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NASA Astronauts Return Home in SpaceX's Crew Dragon Spacecraft [video]

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Re: NASA Astronauts Return Home in SpaceX's Crew Dragon Spacecraft [video]

#31
post #3

Not yet, not until re-entry. It's arguably the most dangerous part of the missions since launching on Falcon 9 has happened many times before. Both Soyuz and the Space Shuttle had fatal accidents on re-entry.

Dragon has come back before (without crew) so this isn't a total unknown.

Re: NASA Astronauts Return Home in SpaceX's Crew Dragon Spacecraft [video]

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong, but I think it's cool how much safer the generic capsule design is than something like the Shuttle. Really the Shuttle got a whole lot wrong—heat-intolerant aluminum structure and critical, sensitive machinery directly beneath a layer of tiles so fragile you can crush them in your hands (IIRC). SpaceX's Starship will probably be a lot more tolerant to defects in the heat shield because of the relati…

The Shuttle was built to bring down soviet spy satellites and spacecraft, so in that regard, it was the best design made.

[deleted]

Re: NASA Astronauts Return Home in SpaceX's Crew Dragon Spacecraft [video]

#33
post #25

What happens in the event of a parachute failure? Would they be in a position where they could fire up the Super Dracos for a propulsive landing?

They originally designed Dragon 2 for propulsive landing, but NASA didn't approve it, and then development focus shifted to Starship. I don't think anyone (outside of SpaceX) knows whether the feature still exists for emergency use; perhaps they never finished the software.

Re: NASA Astronauts Return Home in SpaceX's Crew Dragon Spacecraft [video]

#34
post #25

What happens in the event of a parachute failure? Would they be in a position where they could fire up the Super Dracos for a propulsive landing?

There are four parachutes. It's designed to support at least a single-chute failure, I don't know about multiple chute outages.

As for propulsive landing - the latest I can see[1] is that while the craft is technically capable of propulsive landing, it's not approved by NASA, even for emergencies. So it's likely that these options are not even available for the crew, and they wouldn't have trained on how to use it/activate it.

[1] https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-crew-dragon-emergency-landi...

Re: NASA Astronauts Return Home in SpaceX's Crew Dragon Spacecraft [video]

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Shuttle was built to bring down soviet spy satellites and spacecraft, so in that regard, it was the best design made.

Huh interesting. Do you have sources for that information?

The main concern of the Soviets was that the Shuttle could swoop down and drop bombs without warning.

(Both Reagan and the Soviet top leadership didn't care about MAD, they cared about practical methods to stop incoming missiles. To get the arms limitations agreements signed, Reagan allowed the Soviets an exception to the anti-ABM ban to allow a ring of anti-ABM sites around Moscow, which exists until today. The "Star Wars" kinetic interception methods are also likely still active, though the laser methods probably never worked well.)

Re: NASA Astronauts Return Home in SpaceX's Crew Dragon Spacecraft [video]

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Shuttle was built to bring down soviet spy satellites and spacecraft, so in that regard, it was the best design made.

Huh interesting. Do you have sources for that information?

There was at least one mission to retrieve a satellite (not Soviet):

https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/07/us/space-shuttle-poised-t...

Re: NASA Astronauts Return Home in SpaceX's Crew Dragon Spacecraft [video]

#37

The first comment I saw in the live chat was "You people have it wrong, space is flat, not earth".

It’s more like “matter tells spacetime how to curve, spacetime tells matter how to move”.

Brilliant synopsis. Kudos!

Re: NASA Astronauts Return Home in SpaceX's Crew Dragon Spacecraft [video]

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Shuttle was built to bring down soviet spy satellites and spacecraft, so in that regard, it was the best design made.

Huh interesting. Do you have sources for that information?

I don't have access to classified military secrets, but you don't think they would build a vehicle that could return 15 tons of payload to earth to retrieve US satellites? US could just build and launch a new satellite easier and cheaper than bring one down to fix only to launch it again.

Obviously there is the movie about Salyut 7 that depicts the shuttle trying to capture the station. Salyut 3 had a machine gun attached to it.

Re: NASA Astronauts Return Home in SpaceX's Crew Dragon Spacecraft [video]

#40
post #38
post #17

The SpaceX crew land in Florida at 2:48 p.m. ET on Sunday.

Or 19:48 for those of us in the UK. NASA/SpaceX really should start using UTC for their timestamps.

I feel like it's not at all weird to say that something is arriving somewhere in that somewhere's local time zone.
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