Author Topic: Elon Musk keynote address at ISSR&D Conference - July 19, 2017  (Read 147920 times)

Offline Chris Bergin

Elon notes how Apollo 11 was for all humanity.
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Offline Chris Bergin

Elon (says Dragon is still technically capable of propulsive landing, but had to delete the legs, so would have to be soft surface.

But basically propulsive landing for Dragon 2 has been deleted due to qualifying for safe landing. Could bring it back later.
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Online rakaydos

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Elon (says Dragon is still technically capable of propulsive landing, but had to delete the legs, so would have to be soft surface.

But basically propulsive landing for Dragon 2 has been deleted due to qualifying for safe landing. Could bring it back later.
Also, he implicitly kills red dragon. "Not the approach we want for mars anymore, new architecture is"

Offline Chris Bergin

Elon would like to ride on Dragon 2 (after a lot of "erms") - in three of four years. Kirk puts him on the manifest.
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Offline Chris Bergin

Elon just got compared to Madonna.

Meanwhile, Kirk - ISS manager - keeps asking about his boring machine ;D
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Offline Chris Bergin

Elon ISSRDC Summary: ISS is cool. More reuse advances. FH is super challenging. BFR's getting a little sister. Red Dragon is dead.
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Offline Ronsmytheiii

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Elon ISSRDC Summary: ISS is cool. More reuse advances. FH is super challenging. BFR's getting a little sister. Red Dragon is dead.

and moonbase!

Offline yokem55

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Elon ISSRDC Summary: ISS is cool. More reuse advances. FH is super challenging. BFR's getting a little sister. Red Dragon is dead.

and moonbase!
Yeah. I'm thinking it's just that Elon knows how to follow the political winds though. Previously, it was "sure, the moon is a fine place to go too." But I think though that if a contract for moon base logistics came up, SpaceX would likely jump on putting a good bid out for it.

Offline clegg78

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so does this mean the 2020 goal of sending a Dragon 2 to Mars is dead?
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Offline blasphemer

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Old ITS design was 12m diameter and 550 tons to LEO expendable. Any indication of how big the new ITS-lite could be?

Offline blasphemer

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Elon ISSRDC Summary: ISS is cool. More reuse advances. FH is super challenging. BFR's getting a little sister. Red Dragon is dead.

and moonbase!

Grey Dragon instead of cancelled Red Dragon? hm..

Offline Jarnis

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so does this mean the 2020 goal of sending a Dragon 2 to Mars is dead?

Yes. Instead they go with smaller-but-still-big ITS-style thing, and probably later than 2020 (need to build it first...)

SpaceX plans appear to be commonly in flux so anything that does not straight up involve a contract made with third party can and does change. In part that's what makes it so exciting. Agile Aerospace R&D and Manufacturing? :D

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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Elon (says Dragon is still technically capable of propulsive landing, but had to delete the legs, so would have to be soft surface.

But basically propulsive landing for Dragon 2 has been deleted due to qualifying for safe landing. Could bring it back later.
Also, he implicitly kills red dragon. "Not the approach we want for mars anymore, new architecture is"

Yes, I believe Elon said words to the effect that the Red Dragon landing approach wasn't viable (need to watch again to get exact quote), so that and qualification cost for crew ruled it out.

Sounded like having the SuperDracos on the side was an issue?

Offline Ictogan

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Elon ISSRDC Summary: ISS is cool. More reuse advances. FH is super challenging. BFR's getting a little sister. Red Dragon is dead.

and moonbase!

Grey Dragon instead of cancelled Red Dragon? hm..
Dragon is very much designed around landing on atmospheric bodies. There is no point in having a heatshield or have the vehicle cone-shaped if you are landing on a body without an atmosphere. Also too little delta-V to land on the moon because of a lack of atmosphere to provide decelleration. In addition to that doing a grey dragon would mean working on Dragon's propulsive technology just for that mission, unlike red dragon where the technology would essentially just be taken from the earth propulsive landings.

Offline DJPledger

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Old ITS design was 12m diameter and 550 tons to LEO expendable. Any indication of how big the new ITS-lite could be?
New ITS-lite probably still larger than Saturn V or SLS. Would be very surprised if it is not bigger than SLS.

Offline ZachF

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Old ITS design was 12m diameter and 550 tons to LEO expendable. Any indication of how big the new ITS-lite could be?
New ITS-lite probably still larger than Saturn V or SLS. Would be very surprised if it is not bigger than SLS.

Yeah, Mueller in his interview earlier this year still mentions "hundreds of tonnes" to LEO so I'm guessing around 200t for the cargo variant, probably 10m diameter.
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Offline Lars-J

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Elon mentioned that Boca Chica could be used as an alternative launch site to ISS if a hurricane took out KSC facilities. I wonder if this was just an off-hand musing or if more thought has been put into it.

What would be the launch trajectories out of there to ISS? It would seem like a northern launch direction could have a potential drop zone in Louisiana, and a southern launch direction would put the drop zone in Yucatan. But perhaps they have a dog leg trajectory in mind...

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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[Couldn't post while I was listening earlier.]

One question was whether boring could be used not just for transportation on Earth but also on Mars. Elon said yes, both for mining for raw materials and also for underground habitats to provide radiation shielding.

He did stress that due to different Martian conditions boring machines would be different from Earth ones. Also mentioned later that currently boring machines on Earth are very heavy. So a lot of work needed to design boring machines light enough to take to Mars.
« Last Edit: 07/19/2017 07:18 pm by FutureSpaceTourist »

Offline Hauerg

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Elon (says Dragon is still technically capable of propulsive landing, but had to delete the legs, so would have to be soft surface.

But basically propulsive landing for Dragon 2 has been deleted due to qualifying for safe landing. Could bring it back later.
Also, he implicitly kills red dragon. "Not the approach we want for mars anymore, new architecture is"

Yes, I believe Elon said words to the effect that the Red Dragon landing approach wasn't viable (need to watch again to get exact quote), so that and qualification cost for crew ruled it out.

Sounded like having the SuperDracos on the side was an issue?
We all saw that the ITS ship did not have a heatshield at the base. Today he said that they could not use the Dragon2 or Red Dragon to learn for the ITS Mars landings. So not interested any more for Mars. And for landings from LEO alone it is too difficult to certify.

Offline Star One

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