7 ms·

SpaceX's Dragon ship set for station visit

179 points by PaulMcCartney 15y ago

bprater 15y ago
They mention returning items from ISS. Does anyone know if this is the old standard method of using a parachute and dropping into the ocean for recovery?
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  Previous Dragon Capsule recovery (and it was only once before) was parachute to ocean landing. [1] So presumably to limit the number of things being tested on this flight to a reasonable number they won't try to return it to land. I am very hopeful that these guys succeed, and will be impressed as hell. Elon is not kidding when he says it is 'tricky.' Although I think the speed thing is over blown (17,000 MPH, wow! except you're both going about 17,000 MPH and you're both going the same direction, so relative speed is more interesting) But you do have to navigate there, rendezvous, and dock. If successful they will have duplicated everything in Gemini and next up will be the Mercury program (first manned missions) :-) [1] http://news.discovery.com/space/spacexs-dragon-capsule-returns-safely-to-earth.html http://news.discovery.com/space/spacexs-dragon-capsule-retur...
  - electromagnetic 15y ago
    I think the reason they're saying it's a bit more tricky than people realise is because, even when dealing solely in terms of relative speed, you're dealing with orbits. If you try to accelerate, you'll actually end up in a higher orbit. It would be like putting down the gas to overtake someone on the highway and end up flying above them and even if you let off the gas, you will slowly drift further away as you're now dealing with a small amount less gravity. It's tricky, because the common person doesn't have any clue how to relate to three dimensional movement in an orbit.
    - ChuckMcM 15y ago
      Actually, another funny story ... One of the first programs I ever wrote was a BASIC game called 'orbit' which simulated docking with other space ships and satellites in orbit. No graphics other than things like closing speed and distance from target, sort of like the old Lunar program at the time. One of the things that always got people thinking it was 'broken' was that you had to slow down to catch up, basically by slowing you moved to a lower orbit and moved faster relative to an object in a higher orbit, and then you went to a higher orbit to slow down (accelerating).
- hej 15y ago
  By the way, currently it’s only possible to return up to 50kg of cargo from the ISS. After the Space Shuttle was retired, Soyuz became the only spacecraft that can actually return anything to Earth from the ISS and there is pretty much only space for three people and nothing else in that thing. Dragon is supposed to bring back 600kg in its first test flight to the ISS, but it can bring back up to 3.000kg. That’s still not much compared to what the Space Shuttle could do (14.000kg), but it’s a lot more than what is currently possible. So even if it takes another three years until the first manned flight, Dragon can be very useful as a cargo ship for the ISS (despite the fact that the ISS already has three cargo ships: the Russian Progress, the Japanese HTV and the European ATV – those three ships can deliver tons of cargo but they all can return nothing).
  - nknight 15y ago
    The ability to do about 4 Dragon flights to the ISS for the incremental cost of a single 2011 Shuttle launch does mean the raw down-mass capability is actually pretty comparable, though.
    - hej 15y ago
      One thing, though, Dragon won’t deliver is volume. There was lots of space in the Space Shuttle. (But I just wanted to add that for completeness sake, not to claim that the Shuttle was super awesome.)
      - smithian 15y ago
        Yes, but that volume would not have been used for station maintenance missions. If you look at the manifests for the shuttle, they hardly ever used all that volume even for station construction.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  For now, at least. They have signaled the intention to use the launch abort rockets to make powered landings. I am not sure if they'd try to do it straight from atmospheric braking or if they want to use parachutes to slow down and then use the rockets to land. In any case, it's very 60's sci-fi style. Quite cool.
waiwai933 15y ago
I can't believe that the launch is scheduled for April 30th; in my mind, commercial spaceflight was at least another year away. Either way, if all goes well, I think this marks the beginning of yet another era, and the milestone is, quite frankly, amazing.
- MikeCapone 15y ago
  I'm surprised at the rate of progress too. NASA used to be able to make rapid progress like that, but I feel like - from my layman's perspective - they couldn't do that now. It would cost billions more than it cost SpaceX to start from nothing (well, not exactly, they had help from NASA, but still) and take years longer.
  - Synthetase 15y ago
    SpaceX is innovating off of NASA's inventions so it has a smaller barrier to clear. NASA is in charge of space exploration and space science with a budget that can really only handle one. In addition, politicians and not engineers run NASA.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    NASA once had the job of putting man on the Moon and bringing them back before 1970. The mission is much broader now, the budgets much smaller and everything seems designed around generating as many jobs in as many places as technically possible (and frequently beyond that boundary). I'm not surprised at all.
  - nipunn1313 15y ago
    I know people who work at SpaceX. They recruit pretty heavily from CMU (where I am now). From what I have heard, this is why they get things done so quickly: 1) Elon Musk knows about every detail of the rocket's design. 2) They make almost all the parts in house (literally in the same factory). 3) The work ethic/culture at SpaceX is very high. If something needs to get done, Elon will make sure it gets done fast. They somehow maintain a high rate of progress despite how huge the undertaking is.
mukaiji 15y ago
While Zuckerberg is busy buying vanity smartphone photo-filters for a billion bucks, Elon Musk is busy putting America back in space. Impact. Matters.
- schraeds 15y ago
