This spacecraft looks really nice. Amazing that a luxury ride like this will be the most inexpensive option for American astronauts (at least, as far as we can tell right now).
Why do you think so? Russians are charging a steep price because of their monopoly, but it doesn't mean they have similarly high costs. As soon as a competitor surfaces, they can reduce the price. Do you think SpaceX will be able to compete on price? Why?
> Why do you think so? Russians are charging a steep price because of their monopoly, but it doesn't mean they have similarly high costs. As soon as a competitor surfaces, they can reduce the price. Do you think SpaceX will be able to compete on price? Why?
They built their platform from scratch. The Russians are using 1960s tech still.
It also helps SpaceX that Russia is always threatening to embargo exports of their rocket motors. Better to have a homegrown supplier versus being dependent on Vlad.
Yes, but SpaceX makes rather different ship from scratch. Crew Dragon should be nicer to ride than Soyuz - more space, better aerodynamics. But better qualities don't mean less price.
> The Russians are using 1960s tech still.
Yes, but that makes some tech more flight-proven and amortized over time. Like rockets - Soyuz and Proton are old, but quite inexpensive (albeit with reliability issues lately). At the same time, lots of internals of Soyuz were changed.
> It also helps SpaceX that Russia is always threatening to embargo exports of their rocket motors.
Fully agree here. But that's not quite economical issue.
Reusability: the first stage is designed to be reuseable, the capsule is designed to be reuseable. The Russians, like everyone else, throw their rockets away.
The NASA division I interned at was tasked with creating better living spaces for astronauts. The division was decommissioned soon after my internship ended because astronauts more or less said, "We don't need more space. We get to be astronauts."
While I'm sure it's not the case, this seems like something SpaceX designed before talking to astronauts (and I doubt that's actually the case). However, it's a crew transport and not payload transport, so their space (volume, that is) considerations could be much less particular.
They mention they have nice windows to get a good view of things. Might they be planning to use this capsule for space tourism? (i.e., send a few people up to do an orbit or two and give them a chance to get out of their seats and move about.)
Its an early view. Once you cover the walls with compartments for storing random crap and add a bunch of people in there it'll definitely not look "unnecessarily large".
I imagine 'DEORBIT NEXT' would be something along the lines of 'deorbit the next time we're flying over the US' while 'DEORBIT NOW' would be more of a 'get to the ground ASAP, I don't care where' option. Medium and high priority abort scenarios, basically.
I'm actually wondering what would be more reliable: a physical button or a digital one. I would like to see a comparison.
Of course, one could argue that in both cases it depends on the implementation. Nonetheless, I think it's fun to think about what kind of buttons would the average person prefer, when their life is on the line.
I was thinking the same thing - sure, it's cool to have a glossy touch screen and futuristic touch panels, but I can't count the number of times touch screens / buttons have gone wonky on me with everything from my cell phone, to my tablet, to my microwave, to my fridge, whereas the light switches in my house are about 50 years old and have yet to let me down...
"Crew Dragon’s displays will provide real-time information on the state of the spacecraft’s capabilities – anything from Dragon’s position in space, to possible destinations, to the environment on board."
Um, that's a use case?
"Mars? Screw that. Let's hit the ISS for lunch first."
I don't understand the criticism. I think it is safe to say the design process at a company like SpaceX is likely to follow best engineering practices.
Yes, that probably means astronauts --as well as other domain experts and stake holders-- are in the design loop.
Is this the final design? Probably not. Any engineer looking at this knows exactly what this is: An evolutionary step towards a solution.
Ease-up folks, you are being given a front seat to a pretty amazing moment in our history: Humans travelling and landing on another planet.
I, for one, can't wait.
I know it's a TV show, but holy crap, we are on our way...
Kinda makes you wonder if it's not overly wasteful, the Soyuz capsule has almost no room to move in when all 3 passengers are seated, you need to crawl past the emergency parachutes (which are located inside the capsule).
Every system has a direct mechanical/elctro-mechanical connection override in case of an emergency and every thing is redundant to the point of mechanically operating the heat deflector and opening the chutes.
Touch screens and capacitive buttons are nice but that capsule has more room than an SUV while every other spacecraft we had had less leg room than flying coach so would be interesting to see what they've had to give up to get that.
Soyuz has more room in the orbit module. What you see in those Soyuz photos is not all the room there is, at least on orbit, if not during the trip through the atmosphere.
The ride to and from orbit itself doesn’t take that long (measured in minutes) and indeed doesn’t really require a lot of space for human passengers. The space is for the rest of the journey, which normally also should go by quickly (a couple hours), at least with the modern approach they use to get to the ISS, but can take longer depending on the exact circumstances (a couple days). The recent Soyuz trip to the ISS took two days instead of a couple hours because ISS had just completed an obviously unplanned debris avoidance maneuver.
I know but the orbit module doesn't go through re-entry it was also designed to either bring cargo or serve as temporary living / scientific quarters when the Soyuz was used for manned orbital flight rather than a ferry to Mir or to the ISS.
But and it's a big but the space is separated which means a great deal this means that the Soyuz orbital module can be used to bring cargo to the ISS the space in the Dragon capsule is really just wasted, there's no way there will be cargo in there no matter how well tied down during lift off no human flight program ever had anything in the cabin that wasn't a part of the space craft or needed for life support / emergency, so it's still a bloody waste of space.
Some Soyuz design decisions were surely off the mark :) . Like, diameter of the capsule - when they tried to squeeze into a particular rocket (fairing?) diameter while having good enough aerodynamics while solid surface-to-volume ratio.
On the other hand, the whole craft weight just above 7 tons - and that's with almost 9 cubic meters of internal volume, and lots of systems still using analog electronics. And, by the way, without toxic propellants in the capsule. Granted, today one can - and should - do better. We'll see.
I wonder if the spacesuit and helmet designs shown in the interior video are representative of the work SpaceX is doing in-house to "de-bulk" standard suits?
> Crew Dragon was designed to be an enjoyable ride. With four windows, passengers can take in views of Earth, the Moon, and the wider Solar System right from their seats.
Who is this video for? Don't get me wrong, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. But do people sending astronauts in space get sold by carbon fiber and slick videos?
Well if we are frank about it Astronauts for the most part are quite useless as far as science goes, they don't really do anything in space other than PR, which is quite important.
Other than PR they play technicians to plug all the experiment modules to laboratories in the ISS and are guinea pigs for various experiments which are conducted on the astronauts them selves so they'll do an ultrasound of their eyes, keep a log of their feelings and take blood samples when needed.
"Although I pay dues, I don’t interact much with the planetary society. My last experiences with them was Carl Sagan arguing for more robotic exploration and abandoning manned space exploration. Making the universe safe for robots. Larry Niven told Sagan 'Carl, I hope you realize that every time you get a convert , you lose support for space exploration. People don’t hold ticker tape parades for robots.'”
This spacecraft looks really nice. Amazing that a luxury ride like this will be the most inexpensive option for American astronauts (at least, as far as we can tell right now).