This is pretty cool and I think the naysayers have it wrong (there aren't many but still; and the pre-launch reportage was pretty staunch in mentioning delays).
Launching a rocket, berthing at the ISS (commercial company first) and returning back to earth (no other current spacecraft does this) is extremely difficult. Doing it privately on a budget is just as noteworthy...or more so.
News stories have highlighted the delays but will have little room to criticize the mission now (the only glitch I am aware of was a laser guidance problem which was quickly and adeptly resolved by SpaceX staff).
And as a web developer, it's difficult to imagine what it's like to build something with very long feedback cycles, little or no ability to test in actual conditions and extremely slim error margins.
I agree it is cool, the Soyuz actually does have a return to earth capability, its the Progress modules that don't. Now in their defense the Russians would be happy to return stuff in a Progress module but often they have trash in them and up until recently you could always bring things back in the shuttle.
All of that aside, SpaceX has hit one right out of the park here. They have effectively re-done all of the Mercury goals and most of the Gemini goals (the last being the whole man in space part). For comparison that took the Chinese 10 years [1] (some western observers would tell you it actually took them 20 years to get to the level that SpaceX is now but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt, and NASA couldn't talk to them.)
I am super excited about having someone who is commercially motivated to step into adjacent markets with space flight capability. It makes talking about doing things in orbit a much more serious thing than it was.
The soyuz has the capacity to return crew to the Earth, but Dragon is actually the only unmanned capsule capable of returning significant amounts of cargo.
Part of the problem is that the name 'Soyuz' is the name for the whole thing, the module on top is called 'Progress' and the current generation, Progress-M [1]. From the wikipedia page (but I've heard this from my Russian space enthusiast friends as well) "The Progress M is essentially the same spacecraft as the Progress, but it features improvements based on the Soyuz T and TM designs. It can spend up to 30 days in autonomous flight and is able to carry 100 kg more. Also, unlike the old Progress crafts, it can return items to Earth. This is accomplished by using the Raduga capsule, which can carry up to 150 kg of cargo." [2]
So in a strict language mapping Falcon-9 -> Soyus, and Dragon -> Progress if we talk about the various parts. And yes, the amount of cargo the Progress-M can return it quite limited compared to Dragon. But my Russian friends tell me that there are variants that are an equivalent to Dragon either available or designed but not deployed. I don't know one way or another and it takes NOTHING away from the huge thing SpaceX has accomplished. I would be hugely proud to be part of a team that has shown such a stunningly good ability to execute against their goals.
For clarity: soyuz is the name of a launch vehicle as well as a manned spacecraft (the Soyuz-TMA-M). The Soyuz spacecraft can return humans to the Earth and of course has the ability to return cargo as well, but since the space is taken up by people that capacity is extremely limited. The Progress can return a very tiny amount of cargo (about 150kg) to Earth using a specialty capsule that was last used in 1994.
To be fair to NASA there are some good reasons to have used a carrier battle group. First, it's a strong deterrent against interference, from either the Soviets, proxy forces, terrorists, or some independent 3rd party (pirates?).
Second, it's handy to have 1st world medical care available immediately just in case. If a bad landing caused severe trauma, burns, or what-have-you, or if an emergency appendectomy was needed then care would be right at hand.
Third, speed of recovery was important, which meant big ol' helicopters, which means aircraft carriers.
Fourth, a worst case scenario survivable landing could involve the capsule landing significantly out of the drop zone, causing injury to the crew (partial chute failure, very hard landing), and sinking forcing the crew to evacuate the capsule. Potentially all without radio contact. In that scenario you'd want to be able to mount a robust search and rescue operation, which is just the sort of thing that a carrier battle group excels at.
With more experience, less geopolitical pressure, and more capable spacecraft we can ratchet that response way down, but it wasn't entirely unjustified at the time.
Edit: Case in point, the 2nd ever manned flight in the US (sub-orbital even) Liberty Bell 7 had the capsule sink and the astronaut, Gus Grissom, swimming without much assistance in the open ocean. If recovery had taken much longer (even by minutes) it's likely he would have drowned. That set the tone for the later recovery operations.
Just a nitpick; you have to have your appendix taken out to travel to Antarctica, so I highly doubt they're sending up astronauts without having the procedure done!
