SpaceX Falcon 9 / Dragon 2 : SpX-DM1 : March 2, 2019 : DISCUSSION

[Mark McCombs]

Looked shattered.

Elon is REALLY tired or something. He can't speak clearly today, even more than usual.

Yeah, he's burnt.   You get a lot a truth and genuine heart felt comments in that condition.

[tyrred]

Bridenstine, on the other hand, was positively eloquent. 

I admit, I haven't actually listened to any of his statements before.  Did not have an opinion on his position as NASA administrator.  Until now.

Color me optimistic, but I found his closing statements at the post-launch presser absolutely inspirational.

Time to put the money where the mouth is.

[Alexphysics]

Why barge and not land landing for the first stage?

I thought it would have enough performance for coming back to cape canaveral on this kind of payload.

This kind of payload? What do you expect with a +12 metric ton spacecraft on top of the rocket? This is the heaviest thing a Falcon 9 has ever launched to ANY orbit. Add that to the "reserving performance" thing and inevitably they have to land on the droneship.

[Alexphysics]

Broadcast of the view inside the cabin seemed to have some transmission issues. But it did look like the “zero gee indicator” earth plushie did start to float away after dragon separation.

But it looked like it didn’t start floating until separation?  If so, why didn’t it start floating as soon as SECO?

The reason it didn't move at all after SECO may well be just because it is a very smooth shutdown process so the cute plushie thingie didn't move too much.

[catdlr]

SpaceX Demo-1 Post-Launch News Conference
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6658

John44,  glad to have you back on the forum with your High-Quality video captures.  We missed you and understand what you went through.  Tony.

[Alexphysics]

I thought I heard the NASA PA person say the first operational crew would fly with two as yet unannounced international partner astronauts. Did I misunderstand??

Yup, it is a crew rotation mission so it will carry four astronauts but not all four will be american astronauts, at least three of them will be for the ISS USOS and the fourth will be a russian cosmonaut. This has been known for quite a while

[dsmillman]

Does someone have a timeline for the rendezvous and docking operations?

[vanoord]

Why barge and not land landing for the first stage?

I thought it would have enough performance for coming back to cape canaveral on this kind of payload.

This kind of payload? What do you expect with a +12 metric ton spacecraft on top of the rocket? This is the heaviest thing a Falcon 9 has ever launched to ANY orbit. Add that to the "reserving performance" thing and inevitably they have to land on the droneship.

Is there not also a belief that the S1 trajectory was lower than usual, so any boostback burn would have to add height as well, increasing propellant requirements?

[Alexphysics]

Why barge and not land landing for the first stage?

I thought it would have enough performance for coming back to cape canaveral on this kind of payload.

This kind of payload? What do you expect with a +12 metric ton spacecraft on top of the rocket? This is the heaviest thing a Falcon 9 has ever launched to ANY orbit. Add that to the "reserving performance" thing and inevitably they have to land on the droneship.

Is there not also a belief that the S1 trajectory was lower than usual, so any boostback burn would have to add height as well, increasing propellant requirements?

It seems it might have been all a misunderstanding, it was actually a lofted trajectory and in some way even more lofted that some cargo missions. I don't understand very well how NASA would like such trajectory, if Falcon 9 has a bad day and the crew has to abort mid-flight, they will have quite a hard reentry with all the g-forces. Soyuz usually flies a flat trajectory, they usually take about the same time to get to a similar orbit as this Dragon has gone into but if you look back at their failiure in October the rocket was still about 50km up at about 2 minutes or so and the apogee after abort never went higher than 100km and the rocket was travelling almost horizontal from the external camera views (not exactly horizontal, but you know, something like 30º or something like that, maybe even less than that). If only this flight could have been in daylight to have some visual reference... but all we have is the telemetry from the webcast. Maybe we could even compare that with the "telemetry" from roscosmos coverage of the Soyuz launches but I'm not sure about how an abort would be better with a lofted trajectory...

[ugordan]

I never noticed up until now that one section of a pipe on an MVac gets red hot during operation. I went back to the Nusantara Satu webcast and it was there as well, it appeared to be a duller red glow, but maybe it's down to the the camera auto exposure.

[TrevorMonty]

I thought I heard the NASA PA person say the first operational crew would fly with two as yet unannounced international partner astronauts. Did I misunderstand??

Yup, it is a crew rotation mission so it will carry four astronauts but not all four will be american astronauts, at least three of them will be for the ISS USOS and the fourth will be a russian cosmonaut. This has been known for quite a while

See extract below from this article. Russians aren't competition but partners in regards to ISS. While Russia may lose some revenue from not flying NASA crew,  they now get backup to Soyzu which is good for everybody. Recent incident with Soyzu proved how important it is to have backup crew vehicle. I think the new crew vehicles also offer orbit raising of ISS as bonus feature.

https://www.space.com/spacex-launches-crew-dragon-test-flight.html

These private vehicles' operational debuts will end NASA's reliance on the Soyuz but not the agency's use of the Russian vehicle. At least for the near term, American astronauts will continue to fly on the Soyuz, and each contracted Crew Dragon and Starliner flight will include one cosmonaut, NASA officials said.

