Slashdot Mirror
SpaceX Cargo Capsule Reaches International Space Station
Despite having some trouble with maneuvering thrusters a few days ago, SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule has successfully reached the International Space Station. from the article: "Astronauts aboard the outpost used the station's robotic arm to pluck the capsule from orbit at 5:31 a.m. EST as the ships sailed 250 miles over northern Ukraine. Flight controllers at NASA's Mission Control in Houston then stepped in to drive the capsule to its berthing port on the station's Harmony connecting node."
Congrats SpaceX and their NASA Counterparts!
"Chance favors the prepared mind." ~Me
Don't understand all the throwaway freighters, it's like throwing away your semi-truck after every shipment.
Truckers would readily throw away their trucks on every voyage if it were insanely expensive and difficult to bring them back in any kind of functional condition.
And that's exactly why we use single-use rockets.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
It's really a misnomer to call the space shuttle reusable. "Rebuildability" is more like it. The things had to spend months after each flight being torn apart and having every part inspected over and over and a big chunk of them replaced.
The key to economic space flight is full and rapid reusability. Payload launchers need to become as reusable as passenger aeroplanes for space flight to become routine.
If it's so insanely expensive and difficult, then why is SpaceX working on just that, a reusable rocket?
Because it's a worthwhile goal, which IMNSHO SpaceX is working on in the proper method: incrementally from simple, known-working parts.
That was the idea behind the shuttle. Didn't work out so well, but that was the idea.
Many at NASA in the 1970s should be flogged for over-promising and under-budgeting a single-stage-to-orbit "truck".
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1