering something that travels through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds is also tough, especially if you want to man-rate it, and to make portions of it recoverable.
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It's not quite that simple though. That method doesn't hand over the ballistic momentum that a rocket first stage does.
For those curious about 'wing launch', don't skip over the shuttle freighters. 747 are a massive piece of kit, originally designed as freighters. The big load of the shuttle limited their ceiling to only 15,000'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Carrier_Aircraft
Can ya'll please provide a transcript for your video stories?
I have a hard time hearing what is being said in that video, and I'm sure your deaf viewers have an even harder time hearing it.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Exactly.
By common courtesy (yeah, I know, ROTFLMAO) or new law, rocket "bits" must be designed with drag-inducers of some sort to get them to fall quickly back to earth.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I know this is a problem, and I imagine smart people are trying to figure something out.
That said, I can't help but marvel at the shrinking cost-to-LEO. Just a year ago I was talking to someone at a company that does tubeSat launches for $8,000. That's the launch and the satellite. And I heard that SpaceX does CubeSat launches on their Falcon 9 rockets.
Now I don't know if the cost reductions would translate directly to that kind of mission, but if they can get the cost down to anywhere near 1/100, putting a satellite up will be easily within reach for an individual tinkerer. To me, that's just amazing... that you can put your own little satellite in space (for a short time), and not even be crushed if something goes wrong.
Found the $8k one...
http://interorbital.com/TubeSat_1.htm
Just to be clear, TFA is the video attached to TFS, correct? There's no actual FA associated with this that I can go read? How about including a link to this, or perhaps this?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Hmmm, back when I was in the rocket biz I seem to remember a several month long period where there was no way to orbit - our deltas were failing inexplicably, the Japanese vehicle wasn't ready, Arianespace lost a bird... it's all kind of fuzzy now.
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
They are sending each stage up with enough fuel to land under power? I wonder how much extra $/kg that costs relative to just using parachutes...
I don't see things in black and white; I see the gray. Heck, I actually see in color, which makes things more difficult
I believe individual tinkerers are already putting there little satellites in space. See http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zacinaction/kicksat-your-personal-spacecraft-in-space .
That's cool and at $1,000 that's much cheaper than the other ones. Though by the look of it, it seems you get what you pay for. ;)
I know some amateurs have done cubesats and tubesats, it's just that those pricetags are all still in the pretty-serious tinkerer range. I'm going to cling, desperately, to that 1/100th number. Because at $80 or $100, I have a list of projects I'd love to cram into one of those and send up.
And I figure Elon Musk has got a pretty impressive track record, so there's hope.
I know this is a problem, and I imagine smart people are trying to figure something out.
We already have. Orbital scoop mining for fuel supply:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Space_Transport_and_Engineering_Methods/Resource_Extraction#Scoop_Mining
Use the fuel for electric tugs to collect orbital debris, salvage dead satellites, or repair/refuel ones that can be fixed. Anything that cannot be recycled/reused gets brought down to air mining altitude, where it will quickly de-orbit. The problem until now was debris was in such scattered orbits you could not afford to go collect it. The combination of mining the upper atmosphere for fuel and electric thrusters is so much better, that now you can.
For those who don't understand how the scoop works, you are collecting air at 7.5 km/s inlet velocity, and your thruster works at 30-50 km/s exhaust velocity. So you only use part of your collected air mass to make up for drag and keep the rest. You do this at ~200 km altitude, which is still a vacuum by ordinary standards, but is just low enough that you can collect and pump it into a tank. You need healthy size solar arrays to power the thrusters.
Never, ever dare Congress like that.
They have billions of dollars and tens of thousands of federal employees they can dedicate to regulating you out of existance. All the while claiming it's for your own good or the public's good or for the good of the children.
No, you can't. Interorbital will gladly take your money, but they will not launch anything. The keep throwing new launch dates, but no actual hardware flying. See this thread for details: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=18780.0
Interesting. I called them last year (just inquiring) and they were telling me they had launches scheduled for a couple months ahead of when I called.
It's a little disappointing to see that IOS specifically hasn't managed it yet, but I know others have and my overall excitement stands! :)
The real problems are payloads that were initially put in low orbit with a booster to lift them into their final orbit. Lots of space junk happens when the booster explodes.
It costs a significant amount of fuel to deorbit a satellite at the end of its useful life, and pre-Elon, it was very expensive to launch that fuel to orbit.
Despite that cost, all low-earth-orbit satellites launched by the U.S. Government in recent years have the ability to deorbit themselves.
With reduced launch costs, the rest of the world will have no excuse to not follow suit.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
It's gratifying to see that Elon is right: there are far fewer detractors than there used to be. Slashdot stories about SpaceX used to be jammed full of Lockheed and Boeing partisans talking trash about SpaceX's chances of success. Now that they've succeeded, and succeeded big (the overwhelming majority of new launch vehicle designs suffer a major failure within the first 3 launches; the Falcon 9 has not), it's become effectively impossible to claim they don't know what they're doing. Manifestly they do, and they're pushing hard now to do things neither Lockheed nor Boeing has ever done: recover and reuse first and second stages. They will probably succeed at that task as well, so the radical reductions in the cost to orbit that Elon is anticipating actually seem feasible. The physics is good. It's just a matter of engineering now, and SpaceX has the engineering chops to pull it off.
Except CSPAN wasn't on hand, as far as I could tell ;)
Various other networks local guys were, though, and for all I know CSPAN is happy to buy footage from any of them.
That would be good news....
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
Yep, space shuttles were the only way for the US to bring something intact from orbit back down to earth (they had other ways to get stuff up). AFAIK that's one of the features that the US military wanted. That feature is rather expensive, despite all the talk of reusability.
You only save money with reusing stuff if your reusable components are reliable enough so that you don't have to do very extensive and expensive checks and certifications on them after each flight. Otherwise it's actually cheaper to throw/recycle them, and use new components that you are more certain will work without causing stuff to blow up or malfunction.
Yep, space shuttles were the only way for the US to bring something intact from orbit back down to earth (they had other ways to get stuff up).
That's not technically correct. We have long had return capability from spy satellites sending down film canisters and some of them are still operational, and there were a few sample return missions -Genesis in 2004 and Startdust in 2006. To be sure, Genesis didn't make it back entirely intact.
Sig for hire.
We want inexpensive Tesla S
For what it is, the Model S is pretty inexpensive in my view. It's almost certainly going to be my next car (I wanted the Roadster, but now I'm a dad my wife forbid me from getting another two seater; so when my current one gets too old, Tesla Model S or similar it is)
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Hey, is it just me or does the video in the summary keep unpausing itself every few hours?
It occurs to me -- if you wanted to use a parachute system to lower a 100-foot-tall booster safely, it would still be necessary to develop much of the needed technology for vertical landing. That's true even if it's mostly an empty tin can.
You'd need this to slow the booster from sub-orbital speed, and orient the booster, and remove much of the spin, so that when the parachute(s) do come out the booster doesn't break in half and the parachutes shred.
As other commentators have pointed out, it makes little sense to return to the launch pad, and even Musk himself has said that. So the first stage decellerates then parachutes into the Atlantic for pick-up. The second stage uses a heat shield to bleed off velocity, THEN the vertical landing system to orient and bleed off more velocity, THEN a parachute system to land... somewhere.
The big dangers of a vertical landing is having something "go wrong" at the last minute and that 100 foot tower fall over and explode. Parachuting down following a complete stop at 100 feet (especially with a 'tilt' to horizontal) could avoid a lot of this. I wonder how much that first stage weighs when empty? Is it difficult to parachute something that size and weight?