Engineers Mark Completion of Orion’s Pressure Vessel | NASA

Abbey, krantz, kraft plus others --- don't go back to capsules. Capabilities not close to shuttle!!!!!!!


http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/engineers-mark-completion-of-orion-s-pressure-vessel/


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Unfortunately LIKELY take a Major Disaster to get our " brilliant" leaders off dead center re making AMERICA the world's Greatest Space Power!

It is all part of our overall military capability. Maybe as a result of secret programs all is fine, but I doubt it, considering this adm's published cuts in military capabilities.

The way things appear, Armstrong, Cernan, Cunningham, Kraft, Abbey, & krantz are correct, we are on road to being a third or fourth rate nation relative to space capabilities!

Time to move on -- Bolden--- BS-- Slow to Zero progress to ZERO Capability!

What sense does it make to waste more money on what we do not need? That is COTS. The Gov. Must operate a shuttle system, probably s/b in DOD.

We had what we needed, we should have evolved & improved it.



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What operational capabilities are we giving up by retiring the shuttles? And are we sure we can dispense with them? Because if the answers are "Too many" and "No!" we need to start planning how to regain them with new vehicles.

6 LOST capabilities with shuttle retirement

Credit : Jamesoberg.com 

6 July 2011—For 30 years, the space shuttle fleet—Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour—strutted its stuff in low-Earth orbit. The spacecraft's missions included simple payload deployments, science module sorties, and the delicate assembly and servicing of the International Space Station. They were also used for in-flight repairs to themselves and to other satellites, hyperprecision orbits for radar mapping, tethered experiments, and gentle close-in maneuvering with smaller spacecraft. Those capabilities were originally unimagined by their designers, and they firmly refute the old maxim that "form follows function." Indeed, the shuttles performed functions beyond the dreams of their builders.

The current stable of heavy-launch vehicles can carry deployable satellites and rocket stages as big as or bigger than any that the shuttles have ever launched. With replacement vehicles already being designed for specific manned missions, such as Earth-to-orbit taxi services or for beyond-low-Earth-orbit sorties, the biggest engineering questions must be these: What operational capabilities are we giving up by retiring the shuttles? And are we sure we can dispense with them? Because if the answers are "Too many" and "No!" we need to start planning how to regain them with new vehicles.

Here's what we're losing.

Lost capability No. 1: Gentle delivery of large modules for attachment to existing complexes. Compared with other means, the shuttle provides an environment in its payload bay with relatively minimal acceleration, vibration, and noise, and that means very large components can be built a lot less expensively. The savings comes from several sources. The shuttle's own hardware delivers cargo close to its destination, after whichrobot manipulators can install it carefully. Without this capability, the items would have to be built with structural enhancements to survive the attendant stresses, making them significantly heavier. What's worse, without the shuttle, the module might need its own maneuvering capability—resulting in significant mechanical stress as the add-on connects to the existing structure. Such stress leads to design headaches: For example, the size of any connecting pressurized tunnels must be restricted. Furthermore, in the event of a mishap, the shuttle design is supposed to allow for intact retrieval of the payload for relaunch, mitigating the need to build expensive backup hardware. 

Lost capability No. 2: Bringing cargo down gently. The shuttle payload bay can carry specialized laboratory modules into orbit and then back to Earth for reuse. It can also retrieve and return large spacecraft and their components for repair or redeployment. Entry stresses do not exceed 1.5 g's, and to demonstrate that, several astronauts have remained standing throughout most of the descent. Without the shuttle, the scale of returnable objects is greatly limited, and the stress and shock of descent is severe. To replace this large-scale capability, NASA might have to develop inflatable heat shields that could be scaled up in size as needed—but even with such shields, cargo would still be subject to significant entry and landing stresses.

Photo: Nikolai Budarin/Russian Space Research Institute/NASA

Lost capability No. 3: Safe "proximity operations." The length of the shuttle allowed use of nose- and tail-mounted thrusters to provide extremely gentle maneuvering, bringing the craft right up to such small targets as "round-trip" satellites and orbital instruments in need of repair. Once such objects were over the payload bay, the shuttle switched to a control mode called z axis. In this mode, the target object was mostly out of the way of the forward and aft thruster plumes, allowing the shuttle to maneuver without pushing the target around or contaminating it with propellant. An even gentler mode called low-z-axis worked by firing counterbalanced forward-pointing nose thrusters and aft-pointing tail thrusters that are slightly canted above the horizontal. Though this maneuver looked bizarre, low-z-axis mode was one of those lucky accidents of the original shuttle design that proved really useful. No other vehicle ever built or designed had this specialized "gentle approach" capability, which was critical to a number of satellite retrievals and repairs, including the Hubble Space Telescope missions. Any other vehicle would have seriously damaged such rendezvous targets.

