There haven't been a lot of things that left me in awe in the past couple of decades but that did. That thing looks like something right out of a movie. Does anyone have a direct link to the flight testing program?
I agree with others that the vibration environment may be challenging. Most of the ships and ship mockups I've seen had a lot of work to avoid randomly hitting switches, it would not do to have an atmospheric bump cause you to make some mistake in commanding it. Presumably the entire thing can be flown on automatic so the first flight can be with just flight test dummies rather than people.
My other initial impression is that it makes NASA's efforts with the Orion project look somewhat kludgy in comparison. Sort of the 'go kart' versus an actual car. I'm sure a lot of that is just the resonance that Orion has with the Apollo capsule from the 60's and the modern look of Dragon 2 but the difference between propulsive landing vs parachutes is huge. Cost of operations goes waaay down if you land people on the ground.
I really feel like somebody from the future popped into the present and 'snuck' in design that wouldn't normally be seen for 50 years or so. I am massively impressed with what they've done so far.
I agree, everything SpaceX come out with leaves me with a futuristic feeling in my bones. The first grasshopper flight, and indeed the recent F9R test look like CGI from a 90's film and I keep watching them with wonder. The least amazing thing about the footage is that it's taken from a drone hovering next to a rocket, and said drone is recording HD footage... If I'd said that 20 years ago it would have been in a sci-fi novel.
The Figure Gala Show Lillehammer Olympic was broadcasted in HDTV, exactly 20 years ago. [1]
Though I do completely agree with you and the parent comments.
You aren't hitting anything other than "abort" during launch. And for a modern system, the space of problems where the computer hasn't already done it and you're not already dead must be pretty small.
It doesn't particularly need to have a "pilot", even. It's entirely capable of autonomous/ground-controlled operation, as witness the several unmanned Dragon flights. But it probably makes the passengers feel better to have some token control. And I suppose it gives them some options if things go wrong.
So in a way, a better metaphor is an elevator, not an airplane. Like you say, there's very little the occupants can do to properly get the craft where it's supposed to go, aside from a few basic aspects.
It could be argued the airplane metaphor, and the space shuttle, did more to hold back progress ... with current technology anyway ('course you don't necessarily know 'til you try). Perhaps in the future we'll have the ability to go to/from space with the freedom, abilities, and choices pilots have in airplanes.
But until changing orbit / inclination / altitude / destination becomes no big deal (i.e. right now where the majority of your choices are already made for you), the elevator metaphor is a better fit.
As early as during the period of Gemini project (50 years ago!), the engineers wanted to put in computer controlled flight system and not add in any human controllable flight control. The test pilots who were going to sit in them objected though.
That's pretty critical of Orion. I don't think NASA can make something that's designed to last 2-3 weeks in space look 'sexy' like the Dragon vehicle. Its just going to need big ugly shield, big clunky switches, etc.
The Dragon is like a yacht. Sure it can have some sexiness to it, but Orion is more like a ferry boat or cargo ship. Sexiness at that point becomes a liability.
I also don't see how parachutes will cost so much more. Orion is designed to land on the ground. Retrieval isn't a big deal.
>I really feel like somebody from the future popped into the present and 'snuck' in design that wouldn't normally be seen for 50 years or so.
Tossing in a tablet and some curved plastic doesn't make it properly futuristic, it makes it hollywood futuristic. Actually ferrying humans, safety, and cost is all that matters. Musk and Boeing play up the interiors of their capsules because its easy to do and looks good to Joe Public. NASA has no one to impress with Jonathan Ives-looking solutions, why spend time/money making them when they have really difficult problems to solve like getting the SLS going.
You say that retrieval isn't a big deal, but relative to what?
First, is Orion actually designed to land on ground? Wikipedia says water. Sounds like they were debating it for a while and eventually chose water. That means ships and salt water exposure and all sorts of fun.
Even if landing on ground, parachutes don't steer too well so you need a pretty big empty area to recover in. How far is that going to be from Florida? How long to ship the capsule back, make sure nothing broke, and prep it for flight again?
It sounds like SpaceX's plan is to land Dragon back at the launch site, at which point it will be ready to go again almost immediately. No need to arrange for long distance transport, no worry of things being jarred loose by the impact of landing, and no need to worry about all the places salt water will get.
As for yacht versus cargo ship, Orion is only designed for 21 days in space with people on board. Longer missions need a separate habitat module. It doesn't really sound much more capable than Dragon. Add in the likely vast disparity in cost between a Dragon launch on a Falcon 9 and an Orion launch on SLS, and that Dragon will probably be flying routinely for years before Orion makes its first manned flight, and I start to wonder if there's any point in continuing to develop Orion now.
