Dragon Is In Orbit!

On Wed, 08 Dec 2010 23:39:35 -0800, Pat Flannery
wrote:

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.

It does have one big capability advantage over Orion...it exists. :-D

The manned version does not.

Lockheed says it can fly an unmanned Orion on Delta IV-Heavy in 2013
and NASA has already tested Orion's LAS once.

SpaceX says it will be 38 months (that's 2014 now) from go-ahead for
Manned Dragon, which so far has no LAS/LES.

This could well be a horse race. Sure will be fun to watch!

Brian

On 12/8/2010 4:29 PM, Mike DiCenso wrote:
On Dec 8, 4:25 pm, Pat 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?

It may have been a rebroadcast of the news conference, but whatever it
was was screwed up.


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.

It does have one big capability advantage over Orion...it exists. :-D

Pat

On 12/8/2010 9:57 PM, Brian Thorn wrote:

It does have one big capability advantage over Orion...it exists. :-D

The manned version does not.

Lockheed says it can fly an unmanned Orion on Delta IV-Heavy in 2013
and NASA has already tested Orion's LAS once.

The Russians say they can have a new Soyuz replacement up and running in
no time flat...I take anything related to Constellation actually
happening with the same degree of confidence as I treat any Russian
space-related plan.
The whole Constellation plan is a complete mess at the moment, with
factions inside NASA and industry each supporting their own way it "can
be done best" and the end result of nothing at all being accomplished.
After the F-35B fiasco, I would have serous doubts about what Lockheed
says can and can't be done.
Remember the joys of the X-33/VentureStar, which was going to be easy to
develop according to Lockheed.
Then there's the F-35...if they cancel the V/STOL F-35B, they will have
just canceled the version of the plane that drove the whole design
process for it; if all that was needed were the Air Force and Navy
conventional takeoff and landing versions without the swiveling rear
nozzle and lift fan of the Marine F-35B, the whole design could have
been different, far simpler, and more stealthy, and it could have used
an existing engine rather than one that had to have the capability to
drive the front lift fan in the Marine version.
That's what happens when you build a "experimental" version of a
aircraft that's a lot lighter than the actual production version will
be, due to having no need to carry a full fuel load, full weapon
complement, or full avionics suite...and hope that you can give it
enough performance increase before it hits production to do what you
promised it could do when you were awarded the government contract to
build it.
It shouldn't have been a "XF-35", it should have been a "YF-35" - a
full-up production prototype.
Then we could have seen that it wasn't going to work right from day one,
and canceled it, while moving on to something else that would work.

Pat

On Thu, 09 Dec 2010 01:00:01 -0800, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Lockheed says it can fly an unmanned Orion on Delta IV-Heavy in 2013
and NASA has already tested Orion's LAS once.

The Russians say they can have a new Soyuz replacement up and running in
no time flat...I take anything related to Constellation actually
happening with the same degree of confidence as I treat any Russian
space-related plan.

Agreed, but Constellation is dead, Orion is not. That changes the
rules. We'll be running head-long into a battle on Capitol Hill
between those who want Orion/SLS (or whatever the Heavy Lift will be
called) and those who want to reduce spending. Who will win? If Orion
on Delta IV wins the day (and I think it will) then we'll have a
horserace between Orion and Manned Dragon, and we'll have to wait for
NASA and Congress to make that decision before either Delta/Orion or
Manned Dragon can proceed.

The whole Constellation plan is a complete mess at the moment,

Constellation is dead.

Remember the joys of the X-33/VentureStar, which was going to be easy to
develop according to Lockheed.

Sure, but Orion is already developed, and even if it isn't quite yet,
Orion has no radical new technologies like composite non-hemisphere
cryotanks or linear aerospike engines, and no tricky (ultimately
impossible) aerodynamics to be solved. Orion had troubles, sure (so
will Dragon) but the biggest one was the ever-dwindling lift capacity
of Ares I, a situation that is now moot.

Then there's the F-35

Which is irrelevant to this discussion. F-35 has nothing in common
with Orion. F-35 was the latest doomed effort to build one plane for
all customers (see also F-111). Orion is a bigger version of Apollo
who's only other requirement was Space Station ferry flights, but like
Apollo the deep space Orion could handle the LEO mission without much
fuss. In fact, the last design cut the LEO version down to four,
making it more common to the primary deep space version.

