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The problem is that, unlike ships, they're generally not designed to be water proof. It's not the exterior that's the problem.
I mean, the crew part of it is water proof, right? It has to be air tight... I'm guessing there are things on the "outside" that might still have issues?
... on the second reentry attempt.
Could anyone explain what is historic about this test flight? Why is that so different from a bog standard Soyuz or Mercury/Gemini/Apollo?
If you read the article you’d probably be able to work it out, but essentially: - it marks the return of American human launch capabilities after a several year hiatus from the retirement of the space shuttle - it is being done on by a private company (with government funding), which is unprecedented - dragon crew is intended to be reusable (in opposition to Shuttle/mercury/Gemini/Apollo - the capsule is designed to…
Here's a video explaining how it works, with footage of it being tested during the Apollo era.
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Why would they do day trips when they plan to do suborbital passenger trips. Not make going into space a bucket list item for the upper middle class, but a routine A-to-B for business class flyers. The bucket list item would be Mars.
SpaceX actually showed a mock-up of what point-to-point travel might look like in one of their videos.
Your passengers do multiple g's to altitude, then go weightless, then go back to taking g-forces on descent. That's the vomit part. Not a great customer experience.
Meanwhile, the Starship looks like an ICBM to every early warning radar on the planet. It's only during reentry that it stops looking like an ICBM, but most missile defense strategies call for intervention in the boost phase.
Let's suppose that they address those false positive detection issues. If you're a military planner, though, you're probably asking yourself how many MIRV warheads could fit inside a militarized Starship retrofitted for a preemptive strike?
This is a better article on the recovery than the one I linked from TechCrunch. I would like to reiterate the point made before which is that SpaceX is on the verge of being in a place that no company has ever been before with regard to space. The are on the cusp of having a capsule that they can send into orbit for days and then return to Earth. They already have rockets capable of putting tons of material into ever…
> I would like to reiterate the point made before which is that SpaceX is on the verge of being in a place that no company has ever been before with regard to space. Excuse my ignorance, but what have they done that's so revolutionary? We have been putting people into LEO for decades. What's so groundbreaking about this test?
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They are unlikely to do this at this point. The big problem is that while the capsule will be reusable, since NASA killed the propulsive landing for Dragon 2, it now needs to splash down in saltwater and therefore is not considered safe for humans after the first use. This makes Dragon 2:s too expensive for large-scale space tourism. Unless there is suddenly a huge market for this, I think SpaceX would prefer to sell…
where did you hear that dragon 2 is not safe for humans after splashdown? that's not accurate
This is a better article on the recovery than the one I linked from TechCrunch. I would like to reiterate the point made before which is that SpaceX is on the verge of being in a place that no company has ever been before with regard to space. The are on the cusp of having a capsule that they can send into orbit for days and then return to Earth. They already have rockets capable of putting tons of material into ever…
SpaceX is breaking new ground, but it isn't the first corporation to launch large rockets. The Saturn 5 wasn't built by the air force, nor was shuttle constructed by Nasa. These objects were built by contractors, corporations working under government contracts. The differences between SpaceX today and the corporations that built, and largely launched, the big rockets of the past is largely a legal distinction. Space…
In contrast every aspect of the Falcon rocket and Dragon capsule design was determined by SpaceX. NASA set the overall goals and safety criteria, but you can see from the differences between the Starliner and Dragon designs how much scope the manufacturers had. It really is a completely different paradigm.
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SpaceX is breaking new ground, but it isn't the first corporation to launch large rockets. The Saturn 5 wasn't built by the air force, nor was shuttle constructed by Nasa. These objects were built by contractors, corporations working under government contracts. The differences between SpaceX today and the corporations that built, and largely launched, the big rockets of the past is largely a legal distinction. Space…
What other US-based company has had a man-rated rocket such that they owned the full stack, launch facility, etc? Sure contractors have been involved and built lots of components, but this is the first time a corporation has owned the fully, complete product as well as the facilities to launch and recover.
No company does (including SpaceX)
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I am curious about this as well. Was the propulsion the problem? Did they just want a water landing? Did they specifically want an ocean landing to increase the acceptable margin for error in the splash down location? Is there some specific property to the salt water like buoyancy that is important? Would a landing in fresh water like the Great Lakes (or Lake Victoria if they need something more equatorial) meet NASA…
+1 for splashdown in the great lakes. Now let's throw in launch pad on the shore of lake superior for getting in polar orbits. ;-)
So yah they didn't reach orbit but you betcha it was still pretty neat to see it.
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Any news on this? I was super, super disappointed this mission did have a propulsive landing. I'm just now finding out it was nixed entirely. But that's fine for NASA if they want to pay for a splash down? If somebody else wants to pay for propulsive landing, it's on the table? EDIT: Sounds like a SpaceX driven decision.
As I understand it, originally SpaceX was planning on using propulsive landing with side-mounted thrusters and legs coming through the heatshield (i.e. what was planned for Dragon 2) on Mars, so they were developing the technology with that end in mind. Once they decided to go straight to Starship/BFR with the movable 'wings' and raptor engines on the bottom and cancelled the dragon missions to Mars, there was less r…
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I wonder at which point we will start worrying about the carbon footprint of these launches, though. I didn't do the math, but it seems it might become a global factor once you get to multiple launches per week.
World CO2 emissions last year was ~ 37Gigatons of carbon. A F9 launch uses of order 100 tons of RP1, so global emissions correspond to about 370 million launches...
(Though it's still comparable in "order of magnitude" terms.)