SpaceX Dragon podule back from ISS, successful Pacific splashdown

The SpaceX Dragon splashed down in the Pacific yesterday, marking the end of a mostly successful first contracted trip to the International Space Station. The reusable cargoship dropped into the ocean yesterday evening around 250 miles off the coast of Mexico after resupplying the ISS and its crew. The Dragon was ferried to …

[Steve Hosgood]

Remember that readers' poll?

Article should be saying:

"The reusable cargoship dropped into the ocean yesterday evening around 400 km off the coast of Mexico after resupplying the ISS and its crew. The Dragon was ferried to a port near Los Angeles where it will be prepped for its return to SpaceX's test facility in Texas.

Some of the cargo brought back by the capsule is due to be returned to NASA in the next couple of days, including research samples from the station's microgravity environment. The ship delivered 400 kg of gear to the ISS, including scientific research and crew supplies. It returned with nearly twice that mass of stuff."

There - fixed that for you! Notice the "weight" -> "mass" fix in the final line too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Remember that readers' poll?

That reader poll applied to El Reg's "Special Projects Bureau" and naught but.

[Steve Hosgood]

Re: Remember that readers' poll?

Hot d*mn! "AC" is right, the small print of the poll does indicate Special Projects only.

That's a bummer. May I propose El. Reg consider another poll, with the goal of extending that policy to all articles? I'm heartily fed up with having to wade through articles peppered with units translated into all sorts of other units when simple straightforward S.I. (*) would have done the job the first time.

It must be a right pain for El. Reg hacks to have to do all these translations in the first place. And some of them get to be just plain wrong too....

(*) Notice that round here, the "Olympic Sized Swimming Pool" *is* an S.I. measurement, being 50m x 25m x 2m - i.e. 2500m³ or 2500 tonnes of water. Not sure about Wales....

[Anonymous Coward]

Ohh

Ohh, look who's so smart all of a sudden, it turns out your friend's launch here was only *mostly successful*

[Tom Cooke]

OK, what was the point of the flashing light? Did it have a "This vehicle is reversing" sound too???

Next it'll be compulsory to have a guy in a spacesuit with a red flag space-walking in front of it ;-)

[Kharkov]

Coolest. Job. Ever

A guy with a red flag in front of a spaceship?

Seriously, who wouldn't want that job?

[Roadkill]

A desirable job...

Securing the opportunity to perform the job of waving a red flag in front of a spaceship is definitely an elating experience for the new hire.

However—and no one has ever explained to me why—it seems that despite the job being so coveted, no employee ever performs the job twice. I've tried to contact these fortunate few, but it seems they are quite hard to meet after they have led their spaceship through reentry.

All I get are voicemails or disconnected notices when I call. No doubt they are screening calls. Such haughtiness is disgusting, really...

[Will Godfrey]

In a way this is actually better than if there had been no problems at all. They have now proved that they can work round at least some faults.