Slashdot Mirror
SpaceX's Crew Dragon Capsule Returns To Earth After Historic Test Flight (nbcnews.com)
SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule returned safely to Earth early Friday, wrapping up its inaugural mission to the International Space Station and signaling that the U.S. may soon be able to ferry astronauts to and from space without relying on Russian spacecraft. From a report: The uncrewed capsule splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, off the east coast of Florida, at 8:45 a.m. ET after spending almost a week at the space station. The spacecraft undocked from the orbiting outpost Friday at 2:32 a.m. ET to begin its descent. "This is an amazing achievement in American history," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said from the space agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "These are all capabilities that are leading to a day where we are launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil." The Crew Dragon capsule was lofted into orbit March 2 by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The flight was a crucial test of the new spacecraft, a seven-passenger vehicle that SpaceX has been developing for the past five years.
When astronauts are transported to the launch pad to load into the Dragon 2 capsule, is it true that SpaceX has selected Tesla to provide the transport vehicle? (Model X)
(that is a serious question. any real information would be interesting.)
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
The Zero-G indicator inside the Dragon 2 capsule looks like a stuffed furry plush toy.
Couldn't they have at least selected a different toy: the stuffed plush Alien Face Grabber? That would have been much better to be in the capsule with "Ripley" on this demo flight.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I haven't heard that, but I would find it highly unlikely as I believe the crew will be in their pressure suits which would be very tight/awkward in anything less than a van.
Also, if there are up to seven astronauts going on the flight, that would mean up to four Model X's to transport the astronauts (four if an astronaut can't sit shotgun).
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
We've replicated 1960s technology!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Nothing more to say, it looks like it was done flawlessly.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
But the crew will be in their sexy new spacex suits designed to contour to the seats of the tesla
What private company has done this before?
This is a first.
The 60s capsules were throw away. the Dragon is reusable. This makes it affordable to build much nicer seats, controls and creature comforts into the capsule. Its the difference between a WW2 Glider and a private Citation 6 seater plane.
**Life is too short to be serious**
From what I've gleaned from business articles, Musk is pretty much just a rain maker for Space X - he's hands off of everything else. Vision? Yes. But day to day operations? No.
Really? So the micro-management stories from SpaceX are all lies?
Ezekiel 23:20
"This is an amazing achievement in American history," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said from the space agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "These are all capabilities that are leading to a day where we are launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil."
So "leading" back to May 5, 1961, then? I had no idea NASA now has the capability to travel back in time 60 years.
My parents let me stay up to watch Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, and I sent money earned from my first real job to help keep Viking's data gathering operation going after funding ran out. And I was actually in the room at the AAAS conference in Toronto in January 1981, when the pictures from Voyager 1's November flyby of Saturn, showing the braided rings, were released. So I'm old enough to remember what an incredible space program America had, and to understand what world-changing scientific and technological advances it produced.
All I can do now is shake my head. I feel genuine grief over what it has become of the United States since the bean counters and warmongers took over.
NASA has had a pretty robust unmanned program that used US technology to send stuff into space. the problem with manned flight, IMHO, was everything was based on the idea that Shuttle would be a reusable, fast turnaround, space transport system (STS), when it failed to live up to the grandiose expectations there was no real follow-on launch vehicle in the works. NASA had a few Shuttle v2 ideas but none of them came to fruition. Part of the problem may have been wanting to continue the idea of a reusable craft so the idea of designing and building single launch boosters and capsules was out of the picture. We could have, perhaps, used a Titan IIIc variant to launch astronauts into Earth orbit and dock with ISS, using a new crew capsule design. That would have been an extension of the old Gemini design, and followed the Russian's approach of using an existing, proven vehicle for launches. I think Shuttle, as it turned out, set the US back quite a number of years when it came to manned launches. That's not to say Shuttle wasn't a success, just that we put too much hope into it being something it turned out not to be; after all early on NASA was contemplating a launch a week.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The difference is how much in the way of specifications, drawings, and input were given to the contractor. In the case of the Apollo era capsules, NASA and the various contractors were tightly integrated from beginning to end. Much of the manufacturing (especially of the larger pieces of the rockets) was conducted at NASA owned facilities.
