"David Spain" wrote in message ...

On 1/8/2016 6:33 AM, Jeff Findley wrote:

Not if NASA restricts Dragon such that it is against the rules to use
that capability.


This is why SpaceX needs to have a reason to fly crew on its own not just
part of CCDev. If SpaceX could launch a Bigelow module for their own
purpose, such as renting lab time to various Industry & University
consortium or even under NSF program grants of a few million to partially
fund it, then trips up and down are under the purview of the FAA not NASA.
SpaceX can land as they see fit, for I believe commercial spaceflight is
still operating under FAA rules which IIRC had their October 2015
moratorium extended, basically to allow companies such as SpaceX to
establish them!


I suspect Bigelow and SpaceX may fund such a flight just to show it can be
done.

I think we're less than a decade (perhaps less than 1/2 a decade) out from
the first private mission to a private space station.

If NASA insists on their flying ISS missions under their own antiquated and
inconsistent "man-ratings"* they are free to do so. They are only going to
end up looking pretty stupid in the end dropping their astronauts in the
drink when everybody else uses a staircase.

Maybe to satisfy NASA "man-rating" reqs. they could just drop them in the
Banana River instead? :-P

Dave

*-Safe Is Not An Option - Rand Simberg pg. 33 also see Chapters 3, 6 & 8.
ISBN-978-0-9891355-1-1





Once such a landing would be tested, then they could go the next step
and do parachute descent, and powered legged landing (ditching
parachute) and then do the full re-entry without parachute.

The point being that since NASA accepts Soyuz landings, it should accept
similar landing by Dragon (even if these represent only a portion of it
capabilities).

"Soyuz landings" are not the same at all, which you *still* don't seem
to get.

Jeff


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Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
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