Brian

On 12/9/2010 5:44 PM, Brian Thorn wrote:

Which is irrelevant to this discussion. F-35 has nothing in common
with Orion. F-35 was the latest doomed effort to build one plane for
all customers (see also F-111). Orion is a bigger version of Apollo
who's only other requirement was Space Station ferry flights, but like
Apollo the deep space Orion could handle the LEO mission without much
fuss. In fact, the last design cut the LEO version down to four,
making it more common to the primary deep space version.

We'll wait and see...but I doubt a manned Orion in any form will ever
fly, and she well end up in the same pile of discarded projects that all
the other manned post-Shuttle NASA projects have.
At the moment ATK is doing its best to stop any plans that don't have
the Orion going up on something solid-fueled:
http://politicalnews.me/?id=6810&key...AAuthorization
Easy for SpaceX to succeed when all of its major aerospace industry
competitors spend all of their time tearing each other apart.

Pat

On Thu, 09 Dec 2010 20:49:20 -0800, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Which is irrelevant to this discussion. F-35 has nothing in common
with Orion. F-35 was the latest doomed effort to build one plane for
all customers (see also F-111). Orion is a bigger version of Apollo
who's only other requirement was Space Station ferry flights, but like
Apollo the deep space Orion could handle the LEO mission without much
fuss. In fact, the last design cut the LEO version down to four,
making it more common to the primary deep space version.

We'll wait and see...but I doubt a manned Orion in any form will ever
fly, and she well end up in the same pile of discarded projects that all
the other manned post-Shuttle NASA projects have.

Different ballgame now. The other NASA projects always had a NASA
Shuttle to fall back on. Orion does not. There is *much* more
imperative on making Orion work, which is why Congress had such an bad
reaction when the President tried to kill it, and why they fully
restored its funding.

At the moment ATK is doing its best to stop any plans that don't have
the Orion going up on something solid-fueled:

Hence my comment about the politics and the looming budget situation.
There will be point, and it will be here very soon, where the
pro-space poltiicians will have to decide if they want Orion or SRBs,
because the money won't be there for both. So that's Lockheed vs. ATK.
Who do you think will win that battle? I really don't think there's
any question who will win.

Brian

On 12/9/2010 8:50 PM, Brian Thorn wrote:

Hence my comment about the politics and the looming budget situation.
There will be point, and it will be here very soon, where the
pro-space poltiicians will have to decide if they want Orion or SRBs,
because the money won't be there for both. So that's Lockheed vs. ATK.
Who do you think will win that battle? I really don't think there's
any question who will win.

Yeah...SpaceX.
Why would you go to all the expense of building a Orion to serve as a
ISS lifeboat when that can be done by using two Soyuz spacecraft, as is
presently done?
Without a mission beyond LEO for it, everything Orion does is ISS related.
And we designed a ISS lifeboat once before that would have been able to
carry all six crew instead of four, and land on the ground instead of at
sea; remember how that little operation ended up?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_X-38
If all you want is a four person US built ISS lifeboat, stick a X-37B on
the ISS. It's already built and tested, lands on a runway, can stay
aloft for eight months at a time (and could probably be modified to go
longer than that), and its 4'x7' cargo bay is big enough to house four
people; just replace the cargo bay doors with a solid roof with a
circular hatch in it and make it able to dock to the ISS using a
jettisonable docking collar atop that hatch, then separate the docking
collar after leaving the ISS to keep it clean for aerodynamic reentry.

Pat

In sci.space.policy William Mook wrote:
On Dec 8, 11:06?am, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article
tatelephone,
says...
Whole ascent went just great, and they got some really good video of the
stage burns and Dragon separation.

I watched the video live and was amazed at how stable Falcon 9 was
during the 1st and 2nd stage burns. ?The earth (in the camera
background) was rock solid, which shows that the attitude and roll of
snip
Liquid fueled rockets are very smooth compared to solids. Vibration
resistant gyroscopicaly stabilized cameras were first developed by the
movie industry for use on helicopters. If you look at the rocket body
as well as the Earth I think some of the solidity had to do with the
excellent engineering that went into the camera as well as the rocket
itself.

I was looking at the point the edge of the main nozzle made with the earth.
It was remarkably stable. The camera can't have anything to do with this.

On Thu, 09 Dec 2010 23:55:28 -0800, Pat Flannery
wrote:

So that's Lockheed vs. ATK.
Who do you think will win that battle? I really don't think there's
any question who will win.

Yeah...SpaceX.