Lost capability No. 4: Temporary deployment of a workbench in orbit for experiments, repairs, and other assembly. The boxcar-size shuttle payload bay has been the stage for delicate repairs to satellites such as Hubble. It has also been used in the following capacities: for attaching new rocket stages to stranded satellites, for test deployments of solar panels and girders (which were later upgraded to become the backbone of the space station), as a base for deployment of payloads with 20-kilometer-long tethers, and for special-purpose space station assembly and maintenance. Repeated two-person (or once, even three-person) spacewalks gave extended "hands-on" capabilities and allowed components to be readily transferred from exterior to interior work areas and back. The shuttle's size provided flexibility in the complement of tools and spare parts you could carry into orbit, and it provided external utility power and communications that no Apollo-, Orion-, or Soyuz-class manned vehicle could ever dream of.

Lost capability No. 5: High-precision research orbits with specialized instrumentation. Several special-purpose shuttle missions required "threading the needle" in space with observational equipment that mandated incredibly accurate physical positioning. For instance, ground-mapping radar missions needed to be navigated so precisely that data from multiple missions could be overlaid as if they had been acquired by several shuttles flying simultaneously in formation. Trajectory disturbances of all types had to be counterbalanced by continual course corrections using very gentle thruster firings. 

Lost capability No. 6: Flexibility of crew composition. Carrying six or seven (or once, even eight) people into orbit allows three or four career astronauts to host visits from real scientists active in their fields. Some professional astronauts are former scientists, but they must spend up to 10 years away from their labs to prepare to fly. Smaller past and future vehicles are limited to highly specialized professional crew members who, though very talented, are frankly often out of touch with advanced research or other specialized skills. A seven-person crew could even have room for occasional VIPs—politicians, teachers, or even journalists.

Many of these capabilities were expensive, and the whole program wound up costing a lot more than had been projected. Worse, when operated carelessly, the machine killed two crews. But the shuttle's capabilities were often far more valuable than expected, with many surprising uses that only became clear over the years.

That last point leads to perhaps the greatest lesson of the shuttle for future spaceship designers and space exploration theorists: If you build a spacecraft, or any other machine, with a predetermined and limited set of capabilities (as NASA is now doing), you will usually get just those predictable capabilities and little more. You will not, as happened with the shuttle, learn to use it more and more efficiently and keep discovering new ways to do new things not even imagined when the vehicle was first conceived. These capabilities, in the case of the shuttle, turned out to be the only way to respond to many unexpected problems. And nobody should be surprised that the unexpected awaits us in outer space.

Space vehicles with these next-generation designs are sure to face both unanticipated challenges and opportunities. Until we realize that some out-of-the-blue, unplanned need cannot be satisfied, we won't even know what we're missing with these new designs. As for the shuttle, we are just starting to recognize the full extent of the capabilities we gained and are now going to lose—and we'd better start thinking of how to replace them. If we do that, we can wisely build future spacecraft that will allow us to be ready when we are inevitably caught by surprise out there in space.

WE flew it once & can do it again!!! We have grossly inept leaders!

Drives me nuts--- we need shuttle, we flew once & can do it again. We have the worst possible leaders!

Read Don nelson's plans for use of EXISTING Orbiter airframes! 
Re nasaproblems.com

Drives me nuts--- we need shuttle, we flew once & can do it again. We have the worst possible leaders!

Read Don nelson's plans for use of EXISTING Orbiter airframes!

Nasaproblems.com.

USA must have this capability!

Commercial Space Freighters

Bring Don Nelson to Congressional hearings, he lives in Alvin, Texas . Number in phone book !!!

http://www.spacetran21.org/


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GET the Shuttle flying AGAIN-- WHY continue to waste money on WHAT we DON'T NEED!

