SpaceX Dragon 2 Updates and Discussion - Thread 3

[QuantumG]

That's one way to spin it, yeah. Or, NASA forced inane requirements on SpaceX who declined to comply in the interests of actually launching people prior to 2022.... We've had this whole discussion before. More than once. Maybe we shouldn't?

... and after they got vertical landing scraped, they went after anything and everything, finally issuing a "safety review" to go fishing for something else they could nitpick to death.

[mlindner]

Is there any protection for the solar cells during launch?

If you look closely, the entire thing is covered in a thick covering of epoxy. You could probably throw a rock at those solar panels and they wouldn't budge.

Hi-res link: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DuuyF4dUwAA7GKS.jpg:orig

[su27k]

Is there any protection for the solar cells during launch?

Has there been precedence for this, or is it the first time solar array on a spacecraft is exposed during launch?

[tyrred]

Is there any protection for the solar cells during launch?

Has there been precedence for this, or is it the first time solar array on a spacecraft is exposed during launch?

This will be a first, I believe.  Amazing what can be done with solar arrays these days. 
Hell, somebody should take this space-age technology and make roof tiles out of it 

[catdlr]

Astronauts prepare for flight in SpaceX capsule

LA Times Business Article

Alternate News site:  PressReader

[ncb1397]

<snip>
Oh good - we're back on this debate. I was afraid it had been discussed to death already...

Yup, SpaceX had as much choice in this matter as someone who has a gun pointed at their head choosing to hand over their wallet.

Bad analogy. NASA is handing over the money. But instead of a wallet, we are talking suitcases full of money. Given the average suitcase can only hold 1 million dollars in hundred dollar bills, we are talking about thousands of suitcases. SpaceX wasn't under any threat, other than not being handed said cash.

[IntoTheVoid]

<snip>
Oh good - we're back on this debate. I was afraid it had been discussed to death already...

Yup, SpaceX had as much choice in this matter as someone who has a gun pointed at their head choosing to hand over their wallet.

Bad analogy. NASA is handing over the money. But instead of a wallet, we are talking suitcases full of money. Given the average suitcase can only hold 1 million dollars in hundred dollar bills, we are talking about thousands of suitcases. SpaceX wasn't under any threat, other than not being handed said cash.

Yeah, not handing over promised money, is nothing like taking money. Huh???

[Lar]

<snip>
Oh good - we're back on this debate. I was afraid it had been discussed to death already...

Yup, SpaceX had as much choice in this matter as someone who has a gun pointed at their head choosing to hand over their wallet.

Bad analogy. NASA is handing over the money. But instead of a wallet, we are talking suitcases full of money. Given the average suitcase can only hold 1 million dollars in hundred dollar bills, we are talking about thousands of suitcases. SpaceX wasn't under any threat, other than not being handed said cash.

And negative optics when press releases spun the delay/cancellation of SpaceX's entry as all SpaceX's fault. The dollar value there is pretty high I think....

The media is not that great at decoding bureaucracy-speak or doing root cause analysis.

That said, can we put a pin in this? we are rehashing what has been discussed many times before. Yes I'm part of the problem. 

[woods170]

<snip>
Oh good - we're back on this debate. I was afraid it had been discussed to death already...

Yup, SpaceX had as much choice in this matter as someone who has a gun pointed at their head choosing to hand over their wallet.

Bad analogy. NASA is handing over the money. But instead of a wallet, we are talking suitcases full of money. Given the average suitcase can only hold 1 million dollars in hundred dollar bills, we are talking about thousands of suitcases. SpaceX wasn't under any threat, other than not being handed said cash.

And negative optics when press releases spun the delay/cancellation of SpaceX's entry as all SpaceX's fault. The dollar value there is pretty high I think....

The media is not that great at decoding bureaucracy-speak or doing root cause analysis.

That said, can we put a pin in this? we are rehashing what has been discussed many times before. Yes I'm part of the problem. 

Emphasis mine.

I fully agree. Folks here can use the search function to find the relevant posts about cancellation of propulsive landing and going back to sea landings. As well as who is to "blame" for it.

[GORDAP]

This almost resuscitation of the NASA-killed-propulsive-landing debate reminded me of something I've been wondering for quite some time.  Do we think that SpaceX has possibly implemented, somewhere in their fault decision tree for the D2, an attempt to do propulsive landing in the event of a failed parachute deployment (thus possible saving the crew)?  I remember after the failed CRS cargo flight a few years back Elon stated that if they'd have had software installed that correctly detected this event and deployed the chute at the right time, they probably could have saved the capsule (and most of the valuable cargo).  I'd be willing to bet that before the following CRS launch, such contingency code was in fact put into the software.  It just seems kind of obvious that they'd put code into the D2 to try to save the crew with propulsive landing (no matter how unrefined), rather than just let the craft smash into the ocean and kill everyone.  Can't think of any downside.  Sorry if already discussed.

