On Dec 8, 4:25*pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 12/8/2010 10:23 AM, Pat Flannery wrote:

On 12/8/2010 9:55 AM, Pat Flannery wrote:
Whole ascent went just great, and they got some really good video of the
stage burns and Dragon separation.

Good communications with Dragon, and she is firing her thrusters.

And she came down intact in the landing area, and has been recovered:http://spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/002/status.html
Now NASA is having a press conference, and the sound is all screwed up.
Way to go, NASA. :-D


It sounded just fine to me. Maybe something to do with your end of
things?

Big congrats to both Space X and NASA. This is how these kinds of
things should work for government-private business partnerships.
NASA's help, both in being a reliable customer, and in providing
technology with the Ames-developed PICA heatshield insulation as well
as other support. The same with Bigelow Aerospace and the transfer of
the Transhab technologies developed at Johnson Space Center.

One thing I take exception to is Elon Musk trying to paint Dragon as
having more capability than Orion. As an example he claimed that the
Dragon class capsules had more volume than does an Orion one. Yet
simple geometrics shows that to be incorrect since Orion is the wider
and taller of the two, has 19 meters cubed of internal volume versus
10 m^3 for Dragon. I would find it hard to believe that the available
*habitable* volume (8.9 m^3 for Orion) is signficantly less than
Dragon's. Also Orion's service module is far bigger than Dragon's, and
an Orion spacecraft as a whole is twice as massive as a Dragon is
given the Orion is intended to support manned deep space missions from
the get-go.

So Elon, please, get your facts straight, or just ease off on the
hype. Orion will live or die on it's own, you just need to stay on
course and focus on ensuring more success for Dragon and Falcon 9, and
you'll have a pretty good slice of the LEO cargo and human
transportation market.
-Mike