SpaceX Dragon, first private ship to the ISS, launched successfully History is just days away from being made as SpaceX' Dragon cargoship finally blasted off successfully on its Falcon 9 rocket this morning on its way to a rendezvous with the International Space Station. Falcon 9 at lift-off (source: SpaceX webcast) Elon Musk's private space firm has had a number of setbacks with the latest …
Please, please, please stop calling them 'English' or 'British' units. US units are not the same as UK imperial units, particularly the ones to do with fluid volume. Over here, we only still use them for a few things, such as measuring volumes of beer and milk, weighing cake ingredients, or giving distances between towns and villages (in the US I believe you call these cities).
Yep. And when the waterbags ignored the engineers warnings or overrode the computer decisions for PR (read 'political') purposes, we wound up with really bad jokes about alternate meanings for NASA (e.g. Need Another Seven Astronauts). Big Thumbs up for doing it right even if no lives were on the line for this specific mission.
IIRC, the actual reason for one of those failures in particular was the politicised tendering process which meant the construction of the shuttle's booster rockets took place in another state, making the transport of the entire assembly in one piece impractical. As a result, the booster was comprised of (I think) three separate peices joined by o-rings. No prizes for guessing what failed in the case of the Challenger shuttle.
SpaceX neatly side-step this sort of problem by manufacturing everything themselves, removing the tendering process entirely. This results in the costs being substantially lower, and because they are in complete control of the manufacturing process end-to-end, should result in greater reliability. This is the main reason why I am of the opinion that large government-led space agencies such as NASA and ESA are going to lose out to private space exploration, and either disappear or greatly reduce their scope to designing payloads over the coming decades.
@Loyal Commenter;
Not to mention a cost-based decision to go with a single o-ring, in place of the two that had originally been designed (which double-ring would almost certainly have held). Plus the political decision to launch on an unusually cold Florida morning, despite engineering warnings about the temperatures, plus...
Most every catastrophe requires a lengthy chain of mis-steps before it occurs.
A single success does not a successful design indicate. Wehn we've got a *string* of successful Falcon launches, *then* I will laud SpaceX.
True. But it's not so much the design we are celebrating as it is that for a change it looks like all the PHBs have been sent packing and the people in charge are following the right processes. So even if the current design fails, it will be a true engineering failure from which something will be learned, the design will be modified, and the project will continue with even better equipment.
Actually there were 2 O-rings used, not one. The idea of being 2 was that the second would hold in the case of a failure of the first. The problem that occured was that the first didn't seal because the ambient temperature was to low (surprisingly, the other o-ring was at the same temperature, and so also failed).
The fix was to honor the minimum ambient temperature requirement for launch.
I'd guess that is why someone downvoted you, but they could've at least said why.
Not really. Private industry still has as many foibles as government, just different ones. They need to do it for the least cost practical and still have to take some political decisions into account. And there's always the chance some egotistical manager will demand that some schedule be kept or someone will lose their job. (Where private industry will be better is that they don't get to side-step the blame quite as adroitly as politicos do.) That's part of why the Big Thumbs Up to SpaceX for following correct engineering processes. They too could have chosen to ignore them.
I concur that government run space agencies will eventually go the way of the dinosaur, but more because of their inherently more efficient processes. I commented some time back on a related issue that one of the advantages of the private project was that it looked to have sustained fiscal and planning backing instead of the start, stop, redo jerking of government.
Good going guys! If this works out then it'll be a great step forward for the private space industry.
The IIS accepting a privatly build spacecraft will open the door to competition which in turn will spurn a whole range of new possibilities not least of which would be cheaper prices and technological advances.
I'd never really thought about it before watching tonight's launch coverage on the SpaceX site, but Dragon is the only way to get stuff BACK from the ISS at the moment - Soyuz takes people, the ATV is a waste incinerator on departure. So that's one more reason to wish them every continued success on this test mission
the participation of which on the ISS (what a misnomer !) has been vetoed by the US government ? No, there's no danger in sight, as the dragon doesn't seem to be responding to the provocation by spitting, but rather is in the process of creating its own space station, as the local space bully won't let it play in what was supposed to be the common sandbox. Pity that US domestic politics makes this duplication of effort necessary, instead of all capable and interested parties pulling together on the great endeavour that is space exploration....
In any event, kudos to the SpaceX team - but before we go overboard in celebrating this «triumph of private enterprise», we might want to recall that the company has been supported to the tune of some 400 million USD by NASA....
Henri
Hmmm, by the time you have opened your sealed helmet to spit, I can imagine the force of the air rushing from your lungs in to the near vacuum of space would impart a pretty good initial velocity to your sputum. After that, being pretty cold in space, I would imagine the frozen gob could do quite a bit of damage, adding to the various bits of space junk flying around up there.
I think we need to develop a new metric for space-spit, but I haven't had enough beer yet to come up with one. Please help...
Hold on a minute guys, didn't you see that "documentary" with Sigourney Weaver about space lizards......
That damned thing gave me nightmares. It was intelligent, spat acid and produced the kind of offspring that you don't want running around your garden.......
I love Gigers work, I just hope that Elon doesn't bring any of his creatures home.....
Well that's excellent, because you then benefit from Buyer Protection.
So when things start to look all wrong and you feel that sinking feeling and your face starts to feel all hot and you're thinking "I have been ripped off", you will at least know that your money is safe and therefore what you're experiencing is all due to the craft being on fire.
Protected. Happy.
Drunk Spiders Arrested after Orbital Hit & Run Incident
AP - Several hundred underaged orb-web spiderlings well over the legal alcohol limit were taken into custody today after their vehicle was involved in a hit and run incident in low Earth orbit. According to eye-witness accounts from those onboard the ISS, the spiderlings had gorged themselves on wine and trout caviar onlty to leg it after the capsule they had space-jacked collided with the station. For further developments, please click this web link...
Probably because it's not just a bolt-on module and would require significant time and money to get right. I'm sure they are working on auto-docking, but when they have the arm on the station, it's best to get the 'basic' bit of just flying up to the station right. This launch is actually putting things ahead of schedule. SpaceX was planning to perform a test flight of a Dragon up to the ISS, but not dock with it, but that flight was cancelled. If they can match orbit and be docked, even manually, it will be a significant achievement.
The whole point of Dragon is to maintain the best weight to thrust ratio. By keeping the spangly stuff off they keep the weight down and can lift more cargo. They are a for profit business, not NASA and need to keep an eye on the bottom line much more critically than the spendocrats in the US Gov with their $2200 hammers.
Hatch size is an issue. The access to an ATV, Soyuz or Progress is around 80cm (Russian design so metric!) diameter so anything carried up in one of them has to fit. The CBM used by the HTV and now (hopefully) Dragon is 51" (NASA design, not metric) square so much bigger items can be transferred.
The shuttle docking had the small sized tunnel as well which is why a lot of the resupply was carried in the MPLMs which were lifted out of the shutttle cargo bay and berthed to a CBM for unloading.
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