"I read an article on the SLS/Orion. They had a problem with vibrations making screens unreadable. It would have cost millions of dollars to dampen the pod vibrations so the pilots could read their instruments. Then a scientist realized that if you changed the monitor refresh rate to match the vibrations, the screens looked perfectly clear. The million dollar fix was abandoned for a 10 cent accelerometer that adjusted the refresh rate automatically. I see no reason why spacex couldn't use this solution to make the screens useful in the rigor of flight."
As clever as that may be, it is still a workaround for a problem that shouldn't even exist.
Astronauts on Soyuz and Shenzhou do not have any problem with vibrations making the screen unreadable. That's because they don't have a vibration problem. Soyuz and Shenzhou are launched on liquid rocket boosters.
Similarly, astronauts on Dragon won't have any problem seeing the screen due to vibrations. The Falcon 9 is also an all-liquid rocket.
The reason that SLS/Orion will vibrate so badly is that it uses solid rocket boosters. The SLS uses SRBs because it is required to use shuttle-derived components. The shuttle used SRBs because they were cheaper than the proper solution of designing liquid rocket boosters.
This sums up, in a nutshell, what's wrong with the American space program. A budget expedient from the 1970s is forcing technical workarounds well into the 21st century.
You're being downvoted but you're absolutely correct.
Even today, in the 21st century, the US Congress mandates Solid Rocket Boosters in all NASA heavy lifters, as a Congressional mandate with strong oversight on design to ensure compliance.
The reason is purely political. There is no engineering or scientific benefit to SRB's, not a single one.
But there are benefits to propping up SRB companies with NASA purchase mandates that we source ICBM stuff from.
The SLS/Orion used a solid-rocket first stage. Vibrations were, at one point, risking the lives of the crew. IIRC, a very heavy dampener was added to the original design, further reducing effective launch capacity. I assume the liquid fuel engines on the F9 offer a much less bumpy ride.
One really starts to wonder at NASA's obsession with solid rockets for manned launchers. I get it for the Space Shuttle, they were cornered and gave it a shot, but surely it's obvious now that it's a bad idea.
The obsession comes from political connections of ATK Thiokol.
(I don't mean to accuse NASA bureaucrats of corruption. What I think happens is that NASA and partners come up with a design and take it to Congress for funding. Congress asks for more design choices. Curiously, the design that uses certain contractors receives funding, and the other ones don't.)
The politics of the SRBs are absolutely disgusting and date back to the original choice of Thiokol in the 1970s.
Thiokol won the contract for the space shuttle SRBs because James Fletcher was the head of NASA. Fletcher had previously been president of the University of Utah. He thus had connections with Thiokol, and also with Senator Jake Garn (R-Utah).
There were four bids for the SRBs. NASA engineers selected the Aerojet bid, which came in at the lowest price. Fletcher overruled his own engineers and picked Thiokol.
Because Thiokol was located in landlocked Utah, their SRBs would have to be delivered in pieces and reassembled at the Cape, using O-rings to seal the joints. The failure of the O-rings in cold weather then killed the 7 astronauts on Challenger.
To add insult to injury, Aerojet had been planning to manufacture the SRBs in Florida, in one piece, shipping them to the Cape by barge. Hence, no assembly, no O-rings, and no dead astronauts.
To add further insult to injury, James Fletcher was reappointed NASA Administrator after the Challenger explosion!
Jake Garn became one of only two Congressmen to fly into space.
"The space sickness he experienced during the journey was so severe that a scale for space sickness was jokingly based on him, where 'one Garn' is the highest possible level of sickness."
At least some sort of revenge was had upon him....
Looks like he flew before the Challenger explosion. I wonder if he ever realized how close to death he came on his own flight, and his own role in it.
To be fair to the engineers who designed the space shuttle, they could have automated almost all of the launch, docking and landing procedures, but they had to please the astronauts as well, and the latter wanted to 'fly' the craft. Some (such as Chris Kraft) have even argued that it would have been better to do this, so that the shuttles could be tested and demonstrated without humans in danger, to verify safety after Challenger and Columbia.
It should also be made clear that even when an astronaut is 'manually' controlling the space shuttle, they are only providing inputs to the outer loop of a very complex feedback control system.
"so that the shuttles could be tested and demonstrated without humans in danger, to verify safety after Challenger and Columbia."