We have drawings, test procedures, much of the facilities remains. We are now going nowhere FAST. Makes more sense to spend money on something we can use. Present Effort WILL STILL leave us " up the creek without a paddle" !!!

Re nasaproblems.com

If we had some leaders with minimal intelligence WE WOULD get shuttle flying Again!

We have drawings, test procedures, much of the facilities remains. We are now going nowhere FAST. Makes more sense to spend money on something we can use. Present Effort WILL STILL leave us " up the creek without a paddle" !!!

Nasaproblems.com. Re post below

Nasaproblems.com

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We should return shuttle to flight-- another astronaut ( Chaio) agrees-- list long & getting longer!

Read the articles, look at the facts. We could fly the orbiters in museum re nasa problems.com. We a leader with the " right stuff"!


Then we should evolve & improve it.

U.S. Space Supremacy Now Critical. If we desire peace on Earth, we need to prepare for war in space!

http://spacenews.com/op-ed-u-s-space-supremacy-now-critical/


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Can NASA be Saved?

http://nasaproblems.com/


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Grounding, A big mistake!

A Mistake--- it could be rectified!

Grounding Shuttle --- A mistake

In the aftermath of Challenger, there was never any doubt about continuing, never the thought of quitting. After the Columbia accident almost seventeen years later, however, the program was wound down over the next eight years. Once construction of the International Space Station was completed, the Shuttles were grounded and the shuttle program ended.
I think that was a mistake. Space Shuttle was and remains the most capable flying machine ever conceived, built and operated. We learned much from the thirty years of Shuttle flights, and in my opinion, we should still be flying them. Shuttle carried a crew of seven, plus nearly sixty thousand pounds of payload to low earth orbit. After transforming from a rocket into an orbital research or construction platform, it entered the atmosphere and landed on a conventional runway at the end of its mission. After around one hundred days of processing, it was ready to fly again.
Nothing like this had ever been proposed before, let alone actually built or operated. Nothing has replaced it since. We gave up on this wonderful machine, because it was deemed too risky and expensive. But we knew about the risks going in. As for cost, take a look at the astronomical costs of current space vehicle programs and tell me that Shuttle was too expensive to continue to operate.
The risk of flying on the shuttle was always present, but it was not something that ever made me consider not getting into the vehicle. In order to do anything worthwhile, one must take calculated risks. I thought about the risks as I waited for T-0, naturally, but didn't dwell on them.
This is the way I have always felt. I still do
Leroy Chiao
Leroychiao.blogspot.com

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We Never Should Have Mothballed the Space Shuttle - Scientific American Blog Network

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/we-never-should-have-mothballed-the-space-shuttle/


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I don't hear anyone Talking about Superior Space Capabilities !

Read what is on Internet about control of space! Read about China's plans!

Appears our leaders have NO INTEREST!

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NASA Day of Remembrance

http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/DOR2016/index.html


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Fwd: Destruction of manned program Grossly Short Sighted

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Begin forwarded message:

From: Bobby G Martin <bobbygmartin1938@gmail.com>
Date: January 27, 2016 at 9:10:18 PM CST
To: "ted@tedcruz.org" <ted@tedcruz.org>
Subject: Fwd: Destruction of manned program Grossly Short Sighted

We must have an operating shuttle.  Talk to Abbey, Cunningham, Don Nelson -- Alvin, Texas, Kraft -- they are all in Texas !

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Begin forwarded message:

From: Bobby G Martin <bobbygmartin1938@gmail.com>
Date: January 27, 2016 at 6:56:31 PM CST
To: "ElRushbo@eibnet.com" <ElRushbo@eibnet.com>
Subject: Destruction of manned program Grossly Short Sighted

What I don't understand is why wouldn't you periodically rant about this terrible tragedy for the USA 's preeminent space capabilities.  It is beyond me.

Re Abbey's article Lost in Space, Washington examiner--- sums it up real well, as does The Case to Save the Shuttle, Close the Gap on WalterCunningham.com & myth vs.
Reality .  All on keeptheshuttleflyingc.blogspot.com.

The public needs to understand what has been done to our capabilities & the terrible waste.
As Abbey, Hillhouse & others have asked, WHY did nasa turn down the Boeing x37C proposal?

Also, Facebook page, Real Space Act of 2013 , has lot of posts pointing out  many of same points.

