SpaceX To Refly a Dragon Cargo Spacecraft (arstechnica.com)

Thelasko writes: Tomorrow's scheduled resupply mission to the International Space Station will mark the second time its Dragon capsule has visited the station. Ars Technica reports: "This particular Dragon spacecraft was sent to the International Space Station in September 2014, and it delivered nearly 2.5 tons of cargo to the orbiting laboratory. The Dragon returned to Earth about a month later, splashing down into the ocean. It is not clear how much processing SpaceX has had to undertake to ready the spacecraft for its second flight to the station, nor has the company released a cost estimate. It also had to manufacture a new 'trunk,' the unpressurized rear section of the vehicle, and solar panels."

Comments

s/time its Dragon/time this particular Dragon/

[phayes]

Dragon has flown to ISS on multiple occasions but this will be the first time that a Dragon capsule that has previously flown to ISS is being launched for a second visit.

Pre-launch NASA briefing

[JoshuaZ]

The pre-launch briefing was live yesterday and a recording is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?... . It has a lot details both about the Dragon and its cargo.

Will we find out how much processing for reuse?

[mykepredko]

As people have pointed out, the various Space Shuttles were reused quite a few times and the X-37 has flown multiple times. They both require significant refurbishment before they could be flown again - the Space Shuttle required basically a reskinning of the thermal protection tiles and for the X-37 it sounds like the tiles are good, but it requires significant refurbishment inside the spacecraft after it's long stays in orbit. It would be interesting to see how much work is required on the Dragon (and SpaceX hasn't really explained what needs to be done to refly a Falcon booster).

The problem is, if SpaceX has very efficient systems for turning around Dragons and Falcon boosters then they may want to keep it secret to minimize competition. On the other hand, if they have a very poor process, they want to keep it secret to give the appearance that they know what they are doing.