You could demonstrate, but I don't think it was possible to verify safety with such small a fleet in a decent timeframe. Let's say you accept a 1:100 chance of disaster, and you want to verify that experimentally. You certainly can't do that with fewer than 50 normal launches. That would have taken NASA over 5 years (assuming a vastly sped up launch schedule made possible by the lack of danger to humans)
Alternatively, suppose you decide to test beyond the normal flight parameters, and launch a few shuttles with ice on them, a few with O-rings that aren't 100% up to standard, a few in high winds, etc. Even if you try to stay just on the edge of destructive testing, you would run out of shuttles to launch before you know it.
I believe the approach would be to look for sub-critical failures, not testing to destruction (or lack thereof).
For example, there were a lot of O-ring leak incidents in the years leading up to Challenger. Almost every flight had a problem with it to some degree. It just wasn't bad enough to destroy the craft until various factors came together.
Similarly, leading-edge damage from debris was a problem throughout the Shuttle program, but it wasn't severe enough to lead to disaster until Columbia got unlucky.
Once you were confident in the cause of the disasters, it would be reasonable to mitigate them, then fly a couple and look for any sign of these smaller failures, which should also be stopped by the fixes.
> even when an astronaut is 'manually' controlling the space shuttle, they are only providing inputs to the outer loop of a very complex feedback control system.
That's pretty much how the human brain works, with the astronauts in this case being the cortex.
This thing looks so...empty! I imagine it will be a welcome change to the incredibly cramped Soyuz.
Does anybody know if the second row of seating is meant to be replacable? I assume a 7 person crew won't be the norm for the usual ISS crew rotation missions, so it seems like that row would usually be better spent on filling up with supplies.
I doubt they would stuff cargo into the same space the crew sits in. I think it wouldn't be that safe. They will probably continue using dedicated Dragon for resupply.
It'll be crammed full of stuff, that's the nature of ships like that. Emergency equipment, pressure suits when not in use, backup food supplies, and so on. Also, delivering cargo to the station currently runs at a cost of around $50 per gram, give or take, so they're going to make use of every launch they can to bring things to the station.
That depends on who the customer is. With NASA there are lots of bureaucratic hoops to go through which raise costs substantially.
Otherwise it depends on how many flights you can get out of the capsule and first stage and how expensive operations are. Assuming that operational overhead is minimal, and assuming that you could get, say, 5-10 flights out of a Falcon 9 first stage and a Dragon v2, that leaves you with a rough cost per flight of maybe as low as $20 million for a manned Dragon and maybe less for an unmanned Dragon. Unfortunately the cargo that NASA tends to send to the ISS is often quite bulky so the cargo Dragon tends to be more volume constrained than weight constrained. Potentially the Dragon could take up about 3 tonnes of cargo, though sometimes they only manage around 2 tonnes due to volume, but that leaves a cost of around $7 per gram, which is remarkably better but still extremely expensive. And note that even though a reusable Falcon 9 could potentially deliver payload to LEO at $1/gram ($1k/kg) or less the extra overhead of delivering actual, packaged cargo in a pressurized environment to a station adds significant cost.
To get back to the other point, even at $7k/kg there is substantial incentive to pack every vessel headed to the space with as much cargo as is reasonably feasible.
Because fundamentally, if a craft is safe to send humans to orbit you want to send humans - not cargo, which is cheaper to send with a craft which is less safe.
You are correct to say that using a human-rated system to launch cargo is usually much more expensive than necessary, as was true of the space shuttle. This does not mean that the cargo causes any safety problems.
Short version: The V2 has chutes as a fallback, but is meant to land using 8* rockets and buffered legs.
More: It has seats for 7 people and the controls seem to have taken lessons from the Tesla cars: Large touchscreens, with fallback buttons for critical functions.
Bold choice on the touch screens. If there's any time you'd think you'd want unambiguous, tactile buttons it'd be when you have spine-wrenching vibrations coursing through your entire body and have 3 Gs pulling your arm back towards your body.
But I guess pretty much the only thing astronauts are potentially required to do during launch is abort, and they have the physical buttons for that. So maybe it's not actually an issue.
Note the physical controls between the touchscreens; Musk specifically described those as tools for emergency launch/landing situations, where the touchscreens would be less usable.
I assume the touchscreens are for less urgent tasks, like plotting orbital changes and rendezvous.
There are some good reasons that NASA has avoided touchscreens, besides the ones pointed out here:
* Things tend to get loose in microgravity. You don't really want things floating into a touchscreen and performing unintended actions.
* During ascent and descent, it's incredibly hard (potentially impossible) to hold your hands out in front of you to operate something like that. The Orion has hand controllers next to each seat, which are notably lacking here.
