http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/picture-uk-built-spacex-capsule-revealed-222995/Stumbled upon this article today. No idea if it was discussed before. Do you think there's any truth to the article?I mean SpaceX were known to have connections and investments in the UK, but the whole dragon design...
Looks like a much smaller diameter (but similar volume?). I hope they have a company historian on staff so in another decade or 3 we can read all about the progression, the trade-offs, etc.
Quote from: go4mars on 12/26/2011 01:08 pmLooks like a much smaller diameter (but similar volume?). I hope they have a company historian on staff so in another decade or 3 we can read all about the progression, the trade-offs, etc. I briefed Elon on a concept very similar to one discussed in the attached PDF in 2003. (In fact, the brief was much more detailed and under NDA with HMX; a 2003 rendering of that updated version is shown below). I was essentially offering to sell our "XV" spacecraft to SpaceX for crew and cargo. Elon decided he didn't want to buy his crewed spacecraft from a third party and turned down my offer. In 2004, I met with Gwynne Shotwell of SpaceX to discuss buying a Falcon 5 to launch a commercial XV, since I thought I had some funding to build a prototype and SpaceX was offering the F5 for only $12M (how times have changed!). She took one look at the illustration and turned it over and said [paraphrasing] "I can't look at that...it's like something we are building." My funding never materialized so I frankly didn't give it any more thought until those photos started showing up a few years later, but it seems likely there was some connection between my original AltAcess brief and whatever was being built in the UK. But I have never seen an exterior moldline photo, so there is no way to be sure. Of course, there were lots of concepts floating around that could have been the model for whatever Magic Dragon was, but I have always wondered about what might have been...if only we had been able to work together on such a venture.
Quote from: HMXHMX on 12/27/2011 03:39 amQuote from: go4mars on 12/26/2011 01:08 pmLooks like a much smaller diameter (but similar volume?). I hope they have a company historian on staff so in another decade or 3 we can read all about the progression, the trade-offs, etc. I briefed Elon on a concept very similar to one discussed in the attached PDF in 2003. (In fact, the brief was much more detailed and under NDA with HMX; a 2003 rendering of that updated version is shown below). I was essentially offering to sell our "XV" spacecraft to SpaceX for crew and cargo. Elon decided he didn't want to buy his crewed spacecraft from a third party and turned down my offer. In 2004, I met with Gwynne Shotwell of SpaceX to discuss buying a Falcon 5 to launch a commercial XV, since I thought I had some funding to build a prototype and SpaceX was offering the F5 for only $12M (how times have changed!). She took one look at the illustration and turned it over and said [paraphrasing] "I can't look at that...it's like something we are building." My funding never materialized so I frankly didn't give it any more thought until those photos started showing up a few years later, but it seems likely there was some connection between my original AltAcess brief and whatever was being built in the UK. But I have never seen an exterior moldline photo, so there is no way to be sure. Of course, there were lots of concepts floating around that could have been the model for whatever Magic Dragon was, but I have always wondered about what might have been...if only we had been able to work together on such a venture.Nice PDF on the XV.Very similar to the Kistler K-1 orbital stage.Nice to see this version of the XV was to have a land-landing. Now if the new XV design had a land-landing instead of aircapture!Thread on the XVhttp://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=24859.0I wounder why the UK or ESA did not pick up on the Magic Dragon design?
Designed for tourism Elson said SpaceX insisted on square windows for the tourists and that the capsule was designed to be launched by a SpaceX Falcon 5.
QuoteDesigned for tourism Elson said SpaceX insisted on square windows for the tourists and that the capsule was designed to be launched by a SpaceX Falcon 5.http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/hyperbola/2008/04/magic-dragon-the-uks-first-com.htmlSquare windows?
I wounder why the UK or ESA did not pick up on the Magic Dragon design?
Captured on May 3, 2006, @elonmusk with a Dragon mock-up.From this humble moment, @SpaceX rose to incredible heights, outpacing giants like Boeing to the ISS, changing Spaceflight with reusable boosters, and crafting the largest rocket ever.Dream big, achieve bigger! 💪🔥
Elon Musk explains the "Dragon" manned space capsule mockup at the SpaceX facility in Los Angeles, CA. This was part of a tour arranged by the National Space Society for the 2006 International Space Development Conference.
This vehicle was called Magic Dragon, it was being developed by a UK company called Black Sky Technologies under contract to SpaceX, to fly on Falcon 5
Notably, this would've used CBM to attach to ISS, even on crewed missions (like SpaceX later unsuccessfully proposed for Dragon 1 Crew during COTS). And it would've propulsively landed using its abort engines, like Dragon 2 planned originally
