SpX Dragon Crew ahead of schedule

[Dr Mordrid]

Enter: Super Draco - the thruster for Dragon's launch escape and propulsive landing systems. Test firings of the Super Draco starting "soon" is a big deal since under their NASA CCDev-2 contract they aren't required to do it until May, 2012.

Garret Reisman: SpaceX Project Manager for commercial crew talking at NewSpace 2011 sez -

- Been with SpaceX for about 5 months.

- Feeling of great responsibility

- The Commercial Crew funding by the House was less than 2% of the NASA budget.

- When first visited SpaceX, was blown away by their capabilties.

- 5 Falcon 9s in constructions, 2 or 3 Dragons

- 1400 employees

- Engineers paradise.

- VPs are experienced technical people.

- First private company to bring <back> something from space

- Focus on launch abort system - just had conceptual design review, and is due to complete its primary design review in September (PDR from elsewhere)

- Will be test firing Super Draco thrusters soon at the Texas test center.

New cutaway of the crew Dragon-

[Dr Mordrid]

Just dug up the results of tests & structure of Dragon's ventilation system. Also shows some graphics of the cargo racks and airflow analysis. This is the basic system shared by all versions but not including the life support system, which is a separate modular rig.

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