Surely they would not be using a resistive touch screen for a dragon capsule? A modern (or enhanced) capacitive touch screen requires something like a human finger to act as a conductor for operation. That is how every modern smartphone and tablet work and why they suck with gloves on.
An approach used in some experimental aircraft touchscreens is to combine resistive and capacitative approaches, almost like the old BlackBerry Storm. You need to press down with a certain level of force to get the screen to register the click, but it won't be triggered by random objects.
It's not easy to see just from looking at the displays. They may also have incorporated some sort of software-based delay, requiring the user to press down for a certain amount of time before a click is registered.
I doubt that SpaceX has not considered the implications of touch screens in space ships.
It's a horrible solution for a smartphone touchscreen and the Storm had no other redeeming features. The needs in a cockpit are rather different, obviously.
I suppose it depends on the probability of a fault which could kill the read out on a single physical control vs. the change of a fault killing a touchscreen.
You'd want to make sure you could field-service the backlight on those things.
I'm honestly really surprised at the choice of touch screens; traditionally, for safety reasons, launches of other spacecraft have involved crew in bulky pressurized suits that A) don't feel like they fit those seats and B) probably aren't conducive to the use of touch controls.
I'd be incredibly surprised if they had a suit with the level of fine motor control in the fingers that touch would require, but I'd also be incredibly surprised to see crew at launch not in suits.
If the cabin is pressurized why would they need suits? Did SpaceX ever say anything about this? Imagine the operational cost savings of not needing them for anything but space walks outside the station.
I thought that as well, but then I realized that there are some other fairly large benefits to the touch screens, namely the ability to change the entirety of the controls when needed. If something goes wrong, the entire control panel can be changed to a "Fix this one thing" mode, with fist-sized buttons for easy pushing.
Excellent question. I was wondering the same thing.
It seems like it must be two engines that aren't in the same pair. If two engines in the same pair went, you'd have to cut off the opposite two to maintain symmetry, and then you're down four. If it could handle losing four engines, you'd think he would have said that....
On the other hand, maybe they can lose four engines as long as their opposite each other, and he didn't say that because it's not any four. It's not completely implausible. If each engine runs at 50% normally, then increasing the remaining four to 100% would give you the same thrust. Attitude control would be the big challenge, but perhaps smaller thrusters are able to handle it.
Edit: I just realized that the landing thrusters double as the launch escape system. The LES needs really high thrust to get the fragile meaty cargo as far away from the exploding rocket as quickly as possible. The Soyuz LES produces accelerations of well over 10 gees, for example. If these engines are capable of that, then they must have huge margins, as far as thrust goes, for landing. Looking over reports, I must have missed it in the stream, but Musk said that each one generates 16,000lbs of thrust. While the capsule as a whole weighs well under that... and it has eight engines. It also looks like the engine pairs are angled apart somewhat, which should allow for some control even on only two opposite pairs. I'm going to go ahead and guess that it can tolerate losing any two engines, and up to four if it's lucky about which ones it loses.
Yup, same engines. The escape system is an integral part of the vehicle (rather than a bolt on system as with tractor abort) and is regularly used and tested. And because the escape system is always there it means they can abort at any point during launch all the way up to orbit, which is fairly unprecedented. I believe they can generate 8 gees of thrust with the escape system which would allow them to escape even if the rocket doesn't get shut down during an abort.
As jcooper said you can lose two engines from the same pair. The pairs of engines are in a rectangle configuration not a square. This asymmetry allows you to compensate for a missing pair by using some combination of the the other 3 pairs.
When rocket scientists say "any two" they usually mean it. It can probably tolerate more, if they fail just right, but you can't assume that.
And it seems plausible. The layout of the SuperDraco clusters is not equidistant; it's more of an "X". If you lose one cluster, the other nearby one can provide the makeup thrust without being too unbalanced, and there's still X and Y control authority from the other pair.
Watching the video again, I see that the SuperDracos are mounted pretty high up in the sides. Given the fuel tanks, Draco manouvering thrusters, life support system and so on are mounted lower down or in the base, plus the weight of the heat shield, I suspect the SuperDraco's are mounted above the centre of mass of the Dragon. This means it would be statically stable on just two opposite clusters. Four SuperDracos have 64,000lbs of thrust, which should be plenty. So, yes, I think it could cope with losing two engines in the same cluster.
The height of the engines compared to the center of mass doesn't actually influence stability. The thrust vector turns with the vessel, so it's neutrally stable whether the engines are above or below. This is called the pendulum rocket fallacy:
I couldn't shake the feeling that Elon seemed a bit nervous. The pressure of expectations when you're already successful, perhaps.
