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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.
You mean this whole idea of spending billions on a flashy project with absolutely zero profit potential was all publicity-generating bullshit designed to boost Elon Musk's cult of personality?? No way!
Let the tax payer fund the research and iron out all the kinks , then we will swoop in and take all the profit.
Richter has given up on this one! The BIG ONE!
In other words, Musk is feeding at the public trough and looking for a bigger hand out.
from the top 5 media outlets over & over.... barely perceptible.. liars touts & shills oh my,, cease fire stand down is the real story part of creations' wildly popular planet/population rescue initiative... pretending we cannot feel it is useless? that's the spirit...
Is this "tremendous amount of effort to qualify that for safety for crew transport" really true?! Who could have thought about such a tiny issue to be so relevant! Isn't it enough with just doing some tests and simple calculations in a model and then scale the conclusions up? Or just taking what works in situations without people and adding the having-humans-there factor? Hopefully, videos showing technology which has never been created before will continue being a very reliable source of engineering knowledge!
CLARIFICATION FOR SARCASM-CHALLENGED PEOPLE: this post is 100% sarcasm.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
we feel almost nothing? what could be better? sing along.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRCgueckAXE .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nXGPZaTKik --
Are they launching silence of the lambs instead?
For killing a red dragon?
This guy is just trying to power level.
NASA came out and basically said going to Mars was not in the budget at this time. Clearly we don't have the funding to take up such a mission and its going to affect everyone involved. I am certainly not one against space exploration but we do have more pressing matters on Earth that need attention. I do not think going Mars is tops on the list. I would probably say were decades if not more from placing humans on Mars. Its probably a commitment that needs a more global funded project then just the US going it alone.
AlL major survqeys corporations
Space Nutters. There won't be space tourism for the masses, there won't be Moon colonies, Mars retirement, asteroid mining, none of that is even remotely feasible or realistic.
Get over it, you pathetic ninnies.
We're at the top of the business cycle, which means capital is expensive. It is a natural progression of things at this point for companies to cut off capital spending, new projects, and new jobs.
We have already been seeing job losses for about a year now (if you look at REAL numbers, not the phony baloney government rose-colored-glasses, head-in-the-sand numbers) as the result of capital spending reductions across all industries.
This is why Democrats are going to win the white house and Congress in 2020.. there is a recession coming in the next 6-12 months and it is going to last 3-5 years like the last one. Nobody gets re-elected during a recession. Just look what happened to Obama in 2010 - Congress flipped because of the recession.
Just for the sake of sitting back and seeing what happens. Start a Genesis project of sorts. Maybe something interesting will happen without risking a human life.
> previous NASA designs used successfully.
NASA doesn't have a design that has been successfully used to land a human on Mars. NASA doesn't have a successful design for reusable rocket either.
Right on the first, wrong on the second.
The space shuttle was a reusable launch vehicle that flew in 1981-- before half of you slashdotters were even born. More reusable than Falcon-9, in fact, since the Falcon 9 throws away the second stage (which tends to be the more expensive part).
(The problem with the space shuttle is that the technology got frozen in 1981. It should have been retired in favor of some better next-generation launcher by the 1990s. Instead, the demonstrated problems got patches, but the design itself never evolved, never changed. )
Very un-American of you to tell someone how to spend their money. May be you should grow up and contribution something to society.
I don't know if what's "American," but I love the idea of private individuals trying stuff with their own funding and succeeding or failing on their own merits.
Lots of people out there are underestimating that it takes to do space travel. As usual, reality is stepping in to put everyone in their place.
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.
One thing I know is that Space X has renewed hope for space travel, where NASA could not
SpaceX renewed hope for space travel by working with NASA.
There is nothing on Mars we want or need.
This is a Big Business dream shot to profit in a complete do over with them at the wheel instead of the founding fathers.
That way they can correct all the mistakes the founders made and allow themselves unencumbered profit.
Rick B.
ahhh... I was looking forward to a 17 minute long version of "inna gadda da vida" during landing...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Vapor coming out of the general direction Elon Musk's butt? THAT hasn't happened before. Why does anyone finance this meathead's delusions?
Bezos? Musk? Someone else?
They can't even get a manned crew up or down from the International Space Station .. what if we did for some reason get into a problem with Russia? we would have crew up there we can't get down.. we have no shuttle.. SpaceX can't do what they were doing 3 times a year back in the 1970's with the Space Lab.. can't get crew down in an emergency.. CRAP HE CAN'T EVEN STOP HIS CARS FROM CATCHING ON FIRE... sorry .. forget Mars.. try to get approval to fly men back from the space station in an emergency first.. its a bit more important.. then again how important is any of this? Its not like anyone alive now or in the next 500 years will be moving to the moon or mars.. NASA would never allow him to fly a one way suicide mission to mars anyway.. can you imagine that playing out in a live stream?
You're mixing up two different things. This article was about Red Dragon, which was a proposed unmanned Mars mission. Commercial crew is a different thing-- doesn't go to Mars, doesn't land on Mars, does carry humans.
How do the words "NASA's regulations" lead you to think that "NASA requirements" are irrelevant?
Possibly because the words "NASA's regulations" don't appear anywhere in the article cited?
The article states that propulsive landing was deleted from human transport missions because "it would have taken a tremendous amount of effort to qualify that for safety for crew transport." But it was deleted from robotic Mars missions because "'I'm pretty confident that is not the right way" and SpaceX has "a far better approach". (Those are Musk's words, not mine.)
More reusable than Falcon-9, in fact, since the Falcon 9 throws away the second stage (which tends to be the more expensive part).
Nope, that's just wrong. In a rocket, the most expensive parts are the engines, generally followed by the capsule (which in SpaceX's case is also recovered and reused).
It turns out that the upper stage is way more mass sensitive than the lower stages. All the real tech goes into the upper stage-- the first stage can be dumb and low performance, but the second stage can't. The upper stage has all the GCD and avionics as well-- the bottom stage has more engines, but it only is fuel tanks and engines-- the expensive stuff is on top.
Moving under ground
Rick B.
Your need to make this a political issue, and in in particular to attack "librals brah!", is pathetic.
Go back and masturbate in your Mom's basement. You'll feel better and it's your natural environment.