fasted58 said:Could not miss that.
Made me feel like a kid again.
Same! One of my bucket list items is to go down to Florida and watch a launch.
fasted58 said:Could not miss that.
Made me feel like a kid again.
Same! One of my bucket list items is to go down to Florida and watch a launch.
Lil Stampie and I got to see this from about 30 miles away. Still cool as hell.
Stampie (FS) said:Lil Stampie and I got to see this from about 30 miles away. Still cool as hell.
Im jealous, that must have been so cool.
BenB (Forum Supporter) said:fasted58 said:Could not miss that.
Made me feel like a kid again.
Same! One of my bucket list items is to go down to Florida and watch a launch.
Me too. The uncertainty makes planning a trip around it hard, and I'm only 5 or 6 hours away.
With all of the negative going on here on earth, and the positives in space, it's starting to feel like 1968.
Anyway, Dragon Endevor is within visual to the ISS, and the live feed is mostly that view. Which is interesting, as they pass over daylight- as it looks like the Dragon is just floating in the atmosphere- blue sky and clouds. This is the slow and steady part of space travel, though. To close the rest of the way, it's 2 more hours.
Got to watch a Shuttle launch in 01 from the RV campsite right at the edge of Port Canaveral. One of the most impressive things I've ever seen. What you never see on TV is the acceleration. The TV cameras have to track the rocket /shuttle so it stays in the center of the screen. Live with full background you really get a sense of the unbelievable constant acceleration. Watching a launch should be a bucket list item for everyone. It's also very humbling and puts real science and space travel back in perspective for those raised on the pure science fantasy that are CGI movies.
what time will it get to the ISS ?
THANKS
Docked!
It didn't look like Discovery was doing a thing. The SpaceX YouTube feed seemed to be the best. It has the SpaceX commentators. I am not sure if the NASA feed did, it didn't sound like it.
This is utterly amazing.
If nothing else, I am glad we will not be shoveling money over Russia, which is basically the underworld arms dealer of the world now.
It is pretty cool that the only thing that was thrown away was the second stage. The rest of it should be reusable many times. A bit ironically far more reusable then the "reusable" space shuttle.
aircooled said:It is pretty cool that the only thing that was thrown away was the second stage. The rest of it should be reusable many time. A bit ironically far more reusable then the "reusable" space shuttle.
Good point, but to be fair, we are talking 40 years advance in technology and understanding. And the fact the Space Shuttle was meant to be an F350 Vs Dragons Transit Connect.
Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) said:Got to watch a Shuttle launch in 01 from the RV campsite right at the edge of Port Canaveral. One of the most impressive things I've ever seen. What you never see on TV is the acceleration. The TV cameras have to track the rocket /shuttle so it stays in the center of the screen. Live with full background you really get a sense of the unbelievable constant acceleration. Watching a launch should be a bucket list item for everyone. It's also very humbling and puts real science and space travel back in perspective for those raised on the pure science fantasy that are CGI movies.
we did this in 95(?) from the parking lot of what is now the walgreens at US1 and FL50. At the time it was a demo'd lot and we had rented a town car to drive down. Dad has photos with the Pentax K1000 with a lens doubler and 300mm lens rested on the roof of the car catching the launch. IT. WAS. AWESOME.
Not just that, but a lack of any sort of political tradeoffs.
Watching the astronauts prep to leave the capsule at the ISS, I realized that the whole interior of Dragon looks like a sci-fi set where they've done the basic design but left out all the small details that make it look real. Even the cargo area doesn't have the "let's jam as much stuff as we can in here" appearance, it had unused space and everything was way too tidy. One thing Musk has said in interviews is that everyone working on the designs needs to know how everything works, that way you don't get into trouble at the interfaces or end up designing things that are essentially redundant. Did this complete understanding lead to the very clean design, or was it due to having clear oversight of the complete design process instead of a committee that was taking input from a bunch of contractors?
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I noticed that, the interior of the Dragon was light years beyond older ship designs. Everything looked purposeful, clean, and modern.
Keith Tanner said:...Did this complete understanding lead to the very clean design, or was it due to having clear oversight of the complete design process instead of a committee that was taking input from a bunch of contractors?
I do know SpaceX in general is FAR more flexible in the design revision process than a typical NASA contractor project. SpaceX can do as many revisions on designs as they want. With a design that is spread out all over the country (for political / share the wealth reasons) any revisions have to take into account what is going on with all the other contractors and of course any fixed standards set by NASA.