  How many years after starting PayPal did Elon start space exploration efforts? While I agree with the sentiment of your post, and I am apprehensive Zuckerberg ever strives for NASA or equivalent level accomplishment, I think it's way to early in his life to judge/assume.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- flyt 15y ago
  Zuckerberg has accrued over 20 billion dollars of value. He's 27. Elon started out by starting a company "to let people pay to sell junk on eBay" and he did alright. Give Mark some time before rushing to judge.
  - cft 15y ago
    First, Elon started zip2.com, which "enabled companies to post content on the Internet, such as maps and directory listings"- it was sold in 1999. The X.com (which later became PayPal) is a payment processing engine behind all kinds of things, including companies doing very productive stuff, not just selling junk on ebay. Note that unlike Facebook.com, PayPal.com is never blocked at workplaces, since it's not a productivity killer. I think Mark will re-implement Hollywood in SF Bay Area, but will not do anything as productive as SpaceX or Tesla Motors. If anything, it shows that monetary value is not 100% rationally assigned by the current sociopolitical system.
    - potatolicious 15y ago
      What a needlessly narrow-minded and judgmental post. For better or for worse, Facebook has completely changed the way we socialize, both online and off. We now have means to share and consume information about our acquaintances and friends that we never had before - and based on simple observation we know that people are eating this up. The demand for Zuckerberg's product is massive. Impact? Being the man who invented Facebook isn't impactful? We can spend all day spinning this - I can claim that the Dragon is a billionaire's toy, an elitist device which burns boatloads of cash each launch while others suffer through poverty, illness, and death. But I won't, because that'd be stupid, because the value of any such venture is inherently many-faceted and difficult to ascertain. By your logic anybody who isn't actively curing cancer and malaria is just wasting his/her time.
Metapony 15y ago
While SpaceX is getting all the press, Orbital is working on the same thing.
- mkn 15y ago
  I find your comment amusing in light of my particular frustration with the near anonymity of SpaceX in relation to its accomplishments, especially in addition to the nearly universally unfavorable press it gets over at AviationWeek.com. And never mind that Orbital is not "working on the same thing" by any reasonable understanding of the phrase. Let's get one thing out of the way up front: SpaceX launched, orbited, reentered, and retrieved a fully reusable capsule, one with an ablative heat shield that can be used hundreds, if not thousands, of times over. Disregarding the reusable aspects of the design, they're in the company of 3 nations. Include the reusability aspect and they're in the company only of the United States and the former Soviet Union. I have a degree in engineering. I have engineering friends, some of whom work in aerospace companies. Until this recent PR push, I hadn't found one of them who'd even heard of SpaceX, to say nothing of their groundbreaking and historical flight and recovery of a capsule with private funds. If that's "all the press," then I have "all the press," too. Go ahead. Ask me how it feels to be so famous! The little press that they do get within the ossified aerospace industry has been terrible. AvWeek recently ran a piece which was focused on how SpaceX had "lost some of its luster" (not a direct quote, but close) with the slip from February to April for the Space Station rendezvous launch, as if any government-run space technology was ever delivered on time. A while ago, they found some blow-hard "space policy expert" to opine about how space was hard and how it was absolutely obvious that SpaceX was over-promising and destined to radically under-deliver. They ran another piece about how congress was unhappy with COTS. Only recently did they have to give some ground with a piece about how commercial space was "already having benefits" now that the launch is so near, and I was overjoyed with schadenfreude when they had to provide neutral coverage of the uninteresting and everyday fact that Space Station astronauts were rehearsing for SpaceX's visit to the station. There's a reason, I'm sure, that SpaceX chose Muse's Uprising as the theme song for their animation about their plans for full reusability. It fits. Further, Orbital's offering is not even close. Orbital's vehicle is not reusable. It burns up on reentry, and therefore has no capacity to bring cargo back from ISS. And their price point is nowhere near Musk's. In case you're keeping track--and I mean the hypothetical "you", I'm not pissed at you, Metapony--that's less for more. Less than SpaceX for more money. Furthermore, the floor on Orbital's costs is the same trifecta that's always been around in aerospace: expendability, costs of disparate components, and integration costs. I'd love to see a viable competitor to SpaceX, but Orbital isn't even close. Make no mistake, the battle is not between "government" vehicles and private industry. There are no "government" vehicles: Every vehicle gets built by private contractors. The battle is actually between the established aerospace industry, built around expendables and cost-plus contracting, and SpaceX, an innovative and disruptive aerospace company based around competition, reusables, and fixed-price contracts, with Orbital taking up the rear with the worst aspects of both models. I know. I come across as a strident cheerleader. I hope that has less to do with any inherent fanboyism in my makeup than it does with my absolute perplexity at and frustration with the bare fact that SpaceX has done unprecedented, amazing, historic things, and hardly anyone knows about them at all.
burgerbrain 15y ago
Interesting tidbit from the announcement about this on SpaceX's website: >In fact, Dragon has so much interior volume, that we could place an entire three-person Russian Soyuz capsule descent module inside Dragon’s pressure vessel. That is just awesome.
- lutorm 15y ago
  "The SUV of space capsules!" (It was after all designed in America! ;-)