I always thought you were a big fan of the manned space program.

Bobby Martin

Destruction of manned space capabilities Grossly Short Sighted ! Email to Rush

What I don't understand is why wouldn't you periodically rant about this terrible tragedy for the USA 's preeminent space capabilities.  It is beyond me.

Re Abbey's article Lost in Space, Washington examiner--- sums it up real well, as does The Case to Save the Shuttle, Close the Gap on WalterCunningham.com & myth vs. 
Reality .  All on keeptheshuttleflyingc.blogspot.com.

The public needs to understand what has been done to our capabilities & the terrible waste.
As Abbey, Hillhouse & others have asked, WHY did nasa turn down the Boeing x37C proposal?

Also, Facebook page, Real Space Act of 2013 , has lot of posts pointing out  many of same points.

I always thought you were a big fan of the manned space program.

Bobby Martin 

Destruction of manned capabilities--- email to Rush

Considering the number of words you utter, perhaps a few in support of the need for shuttle like capabilities which are critical to the national security of this country would be in order.

Bobby Martin 
Keeptheshuttleflyingc.blogspot.com 

Astronaut Scott Kelly nails NASA's budget problem - Tech Insider

http://www.techinsider.io/astronaut-scott-kelly-nails-nasa-budget-problem-2016-1


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New Russian space port a reminder that Obama has given "effective control of NASA to Vladimir Putin" - The Rebel

http://www.therebel.media/new_russian_space_port_obama_nasa_to_vladimir_putin


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Ceding space leadership! The Days are coming when a BIG price will be PAID!

SEATTLE — The United States desperately needs a way to get its astronauts to space and back and one solution could be taking NASA's space shuttle fleet out of retirement, Apollo moonwalkers Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan told Congress Sept. 22.

Without an independent way to launch astronauts into low Earth orbit, the United States risks ceding its global leadership in space to Russia and China and others, the retired astronauts said. Developing that access should be a top priority for NASA and the country.

The recently retired shuttles provide one ready-made answer, according to Cernan. "Get the shuttle out of the garage," Cernan told members of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. "It's in its prime of its life. How could we just put it away?" The shuttle program ended this past July after 30 years of operation. The three remaining space-flown orbiters are being readied for museum display.

But it might not be too late to press the shuttles back into action, said Armstrong. "Proposals exist for continuing to fly the space shuttle under commercial contract," Armstrong testified . "Such proposals should be carefully evaluated prior to allowing them to be rendered 'not flightworthy' and their associated ground facilities to be destroyed."

- See more at: http://spacenews.com/take-shuttle-out-retirement-apollo-moonwalkers-urge/#sthash.8VBIiA8o.dpuf

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Take the Shuttle Out of Retirement, Apollo Moonwalkers Urge - SpaceNews.com

http://spacenews.com/take-shuttle-out-retirement-apollo-moonwalkers-urge/


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X37 C --- a shuttle replacement

WHY not make x37B a shuttle replacement????

And those in Congress specializing in space are well aware that, had getting independent access to ISS for our nation really been Job #1 for NASA's leadership, then the Administration would have approved Boeing's proposal for the X-37B follow-on, the 5 crew X-37C. We are talking about a dependable spacecraft that can sit in orbit for over a year and NASA said no to making it a crewed vehicle. Why?

Jim Hillhouse
March 5, 2014 at 7:19 pm
Well, after talking to Capitol Hill staffers, they too are suffering the same head issues I am. At least I'm in good company.

Rather than talk about what Congress will or will not pay for, let's review what Congress has done since 2010 on space funding.

Congress has, on its own and despite both opposition from the Administration and aggressive delaying tactics on the SLS and Orion programs from NASA, appropriated those amounts needed to keep both Orion and SLS on track. And just as it's done since 2010, Congress is going to do what it wants on HSF, which is fund Orion and SLS fully.

What Congress sees is not a justification for Commercial Crew. Far from it. Congressional staffers are well aware of the true progress of that program and no, none of those players are getting us to ISS anytime soon. That's largely NASA's fault since Congress has informed it that the CCP program needed to down-selected years ago to better focus limited resources for faster progress. But NASA's leadership didn't do that for political reasons. Loose Boeing and CCP looses luster and respectability. Loose Sierra Nevada and we working on three capsule programs. And if you want to make engineers working in GN&C or ELSS laugh, tell them that one of the CCP companies will be flying crews by 2016. Guffaws galore.