This can be seen in the revision numbers of rockets and motors and such. Far more then typical.
It's also part of their development process. Build and iterate. Partly because they can - like you said, outside contractors are just building to design - but also because it works for them.
I know there were some changes to the LEM over the course of the production run. I don't know about the Saturn V. That would be an interesting research project.
Keith Tanner said:Not just that, but a lack of any sort of political tradeoffs.
Watching the astronauts prep to leave the capsule at the ISS, I realized that the whole interior of Dragon looks like a sci-fi set where they've done the basic design but left out all the small details that make it look real. Even the cargo area doesn't have the "let's jam as much stuff as we can in here" appearance, it had unused space and everything was way too tidy. One thing Musk has said in interviews is that everyone working on the designs needs to know how everything works, that way you don't get into trouble at the interfaces or end up designing things that are essentially redundant. Did this complete understanding lead to the very clean design, or was it due to having clear oversight of the complete design process instead of a committee that was taking input from a bunch of contractors?
I've seen a large number of people complaining about this task being privatized and in particular to SpaceX / Elon Musk. I'm having a truly difficult time understanding that attitude. I think it's fantastic and the program has been handled fantastically.
Duke said:Keith Tanner said:Not just that, but a lack of any sort of political tradeoffs.
Watching the astronauts prep to leave the capsule at the ISS, I realized that the whole interior of Dragon looks like a sci-fi set where they've done the basic design but left out all the small details that make it look real. Even the cargo area doesn't have the "let's jam as much stuff as we can in here" appearance, it had unused space and everything was way too tidy. One thing Musk has said in interviews is that everyone working on the designs needs to know how everything works, that way you don't get into trouble at the interfaces or end up designing things that are essentially redundant. Did this complete understanding lead to the very clean design, or was it due to having clear oversight of the complete design process instead of a committee that was taking input from a bunch of contractors?
I've seen a large number of people complaining about this task being privatized and in particular to SpaceX / Elon Musk. I'm having a truly difficult time understanding that attitude. I think it's fantastic and the program has been handled fantastically.
I can see having concern over profits vs. anything. But while I'm no fan of Musk, I think SpaceX is pretty cool.
In terms of being modern- one does have to take into account that the entire line of Rockets were designed with some very modern CAD capabilty, where as the Apollo was designed with pretty primitive CAD- if that company even had it. So the process was to draw, hope the interface is right, build a prototype- fit together, find problems, and re-do. Which takes a long time for even a single company. And even for the design of the Shuttle, it was pretty primitive CAD.
Knowing the state of the art of CFD, and then combine that with 3D printing, even the motors can be virtually tested over and over before anything gets onto the ship.
And while it's interesting to compare the interior technology, most of it didn't exist for all previous ships- it's like looking at a '70's made 747 vs. a modern 787 avionics. Just having computers to look at everything at once makes the design cleaner. And I'm sure the Apollo designers would kill to have those computers- not because they are cool and powerful- but because they are so simple and light. How much less fuel would be needed to carry modern computers vs. that old Apollo stuff?
Let alone the material advances that were made because of Apollo and Shuttle that Dragon gets to take advantage of. And that's where I hope the rest of us can get benefit from SpaceX.... I hope....
But that should not at all take away from SpaceX- they are pretty clearly the leaders in US based space flight- manned or unmanned- right now. Boeing is oddly really far behind. Maybe it's Musk's vision to go to Mars that focuses their attention so well, maybe it's his PayPal money, maybe it's a lot of things. Regardless, they are doing an amaxing job.
Open the pod bay doors Hal
alfadriver (Forum Supporter) said:Duke said:Keith Tanner said:Not just that, but a lack of any sort of political tradeoffs.
Watching the astronauts prep to leave the capsule at the ISS, I realized that the whole interior of Dragon looks like a sci-fi set where they've done the basic design but left out all the small details that make it look real. Even the cargo area doesn't have the "let's jam as much stuff as we can in here" appearance, it had unused space and everything was way too tidy. One thing Musk has said in interviews is that everyone working on the designs needs to know how everything works, that way you don't get into trouble at the interfaces or end up designing things that are essentially redundant. Did this complete understanding lead to the very clean design, or was it due to having clear oversight of the complete design process instead of a committee that was taking input from a bunch of contractors?
I've seen a large number of people complaining about this task being privatized and in particular to SpaceX / Elon Musk. I'm having a truly difficult time understanding that attitude. I think it's fantastic and the program has been handled fantastically.
