"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...

Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

Anthony Frost wrote:

In message
Jeff Findley wrote:

This has changed somewhat recently. Reportedly SpaceX is the one
who
shelved development of Dragon V2 vertical landing. The reasons
for this
aren't terribly clear, but there are hints from SpaceX that this
is
because they've decided to change the (Mars) landing mode of their
(eventual) Mars vehicle.

Also apparently NASA weren't happy about cargo flights being used for
testing powered landings.


Why would they care? They get their cargo on the way up, not the way
down.


Because Dragon is the only way that NASA can get things like EMUs back
to earth for refurbishment. There have been articles on how few
functioning EMUs are left. Sorry for the word-wrap on the cites:


But most flights aren't carrying those (or anything else) back down.
So why is NASA apparently being obstructionist about landing the
'empties' propulsively?

I suspect that it's mostly the pointy haired bosses at NASA being
"cautious", not the engineers raising concerns. They've had it hammered
into their heads that "Failure is not an option", even though that's not
at all what was meant by that phrase during Apollo 13.

Like you said, if they lost a capsule or two (as long as it didn't carry
something critical to be refurbished like an EMU), it's not like it
would impact ISS safety in any way.

I'm going to say even then it doesn't matter.

Consider that they haven't been able to count on cargo return since Shuttle.
So, in a sense, bringing back a failed EMU and having it crash is really no
worse than not bringing it back in the first place.



Jeff

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net
IT Disaster Response -
https://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Resp...dp/1484221834/