Posted on 01/16/2015 7:15:08 AM PST by Vince Ferrer
Love to see a poll right now how many NASA astronauts would be willing to take the first manned flight on Space X.
I love the tweet caption for the last picture. Musk called it an “RUD” for “rapid unscheduled dis-assembly”. LOL...no kidding!
Already planned I think.
The first manned Dragon mission to the ISS will carry civilians or scientists and not astronauts.
SpaceX has been very successful in launching supply missions to the ISS
Cool. Engineers learn from analyzing failure, then applying lessons learned.
The only true failure here would have been to not make the attempt at all.
They're not telling us the whole story, keeping the costs close to the vest. NASA has a fixed-price deal with SPACE-X - $133m per launch. This means they don't really need to disclose much. Considering everything, merlins probably do run about $3m-$7m apiece. This is 2x-4x what a nice GE turbofan for an airliner would cost, btw. But with a lower part count and higher resilience (they feed stainless steel nuts into the oxidizer and fuel feed lines as part of the live firing qual for every engine!) this may be subject to very high reduction in cost below the turbofan. Those merlin engines are in the beginning of the development cycle and Space-X has also up-ended the sacred cows of aerospace engineering on that end as well. I'd say the cost curve could easily go below $1k/lb/LEO and even $100/lb, at which point it's mass emigration time. LEO is halfway to anywhere in the solar system.
Wonderful news and your post is chocked full of information. What I see- institutional hamstringing (NASA=gov. budgetary think process) dislodged by entrepreneurship/capitalism.
Space X=winning. Hat tip to Charlie Sheen=winning.
Thanks Vince. A hard landing was an understatement. Thankfully the non vertical explosion kicked most of the stage overboard.
Looking forward to the next Space X landing attempt at the end of the month.
I’ve been waiting to see footage of this. Thanks for posting it.
For a first time they came damn close.
Agreed. He’s got guts and character.
Their next attempt is Sunday.
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