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SpaceX Pulls the Plug On Its Red Dragon Plans (arstechnica.com)
SpaceX has largely confirmed the rumors that the company is no longer planning to send an uncrewed version of its Dragon spacecraft to Mars in 2020, or later. Ars Technica reports: The company had planned to use the propulsive landing capabilities on the Dragon 2 spacecraft -- originally developed for the commercial crew variant to land on Earth -- for Mars landings in 2018 or 2020. Previously, it had signed an agreement with NASA to use some of its expertise for such a mission and access its deep-space communications network. On Tuesday, however, during a House science subcommittee hearing concerning future NASA planetary science missions, Florida Representative Bill Posey asked what the agency was doing to support privately developed planetary science programs. Jim Green, who directs NASA's planetary science division, mentioned several plans about the Moon and asteroids, but he conspicuously did not mention Red Dragon. After this hearing, SpaceX spokesman John Taylor didn't return a response to questions from Ars about the future of Red Dragon. Then, during a speech Wednesday at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference, Musk confirmed that the company is no longer working to land Dragon propulsively for commercial crew.
"Yeah, that was a tough decision," Musk acknowledged Wednesday with a sigh. "The reason we decided not to pursue that heavily is that it would have taken a tremendous amount of effort to qualify that for safety for crew transport," Musk explained Wednesday. "There was a time when I thought the Dragon approach to landing on Mars, where you've got a base heat shield and side mounted thrusters, would be the right way to land on Mars. But now I'm pretty confident that is not the right way." Musk added that his company has come up with a "far better" approach to landing on Mars that will be incorporated into the next iteration of the company's proposed Mars transportation hardware.
"Yeah, that was a tough decision," Musk acknowledged Wednesday with a sigh. "The reason we decided not to pursue that heavily is that it would have taken a tremendous amount of effort to qualify that for safety for crew transport," Musk explained Wednesday. "There was a time when I thought the Dragon approach to landing on Mars, where you've got a base heat shield and side mounted thrusters, would be the right way to land on Mars. But now I'm pretty confident that is not the right way." Musk added that his company has come up with a "far better" approach to landing on Mars that will be incorporated into the next iteration of the company's proposed Mars transportation hardware.
That's the thing I don't get. SpaceX is saving the US government huge amounts of money. Yet so many Slashdotters have this weird conception that they're a giant leach sucking government budgets dry. Their conception is precisely the opposite of reality. ULA has been getting an unbelievable sweetheart deal for government launches, getting paid even when they don't launch anything, and charging massive fees when they do, while also getting government subsidy to develop new craft. SpaceX paid back its COTS funding in spades versus what was being doled out to ULA.
Nietzche: "I'm immortal because I'm all sin." Jesus: "I forgive you." (Bang!) -- Jesus Christ Supercop
Questions Answer: Yes
(1) Have you ever used Autopilot before? 99 %
(2) Are you familiar with the car warnings that Tesla provides about how Autopilot is to be properly used? 98 %
(3) Are you aware that when you first enable the Autopilot, you have to do so through the Drivers Assistance section of Settings on
the center screen? 93 %
(4) Are you aware / Do you know that after enabling Autopilot, you had to agree to an acknowledgment box which stated that
Autopilot “is an assist feature that requires you to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times” and that “similar to the
autopilot function in airplanes, you need to maintain control and responsibility for your vehicle” while using Autopilot? 99 %
(5) Do you know that each time you activate Autopilot, a message appeares on the screen behind the steering wheel stating:
“Please Keep Your Hands On The Wheel; Be Prepared To Take Over At Any Time“? 96 %
(6) Based on these communications, have you understood that when using Autopilot, the driver is expected to maintain control of the
vehicle at all times? 98 %
(7) Has the name “Autopilot” caused you to believe that the car is fully autonomous, meaning that it does not require the driver to be
supervising the car? 7 % (No : 93 %)
There was an interesting study done (unrelated to the German owners survey above) which showed that the minor autopilot failures (occasional lane drift, unexpected speed changes) are ironically improving consumer safety. Users were well aware of its ability to make mistakes specifically because they're common enough, and this keeps the vast majority of users from treating the vehicle like a tool you don't have to pay attention to it; instead they tend to treat it more like cruise control. As automation improves, the danger may counterintuitively increase as users get used to never having to do anything when the vehicle is driving and thus stop paying attention.