I wonder: the chairs do seem awkward, especially for someone who's spent 6 months in space (from what I've read, they can barely walk ... or is that less true these days?). I'm sure SpaceX knows a helluva lot more than me, though.
The inside ... it looks so roomy ... and pretty ... such a far cry from Soyuz, Apollo, or hell the Shuttle even. Like someone said, a spaceworthy Tesla, giant touchscreens and all.
Question: let's say an anomaly occurs, and it has to land using the chutes .. on land. How's that going to feel? Or, will they aim for a coastal area on purpose, and use the chutes to splash in the water if they have to?
For reasons I can't explain I get the feeling Elon struggles to explain things in Layman's terms. He obviously a genius and wants to tell us all the details.. but instead he simplifies it.. but then he corrects himself because he doesn't like being so inaccurate.
I agree. When I first started watching him I thought he was nervous but after seeing him on increasingly larger, and more important stages I think it's just his mannerisms that give that impression. Dude can handle himself.
> Question: let's say an anomaly occurs, and it has to land using the chutes .. on land. How's that going to feel?
The seats look to be suspended well above the floor. That gives you the ability to smooth out the pretty large instantaneous acceleration from hitting the ground faster than intended. I imagine you won't be reusing that particular Dragon again, but the astronauts should be fine.
Well, the Soyuz does depend on retro-rockets to cushion the final impact. If those don't fire, it's not going to be a soft landing. If I recall correctly, that did happen on one of the Soyuz landings, resulting in some broken teeth from the impact.
man, you weren't kidding. to the untrained eye, that doesn't look like a successful landing. I wonder if airbags, similar to the mars rovers, would do well to cushion the landing.
In reading up a bit on NASA's Orion capsule, a parachute landing on ground with air bags to cushion the impact was apparently a serious option for a while, before they decided to go for a water landing instead.
If you parachute onto land, you're probably going to have a bad time. But better than no rockets and no parachutes.
However, I expect they will usually pick a coastal landing site where the "no power" trajectory puts you in the water, but where the rockets and/or aero lift can put you on land. Unpowered capsules have a pretty good ability to adjust downrange just by changing attitude (look up the Soyuz "ballistic descent"); the powered Dragon 2 would have more options.
A bit nervous? He was so nervous it was painful to watch! I just wanted someone else to take over for the guy. I would like to know more about why it was so difficult for him. He was stuttering, repeating himself, at the moment of the reveal he said "Here's Dragon V1!" then corrected himself. At times the mic picked up nervous little laughs to himself. Perhaps he should practice the presentation more, the way Steve Jobs did. When Mark Zuckerberg would get on stage, he too was terribly awkward but he got better over time.
I think Elon looked extra uncomfortable inside the thing with the control panel in front of him. He seemed eager and relieved to get out. I got the impression he doesn't like confined spaces.
Funny, my impression is that he's running through his head, "I wonder how much it would hurt our efforts if I insisted on taking a seat for our first launch?"
It might help, actually. It would certainly demonstrate his confidence in the system.
Reminds me of the bulletproof-vest company who shoots every employee at least once, point blank, while wearing one ... certainly shows their confidence in their product (and instills in every team member the desire to get it right).
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2009/02/22/ballistic-vest...
I love the spirit, but I think it depends on the industry and probably wouldn't work here. Seats on the first Dragon flights will be at a premium, and any goodwill from "I'm willing to risk my own life" would, I think, be overshadowed by "deadweight CEO is taking up space that we could have used to bring someone useful".
But I wouldn't place bets on it. If Dragon V2's first manned launch gets narrated live by Musk from inside the capsule, I won't be too shocked.
People's ability to move after being in space differs. Shannon Lucid walked right off after months aboard the Mir, possibly because of her strict adherence to exercise routines.
Just an observation. I think Elon is one man who is not motivated and driven by money.
One who's driven to make money for the sake of having money often ends up not being happy and often self destruct, because there's always more money to make.
And then there are those are driven to achieve a goal, other than money or possession. There aren't many such people around and it's especially refreshing to see someone who not only has such dreams (other than making money) but is achieving them.
There's plenty of people around who aren't motivated by money and most of them have not much of it! The rare thing about Musk is he's someone who made his fortune (from PayPal) and then went on to pursue some really transformative goals. Bill Gates is probably another.
I will never completely excuse him in my mind for what he did as the CEO of Microsoft in the 90s in the name of profit. No matter how much he gives back. After all, we still suffer from it today.
he's very open about his motivations: he wants to put people on Mars, himself included. he obviously needs truckloads of money to do that so he's involved in things that make money. now that spacex can more or less pay for itself he's in a great position to proceed with his goal.