[nacnud]

^ I would be surprised if there wasn't the code in there somewhere. There is already code to make D2 hover, thought I've no idea if that had a moveable cog or if that was only needed for landing accuracy. No need to be accurate in a parachute failure, after all it's fairly tricky to miss an ocean.

[whitelancer64]

<snip>
Oh good - we're back on this debate. I was afraid it had been discussed to death already...

Yup, SpaceX had as much choice in this matter as someone who has a gun pointed at their head choosing to hand over their wallet.

Bad analogy. NASA is handing over the money. But instead of a wallet, we are talking suitcases full of money. Given the average suitcase can only hold 1 million dollars in hundred dollar bills, we are talking about thousands of suitcases. SpaceX wasn't under any threat, other than not being handed said cash.

Yeah, not handing over promised money, is nothing like taking money. Huh???

Put the same thing from SpaceX's perspective: If Super Draco landing for Dragon v2 was critical for their future plans, would SpaceX have spent any amount of money to do it? Yes.

But they didn't, because it wasn't that important for them to do so in the big picture.

[Comga]

That said, can we put a pin in this? we are rehashing what has been discussed many times before. Yes I'm part of the problem. 

I fully agree. Folks here can use the search function to find the relevant posts about cancellation of propulsive landing and going back to sea landings. As well as who is to "blame" for it.

Yeah
I PM’ed jerangrove87 when he used his first post to start this rehash.
The response was inevitable and unavoidable.
If only we had a launch or two to distract us.

[Comga]

So let's start a different unanswerable debate about Dragon 2
Please point out corrections where these assumptions are wrong.
SpaceX is building a new Dragon 2 for each manned/crewed flight to the ISS under Commercial Crew.
Eventually NASA will allow these to fly, next spring, next fall, before Boeing's CST-100, after Boeing, whatever.
They plan on refurbishing capsules and reusing them for CRS-II cargo flights.
SpaceX may do one crew rotation per year, and perhaps three cargo flights, as one of three providers, four if we count the modest amount of cargo that can ride with the four passengers on CST-100.
Because Dragon is never flown as expendable, SpaceX will start accumulating used Dragons.
I would presume that BFS will take a bit longer than some of Musk's predictions to get built, work out the ground system, fly low altitude, low speed tests, build to high speed and altitude, practice the acrobatics of converting from reentry to landing, and fly some test orbits, which will be needed before the DearMoon flight.
Given they will have used first stages and capsules complete with proven life support systems, the marginal cost of an independent crew flight to orbit is mostly the second stage and trunk.  This is not trivial, but not huge on the scale of SpaceX projects, or even the Boring Company projects.

Why wouldn't someone try to arrange a private flight to LEO?
Why wouldn't SpaceX agree to make that happen?
NASA will have "real astronauts" doing Real Astronaut Stuff (R) on the real space station, so they might not care.
SpaceX can "walk and chew gum at the same time". 
I think this will indeed happen, perhaps in 2021 or 2022.

I also hope it does.

[whitelancer64]

So let's start a different unanswerable debate about Dragon 2
Please point out corrections where these assumptions are wrong.
SpaceX is building a new Dragon 2 for each manned/crewed flight to the ISS under Commercial Crew.
Eventually NASA will allow these to fly, next spring, next fall, before Boeing's CST-100, after Boeing, whatever.
They plan on refurbishing capsules and reusing them for CRS-II cargo flights.
SpaceX may do one crew rotation per year, and perhaps three cargo flights, as one of three providers, four if we count the modest amount of cargo that can ride with the four passengers on CST-100.
Because Dragon is never flown as expendable, SpaceX will start accumulating used Dragons.
I would presume that BFS will take a bit longer than some of Musk's predictions to get built, work out the ground system, fly low altitude, low speed tests, build to high speed and altitude, practice the acrobatics of converting from reentry to landing, and fly some test orbits, which will be needed before the DearMoon flight.
Given they will have used first stages and capsules complete with proven life support systems, the marginal cost of an independent crew flight to orbit is mostly the second stage and trunk.  This is not trivial, but not huge on the scale of SpaceX projects, or even the Boring Company projects.

