A pretty sorry looking "replacement" as we retire the impressive shuttle fleet, imo.
This is the work of a company that didn't even exist 8 years ago and only put something successfully into orbit 3 years ago and did so at a fraction of the cost it would have taken NASA. In my book that's progress.The problem is you seem to equate SpaceX and SpaceX alone with the entire U.S. manned space program. Don't like capsules for any purpose, even cargo delivery? Fine, wait for Dreamchaser or whatever.
Nice pictures, Marek!
Quick trim. Not the thread for what was said on here before the trim. Those wondering what it was about, don't. You really don't want to ask. Nice pics Marek.
This may be a dumb question but is the charred coloration from the ablative heat shield or from the rest of the shell? I really think they should paint capsules brown
Looks barely used.
Quote from: Nascent Ascent on 07/03/2011 02:07 amLooks barely used. looks like it came down on its side abit or maybe the heat shield needs to be enlarged a tad.
Quote from: Prober on 07/03/2011 05:27 am Quote from: Nascent Ascent on 07/03/2011 02:07 amLooks barely used. looks like it came down on its side abit or maybe the heat shield needs to be enlarged a tad. That is part of the design, coming at an angle instead of pointing the heat shield straight on generates lift that reduces g-forces and provides cross range so it can come in more precisely. Apollo and Soyuz did/do the same thing.
-He did say it did look like they paid some college student 2 cases of beers to put it back together, the panels where all out of alignment and you could actually see finger marks in the scorching where people where taking it apart.This is just the 1st capsule, can you imagine how in your face SpaceX is going to be about this when they have 2-3 crispy capsules? Every conference one of the managers speak at they are going to push a crispy capsule out in front of them, give a speech leaning on it, then at the end have a model in a space suit hydraulically shot out the docking ring.
Every conference one of the managers speak at they are going to push a crispy capsule out in front of them, give a speech leaning on it, then at the end have a model in a space suit hydraulically shot out the docking ring.