In 1961, this wasn't the case, and a surgeon was forced to operate on himself:
I found it kind of amazing that it is actually so hard to find information on this sort of thing. You would think there would be some checklist somewhere for "I am going to the Antarctic" or "I am going into Space", but no such luck.
Your statement was right at one point, it is just outdated and its not like updates show up in the air. hmm... a push new facts services on subjects I care about hmmm....
Makes me wonder: what system was in place in the time of the Apollo missions for determining the exact location of a reentering spacecraft? Was it just, "here's the probable drop zone, commence search-and-rescue"? I imagine GPS would make that a lot easier.
"Makes me wonder: what system was in place in the time of the Apollo missions for determining the exact location of a reentering spacecraft?"
The system was called the Apollo Unified S-Band System. For further reading, this document describes the various telemetry parameters, operating spectrums and transmission details:
This is a nice resource as well. Don't miss the articles at the bottom of the page from CQ that discuss the system. The Proceedings of the Apollo Unified S-Band Technical Conference document is definitely worth your time (it's also at the bottom of the page).
To be fair, there were people in NASA's crafts. National heroes even. They sent out pretty lean teams to capture the SRBs for the Shuttle (which are much larger than the Dragon capsule):
Also, carriers weren't used. Destroyers were (they're a lot more nimble) and we have a bunch chugging around doing exercises at any given point so that's probably a fairly cost effective method.
Those HN'ers in the SF Bay area may want to visit the USS Hornet (CVS-12), the aircraft carrier that recovered Apollo 11 and 12. In the hangar bay, they have an isolation unit used to hold the astronauts (basically just a modified Airstream trailer).
Also, don't forget that the USA was in the middle of a space race (which was an extension of a broader arms race [1]) with the Soviet Union. I wouldn't be surprised if the US government considered recovering the space craft and crew to be an issue of national security. The stakes for SpaceX are much lower, so comparing their expenditures isn't fair.
"I wouldn't be surprised if the US government considered recovering the space craft and crew to be an issue of national security."
To add to your point, with regard to Apollo 11, both ships and aircraft (Boeing EC-135) played a critical mission role (in addition to security) by extending the mission capability of ground-based tracking stations and satellites in the areas of telemetry acquisition, communications and contingency planning.
Some examples (non-exhaustive):
1. The USNS Vanguard was positioned in the Atlantic to provide communication and telemetry acquisition during the launch of Saturn V. In addition, it was also strategically positioned to serve in a post-launch contingency posture, if necessary.
2. Both USNS Huntsville and USNS Redstone acted as sea-based tracking stations, positioned in the Pacific. In addition to tracking the CSM (Command Service Module), they supported a communication link to the aforementioned aircraft that were being utilized to ensure that there was 100% communication coverage.
A note regarding the USS Hornet, since it has been mentioned in other posts: this aircraft carrier was selected to serve as the recovery ship. After all, this was an epic, history-making mission and event. This ship is now a National Historic Landmark.
Designed to hold and have real life people inside are two very different things. NASA didn't want to have a successful mission and then lose their hero astronauts because they couldn't find them at sea in time.
Also remember that NASA was doing this in the age before GPS...
And then we all know how wikipedia is. I'll be following links for the rest of the afternoon and probably shake myself out of it when I realize that I've been looking at Wikpedia articles for Marvel superheroes for 20 minutes.
Musk said during the press conference today that they're targeting thruster landings (in any atmosphere!) within 3 years, or more like 4-5 if they encounter difficulties.
That might have been because NASA was a national project and so national pride was involved. Showing the military strength and size would have been part of the overall story that the NASA program was showing.
Agreed, but the difference in scale is so extreme.
Looking out my office window, I can see a fairly major sea port. The Navy can't get 1 ship off the dock without a half dozen tug boats, plus several security boats, etc. The flotilla SpaceX sent out is smaller than what it takes to undock 1 ship, and a carrier battle group consists of 20+ ships.
I just find the contrast really illustrative of why SpaceX was able to do this for a fraction of the cost.
You're assuming that NASA 'pays' for the flotilla the same way spacex pays for its gear. Think about it, SpaceX probably rents/leases the gear it needs for the time it needs and knows exactly what it costs.
Nasa can basically call the local navy detachment and ask them to swoop in. It's not clear that is accounted for in the NASA budget vs. the normal operating budget of that battle group.