"The Russians have been really great partners," Cabana said. And, he added, "we want to have interoperability. We want to have redundancy, so if there's a problem with one vehicle, we can fly another."

[JimO]

The reentry fireball ought to be visible pre-dawn from Central America, does anybody have an approximate track/schedule?

[JimO]

What happened to Stage-2 deorbit burn and entry?

[dsmillman]

The reentry fireball ought to be visible pre-dawn from Central America, does anybody have an approximate track/schedule?

At the post launch press conference someone said that landing will be on a descending node.  So reentry will not be over Central America.  The NASA TV schedule shows splashdown at 8:30 AM EST on March 8.  So maybe the Pacific Northwest will see something.

[Johnnyhinbos]

There were some classic Elon moments during this press conference. Like:

- When he went on about D2’s integrated launch abort system and then compared it to the older tractor system, which required a separate ejection system to get rid of it, and didn’t provide abort capabilities through all phases of flight - all the while sitting beside the Administrator who’s sole human capable launch vehicle uses that exact system.

- When he went in about all the ways D2’s could fail and how it stresses him out, while sitting beside the two humans who will be the first to fly the spacecraft.

- When he made Bridenstine squirm when he underscored the face that humans really needed a permanent base on the moon and Mars. (Bridenstine, in his closing comments, worked to take emphasis off “permanent” and more on benefits of returning to the moon from an Earthly basis).

- When he talked over Bridenstine who was trying to take the last question and Bridenstine just held his hands up in a “or maybe were not done with that question “ kinda way.

Main takeaway - great conference, Bridenstine and Elon and the entire panel were great, and I’m excited as h*ll that this is all happening...

[thomson]

Anyone knows how to track SpX-DM1 or how to find out its current orbital parmeters? I'd like to try taking a photo of ISS with a Dragon chasing it up. My understanding is that Dragon should be on similar orbit: with the same inclination, right ascension of the ascending node, just slightly lower apogee and/or perigee to catch up with the ISS.

Are the orbital parameters available anywhere? I'd like to observe it tonight and was wondering how far away from ISS the Dragon will be.

[envy887]

Anyone knows how to track SpX-DM1 or how to find out its current orbital parmeters? I'd like to try taking a photo of ISS with a Dragon chasing it up. My understanding is that Dragon should be on similar orbit: with the same inclination, right ascension of the ascending node, just slightly lower apogee and/or perigee to catch up with the ISS.

Are the orbital parameters available anywhere? I'd like to observe it tonight and was wondering how far away from ISS the Dragon will be.

Dragon is in plane with ISS and catching up from behind in a lower orbit with a higher rev rate. If you can see ISS, you should see Dragon chasing it along the same path a few minutes later.

[edkyle99]

That curved event list is a cool design. Not the most practical maybe, but it looks cool.

Gonna have to disagree in the very strongest possible terms.

I agree with you Prettz.  This trend toward blocking the view in launch webcasts (ULA did it with an ugly crawl) is beyond bad.  I don't mind having a data display, but why not move it out of the video frame?  It worked when they did the split screen when it didn't block the view, but when they showed a single frame it blocked important parts of the view, including the launcher, the exhaust plume, part of the Vacuum Merlin, and so on.  I didn't like the previous SpaceX status bar, which covered the bottom 10% or so of the frame.  Now they've replaced it with something 3-times taller.  Who comes up with this stuff?  Horrible.

 - Ed Kyle

[clongton]

That curved event list is a cool design. Not the most practical maybe, but it looks cool.

Gonna have to disagree in the very strongest possible terms.

I agree with you Prettz.  This trend toward blocking the view in launch webcasts (ULA did it with an ugly crawl) is beyond bad.  I don't mind having a data display, but why not move it out of the video frame?  It worked when they did the split screen when it didn't block the view, but when they showed a single frame it blocked important parts of the view, including the launcher, the exhaust plume, part of the Vacuum Merlin, and so on.  I didn't like the previous SpaceX status bar, which covered the bottom 10% or so of the frame.  Now they've replaced it with something 3-times taller.  Who comes up with this stuff?  Horrible.

 - Ed Kyle

Agree. I really don't like the new display. It's distracting and ugly.

[M.E.T.]

So stupid question.

Will Dragon2 take this long to reach the ISS when there are crew on board as well? If so, how do they “go to the toilet” during that roughly 24 hour period?