Not enough pork. Let's be realistic. SpaceX might get funding, but
they won't be the only ones. Congress has too may voters to bribe.
Little SpaceX gives Congresscritters the political cover they need
("See! We're pro-business! We're good stewards of your tax dollars!")
while still shoveling money to (almost certainly) Lockheed-Martin and
Boeing/ULA. Critics will say they're still wasting money duplicating
services with Delta IV/Orion, but Congress can answer that Orion is
needed to go beyond LEO. And for once, Congress is right.

Why would you go to all the expense of building a Orion to serve as a
ISS lifeboat when that can be done by using two Soyuz spacecraft, as is
presently done?

You wouldn't, you'd build Orion as a deep space vehicle and use ISS as
a target of opportunity in the meantime. While I am all for Dragon for
the routine job of ISS crew transport, I really don't believe Mr. Musk
when he says Dragon can do everything Orion can do and do it better. I
just don't think Dragon is big enough for Moon/Mars/Beyond, and Dragon
will need a much larger service module for the job even if SpaceX
really did saddle Dragon with a vastly larger heatshield than it needs
for LEO re-entry, which is seriously doubt. Orion already has these
designed for it and pretty much waiting to start being built.

Without a mission beyond LEO for it, everything Orion does is ISS related.

But there won't be a beyond LEO mission if we don't get started and
build a spacecraft that can do the job now, or at least soon. If we
give up on Orion now I honestly think there is no hope of getting
Congress to support deep space manned mission funding anytime soon
(there is little hope as it is.)

And we designed a ISS lifeboat once before that would have been able to
carry all six crew instead of four, and land on the ground instead of at
sea; remember how that little operation ended up?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_X-38

That speaks against *any* US lifeboat, because X-38 died due to the
existence of Soyuz, and that hasn't changed at all. The lifeboat
justification for a new spacecraft just won't cut it. We have to
justify a new spacecraft as indigenous round-trip US access to space.
We can probably get Dragon funded as the farthest-along and most
promising of the lot (given SpaceX's now indisputable record) but
Dragon won't get us beyond LEO with much useful capability, no matter
what Mr. Musk says. So we need Orion if the US really plans to leave
LEO after 2020.

If all you want is a four person US built ISS lifeboat, stick a X-37B on
the ISS. It's already built and tested, lands on a runway, can stay
aloft for eight months at a time (and could probably be modified to go
longer than that), and its 4'x7' cargo bay is big enough to house four
people; just replace the cargo bay doors with a solid roof with a
circular hatch in it and make it able to dock to the ISS using a
jettisonable docking collar atop that hatch, then separate the docking
collar after leaving the ISS to keep it clean for aerodynamic reentry.

Good idea, I'm all for it. But NASA never will be. All things with
wings are now evil (EVIL I say!) since Columbia went down, at least
according to the knee-jerk reactionaries at NASA. And there are
difficulties with X-37B anyway (can you get both a crew compartment
and a docking mechanism in that little cargo bay? I doubt it. Which
means you have to redesign larger... another expensive redesign when
we already have Dragon just waiting for funding and Orion at or near
CDR and awaiting funding to go into production.)

Brian

On Dec 10, 6:17*pm, (Ian Stirling) wrote:
In sci.space.policy wrote:



On Dec 8, 11:06?am, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article
tatelephone,
says...
Whole ascent went just great, and they got some really good video of the
stage burns and Dragon separation.

I watched the video live and was amazed at how stable Falcon 9 was
during the 1st and 2nd stage burns. ?The earth (in the camera
background) was rock solid, which shows that the attitude and roll of
snip
Liquid fueled rockets are very smooth compared to solids. *Vibration
resistant gyroscopicaly stabilized cameras were first developed by the
movie industry for use on helicopters. *If you look at the rocket body
as well as the Earth I think some of the solidity had to do with the
excellent engineering that went into the camera as well as the rocket
itself.

I was looking at the point the edge of the main nozzle made with the earth.
It was remarkably stable. The camera can't have anything to do with this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-ci9...eature=related

If you look at 1:05 through 1:12 (mission timer) - you'll see when
they go supersonic there's definite vibration. The first stage plume
also changes with altitude as it over-expands. At 3:10 you have first
stage separation - and there's a slight change of pitch - and then you
can see a 3 second oscillation - and a half second oscillation not a
vibration per say - but its hard to tell since the field of view is
being obscured by the second stage plume. At 3:47 the engine gimbals
actuate for a fraction of a second and you see the stage pitch a
little and then hunt around its ideal flight angle. Again at 5:38 -
6:31 - etc.