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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!
I think he has just got bored with his space toys, and decided to play with the digging toys for a bit.
Actually, it has been SpaceX doing the heavy lifting for some time now. The have worked out how to land an orbital class first stage booster on a tiny ship in the middle of the ocean without anyone paying them to do so. They have designed new engines, modules and rockets faster than anyone else in the game using modern technology instead of relying on "tried and tested" 1960's engineering. Nobody demanded that their capsules must return to the launchpad propulsively, but they pushed ahead anyway and showed in full scale testing how their superdraco engines can hover and balance. There is no legitimate reason to doubt that they have the technical ability to land propulsively. However, if the safety demands of Nasa force them to stick with old (but proven) technology, then so be it.
Amazing how many naysayers there still are after all the amazing things SpaceX have already acomplished that most people thought were completely impossible just a couple of years ago. They are saving the American tax payer millions every single day and the trolls still come out and whine. As a European, I cannot fathom how so many Americans can be so ungrateful to a company that has been the leading star in private space technology. Maybe they will screw you all over tomorrow or a decade from now, but that can be said of any company in the world.
It's like you didn't even read the article or pay attention to what he said. So I guess someone has to repeat it for you.
NASA's regulations for propulsive landing of a Dragon 2 capsule are too difficult to reasonably meet. So they're dropping propulsive landing from Dragon 2. Meaning it can't land on Mars either. At the same time, they've decided that there's a better approach to landing on Mars than Dragon 2's approach of a bottom-mounted heat shield and side-mounted thrusters.
And for the record, that better approach is what they're looking at with ITS - a side lifting body heat shield with base thrusters for landing. The latter spreads the heat out over a much larger area (Dragon 2 had no option for that because it had no giant, partially empty propellant tanks attached) and increases the length of time over which the heating occurs, slowing the rate.
It'll be interesting to see their changes to ITS. I'm glad to see that "smaller" is among them - I like ambition, but ITS was a step too far, IMHO.
Nietzche: "I'm immortal because I'm all sin." Jesus: "I forgive you." (Bang!) -- Jesus Christ Supercop
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
If you think SpaceX has only made one landing, you haven't been following things well, landings are pretty close to routine now (unless the mission is for a payload heavier than anything short of a delta heavy can handle, and they're rivaling that, the Falcon heavy will be able to handle payloads over double the max that a delta heavy can do)
You ask if it's reproducable, they've landed about a dozen first stages, (7 so far this year)
they've had two first stages that they've flown and landed twice, and one dragon capsule that's flown and landed twice.
They are on track to have about 20 'flight tested' first stages by the end of the year, and either late this year or early next year are planning to land, refuel and refly a first stage with a 24 hour turnaround.
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
To elaborate on the above AC's point, here's a list of SpaceX launches (starting with the first oceanic "landing" attempt) and their success/failure rate.
29-sep-2013: Ocean failure
03-dec-2013: No attempt
06-jan-2014: No attempt
18-apr-2014: Ocean success
14-jul-2014: Ocean success
05-aug-2014: No attempt
07-sep-2014: No attempt
21-sep-2014: Ocean success
10-jan-2015: Drone ship failure
11-feb-2015: Ocean success
02-mar-2015: No attempt
14-apr-2015: Drone ship failure
27-apr-2015: No attempt
**********28-jun-2015: In-flight failure
22-dec-2015: Ground pad success
17-jan-2016: Drone ship failure
04-mar-2016: Drone ship failure
08-apr-2016: Drone ship success
06-may-2016: Drone ship success
27-may-2016: Drone ship success
15-jun-2016: Drone ship failure
18-jul-2016: Ground pad success
14-aug-2016: Drone ship success
**********01-sep-2016: Pre-launch testing failure
14-jan-2017: Drone ship success
19-feb-2017: Ground pad success
16-mar-2017: No attempt
30-mar-2017: Drone ship success
01-may-2017: Ground pad success
15-may-2017: No attempt
03-jun-2017: Ground pad success
23-jun-2017: Drone ship success
25-jun-2017: Drone ship success
05-jul-2017: No attempt
These don't even tell the whole story because not only has their success rate gone way up, but they've also been attempting to land from increasingly difficult flight envelopes that previously they wouldn't have even attempted from (and simply flown legless / finless rockets)
The issue with testing rocket landing is, you can't just do it in some research lab; you can only do it by actually landing rockets, and changing whatever doesn't work. That's the only way you can learn of your failure modes. Sure, you can use scaled-down testbeds, and SpaceX did that with the Grasshopper series - but there's the difference between a testbed and something that actually goes to orbit. There's a reason that SpaceX used to call them "experimental landings". I don't think they use that term any more; nowadays a landing failure would be seen as a pretty significant setback.
Nietzche: "I'm immortal because I'm all sin." Jesus: "I forgive you." (Bang!) -- Jesus Christ Supercop
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
You misread him. It isn't that they are " insisting that space exploration be a government monopoly." It is that they couldn't conceive of any for-profit company putting in the long term investment on something that doesn't give an immediate boost to the quarterly reports.
Here is a couple examples:
https://mic.com/articles/2267/...
http://bgr.com/2015/12/03/neil...
“Private enterprise will never lead a space frontier,” Tyson told me in a phone interview. “In all the history of human conduct, it’s as clear to me as day follows night that private enterprise won’t do that, because it’s expensive. It’s dangerous. You have uncertainty and risks, because you’re dealing with things that haven’t been done before. That’s what it means to be on a frontier.”
Imagine a meeting between a space-obsessed entrepreneur and a venture capitalist, Tyson suggested. “We want your investment.” For what? “To go to space.” Why? “We want to put humans on Mars.” How much will it cost? “A lot. People might die.” What’s the return on investment? “Probably nothing in the short term, but later on you’ll make money.”
It’s not a perfect comparison, since the likes of Bezos and Musk have deep enough pockets to fund much of what they want to do, but the larger point remains.
“The government is better suited to these kinds of investments,” Tyson told me. “They have a longer time horizon. They’re not shackled to quarterly reports like you see in a private enterprise.”
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
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.
Kjella opined:
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.
I fail to see how either Ballmer or Ellison belongs in the company of the other individuals you list. Ballmer is an MBA candidate who never displayed the slightest trace of vision, invention, or originality (unlike Gates, who, love him or hate him, built a career and a company that achieved market dominance based on his having all three). For proof of his profound unfitness as an executive, you need look only as far as his slavish insistence on the stacked ranking model for employee reviews. Ellison had one good idea - a multiuser relational database for businesses - and an ethos of profound ruthlessness and exploitation with regard to his customers that's based on his bullshit interpretation of bushido. Neither one is what I'd call a positive role model.
The other guys, though, are genuine visionaries, IMnsHO ...
Check out my novel.