141–150 of 260 posts
I recall Elon was hoping to get an order of magnitude reduction in cost per launch, but Wikipedia claims it costs $160 million per launch versus the Soyuz price of $76 million per astronaut. That would “only” be a 3x reduction with a crew of seven, but they’ve configured for a crew of four, which is a hair under 2x. I wonder how reuse affects the math, and what they’ll be able to do to lower those prices further. Obv…
If they filled the dragon to its capacity of 7 it would be closer. I believe hearing that NASA will only use up to 4 seats.
Did Doug bump his head on the way in?
And whats up with the guy with baseball bat while taking photo? Is that normal?
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Incredibly impressive, but you have to take into account both more modern technology, as well as the fact that they were able to build off the shoulders of giants. It is still amazing of course, but I doubt they could've done the same thing during the era of the mercury program, so not really apples to apples comparison.
Guidance systems are vastly less expensive now, and can take advantage of things like MEMs, fiber laser gyros, and GPS (and, of course, modern computing power). The tanks on Falcon are welded using Friction Stir Welding, which was invented in the early 1990s. The landing algorithm for the first stage uses convex optimization algorithms based on interior point methods, which were not available in the 1960s. However, s…
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Well we're not gonna get to Mars with that attitude!
Mars is key ! We must get to Mars!!!
I was surprised they slept on the trip. I assume they took turns.
I recall Elon was hoping to get an order of magnitude reduction in cost per launch, but Wikipedia claims it costs $160 million per launch versus the Soyuz price of $76 million per astronaut. That would “only” be a 3x reduction with a crew of seven, but they’ve configured for a crew of four, which is a hair under 2x. I wonder how reuse affects the math, and what they’ll be able to do to lower those prices further. Obv…
Worth noting that Dragon also carries tons of cargo, whereas the Soyuz “sticker price” is for just a seat.
Does it? I seem to remember reading somewhere that the "trunk" section will be mostly empty on crewed vehicles.
It makes sense. We've seen that Dragon aborts with the trunk attached for aerodynamic reasons. It seems likely that hauling a bunch of cargo together with an escaping crewed capsule isn't feasible.
You could also see that during the Demo-2 launch stream when the Dragon separated from the upper stage. There was a short segment where camera from the stage showed the underside of the Dragon and you could see that it was mostly just empty space inside.
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Some are meant to teach, others are meant to do. NASA and their bureaucracy have been sliding out of the "do" category for some time.
They’ve been doing plenty, but it’s all in unmanned missions.
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Can’t tell if serious or troll. Successful human spaceflight on reusable hardware > lower cost to orbit of personnel > increased economic activity in orbit > construction of manufacturing facilities > scale up of materials, capability, endurance and knowledge > ability to construct and launch Mars ships and supply a colony Or something like that.
The problem of getting to Mars is bigger than “just do more spacey stuff in space” though. There are some massive physical limits, in terms of fuel efficiency, that make it really really hard to get there and come back . That’s the main challenge and I don’t think SpaceX moved us particularly closer on that point. I’m in my forties and I don’t expect to see us on Mars in my lifetime, except on some poetic suicide mis…
How much AI/ML do you think is running on the software associated with this launch and docking? I suspect there’s a great deal of very explicit, well tested code, but very little AI/ML.
Very little in terms of what you would consider AI or ML. It's a lot of trig and control theory. You do a lot of the math beforehand to figure out the script the craft will follow to reach the ISS. Once it gets close, you either use manual controls or let autopilot do the docking. The autopilot is basically looking some dots on a camera and firing the thrusters to make the dots line up right. It's more like a dumb PI…
The Russians used a KURS unit, which is a cooperative (the ISS has a transponder to talk to it) radar-based system. That was from Ukraine, and after going to war with Ukraine, Russia had to develop an in-house system.
All of this stuff is older technology, predating machine learning.
[1] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/201400...
[2] http://advancedscientificconcepts.com/products/older-product...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurs_(docking_navigation_syste...