Similarly, when NASA says something costs 20k to get to orbit, they're saying that because that's what they told someone it would cost when justifying the program. The real cost of things like a shuttle recovery are never as easy to track as one might think.
Almost certainly. Military overflights of stadiums are written off as training exercises routinely (and if the pilots have to spend a certain number of hours flying, why not do something some other people like for a few of them?)
When has NASA every utilized a carrier battle group of 20 ships? I'd also suspect that the Navy can make locating a capsule and scooping up its astronauts as part of a training mission that they would be doing otherwise. Search and rescue is a pretty big deal, they practice it a lot. It's not like our Naval fleet is on the dry unless we're at war.
I'm not 100% certain for ships but there is a 'pricelist'[1] for when military aircraft are used by other commands/services or even 'non-government' use.
NASA has to pay for when military aircraft are used in support of there research or operations. SpaceX, as covered under Space Act agreement, would be able to obtain appropriate aircraft from the US Navy, such as a P-3 maritime patrol aircraft.
But yeah, you don't actually need a carrier battle group to retrieve a single capsule. On the other hand, if you've got a spare aircraft carrier sitting around the ocean you might as well use it. (You don't need the rest of the battle group to pick up the capsule, either, but you need it to protect the carrier in case a war breaks out.)
NASA was doing this for the first time. They needed resources to deal with unpredictable failures and mistakes. Some NASA capsules missed their target by a hundred miles or more. One sank. Either of those problems would have been far worse if they had been Lean.
"Elon Musk @elonmusk
Thrusters will also fire during reentry to adjust touchdown point. Next version will land w helicopter precision #Dragon"
You know whats leaner then battleships and speedboats? No need for speedboats... vertical landing is next and will reduce time and cost of reusing the capsule by an order of magnitude.
The $1.6b contract was dependent of safe landing and they weren't ready to pull out all of the stops with their "next gen" technology.
Now that they have their contract they can continue hitting their milestones at a blistering pace, get huge press coverage and increase their pace towards the goal of multi-planetary solar system domination...
To be fair, NASA probably had good reasons to fear that the Soviets might try to intercept the capsules. SpaceX doesn't need to worry about that, unless they drop into the Somalian coast or something.
I doubt the Soviets would have intercepted a manned American capsule any more than they would have gone around kidnapping random American citizens or hijacking American ships -- that'd be an act of war.
If the capsule splashed down in an area that the Soviets considered their waters, you can be certain that it would have been considered an "act of war". Things were different during the Cold War.
I think you're forgetting people's mentality during the Cold War and what was at stake. If the worst includes "return the capsule disassembled," that's pretty bad when considered from the mentality that was prevalent during the Cold War, because it would have meant giving the Soviet Union the United States' technology. The lunar program was considered an issue of national security.
I can't tell if you're agreeing with me or if you missed my point. Assuming you missed my point, let me try to elaborate (if not, please excuse my misunderstanding):
I'm not refuting that the USSR would have disassembled, examined, and returned the capsule. I'm pointing out that the US government during the Cold War would have considered that outcome to be a threat to national security. That's what I meant by my statement, "That's pretty bad when considered from the mentality that was prevalent during the Cold War."
From your link: "This was the first time that Western experts were able to get a close look at the aircraft, and it revealed many secrets and surprises. His defection caused a lot of damage to the Soviet Union Air Force." My point was that if the Soviet Union got a hold of one of the USA's space capsules, the outcome for the USA would have been the same that it was for the USSR in the article you linked to.
As I mentioned in one of my other comments in this thread, the space race was part of the larger arms race between the USA and the USSR during the Cold War [1]. Just because the space capsules aren't military equipment, doesn't mean that there weren't serious military ramifications if they fell into the hands of the USSR.
EDIT: Maybe we're talking past each other, because I was replying to a narrow piece of your original comment instead of your comment's intent. I agree with everything you've said: the USSR wouldn't have started a war if the capsule splashed down in their waters, and they would have disassembled and returned the capsule. I'm trying to point out the (perceived at the time) seriousness of the USSR disassembling the capsule. I should have attached my original comment further up the ancestor chain where people were debating how interested the USSR would have been in intercepting the capsule.
It would have been a big deal. All I'm saying is that saying the Russians would have seen it as an act of war is a bit much and gives the Russians too little credit.
