The CRS-2/SpX-2 "Junk in the Trunk" Party Thread

[apace]

Any idea how an "alien" SpaceX Dragon V2 would look like? ;-)

[Lars_J]

Any idea how an "alien" SpaceX Dragon V2 would look like? ;-)

Most likely it won't look that different than the current dragon. See the crew Dragon mock-up below - now imagine an integrated landing gear. Perhaps a slightly larger hatch and windows. It should be pretty close.

[rickl]

One thing I've mentioned before about the current Dragon is that it doesn't look like the side hatch could be opened in orbit while the GNC bay door is open, as it overlaps the side hatch.  So I would assume that the side hatch will only be used for ingress and egress on the ground, and if astronauts needed to perform a spacewalk, they would use the nose hatch.

[rickl]

Or it's possible that crew Dragon won't have a GNC bay. The DragonEye sensors must be relocated to the nose anyway to support docking; in principle, the star trackers can be moved there as well.

Good point.

I doubt that crew Dragon will support EVA at all.

Why not?  Gemini, Apollo, and Soyuz have all supported EVA.  (Voskhod, too, just barely.    )

True, EVA should not be required when Dragon is ferrying personnel back and forth to the ISS, but I don't think that will be Dragon's only mission in the long run.

[Jason1701]

Of course, but that's not half as fun as imagining him sitting in his underground volcano lair stroking his cat 

And if Elon did have a cat, it should be this one...demonstrating water recovery...

http://laugh-lines.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/funny-angry-black-cat-bath-wet.jpg

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m90ka7Zr021rby5xwo1_500.jpg

[Lar]

Wonder how long we can keep this thread going before the mods shut it down?

(cheese it, it's the cops!)

[rickl]

Well, I've been having a quiet, leisurely Saturday, and I've spent about half the day wandering around NSF.com.  At first I was looking at the historical sections, then looked up what I could find about SLC-40 including the Titan era, and finally ended up reading the threads about the first Falcon 1 launch.

100 users online

It's going to be one of those fun nights again (the last attempt was the busiest thread we've ever had on here). This will be the live update thread.

So it appears that SpaceX has had a certain appeal right from the beginning.

I'm a latecomer to both SpaceX and NSF.com.  I don't remember watching any of the Falcon 1 launches, although I think I did see something on TV about them.  Probably learning about it through Space.com, I watched the first Falcon 9 launch attempt until the ignition abort, then assumed they had scrubbed for the day.  After all, I had seen a few Shuttle ignition aborts, and even remembered Gemini 6, which I watched live at age 7.  Once you light the engines and don't launch, you're done for the day, right?

I was absolutely stunned to learn that Falcon 9 had launched successfully a couple hours later.  That was the point where I started taking SpaceX seriously, and I've been avidly following them ever since.