Two nights ago SpaceX had a big, flashy show to unveil their “Dragon V2” spacecraft. It was a great show, which you can see here.
In brief, Dragon V2 will be the crewed version of the current Dragon spacecraft. Dragon just finished its third commercial mission, ferrying supplies to the International Space Station and returning other materials back safely to Earth. The return part is what’s critical to the ISS right now since it’s starting to generate a significant volume of experimental materials that need to get back down in one piece. There are also broken equipment which need to brought back down to figure out why they broke, as well as other equipment which is to be refurbished and sent back up as a spare in the future.
None of this was a big deal before July, 2011. The space shuttle could bring back just about anything. Until of course, the fully functional space shuttle program was shut down and all four orbiters stripped and put into museums. (Breathe… Breathe…)
Since then, ISS has been supplied by the uncrewed Russian Progress spacecraft, the European Space Agency’s ATV spacecraft, the Japanese Space Agency’s HTV spacecraft, SpaceX’s Dragon, and Orbital’s Cygnus spacecraft. (Yeah, I say “spacecraft” a lot because that’s what they are and that’s uber cool, plus, I like saying “spacecraft”!)
But Progress, ATV, HTV, and Cygnus all burn up and are destroyed on re-entry. Only Dragon is designed to return safely.
Dragon has obviously been a step on the path to a crewed orbital spacecraft, albeit a very important and highly functional step. A lot of revolutionary systems, developed by a private company instead of NASA, have been tested, implemented, and continue to be improved as Dragon missions continue.
The Falcon 9 rocket that launched the last Dragon mission was equipped with landing legs on its first stage. As the next test, SpaceX tried to “soft land” it in the ocean. If it had failed, it would have made a big splash instead of a big hole. It didn’t fail, and with a couple more tests upcoming, SpaceX hopes to be flying the first stage back to a controlled, soft landing on land, where it can be reused, drastically reducing launch costs.
The crewed Dragon V2 will not only be able to carry a crew of up to seven to orbit (and the ISS), but on re-entry it won’t just splash down into the ocean and get recovered by a fleet of ships. That’s expensive. Instead, it will come down on land, at a planned place, with the precision of a helicopter. It will have parachutes as an emergency backup, but its primary landing system will be rockets.
Re-usable rocket stages. Spacecraft that come back and land on a dime in a pillar of fire the way Robert Heinlein said that they should!
That’s pretty good stuff.
In the demo of the Dragon V2 , the interior looks more like something from 2001: A Space Odyssey than what we normally see from NASA. Part of that is almost certainly showmanship. The interior of the spacecraft looks huge and empty with just seven seats and a control panel that folds down in front of the pilots. I suspect that in reality all of that empty space will be about 75% full with lockers, equipment, computers, systems, hardware, storage, and so on. But it’s still extremely amazing.
And the Dragon V2 is also designed to be re-usable, quickly and cheaply.
When will Dragon V2 fly? Good question. No one’s talking about that.
But here’s some totally uninformed, off the wall, coming straight out of thin air speculation for you:
- We’ve got a problem with the Russians and it may affect our ability to get our astronauts to ISS
- Congress and NASA have talked about using Dragon V2 as a crew vehicle to get astronauts to ISS, but they don’t think it will be ready until late 2017 at the earliest.
- The Orion capsule being funded by Congress and developed by NASA isn’t scheduled for its first crewed mission until something like 2020? 2021? When will the STS rocket be ready to carry it?
Gee, sounds like someone needs to get their act together and put it in gear. 2017? 2020? What ever happened to “Failure is not an option?”
What if SpaceX can get Dragon V2 ready for crewed flights, say, by mid to late 2015?
What if Congress and NASA still wants to do more testing, more certification, more benchmarking, more foot dragging?
What’s to prevent SpaceX from launching one or two Dragon V2s as test flights at their own expense? Say in late 2015 or maybe early 2016?
If those test flights go well and Congress is still having hearings and NASA is still doing paperwork, what’s to prevent SpaceX from launching a Dragon V2 with a crew of test pilots who happen to be SpaceX employees rather than NASA astronauts? Say in mid to late 2016, a full year or more before Orion is ready.
If NASA and Congress still won’t get with the program, what’s to prevent SpaceX from setting up a program of regular launches of crewed Dragon V2s on their own? The couldn’t go to the ISS, that’s government property, they can’t even get close. (“Goose, I’m going to buzz the tower…”) Where else could they go other than round and round in low Earth orbit in a relatively small spacecraft?
Isn’t there a guy who has built his own, private space station? (There is, his name is Robert Bigelow.) Doesn’t he want to build a space station that’s both a commercial research facility and an orbital hotel/resort? (He does, and Bigelow Aerospace in Las Vegas has flight-ready hardware already built.) Hasn’t he actually already launched two successful test modules? (He has, in 2006 and 2007.) Doesn’t he have a contract to have a module that’s going to be attached to the ISS? (He does.) Doesn’t he have contracts with SpaceX to launch that BEAM module to ISS, and at least preliminary arrangements to launch his private space space station modules on a SpaceX Heavy and then launch private astronauts to that private space station on SpaceX Falcon 9s? (Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it — they do.)
As an individual who’s very unhappy with not having an American crewed spacecraft in almost three years and who is extremely angry and disappointed that Congress and NASA have no plans to have one for at least another three (or more!) years, I’m excited about the possibility of seeing a couple of private American companies possibly bypassing all of the BS and bureaucracy and simply doing the job, as much as two or more years before NASA.
Let’s hope that Congress doesn’t do anything stupid, like start throwing unnecessary and unwarranted regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles in their way.
The Congress-NASA team has had their chance, and they’ve kinda dropped the ball. And then kicked it backwards away from the goal. And then kicked it out of bounds and lost it down a sewer…
Time to let another team give it a try.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 