Dragon 2 is reusable. Falcon 9's first stage is going to be ready for reuse just about any day now. All that's left is the second stage.
Propulsive landing is a big deal. I thought this was going to be along the lines of, "We added chairs and oxygen, hooray!" And I was all ready to be excited by that. I'm impressed.
So you can go up and down to the space station again and again? Sounds almost like the trampolin Russia suggested to the NASA to use for access to the ISS.
These engines are built from Inconel [1] superalloy, which is very hard for machining. 3d printing allows to cut the costs, and also enables more intricate shapes, thus improving the engine efficiency.
The space shuttle's engines are made up of a series of thin inconel sheets sandwiched together, to avoid the problems with machining metals. The most significant machining issue is drill 'walk', which is not specific to inconel, and causes non-straight holes on the plate, which could cause uneven mixture of fuel and oxidizer, thus creating dangerous 'hot-spots'.
Which is really pity, but you can't expect too much.
Watching the presentation, I felt that Elon wants to make an impression of XXI-century spacecraft - but he doesn't want to get into shoes of Doug Engelbart making a thing so great nobody will pay him to fully use that. No, Elon firmly wants not the perfect, but profitable solution. Which is very understandable.
There are multiple places where SpaceX could really try to do better. The problem is, they'd spend much more money and time and get much less predictable results. Considering they already pushing envelope pretty hard, it's likely a wise decision to also use some more proven technologies.
You're right. Because of the layering of 3D printing, you can create shapes and features that wouldn't be possible with casting, molding, or even 5-axis milling machines. Complex undercuts, empty compartments/ hollow areas to cut weight down, and features similar to extrusion-based design can all be performed in conjunction in a single solid body.
He would make such a great Bond villain, I wonder if one day they will name equipment for him? A common trope of science fiction is the naming of ships, propulsion systems, and other devices, for people from history.
He'd make a scarily effective Bond villain. If he ever grows a goatee and starts carrying a white cat around, the rest of the world will seriously need to start worrying.
seconded. You can also see the Falcon 9 v1.1 engine fairing in the background; the front part of the factory right by where you go in is where those engine units are assembled, so that's not a 'show', either.
I get super jazzed by everything SpaceX does, this was no different.
My one question was about the idea that it could just refuel and take off again. I see two issues. First, it appears that it sustains some pretty significant damage upon re-entry, I'm guessing there are probably some repairs needed before relaunching. Second, it seems to launch with some sort of first stage rocket which is detached and presumably is lost or at very least, dropped into an ocean with a parachute? So, although the Dragon can land anywhere, it still needs this other stage to be recovered and attached. With regards to reusability, it doesn't appear to be a huge leap beyond the space shuttle.
I'm sure the process of repairing, reattaching, and refueling are more efficient with the dragon v2 vs the space shuttle but the presentation making the specific claim that the dragon v2 just needs to be refueled and it can launch again seemed false.
It all comes down to, "Do you need to tear the thing to pieces between every flight to do inspections?" SpaceX says they don't, NASA did do that for the Shuttle (at least for the main engines).
Astronaut pilots should be on their way out. The STS required them because it was a semi-airplane. All modern and future craft will be mostly- or fully-autonomous. Soyuz still requires some technical skill, though not actual flying, but unless you're Russian you aren't going to be a Soyuz commander anyway.
But it seems the best bet to become a government astronaut is still to be a test pilot. The Navy actually seems to be a more popular source than the Air Force. Army or Marine aviation may also be good, as there are fewer of them and NASA seems to like to distribute picks among the services.
You can also go get a PhD (or, even better, two) in something hard-research-y. Something with bio- in the title is probably good. They do still pick a few civilians.
Even better is to have two PhDs and be a test pilot. That'll get their attention. If you have to pick one, military might still be best: NASA should probably be picking the best possible lab assistants, but old habits die hard and the astronaut office is rather invested in the test pilot idea. But they might shift a bit once they're all flying passenger on commercial transport.
On the other hand, if they ever get Orion flying, they'll probably want to staff it with test pilots. I don't think anyone else would be crazy enough to get on the thing within the next two decades considering their "test program".
In the coming decades the cost of flying humans and cargo to orbit will drop by about a factor of 100, which will result in a rapidly burgeoning population of inhabitants and habitable structures in space. There have never been more than 13 people in orbit at any one time in history, within 2 decades, at the latest, that record will be shattered, and soon tens then hundreds then thousands of people will take trips to space each year and who knows how many people will permanently live and work on orbit.