179 points by PaulMcCartney 15y ago

They mention returning items from ISS. Does anyone know if this is the old standard method of using a parachute and dropping into the ocean for recovery?

ChuckMcM 15y ago
Previous Dragon Capsule recovery (and it was only once before) was parachute to ocean landing. [1] So presumably to limit the number of things being tested on this flight to a reasonable number they won't try to return it to land. I am very hopeful that these guys succeed, and will be impressed as hell. Elon is not kidding when he says it is 'tricky.' Although I think the speed thing is over blown (17,000 MPH, wow! except you're both going about 17,000 MPH and you're both going the same direction, so relative speed is more interesting) But you do have to navigate there, rendezvous, and dock. If successful they will have duplicated everything in Gemini and next up will be the Mercury program (first manned missions) :-) [1] http://news.discovery.com/space/spacexs-dragon-capsule-returns-safely-to-earth.html http://news.discovery.com/space/spacexs-dragon-capsule-retur...
- electromagnetic 15y ago
  I think the reason they're saying it's a bit more tricky than people realise is because, even when dealing solely in terms of relative speed, you're dealing with orbits. If you try to accelerate, you'll actually end up in a higher orbit. It would be like putting down the gas to overtake someone on the highway and end up flying above them and even if you let off the gas, you will slowly drift further away as you're now dealing with a small amount less gravity. It's tricky, because the common person doesn't have any clue how to relate to three dimensional movement in an orbit.
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    Actually, another funny story ... One of the first programs I ever wrote was a BASIC game called 'orbit' which simulated docking with other space ships and satellites in orbit. No graphics other than things like closing speed and distance from target, sort of like the old Lunar program at the time. One of the things that always got people thinking it was 'broken' was that you had to slow down to catch up, basically by slowing you moved to a lower orbit and moved faster relative to an object in a higher orbit, and then you went to a higher orbit to slow down (accelerating).
hej 15y ago
By the way, currently it’s only possible to return up to 50kg of cargo from the ISS. After the Space Shuttle was retired, Soyuz became the only spacecraft that can actually return anything to Earth from the ISS and there is pretty much only space for three people and nothing else in that thing. Dragon is supposed to bring back 600kg in its first test flight to the ISS, but it can bring back up to 3.000kg. That’s still not much compared to what the Space Shuttle could do (14.000kg), but it’s a lot more than what is currently possible. So even if it takes another three years until the first manned flight, Dragon can be very useful as a cargo ship for the ISS (despite the fact that the ISS already has three cargo ships: the Russian Progress, the Japanese HTV and the European ATV – those three ships can deliver tons of cargo but they all can return nothing).
- nknight 15y ago
  The ability to do about 4 Dragon flights to the ISS for the incremental cost of a single 2011 Shuttle launch does mean the raw down-mass capability is actually pretty comparable, though.
  - hej 15y ago
    One thing, though, Dragon won’t deliver is volume. There was lots of space in the Space Shuttle. (But I just wanted to add that for completeness sake, not to claim that the Shuttle was super awesome.)
    - smithian 15y ago
      Yes, but that volume would not have been used for station maintenance missions. If you look at the manifests for the shuttle, they hardly ever used all that volume even for station construction.
rbanffy 15y ago
For now, at least. They have signaled the intention to use the launch abort rockets to make powered landings. I am not sure if they'd try to do it straight from atmospheric braking or if they want to use parachutes to slow down and then use the rockets to land. In any case, it's very 60's sci-fi style. Quite cool.