I can see having concern over profits vs. anything. But while I'm no fan of Musk, I think SpaceX is pretty cool.
In terms of being modern- one does have to take into account that the entire line of Rockets were designed with some very modern CAD capabilty, where as the Apollo was designed with pretty primitive CAD- if that company even had it. So the process was to draw, hope the interface is right, build a prototype- fit together, find problems, and re-do. Which takes a long time for even a single company. And even for the design of the Shuttle, it was pretty primitive CAD.
Knowing the state of the art of CFD, and then combine that with 3D printing, even the motors can be virtually tested over and over before anything gets onto the ship.
And while it's interesting to compare the interior technology, most of it didn't exist for all previous ships- it's like looking at a '70's made 747 vs. a modern 787 avionics. Just having computers to look at everything at once makes the design cleaner. And I'm sure the Apollo designers would kill to have those computers- not because they are cool and powerful- but because they are so simple and light. How much less fuel would be needed to carry modern computers vs. that old Apollo stuff?
Let alone the material advances that were made because of Apollo and Shuttle that Dragon gets to take advantage of. And that's where I hope the rest of us can get benefit from SpaceX.... I hope....
But that should not at all take away from SpaceX- they are pretty clearly the leaders in US based space flight- manned or unmanned- right now. Boeing is oddly really far behind. Maybe it's Musk's vision to go to Mars that focuses their attention so well, maybe it's his PayPal money, maybe it's a lot of things. Regardless, they are doing an amaxing job.
Could not have said it better. Boeing is acting like there are no adults in the room with the 737Max and then the failed launch. Oddly, that's what I normally accuse Tesla of. SpaceX seems to be doing pretty well. As you point out, they have plenty of time and money and tech over the Apollo or Space Shuttle, so it's not a shock. They also didn't have to take off from the moon. Anyway it's great to see. Has anyone else built a clean sheet program like this in the past decade?
I will be watching when it comes back and lands ,
Space X is a few miles away from me , its where the Northrop factory was in Hawthorne Ca , that I went past everyday to go to high school. So its the "Home" team
alfadriver (Forum Supporter) said:Regardless, they are doing an amaxing job.
Cool typo.
Boeing hasn't really been taking this seriously for a while now - they're excellent at milking the political machine for money, and that's their primary goal. The SpaceX upstart sorta upset the apple cart there and they're scrambling. They lost their way as an engineering company years ago. SpaceX, on the other hand, has a clear goal and a driven leader. The former in particular is what's making it work. They're using these NASA contracts to fund some of the R&D such as practicing their first stage landings, but they're also delivering a value for money that hasn't been seen in the space industry for years. This privatization doesn't really come with any downsides, honestly, the price of access to space has dropped dramatically because of it. Someone at SpaceX has a very consistent long term outlook and is playing a strategic game where project is a step towards the ultimate goal. Maybe it's Musk, maybe it's Shotwell, but they're also free of the political mayhem that comes from programs being funded and defunded and refunded.
The Apollo computers weren't all that big or heavy, really. What they were was extremely specialized, and brilliantly so. There were some great hacks performed to get them to do things they weren't supposed to do.
What gets me about the capsule design is not that it's modern, but that it shows signs of complete design consistency. There's no sign of anything being bodged on, no afterthoughts at all. Some of that may come from the fact that it's a second generation of a spaceship with a fundamental design that's been flying for 8 years, and that fundamental design was intended from the start to be crew-rated. IIRC, they've all had windows for example.
In reply to tuna55 (Forum Supporter) :
The only other real clean sheet on their own, that I can think of quickly is Tesla.
Which actually makes me sad for Boeing. What Tesla said about the auto industry is actually true about the space industry. And in the context of where I work, Alan Mulally turned out to be a pretty big player- good for us, bad for Boeing that he didn't get the gig. If he did for Boeing what he did for us, I don't see the disasters happening, and they may have even won the race to ISS.
Interesting tangent to consider.
(I'm sure other clean sheet updates are out there- just that it's one that I relate to)
In reply to Keith Tanner :
WRT the computers- I would wager that the Dragon computers systems are lighter than the memory from the Landing Module. They are hard wire copper modules.... Replacing just that with modern memory of a modern computer would have save millions in fuel.
A quick google search says that it cost $1.5M/lb to the moon, and another thread has the guidance computer at 70lb.
(I'm not sure why I can't paste in a reply, kind of annoying)
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