If you really want to go into space don't become an astronaut, figure out how to acquire the skills which will make you so indispensable that it would be easy to find a job on orbit. It's hard to say what those are today but I think a fair bet would be becoming an expert on systems unique to spacecraft. But, you know, realistically it could also be something like becoming a zero-g chef, learning how to cook in zero-g and make food that is uniquely appetizing given the constraints and given the changes to taste in that environment.
Depends what you mean by 'astronaut.' One of the interesting things about the space shuttle is that it allowed large crews (up to 11, but typically 7) of which only 2 were absolutely necessary to fly it, so you could have relatively specialised people (e.g. scientists who were not also pilots) going up into space. Now, with the Soyuz capsule only having 3 seats, every seat counts again and we don't have that flexibility anymore. But the Dragon V2 seats 7, so maybe that's about to change :) and you wouldn't necessarily need to join the air force at all to get into space!
I wonder if the best bet at this point, if you're starting fresh, might be to join SpaceX directly rather than shooting for NASA. With all their talk of Mars, they must be planning to have their own astronauts at some point.
As I understand it, it was actually a point of contention whether a NASA astronaut or a SpaceX astronaut would fly first. I think they decided on a NASA astronaut in the end, but it seems like SpaceX definitely has plans in that direction...
7 seats, along with a potentially much faster recycle time on the spacecraft. There were less than 200 shuttle flights and it ended up costing $1.5 billion per flight (with everything factored in), so the total number of people who get to fly into space on a Dragon V2 should be more than an order of magnitude more.
ISS is only projected until 2020, but will obviously go longer. I am not sure you will be competitive within 10 years. Flight hours alone may limit your true chances. It is also not uncommon to be certed to fly and still wait 3-5+ years.
Looks like a really early mockup. For example, the buttons don't have any physical accidental press protection. The labels are tiny. All shapes, sizes and colors are identical.
The seats look that they don't support the crew at high g forces at all. In a nominal launch that might be ok, but in case of problems, you'd need a better seat.
... and i thought I heard him say something about it landing on Earth, "or other places".
Did I hear that right? Does he believe this craft could land elsewhere? A subsequent version, sure, especially if purpose-built, but this version ... that would be pretty special.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know what happens to the solar panels that are shown in the animation when it docks to the ISS? They are disconnected before returning to earth. All of the stages are reused - are the solar panels thrown away?
2nd stage and trunk are not reused (I think). Cost-wise solar panels are not that expensive, they're mostly silicon doped with germanium (and other elements).
There are still throwaway parts to the stack at present. The 2nd stage isn't reused and the trunk is disconnected and burns up in the atmosphere. For now that's not such a huge deal, as both are fairly inexpensive components comparatively.
IIRC Chris Hadfield recently noted in a Reddit IMA that power isn't an enormously constrained resource for them on the ISS. The hassle of saving and installing them might not be worth it.
Does anyone know what the thinking behind the ability to sustain the crew for several days is? Is this just a step on the way to being able to sustain a crew for lunar/Mars flights or does it have any immediate utility?
For the past few years, manned missions to the ISS take only 6 hours in ascent, all the rendez-vous maneuvering is being done in the duration of 4 orbits.
It used to take a few days, though. However, the crews take a pre-flight enema [0] and go through a diet to avoid having to go #2. There's a story that the Soyuz toilet has been used only once in ISS missions after a Cosmonaut had been eating prunes prior to departure back to earth [sorry, can't find a link].
So for orbital operations to/from the ISS, there's not much use for a space toilet. So little, that I wouldn't be surprised if there's no toilet at all and the fallback plan is to soil your pants, as crude as it sounds.
Transport to a space station may need a few days in transit. It also makes it useful for non-station missions, such as research (DragonLab), in-orbit assembly, or satellite repair.
For long-duration missions, the PICA-X heat shield has plenty of margin for a direct entry from a lunar or Mars mission. Dragon systems seem happy enough so far loitering at the ISS for an extended duration. However, the Dragon itself is still pretty darn small and may require an additional logistics/living module, which it could dock with like Apollo did the LM. Such a thing wouldn't be too hard for SpaceX to make up.
Doubtless they will take their time in the beginning, and learn exactly what it does take to relaunch. (They'll have plenty of time, as their current sole customer probably won't want more than four a year for at least a few years.) The Shuttle was originally also intended to be quickly reused, but it failed spectacularly at doing so. However, the Dragon is not the STS, and SpaceX is not NASA. It's a much simpler and less compromised vehicle, and when they discover pain points during recycle, I expect they will be engineered away, and quickly too. I wouldn't bet against it being "gas-and-go" in 2-3 years (by which I mean requiring no more than the usual pre-flight checks.)