The Russians probably would have been somewhat pleased while putting on a show of mild annoyance and the Americans probably would be quite unpleased but unable to do much about it. The MiG 25 thing with the players reversed ( feigning annoyance is out of place with a defection, but would make sense with a technical border issue.) Standard politics.
I am fairly certain the Russians would have recognized that an Apollo capsule landing in their ocean would be a good deal different than a spy plane flying over their country. At the very least they would have known from their own experiance that a reentering capsule would make possibly the worst spy platform ever made.
Consider also that the two space programs were basically all about propoganda. Both countries were more or less on their best behaviour.
That flight was during a period when the Soviet's were terrified of a US first strike.
Not long after this flight was the Able Archer 83 exercise, which is probably the only time since the Cuban Missile crisis that we got close to an actual nuclear war.
> you can be certain that it would have been considered an "act of war"
You should really read up on how touchy-feely Soviets were with all things space-related, and perhaps you would understand how patently idiotic your statement is.
The article mentioned in the future the capsule will use thrusters to land on the ground. Is this something that has been done before or is that a new advancement?
The idea is for Dragon to have engines that would allow the crew to abort mission at any point (launch included) and land anywhere in the solar system (e.g. I read [1] that because of thin atmosphere on Mars they're making Super Dracos capable of firing when the vehicle is supersonic).
"The escape system's motors will allow the capsule to land anywhere in the solar system, whether it has an atmosphere or not - and that's pretty cool. These motors can even fire supersonically which is important for Mars: in the higher altitudes of Mars the atmosphere is so thin that parachutes are completely pointless. So retro thrusters have to be able to fire when you are supersonic so they have to be very high thrust."
The elaborate floating crane isn't as Rube Goldberg as it seems. It's pretty similar to the Mars Phoenix mission, but with the engines on the other end. The only real difference is that SpaceX is eliminating the need to pack a parachute by developing engines that can fire reliably and predictably in a supersonic flow. (And Dragon doesn't throw the engines away after landing).
Curiosity isn't required to use the elaborate floating crane, but I'm guessing some feature or requirement of the mission made placing the engines above the craft more appealing than placing them below.
For the first video, I get "Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany, because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights.". What an absolutely boneheaded, irrelevant, infuriating reason to block a video of a rocket landing. :(
Hey, Blue Origin looks pretty cool, and I go on the job market tomorrow. I might like to ask you some questions about Blue Origin if you don't mind, but your HN profile doesn't have any contact info. Would you mind adding contact info to your profile or emailing me to start a chat? (My contact info is in my profile.)
There will be inspiring stuff happening in this industry for the foreseeable future. No point in waiting even a week, that's just one more week of amazing work you could have been a part of :)
That Blue Origin ship was amazing, if they could send this into orbit and then land it like this with no parachutes, that would be incredible? No one else has done that, not even Space X?
Is blue origin going to compete with Musk? I don't think Jeff will leave Amazon and focus on this 100%?
If you believe SpaceX's concept videos they're gonna do it without parachutes. I have no idea why, though. Parachutes are good. Perhaps they're just thinking ahead, because they want an all-purpose capsule that can land on the Moon just as well as the Earth.
Soviets used to land manned capsules on land, but I believe they just used parachutes. I don't really see the advantage of landing on thrusters alone.
A combination, though, to aim your parachute to a precise location, would be cheaper than thrusters alone, and less chancy than a parachute alone ("Sir, sir, calm down, what do you mean, 'a space ship just landed on my car'?")
The advantage of a powered landing is significant.
First, precision: landing on a pad is operationally vastly superior than landing in a several mile drop zone. The latter must be in some depopulated area for safety, which has obvious downsides. Being able to land without bringing into play a whole search and rescue aparatus is huge.
Second, turnaround time. Parachutes are fussy, and re-installing new, carefully packed chutes along with all the pyro bolts and whatnot and verifying the whole system checks out is an expensive and complex thing to do for each flight. Landing on rockets means that you only need to inspect and refuel before the next flight, which you would need to do regardless, is very much streamlined compared to the use of parachutes.
They'll probably still be landing in depopulated areas --- you want to minimize damage on the ground if the propulsive landing system fails. (In which case, by the way, the plan is to still use parachutes as a backup.)