When it comes to the Dragon, NASA set various requirements (Must carry x Astronauts, compartment must meet y environmental requirements, must use the IDA, etc...) and otherwise stayed out of the design.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Cargo Dragon berths, which means the Canadarm catches it and it is bolted to a berthing port. Berthing ports have a larger opening than the International Docking Adapter, and you can get larger diameter cargo through the door. Crew vehicles dock so that a crew can abandon the ISS or board the uninhabited ISS - nobody would be on board to operate the arm and bolt the vehicle to the berthing port.
A berthing port can have an IDA attached to it, and then becomes a docking port.
Crew Dragon docks autonomously without needing assistance from the ISS or the crew on board the Dragon.
Bruce Perens.
"Commercial" doesn't mean what you think in this context. The previous efforts were NASA projects with components farmed out to different vendors for development. NASA is famously bad as managing cross-vendor projects like that (almost every disaster can be traced to a failure to communicate properly netween vendors). This is different: NASA just set some acceptance criteria for a capsule, and bought them as finished projects from vendors: SpaceX and Boeing. The rocket launches to prove these capsules are also "COTS" launches. Crew Dragon 2 was just an "off the shelf" Falcon 9 payload. Starliner will be an "off the shelf" Atlas V launch.
It's massively cheaper this way as well, even including the grants SpaceX, Boeing, and others got along the way. The difference in cost is a difference in kind, BTW. Launch costs have fallen so far that projects that would have been entirely ridiculous in the 70s are now commonplace. E.g., an Israeli nonprofit putting a lander on the moon for a total budget of around $100M.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
They were planning three modes of operation: parachute splashdown, parachutes plus thruster assist, and full thruster landings. They decided to focus on the first two, at NASA's request.
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
They decided not to pursue the thruster landing because it would require a lot more effort to prove its safety. A parachute landing is based on well known technology. They may still do it at a later time.
William Proxmire's grave is in Lake Forest Cemetery Lake Forest, Lake County, Illinois, USA. Piss on it for me, please.
Yes, cowardly, craven American politicians including Mr. Proxmire cancelled the last three Apollo missions when we already had the spacecraft for Apollo 18 sitting around, essentially ended manned space exploration for three generations (earth orbit is not exploration), and as far as I can tell achieved no real purpose with the money "saved", other than fighting stupid wars that cost much more than any space program. The Saturn V at the Saturn V Center in Florida is mostly the vehicle that should have flown as Apollo 18. There are also some pieces from Skylab missions, made to look like the Apollo versions.
Bruce Perens.
In addition to the reasons mentioned by religionofpeas, they decided that it would be expensive to develop and certify, and that the vehicle itself wasn't going to see much use for manned spaceflight (Crew Dragon is probably only ever going to be used for ISS flights). They decided to shift those resources to Starship development, which is also going to land propulsively, and have a lot more potential missions. Starship should be capable of handling the manned ISS flights, but also the manned lunar gateway flights, manned lunar landing flights, manned Mars flights, etc.
They decided not to pursue the thruster landing because it would require a lot more effort to prove its safety. A parachute landing is based on well known technology. They may still do it at a later time.
They could, but it wouldn't really make any sense. NASA is their only customer and they're willing to pay the price to have it their way, if there's any savings SpaceX would probably have to give most of it to make them switch. And NASA might eventually turn it down in the end because of the potential political fallout of losing men to what fairly or unfairly will be considered gambling with the safety of astronauts to save a few bucks. If another customer shows up they'll have a NASA certified package ready to go for a ride or two, who'd start messing with that? It seems extremely unlikely they'd get enough business to justify rebooting the thruster project as a stop-gap before the BFR/BFS is ready.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings