SpaceX Dragon passes NASA review; NASA's Orion has problems

[Dr Mordrid]

Looks like the 7-passenger + cargo Dragon spaceship will be ready when the shuttle quits flying in 2010. 3 demo flights are scheduled for 2009, including one remote controlled mission to the ISS. Yes, remote controlled. They can strip out the seats, unplug the manual control module & life support and fly it on autopilot full of cargo racks plus carry unpressurized cargo in its service module/trunk.

Totally modular, reconfigurable, re-usable and its docking port can be adapted to use either the US or Russian system. Basically it can do what Soyuz/Progress does but with much more crew and/or cargo. Rumors are it's also capable of lunar missions if the LEO service module/trunk is replaced with one intended for that purpose. This sounds credible because the heat shield is known to be way over designed for just LEO missions.

Meanwhile NASA's own 4-passenger Orion has been downsized for the 3rd time and redesigned for the umpteenth time because the Ares-I rocket isn't as powerful as predicted and the Orion itself too heavy. In fact just last month a new review came out where they took it back to zero and now have started over with each addition having to meet new weight limits. Looks not to fly until 2015 at the earliest.

NASA has already spent several billions on Ares-1/Orion.

SpaceX has yet to spend $500 million on Falcon 9/Dragon.

Hmmmm......

Link.....

SpaceX Completes NASA CDR For New Dragon

El Segundo CA (SPX) Oct 18, 2007

SpaceX has successfully completed the Critical Design Review (CDR) for its first Falcon 9 / Dragon mission as part of the NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demonstration program. During a three day period, SpaceX hosted a group of over forty top level NASA representatives and key SpaceX customers for a review of the design of the Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon spacecraft and associated ground systems for the first COTS demonstration mission.

Three weeks prior to the review, SpaceX submitted more than 480 design documents to NASA for detailed review by its experts. At the review, twenty six speakers gave thirty two presentations on over two dozen different topics including aerodynamics, propulsion, communication, ground processing, flight operations, recovery and more. The event was held in the 60 ft tall high bay at SpaceX's new 550,000 square foot (51,000 sq. m.) headquarters in Hawthorne, California, a facility formerly used to build Boeing 747 fuselage sections. On display were several pieces of Falcon 9 hardware and tooling, a full sized engineering model of the Dragon spacecraft, and the new Merlin 1C engine developed by SpaceX.

During the event, all comments and questions raised by NASA's experts were satisfactorily addressed by the SpaceX design team, which resulted in official NASA approval. With this, SpaceX continues its track record of meeting all COTS milestones on schedule.

"In terms of overall design maturity of the Falcon 9 project, we are well ahead of the curve for a program of this size," said Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX. "Few CDRs feature multiple hardware items in fabrication, assembly, integration and test phases."

The Dragon spacecraft is designed to transport up to seven astronauts, as well as both pressurized and unpressurized cargo, to Earth orbit and back. The architecture allows for berthing/docking with the International Space Station, as well as private space stations that may come into being.

As part of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) competition, SpaceX will launch a Falcon 9 with a cargo carrying Dragon spacecraft on a series of three demonstration missions to the International Space Station, culminating with the delivery of supplies to the $100 billion dollar orbiting laboratory. SpaceX intends to demonstrate its launch, maneuvering, berthing and return abilities by 2009 -- a year before NASA has scheduled the conclusion of Space Shuttle operations.

[Technoid]

NASA is suffering from the IBM syndrome

[Dr Mordrid]

Indeed.

Remember that part of the post where I said the first Falcon 9 flights are scheduled for 2009? Forget it.

SpaceX has just published a new manifest and the first Dragon flight has been rescheduled to Q4 2008, just a year from now. I've heard of schedules slipping, but rarely do they go the other way

In addition to this two other Falcon 9 flights are scheduled for 2008; a test flight and a satellite launch for MDA Corp. of Canada. All will be from SpaceX's private launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center; LC-40, the former home of the monster Titan IV. They're going to need it as the Falcon 9 Heavy is going to be a beast capable of putting 27,500 kg payloads the size of a bus in orbit.

[Evildead666]

Woohoo ! somethings looking up in the space race
Once the ball starts rolling, were gonna be seeing more and more space launches...sweet.

lets just hope we can keep the space weapons to bare minimum ...ie none.

[Dr Mordrid]

Here's a couple of cutaways of the cargo and manned configurations of Dragon and a photo of the engineering mockup. Rather instructive.

Note that the aeroshell is angled at just 15 degrees vs. Orions 32.5 degrees (same as Apollo), lengthening the cabin and allowing for two rows of seats vs. Orion's one row. This explains why it can hold a crew of up to 7 vs. only 4 for Orion.

Cargo configuration


Manned configuration

Engineering mockup

Orion for comparison

[Tjalfe]

after seeing that mockup, I will never complain about lack of legroom in comercial flights again

[Dr Mordrid]

Yup, capsules are spam in a can

That said they're the best way to re-enter absent a large deceleration engine, and that would require more launch mass.

[Technoid]

one thing is sure, when they make sci-fi movies that depicts "the near future" space ships should not have a NASA logo on em

There are better candidates for that

[Dr Mordrid]

This brings up an interesting conversation we had on one of the space boards. Basically we were discussing the Orion 'troubles' and someone brought up the "Spaceship Orion" program that was on the Science Channel.

In this 1 hour program a whole segment was devoted to the task of sizing, positioning and mounting a pair of windows through which the pilot and co-pilot would view approaches and docking. Through the whole segment they were cutting foam-core board outlines, playing with helmets & head rests as well as moving the couches around. No matter what they did there was a conflict between these two functions and how the windows would be placed.

It became obvious to me that they were stuck on stupid and this was making them ignore the simplest solution of all: put a pair of video cameras on either side of the docking port. One would be for flying and one for redundency. The signal could easily be routed to one of the pilots 5 flat panel displays. The Russians do something similar using a periscope and it's worked for decades.

A plus is that with todays wide-band CCD cameras a few IR LED's could provide zero light capability, something the M1 EyeBal cannot without high wattage lamps.

No....NASA argues ad nauseum over where to cut a pair of windows

BTW: Dragon will use video cameras with IR lighting. So will Bigelow in their space habs and modules, which will be assembled into a space station by remote control.