However, in case of a normal landing, it lets you land near pre-positioned processing facilities, and saves you the currently long transit time from the landing site to decommissioning that the spacecraft is currently on. (A couple of days at sea to the docks, and then trucked to SpaceX facilities elsewhere for propellant off-loading and other processing.)
As to not repacking parachutes --- the 'chutes will still be there, as a backup system, and I expect that at least the first few times a reused Dragon is launched, they'll have inspected everything pretty thoroughly to determine that it was still operable. Economy starts with not building another one completely from scratch; further measures can come later.
Off topic. Why is bad_alloc's comment marked [dead]?
bad_alloc 42 minutes ago | link [dead]
NASA is (more or less) using the same technique with the Mars Science Lab, currently en route to Mars. The only differences are that the rover is smaller and that they use a sky crane (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4boyXQuUIw&feature=relat...). Landing on Earth however is always done by parachute, as we have enough atmosphere to slow down the lander. So you can say it's a new advancement for landing on earth. As we have quite a lot of gravity here (compared to Mars or the Moon) SpaceX will probably have to sigificantly improve the technology required for a powered landing, especially when they intend to land their first stage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...).
Considering he's not hellbanned, the most likely explanation is that he posted the same comment twice. HN will automatically kill the duplicate, which is what you see. Then, realizing he posted twice, he deleted one of the copies... but chose the original. It doesn't appear [dead] on his screen so he didn't realize he deleted the wrong one.
Because you've enabled 'show dead' in your profile and so you see posts from accounts that are not normally shown.
One of the reasons why it is helpful to put a contact email in your 'about' section of your profile is that if your posts are showing up dead, folks can contact you.
NASA is (more or less) using the same technique with the Mars Science Lab, currently en route to Mars. The only differences are that the rover is smaller and that they use a sky crane (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4boyXQuUIw&feature=relat...). Landing on Earth however is always done by parachute, as we have enough atmosphere to slow down the lander. So you can say it's a new advancement for landing on earth. As we have quite a lot of gravity here (compared to Mars or the Moon) SpaceX will probably have to sigificantly improve the technology required for a powered landing, especially when they intend to land their first stage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...).
I would perhaps expect shuttles to have greater ease of launching and landing on Earth. After about 10 successful runs I would say we can mark the start of private space exploration.
This is the beginning but nothing is certain at the moment. I wish SpaceX only success though, they are working on something great.
I personally wouldn't use any single event to mark the "start" of private space exploration. It's a gradual process, not something that happens all of a sudden.
If they succeed in evolving this to a higher level of sophistication and functionality people will point to this mission as the start of it all.
If they fail they will point at this mission as an example of a foolish pursuit that should have been left in the hands of government agencies.
Either way this is, without a doubt, the start of the private sector launching into space exploration. Nobody can point to any other private mission that launched a capsule, docked at the space station and then returned cargo to earth.
When they progress onto human transportation if, god forbid, there happens to be any catastrophic casualties, would the public be as forgiving as they would if it was NASA.
It might well happen then if everything goes well, but I'm not sure they've ever given a specific date. In public statements that I've seen, Elon's been pretty consistent about saying he wants a "steady cadence of launches" before a public offering, because that's what it takes to convince Wall Street that something as exotic as a space launch company is a sustainable business, particularly if the CEO keeps talking about colonizing Mars. He went on in COTS-2/3 press conferences to define "steady cadence" as a launch a month or so, which would be a breakneck pace for any other organization on Earth.
If they launch everything on their manifest successfully, they may be on path to do that by the end of next year --- but that, too is an ambitious goal. (Heck, even if he can produce all the rockets, his customers may not have the payloads ready!)
The joke for many years has been "If you want to be a billionaire, take ten billion dollars and start a rocket company." Wall Street is right to be skeptical, though nobody has ever had this much success before.
Launching a rocket, berthing at the ISS (commercial company first) and returning back to earth (no other current spacecraft does this) is extremely difficult. Doing it privately on a budget is just as noteworthy...or more so.
News stories have highlighted the delays but will have little room to criticize the mission now (the only glitch I am aware of was a laser guidance problem which was quickly and adeptly resolved by SpaceX staff).
And as a web developer, it's difficult to imagine what it's like to build something with very long feedback cycles, little or no ability to test in actual conditions and extremely slim error margins.
Great job, SpaceX!