And those in Congress specializing in space are well aware that, had getting independent access to ISS for our nation really been Job #1 for NASA's leadership, then the Administration would have approved Boeing's proposal for the X-37B follow-on, the 5 crew X-37C. We are talking about a dependable spacecraft that can sit in orbit for over a year and NASA said no to making it a crewed vehicle. Why?

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/…/x-37b-expanded-capabiliti…/

What Congress does see is that if we had not gone through the nonsense of 2010, we would be much closer to our own capability to launch crews to ISS than we are today. Instead, Neil Armstrong was right–the Administration changed our nation's HSF course in secret, without consultation, and mucked things up.

When it comes to the Moon, Congress is funding $3.5B annually on the DDTE for Orion and SLS. Anything else will have to wait for a new Administration as there is zero trust right now in Congress of anything the White House or NASA HQ are selling about human spaceflight.

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Fwd: LISA Pathfinder on station a million miles from Earth

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: January 26, 2016 at 10:43:03 AM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: LISA Pathfinder on station a million miles from Earth

 

LISA Pathfinder on station a million miles from Earth

January 25, 2016 by Stephen Clark

 

Artist's concept of the LISA Pathfinder science module separation from the spacecraft's propulsion section. Credit: ESA/C.Carreau

Europe's LISA Pathfinder mission crafted to demonstrate the ability to detect gravitational waves — theorized ubiquitous cosmic signals that have so far eluded discovery — has arrived at its operating post around the L1 Lagrange point nearly a million miles from Earth.

The six-sided spacecraft jettisoned its propulsion module at about 1130 GMT (6:30 a.m. EST) Friday after a series of engine burns thrust LISA Pathfinder toward its work site at L1 after lifting off from French Guiana on Dec. 3.

LISA Pathfinder's launch aboard a European Vega rocket put the spacecraft and its fuel-laden engine section into an elliptical low-altitude orbit with a high point about 1,540 kilometers (957 miles) above Earth.

The propulsion package attached to the base of the LISA Pathfinder science module fired six times to propel the probe farther from Earth toward the L1 libration point about 1.5 million kilometers (932,000 miles) toward the sun.

A final 64-second maneuver by the spacecraft's main engine Jan. 20 nudged LISA Pathfinder into a looping, halo-like orbit around L1, an imaginary point between the Earth and the sun where the gravitational pull from the two bodies balances, allowing a spacecraft to loiter there with occasional small corrections.

LISA Pathfinder needed only one of two prescribed burns to enter orbit at L1, and ground controllers programmed the spacecraft to jettison its engine module Friday.

Airbus Defense and Space manufactured the LISA Pathfinder spacecraft and its propulsion module, which engineers derived from the fuel tanks and thrusters used on Airbus' Eurostar series of large commercial communications satellites.

Tiny nitrogen cold gas thrusters now have primary control of the spacecraft for its six-month primary mission.

"Heat and vibration from the regular, hot thrusters on the propulsion module would cause too much disturbance during the spacecraft's delicate technology demonstration mission," said Ian Harrison, LISA Pathfinder's spacecraft operations manager at the European Space Agency's control center in Darmstadt, Germany. "Primary propulsion during the rest of the mission will be provided by cold gas microthrusters to keep us at L1."

The cold gas jets supply minuscule levels of thrust to maintain control of the spacecraft and help steer it in orbit around L1.

This diagram illustrates the journey of LISA Pathfinder from its launch pad in French Guiana to an orbit around the L1 Lagrange point. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

The thrusters were scheduled to guide LISA Pathfinder into its final orbit around L1 this week, putting the craft in a looping path stretching between 500,000 and 800,000 kilometers (300,000 to 500,000 miles) from the L1 location.

LISA Pathfinder's mission is to test technologies needed for a future observatory to detect and study gravitational waves, elusive signals through spacetime predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Einstein predicted that the movement of immense objects in the universe, such as galaxies and black holes, send out low-frequency waves of gravitational energy rippling across spacetime.

But gravitational waves are easily overwhelmed by gravity from nearby objects like the sun and the planets, and perturbations from a spacecraft's thrusters, motion and other sources could mask a detection.