Why wouldn't someone try to arrange a private flight to LEO?
Why wouldn't SpaceX agree to make that happen?
NASA will have "real astronauts" doing Real Astronaut Stuff (R) on the real space station, so they might not care.
SpaceX can "walk and chew gum at the same time". 
I think this will indeed happen, perhaps in 2021 or 2022.

I also hope it does.

SpaceX's attitude has generally been, "if someone is willing to pay us, we'll do it," so I would say such a tourist flight(s) would be plausible.

That said, they will probably also be re-using crew dragons for flights to Bigelow's space station, whenever they get around to launching it.

[b ramsey]

Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 in 39A hanger in preparation for DM-1 test flight.

[RonM]

So let's start a different unanswerable debate about Dragon 2
Please point out corrections where these assumptions are wrong.
SpaceX is building a new Dragon 2 for each manned/crewed flight to the ISS under Commercial Crew.
Eventually NASA will allow these to fly, next spring, next fall, before Boeing's CST-100, after Boeing, whatever.
They plan on refurbishing capsules and reusing them for CRS-II cargo flights.
SpaceX may do one crew rotation per year, and perhaps three cargo flights, as one of three providers, four if we count the modest amount of cargo that can ride with the four passengers on CST-100.
Because Dragon is never flown as expendable, SpaceX will start accumulating used Dragons.
I would presume that BFS will take a bit longer than some of Musk's predictions to get built, work out the ground system, fly low altitude, low speed tests, build to high speed and altitude, practice the acrobatics of converting from reentry to landing, and fly some test orbits, which will be needed before the DearMoon flight.
Given they will have used first stages and capsules complete with proven life support systems, the marginal cost of an independent crew flight to orbit is mostly the second stage and trunk.  This is not trivial, but not huge on the scale of SpaceX projects, or even the Boring Company projects.

Why wouldn't someone try to arrange a private flight to LEO?
Why wouldn't SpaceX agree to make that happen?
NASA will have "real astronauts" doing Real Astronaut Stuff (R) on the real space station, so they might not care.
SpaceX can "walk and chew gum at the same time". 
I think this will indeed happen, perhaps in 2021 or 2022.

I also hope it does.

SpaceX's attitude has generally been, "if someone is willing to pay us, we'll do it," so I would say such a tourist flight(s) would be plausible.

That said, they will probably also be re-using crew dragons for flights to Bigelow's space station, whenever they get around to launching it.

Skip the second stage for an interesting suborbital flight. Only throwing away the trunk. Should be relatively inexpensive with reusable booster and capsule.

[ncb1397]

<snip>
Oh good - we're back on this debate. I was afraid it had been discussed to death already...

Yup, SpaceX had as much choice in this matter as someone who has a gun pointed at their head choosing to hand over their wallet.

Bad analogy. NASA is handing over the money. But instead of a wallet, we are talking suitcases full of money. Given the average suitcase can only hold 1 million dollars in hundred dollar bills, we are talking about thousands of suitcases. SpaceX wasn't under any threat, other than not being handed said cash.

Yeah, not handing over promised money, is nothing like taking money. Huh???

That is an extraordinary claim that NASA was ever considering not paying their bills. And no, contract cancellation wouldn't be not handing over promised money. The contract is a promise to follow the contract only, including terms for cancellation if so desired. If there was no cancellation clause, that is the only case where money was promised and assured and not delivered. And if NASA ever attempted to steal money from SpaceX, they would have numerous legal remedies to recover it.

The government could wake up tomorrow and decide they don't want to fly on Dragon/Commercial Crew for any reason (or no reason) and that act alone could not be construed as theft.

[georgegassaway]

Sorry to interrupt this propulsive landing /  NASA money vs SpaceX  / dead horse beating thread by asking about an update on Dragon 2.   

So, can someone explain the white covers that are over the black solar cells on the Trunk as seen in a photo a few posts up?  Protective until shortly before launch, or  will be there at launch and discarded sometime after Max-Q? Or is one side (180 degrees)  covered in solar cells and the other not?

[whitelancer64]

Sorry to interrupt this propulsive landing /  NASA money vs SpaceX  / dead horse beating thread by asking about an update on Dragon 2.   

So, can someone explain the white covers that are over the black solar cells on the Trunk as seen in a photo a few posts up?  Protective until shortly before launch, or  will be there at launch and discarded sometime after Max-Q? Or is one side (180 degrees)  covered in solar cells and the other not?

The white half of the trunk are radiators.