waiwai933 15y ago

I can't believe that the launch is scheduled for April 30th; in my mind, commercial spaceflight was at least another year away. Either way, if all goes well, I think this marks the beginning of yet another era, and the milestone is, quite frankly, amazing.

MikeCapone 15y ago
I'm surprised at the rate of progress too. NASA used to be able to make rapid progress like that, but I feel like - from my layman's perspective - they couldn't do that now. It would cost billions more than it cost SpaceX to start from nothing (well, not exactly, they had help from NASA, but still) and take years longer.
- Synthetase 15y ago
  SpaceX is innovating off of NASA's inventions so it has a smaller barrier to clear. NASA is in charge of space exploration and space science with a budget that can really only handle one. In addition, politicians and not engineers run NASA.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  NASA once had the job of putting man on the Moon and bringing them back before 1970. The mission is much broader now, the budgets much smaller and everything seems designed around generating as many jobs in as many places as technically possible (and frequently beyond that boundary). I'm not surprised at all.
- nipunn1313 15y ago
  I know people who work at SpaceX. They recruit pretty heavily from CMU (where I am now). From what I have heard, this is why they get things done so quickly: 1) Elon Musk knows about every detail of the rocket's design. 2) They make almost all the parts in house (literally in the same factory). 3) The work ethic/culture at SpaceX is very high. If something needs to get done, Elon will make sure it gets done fast. They somehow maintain a high rate of progress despite how huge the undertaking is.

mukaiji 15y ago

While Zuckerberg is busy buying vanity smartphone photo-filters for a billion bucks, Elon Musk is busy putting America back in space. Impact. Matters.

schraeds 15y ago
How many years after starting PayPal did Elon start space exploration efforts? While I agree with the sentiment of your post, and I am apprehensive Zuckerberg ever strives for NASA or equivalent level accomplishment, I think it's way to early in his life to judge/assume.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
flyt 15y ago
Zuckerberg has accrued over 20 billion dollars of value. He's 27. Elon started out by starting a company "to let people pay to sell junk on eBay" and he did alright. Give Mark some time before rushing to judge.
- cft 15y ago
  First, Elon started zip2.com, which "enabled companies to post content on the Internet, such as maps and directory listings"- it was sold in 1999. The X.com (which later became PayPal) is a payment processing engine behind all kinds of things, including companies doing very productive stuff, not just selling junk on ebay. Note that unlike Facebook.com, PayPal.com is never blocked at workplaces, since it's not a productivity killer. I think Mark will re-implement Hollywood in SF Bay Area, but will not do anything as productive as SpaceX or Tesla Motors. If anything, it shows that monetary value is not 100% rationally assigned by the current sociopolitical system.
  - potatolicious 15y ago
    What a needlessly narrow-minded and judgmental post. For better or for worse, Facebook has completely changed the way we socialize, both online and off. We now have means to share and consume information about our acquaintances and friends that we never had before - and based on simple observation we know that people are eating this up. The demand for Zuckerberg's product is massive. Impact? Being the man who invented Facebook isn't impactful? We can spend all day spinning this - I can claim that the Dragon is a billionaire's toy, an elitist device which burns boatloads of cash each launch while others suffer through poverty, illness, and death. But I won't, because that'd be stupid, because the value of any such venture is inherently many-faceted and difficult to ascertain. By your logic anybody who isn't actively curing cancer and malaria is just wasting his/her time.