Yeah, that's where the "compromised" is from. STS was killed in the cradle by politics, and operated its whole life as a zombie. A nearly impossible and quite capable zombie, but still a zombie. An amazing feat to be sure, but it would have been better to let it go once it became clear it could meet nothing like its original goals. An STS2 might have been a decent system, but running the original so long seems to have damaged the very concept of reusability in NASA and other space agencies.
But even the best possible government-designed-and-operated system just doesn't have the right incentives to be really efficient like the SpaceX system is aiming for. The incentives being "making money" and "Elon really wants to go to Mars".
During rocket racing several years ago, XCOR participated with a rocketplane - a plane which only has a rocket engine as the sole mean of motion. They did two back-to-back flights. Between wheels stop and wheels start they had to prepare the rocketplane for the next flight. They did that in under 9 minutes - about 20 people simultaneously working on the plane, checking and loading with pressurized gases, fuel (ethanol, I think) and oxidizer (LOX).
I doubt Dragon will have turnaround in minutes. But in days, under a week - I think it's quite possible, as a routine operation.
So. How far along is that thing? I assume they never really tested it as a whole (since that would kind of imply showing it to the world), so there’s lots of potential for reality crashing into this. Hard. Right now it’s basically vapourware, right? I mean, I guess they have to show it off, but this feels more like a concept study than an actual thing.
Pretty far along. They have an in process application with the FAA for running tests on a "DragonFly" vehicle which is basically a Dragon 2 capsule designed for testing the landing system (which, according to the permit) they plan to do a lot of tests on.
Also, they will test the in flight abort system in two separate unmanned tests this year. One on the launch pad and another with a full scale launch with the escape system activating at Max-Q (maximum dynamic pressure on the rocket, the most extreme test possible for the system).
Many of the components share engineering heritage with the unmanned cargo Dragon such as the pressure hull, heat shield, RCS thrusters, and so on. Nobody outside SpaceX would know how far along they are in terms of every single component and with integration but every indication is that they are quite far along indeed and most of what they need to do at this point is validate their design through testing and eventually operational flights.
They say it's "actual flight design hardware". Probably not quite ready to chuck at the ISS, but all the pieces are there. The main differences from the already-operational Dragon seem to be:
- improved heat shield (presumably a minor iteration)
- docking hardware (OTS)
- Super-Draco thrusters (recently flight-qualified)
- seats (apparently extant)
- piloting controls (apparently extant, may require additional software)
- life support system (?)
- software for propulsive landing (will require testing, but they can already do it for a 10-story F9)
- software for autonomous docking (unknown, but if Soyuz can do it, so can SpaceX)
Most of the hardware seems to be ready to go; the software may not be, but that can be done a lot faster than hardware, and nothing here is beyond their already-demonstrated abilities.
There is certainly plenty of testing to be done on the novel things like launch abort and propulsive landing (much of which is already scheduled!), as well as on-orbit tryout of a few things. But it looks like it's pretty far along, and I bet we'll see it in space within 12 months.
Vaporware would apply to something that the company clearly doesn't have the technical skill or financial means to pull of. The Mars One mission is an excellent example.
SpaceX has already flown multiple missions to the ISS and has demoed soft-landing their first stage under power. This may not work 100% right now, but there's every reason to believe that SpaceX has the technical skill, the financing, and the will to make it work.
They've been testing the superdraco rockets for a while, and there was a pad abort test scheduled for December 2013, I don't know whether that actually happened.
There was an in-flight abort test scheduled for April 2014, again I don't know if that actually happened.
They put out a press release[0] a couple of days ago about having completed "qualification testing" of the SuperDracos. Also "The pad abort will be the first test of SpaceX’s new launch escape system and is currently expected to take place later this year."
I agree with others that the vibration environment may be challenging. Most of the ships and ship mockups I've seen had a lot of work to avoid randomly hitting switches, it would not do to have an atmospheric bump cause you to make some mistake in commanding it. Presumably the entire thing can be flown on automatic so the first flight can be with just flight test dummies rather than people.
My other initial impression is that it makes NASA's efforts with the Orion project look somewhat kludgy in comparison. Sort of the 'go kart' versus an actual car. I'm sure a lot of that is just the resonance that Orion has with the Apollo capsule from the 60's and the modern look of Dragon 2 but the difference between propulsive landing vs parachutes is huge. Cost of operations goes waaay down if you land people on the ground.
I really feel like somebody from the future popped into the present and 'snuck' in design that wouldn't normally be seen for 50 years or so. I am massively impressed with what they've done so far.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_%28spacecraft%29