That's where LISA Pathfinder comes in.

The $630 million mission carries two rounded gold-platinum test cubes — each 1.8 inches or 46 millimeters on a side — that will be suspended in vacuum enclosures. A laser measurement system will precisely track the distance between the two free-floating cubes down to one picometer, or one one-hundredth the size of an atom.

Such precision is required for a future space mission to launch in the 2030s with a goal of using gravitational waves as a window into some of the unseen workings of the cosmos.

The low-frequency waves cannot be detected by LISA Pathfinder because the 2.1-meter diameter (6.9-foot) spacecraft is too small.

But with two or three similar spacecraft positioned millions of miles apart, physicists believe the gravitational ripples can be detected and tapped for scientific research.

Controllers switched on the laser aboard LISA Pathfinder on Jan. 13.

The two gold cubes, enclosed in vacuum containers (shown here without the launch lock mechanism), are key to the LISA Pathfinder mission. Each of these electrode containers houses a gold-platinum test mass. LISA Pathfinder will monitor the two cubes as they enter free-fall motion using a high-precision laser interferometer. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

The test cubes will be released from their launch restraints next month, with the first procedure Feb. 3 to retract finger-like appendages from each cube.

Then each cube's caging device will pull away Feb. 15 and 16, breaking the mechanical contact between the test masses and the spacecraft.

From that point on, LISA Pathfinder's control software and microthrusters will essentially fly the spacecraft around the free-floating test cubes, ensuring the objects do not recontact the edges of their enclosures, with tolerances of a few millimeters — less than an inch.

The process to release the test cubes could not be fully tested on the ground, making it one of the driving reasons behind ESA's decision to develop a demonstrator probe before launching a more expensive multi-spacecraft gravitational wave observatory.

A thruster package provided by NASA will also manage LISA Pathfinder's pointing for about three months of its 180-day prime mission.

The U.S-made electric thrusters will point the spacecraft with a precision equivalent to the width of the double helix in a strand of DNA, according to Phil Barela, project manager for NASA's contribution to the LISA Pathfinder mission.

Such fine control of a spacecraft is an improvement over the pointing requirements for large space telescopes like Hubble, but it is necessary for research into gravitational waves.

Astronomers say gravitational waves coming from immense objects in the distant universe, such as merging black holes and galactic nuclei, can yield new insights into the fundamental physics of the universe in ways impossible to study with traditional observations of light waves.

"We think we know all the different forces that could disturb a test mass, and all the different mechanisms that could basically mask a gravitational wave, and one of the purposes of LISA Pathfinder is saying did we get them all controlled and did we really understand what they all were," said Ira Thorpe, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and a U.S. member of the LISA Pathfinder science team, in an interview before the mission's launch.

 

 

© 2016 Spaceflight Now Inc.

 

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Fwd: Blue Origin to ramp up New Shepard tests - SpaceNews.com

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: January 26, 2016 at 10:38:44 AM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Blue Origin to ramp up New Shepard tests - SpaceNews.com

 

Blue Origin to ramp up New Shepard tests

by Jeff Foust — January 25, 2016

 

Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital vehicle lifting off on a Jan. 22 test flight. The company plans to increase the frequency of future test flights. Credit: Blue Origin

WASHINGTON — After completing two successful flights of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle in two months, Blue Origin plans to increase the frequency of future test flights, with dozens more planned before the company is ready to start flying people.

In a Jan. 25 interview, Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson said that the company was continuing to review data from the most recent New Shepard flight on Jan. 22, but that initial indications were that the vehicle performed as expected.

"We haven't seen or heard of anything that's of concern. The vehicle performed perfectly," he said. "Everything we've seen looks really good."

On the flight from Blue Origin's test site in West Texas, New Shepard flew to a peak altitude of 101.7 kilometers. The vehicle's conical crew capsule parachuted back to Earth, while its propulsion module, equipped with a BE-3 engine developed by Blue Origin, made a powered vertical landing near the center of its landing pad.

The flight involved the same vehicle that flew a nearly identical flight from the same site Nov. 23, making it the first reused vehicle to make a powered vertical landing. Meyerson said the company plans to shorten the time between future test flights.

"We expect to shorten that turnaround time over time this year, and fly this vehicle again and again," he said. Those upcoming tests will use the same New Shepard vehicle that flew the previous two flights, with hardware and software modifications as needed between flights.