Metapony 15y ago

While SpaceX is getting all the press, Orbital is working on the same thing.

mkn 15y ago
I find your comment amusing in light of my particular frustration with the near anonymity of SpaceX in relation to its accomplishments, especially in addition to the nearly universally unfavorable press it gets over at AviationWeek.com. And never mind that Orbital is not "working on the same thing" by any reasonable understanding of the phrase. Let's get one thing out of the way up front: SpaceX launched, orbited, reentered, and retrieved a fully reusable capsule, one with an ablative heat shield that can be used hundreds, if not thousands, of times over. Disregarding the reusable aspects of the design, they're in the company of 3 nations. Include the reusability aspect and they're in the company only of the United States and the former Soviet Union. I have a degree in engineering. I have engineering friends, some of whom work in aerospace companies. Until this recent PR push, I hadn't found one of them who'd even heard of SpaceX, to say nothing of their groundbreaking and historical flight and recovery of a capsule with private funds. If that's "all the press," then I have "all the press," too. Go ahead. Ask me how it feels to be so famous! The little press that they do get within the ossified aerospace industry has been terrible. AvWeek recently ran a piece which was focused on how SpaceX had "lost some of its luster" (not a direct quote, but close) with the slip from February to April for the Space Station rendezvous launch, as if any government-run space technology was ever delivered on time. A while ago, they found some blow-hard "space policy expert" to opine about how space was hard and how it was absolutely obvious that SpaceX was over-promising and destined to radically under-deliver. They ran another piece about how congress was unhappy with COTS. Only recently did they have to give some ground with a piece about how commercial space was "already having benefits" now that the launch is so near, and I was overjoyed with schadenfreude when they had to provide neutral coverage of the uninteresting and everyday fact that Space Station astronauts were rehearsing for SpaceX's visit to the station. There's a reason, I'm sure, that SpaceX chose Muse's Uprising as the theme song for their animation about their plans for full reusability. It fits. Further, Orbital's offering is not even close. Orbital's vehicle is not reusable. It burns up on reentry, and therefore has no capacity to bring cargo back from ISS. And their price point is nowhere near Musk's. In case you're keeping track--and I mean the hypothetical "you", I'm not pissed at you, Metapony--that's less for more. Less than SpaceX for more money. Furthermore, the floor on Orbital's costs is the same trifecta that's always been around in aerospace: expendability, costs of disparate components, and integration costs. I'd love to see a viable competitor to SpaceX, but Orbital isn't even close. Make no mistake, the battle is not between "government" vehicles and private industry. There are no "government" vehicles: Every vehicle gets built by private contractors. The battle is actually between the established aerospace industry, built around expendables and cost-plus contracting, and SpaceX, an innovative and disruptive aerospace company based around competition, reusables, and fixed-price contracts, with Orbital taking up the rear with the worst aspects of both models. I know. I come across as a strident cheerleader. I hope that has less to do with any inherent fanboyism in my makeup than it does with my absolute perplexity at and frustration with the bare fact that SpaceX has done unprecedented, amazing, historic things, and hardly anyone knows about them at all.

burgerbrain 15y ago

Interesting tidbit from the announcement about this on SpaceX's website: >In fact, Dragon has so much interior volume, that we could place an entire three-person Russian Soyuz capsule descent module inside Dragon’s pressure vessel. That is just awesome.

lutorm 15y ago
"The SUV of space capsules!" (It was after all designed in America! ;-)