At the same time, despite the frequency of errors, the overwhelming majority of users felt that its failures presented either no risk, or little risk, as they tend to be things that any reasonable driver could react to (in the same way that we don't fear cruise control because if it's looking like it's going to drive us into the rear of the car ahead of us, we slow down). E.g. autopilot never just suddenly jerks the wheel to hard right in the middle of a road or whatnot. They also get quite used to what situations you use it in and what you don't use it in (just like people do with cruise control); the fact that the system won't let you use it when it perceives its ability to follow the road to be too poor doesn't even need to factor into the equation.
Nietzche: "I'm immortal because I'm all sin." Jesus: "I forgive you." (Bang!) -- Jesus Christ Supercop
Right, so you apparently think there was just some printed list sitting around of what NASA will and won't accept when you want to do something that's not been done before (propulsive crew landing)? As was made abundantly clear, what NASA will and won't accept came out of discussions with NASA. It became increasingly clear over time that they weren't going to allow it, so they cut it. I'm sure that you and your army of space psychics could have handled it better.
Yeah, let's just go back to Redstones. Because that will surely lead us to the future that SpaceX is working to achieve! The whole point is to innovate in ways that can make access to space cheaper and more routine, not to keep repeating what we know doesn't allow for cheap, routine access to space.
I love this double talk that you get from Slashdotters. On one hand, bringing a brand new mode of transportation from almost nothing to huge demand, to the degree that each new model is produced is in volumes an order of magnitude than the previous and yet accumulates even greater waiting lists, isn't happening nearly fast enough, that Tesla is "low sales" (actually, no, they're not, not when you take into account market segment). On the other hand, we're also always flooded with posts about how Tesla isn't paying dividends and keeps having to take capital rounds. So let me get this straight, Slashdot. Tesla is supposed to have, in a decade, gone from "design concept for an electric car" to "selling more cars than the major automakers", of an entirely different type of vehicle, while paying dividends and not raising capital. Am I understanding this correctly?
Tesla's rate of growth has been phenomenal. The fact that you find an automaker going from almost nothing to opening up factory lines to produce hundreds of thousands of $35k+ vehicles per year in under a decade to be way to slow, boggles the mind.
For decades, US launch costs had stagnated. In the matter of a few years, SpaceX cut them to a small fraction of their former value - and they've only barely just started reuse. Again, the fact that you find this to be "not really achieving much" and that you think NASA would have done better (despite decades of distinctly not doing better) likewise boggles the mind.
Nietzche: "I'm immortal because I'm all sin." Jesus: "I forgive you." (Bang!) -- Jesus Christ Supercop
Space exploration was one of the favourite things for liberals to point fingers at and scream "let's see free market tackle THAT". Now it is, they're in panic.
You mean like almost every piece of software we use today? Do you call whatever programs and operating systems you're now "beta" because there's regular updates for them? Most people consider the ability to patch software a good thing. Traditionally, cars are stuck with whatever they're shipped with, and retain any deficiencies for their entire lifespan.
Yes, one failure from a guy who was ignoring warnings and watching Harry Potter, in over a billion vehicle miles under autopilot. My god, how unthinkable.
Yes, that was their accusation as for why they were cutting off their relationship with Tesla. Contrarily, Tesla's accusation is that the Mobileye cutoff occurred when Mobileye learned that Tesla was doing its own in-house image recognition development, aka was going to be cutting Mobileye out of the loop in the future, and demanded as a condition to continue that Tesla kill its in-house development. Mobileye responded claiming that they knew about the team, but didn't feel threatened by it... yadda yadda yadda. Lovely when contract negotiations play out in public.
Nietzche: "I'm immortal because I'm all sin." Jesus: "I forgive you." (Bang!) -- Jesus Christ Supercop
Space exploration was one of the favourite things for liberals to point fingers at and scream "let's see free market tackle THAT". Now it is, they're in panic.
I'm a liberal, I follow both politics and space news, and you just pulled that completely out of your ass. I have NEVER seen anything about liberals insisting that space exploration be a government monopoly. In fact, guys like Musk are the darlings of liberal politics. They actually believe in reality instead of trumpist "alternate facts".
