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.)

Comments

The relevance of the SS2 comment escapes me

[CrimsonAvenger]

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.

Re:The relevance of the SS2 comment escapes me

[CrimsonAvenger]

That may very well be their goal.

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...

Re:The relevance of the SS2 comment escapes me

[Roblimo]

I'm happy to say, "You're right." Makes you feel better and costs me nothing.

However, please realize that if you had said that you couldn't see SS1 leading to SS2/Virgin Galactic, I wouldn't have argued with you then, either.

Re:The relevance of the SS2 comment escapes me

[osu-neko]

Indeed, there's nothing to argue with. He said he can't see it. Presumably, he's being honest about his lack of vision. The fact that this does clearly lead in that direction doesn't alter the fact that he can't see it, so his statement is accurate. ;)

Re:The relevance of the SS2 comment escapes me

[regularstranger]

The point is that SS2 has no chance of making orbit after a few modifications, while SS2 is the next iteration of SS1. SpaceX is putting things into orbit. Comparing anything that SpaceX is doing with anything scaled composites is doing as far as reusability is concerned is stupid, done only by those who don't understand the difference between orbit and just touching the edge of the atmosphere for a short time. The fact that Scaled Composites is reusing their plane with attached rocket engine really isn't relevant. Besides, even if they do put things into orbit, they will only be able to put very small things into orbit. The concept of dropping a rocket from a plane doesn't scale well. SpaceX is making things to go to space and stay there. Scaled Composites is making interesting airplanes, with one that can go to space briefly.

Re:The relevance of the SS2 comment escapes me

[Nethemas the Great]

That's true, however, it's carrier the White Knight2 is quite likely to continue to be used for more than just the SS2, such as it was for the X-37 tests. It is more than probable that it will be used for or evolved into a first stage of an orbital vehicle as a cost savings measure over traditional pad launched vehicles. It's also common for people to erroneously speak of the White Knight 2 and/or WK2, Space Ship 2 pair as just Space Ship 2.

Re:The relevance of the SS2 comment escapes me

[Chris Burke]

Besides, even if they do put things into orbit, they will only be able to put very small things into orbit. The concept of dropping a rocket from a plane doesn't scale well.

That concept (realized via a Pegasus rocket) put NuSTAR in orbit, so it may not scale well, but it's enough to be useful.

Rockets in general don't scale well (which is why you quickly get one much too big to be carried by a plane). That's why what SpaceX is doing -- attacking the cost of launches to earth orbit -- is so important. Once that's a relatively cheap commodity, we can use earth orbit as the launching point to the rest of the solar system.

Re:The relevance of the SS2 comment escapes me

[regularstranger]

Rockets in general don't scale well (which is why you quickly get one much too big to be carried by a plane).

Heh - very true. The air-launched rockets might be cheaper for small satellites when these technologies have matured (this woudn't surprise me at all), but using such a system to put humans and anything much over a couple tons into orbit seems unlikely. Below someone pointed out Stratolaunch, which is a reduced Falcon 9 carried under an aircraft with a ~400 foot wingspan to get ~14,000 lbs into orbit. Of course it's not reusable unless the Falcon 9 is reusable, and I would be surprised if the added complexity of designing a plane of that size to launch something of that payload to be economical. Especially if the (almost) same launch-to-orbit vehicle can perform better when launched from a pad.

Re:The relevance of the SS2 comment escapes me

[multi io]

Scaled Composites people have said for many years that their end goal is reusable orbiters with aerodynamic first stages.

All first stages are "aerodynamic". I think the correct term you wanted to use is "air-breathing".

Re:Wait, what?

[Shatrat]

At no point were space shuttles the only way to get something in orbit, even if you exclude countries other than the USA.

why do you think he's building ICBMs?

[Thud457]

"Elon Musk" is a much better Bond villain name than "Richard Branson". The rest of your argument is superfluous.

Re:why do you think he's building ICBMs?

[dkf]

"Elon Musk" is a much better Bond villain name than "Richard Branson". The rest of your argument is superfluous.

We don't need to worry until he hires a giant with steel teeth...

Re:Wait, what?

[Bing Tsher E]

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.

"AKA wings"

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:"AKA wings"

[DanielRavenNest]

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.

Re:Wait, what?

[Nutria]

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.

Re:Wait, what?

[SomePgmr]

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

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Transcript

[QuasiSteve]

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

Re:Transcript

[Pooua]

Here's my go on the UI parts of the transcript:

00:40) Charles: "If I look inside this, to be quite honest, it's like uh, it's like a space habitation module. I-, I-, I've been in one of those, which is really neat, because uh, it's like a home away from home and you can, 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. [-ui-] In fact, I think [ISS astronaut] 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) Elon: "In Florida and uh, California, uh, people are used to launch, launches occurring in Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral. 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, you know... 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, just, something like that."

02:49) Reporter: "Are you planning on adding more jobs to this facility?"

02:52) Elon: "Yeah, absolutely, we expect to grow quite a bit in the coming years.
We absolutely expect over the next several years to have several hundred direct jobs added in McGregor.
And then, of course, there's an amplification factor, so if, um, if every employee that we hire brings their family, and that generates jobs in terms of automobiles, housing, you know, plumbing, electricity, hotels, restaurants, so usually it's a 5x multiplier in terms of jobs creation, so effectively it would result in thousands of jobs in the McGregor/Waco area."

03:44) Elon: "Well what we're talking about would be an orbital launch facility, whereas in New Mexico it's a sub-orbital, so it's basically-- sub-orbital it's you just go up and you fall down, with orbit it's you go up and you stay up, so it's you've got a ground track that uh, that, uh, when you're orbiting Earth, you are circling Earth, that's it has to be on the coast, because if you're overflying a lot of cities, which you need to do to get to orbit, then you're putting people at risk.
That's why an in-land launch facility for an orbital space flight is very difficult to do and still achieve... and still be safe, for people on the ground.

"I think a lot of people who have been critical, have been critical because of a lack of precedent for what's occurred, and now that we've been able to go to the space station and back, I think that some of the.. I think that we've answered some of their concerns, I'm [not quite sure?] that's definitely done, so I think we're seeing a significant decrease of detractors and.. and you know, just looking at the facts and saying, okay, well, SpaceX is showing that it can be done, and so it's getting.. kind of go with the facts, basically."

Re:Really, that much fuel?

[mosb1000]

Parachutes make recovery more difficult, while a powered landing gets you right where you want to be. Also, these stages don't weigh much when they're empty, so that should help with the fuel requirement.

Re:Really, that much fuel?

[DanielRavenNest]

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.

Wrong

[GPS Pilot]

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.

Re:Wait, what?

[RubberDogBone]

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.