Meh, for every person who achieves something there's ten people who want to slap them down and find their faults and their weaknesses and belittle whatever they do. Everything from jocks bullying nerds to the people who have to hate on Jobs, Ballmer, Ellison, Zuckerberg, Jimbo Wales, Musk etc. almost out of principle. That just have to find that Jobs was an asshole and a terrible family man, so the universe is back in balance. Doesn't matter if you're fucking Gandhi somebody's going to get so pissed at you they'll want to shoot you dead. Maybe he's read a bit too many sci-fi novels. Still better to be a dreamer than a bitter, miserable old coot. Because that's mostly what your post comes across like.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It's because most Slashdotters are jealous morons who begrudge anyone else's success.
Seriously, look at any story about someone being successful at something and many of the responses are "well, it was obvious - ANYONE could have done it!"
They never ask the obvious follow-up: if it were obvious, if it were something anyone could have done, why didn't THEY do it and reap the rewards?
These are the same people who come up with an idea and then engage in mental masturbation about how awesome it is and how it's the most amazing thing and then never do a goddamn thing about it, but they act like that's exactly the same thing as coming up with (or borrowing) an idea and executing on it.
Ideas are easy. Everyone knows an "idea guy." But actually making shit happen is harder - extremely hard, in some cases, and takes dedication and time.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Meh. While people here are busy pointing out how unrealistic Musks plans are, why his ideas will never work, and of course spouting the tired old line about Why We Shouldn't Do Manned Space Exploration, Musk is getting shit done. And yes, there will be many setbacks along the way, and changes of plans. The reasons for those changes are a little more complicated than a simple "ha ha they didn't think of that" or "dumbasses forgot there's different rules for man rated spacecraft". If anything, SpaceX has made space exploration a bit exciting again, and cheaper at the same time. And I think that's great.
Sure, the personality cult around Musk is a bit scary and laughable at the same time (they always are). But the guy does deserve some credit. If anything he's a good example of "big dreams, small steps".
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
SpaceX isn't really such a good counter to that. They benefitted from around a century of government research into rocketry, aerospace and space flight, as well as lots of government subsidies. Their biggest customer is one of the biggest governments in the world. And although they're doing it in very innovative ways, they're serving a pretty well-established market.
And, most particularly, they leveraged NASA funding to build the Falcon-9.
To his credit, Musk doesn't ever try to hide that-- he clearly and directly acknowledges NASA's help. In interviews, he points out that after Space-X failed on their first three launches, NASA was the only one willing to invest in them, and they would have gone bankrupt without it.
In fact, SpaceX may have found the right middle ground -- working with NASA changed them from a company with a record of a string of failures to a company with a record of a sting of successes, but they are separated from NASA enough that they can try cool stuff without too long a string of regulations and reviews. Good for them.
They're still working with NASA. Let's hope they can keep that middle ground, distant enough to be innovative, close enough to be rigorous.
Yeah, and they were trying out never-before used titanium grid fins, too. But that was their highest energy trajectory yet (as noted, they keep pushing the bounds on trying to land more and more difficult trajectories). I imagine they'll cut back on that a lot once the Heavy is in full service and they can just offload heavier payloads to the Heavy.
Nietzche: "I'm immortal because I'm all sin." Jesus: "I forgive you." (Bang!) -- Jesus Christ Supercop
I give him credit for at least *trying* to do things that are ultra-long shots at best.
People come up with long-shot ideas *all* *the* *time* yet they are never willing to put in effort, or risk their reputation or finances to do them. Can't say that about Musk - he knows that if he fails there will be people gleefully tearing at his corpse cackling "TOLDYASO TOLDYASO." Those same people will, of course, consistently move the goal posts when he succeeds at something, sniffing disdainfully, "It wasn't that hard!"
Anyway, with Musk, tbh, I think his cult following is kinda hilarious, but he seems to be trying to use it to try and get big shit done and doesn't seem to be hurting people in the process, so I don't really have a problem with it. The world needs brash people who set stupidly ambitious goals and only achieves 10% of them every bit as much as they need play-it-safe types who set eminently reasonable goals and achieves 90% of them.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.