Meyerson said the company still plans to perform "dozens" of test flights of New Shepard over the next couple of years before the company is ready to carry people on the vehicle. "It really depends on how the flight test program goes," he said. "It could be a little faster than that, or it could be a little longer than that, depending on what we learn."

Blue Origin, though, does expect to start carrying uncrewed research payloads on New Shepard later this year. The company has been working with researchers at Purdue University, the University of Central Florida and Louisiana State University to provide initial "pathfinder" experiments that will fly on the vehicle. "We hope to fly those payloads this year," he said.

Using the same vehicle for those upcoming test flights is also important to demonstrate the vehicle's reusability, a key goal of the company. "It really validates our design and analysis to be able to look at the hardware we've recovered," he said.

He noted that while engineers inspected the vehicle's BE-3 engine after the November flight, they did not remove it and do more thorough analysis of it prior to the Jan. 22 flight. "Having the ability to turn the vehicle around quickly is going to really depend on going to more of an inspection mode on some of those critical subsystems than an overhaul mode," he said.

"New Shepard was designed for reusability from the beginning," he said, emphasizing the development of the BE-3 engine with its "deep throttling" capability that allows it to be effectively used for both launch and landing. That work, he said, has benefits beyond New Shepard itself, given the company's long-term plans to develop an orbital launch vehicle.

"That booster flight profile is very similar to what we will use eventually in our orbital flight program," he said. "Gaining experience launching and recovering and reflying a cryogenic launch vehicle has direct lessons learned for our orbital launch vehicle."

Read more of SpaceNews' interview with Rob Meyerson, including discussion of the company's work on the BE-4 engine and plans for an orbital launch vehicle, in the Feb. 1 issue of SpaceNews Magazine.

 

 © 2016 SpaceNews, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

---

 

TOTALLY INCOMPREHENSIBLE --- Every USA citizen should be EXTREMELY upset! The Case to Save the Shuttle , Myth vs. Reality & Lost in Space by Abbey in Washington Examiner all sum it up---- this country should either return shuttle to flight status or commence a new design ( like boeing x37c proposal).

The Waste is TOTALLY INCOMPREHENSIBLE --- Every USA citizen should be EXTREMELY upset!

The Case to Save the Shuttle , Myth vs. Reality & Lost in Space by Abbey in Washington Examiner all sum it up---- this country should either return shuttle to flight status or commence a new design ( like boeing x37c proposal).

Spread the word!

Shuttle destruction disgusting!

I am disgusted with the lack of courage & common sense this attitude shows!

But as Krantz points out there are risks & we can't always have all the answers.  Does that mean we should be so risk averse that we cease making progress?  

Krantz stated the following & it is on target----

TO read and listen to the coverage about the space shuttle, you would think NASA's mission team has taken careless risks with the lives of the seven astronauts who went into space on the Discovery last Tuesday. During the launching, foam fell off the external tank. For the risk-averse, the only acceptable thing to do now is retire the shuttle program immediately and wait for the divine arrival of the next generation of spacecraft. I am disgusted at the lack of courage and common sense this attitude shows.

Forum: Op-Ed Contributors

All progress involves risk. Risk is essential to fuel the economic engine of our nation. And risk is essential to renew American's fundamental spirit of discovery so we remain competitive with the rest of the world.

My take on the current mission is very straightforward. The shuttle is in orbit. To a great extent mission managers have given the spacecraft a clean bill of health. Let us remember that this is a test flight. I consider it a remarkably successful test so far.

The technical response to the Columbia accident led to a significant reduction in the amount of debris striking this shuttle during launching. Mission managers have said that the external tank shed 80 percent less foam this time than on previous launchings. Only in the news media, apparently, is an 80 percent improvement considered a failure. Rather than quit, we must now try to reduce even more the amount of foam that comes off the tank.

Sent from my iPad

Fwd: Blue Origin relaunches rocket and lands it again

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: January 23, 2016 at 7:53:16 PM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Blue Origin relaunches rocket and lands it again

 

Blue Origin relaunches rocket and lands it again

Emilee Speck
Contact Reporter

 

Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos relaunch used New Shepard rocket, land it again

The same Blue Origin rocket launched and landed in November has taken a second flight, CEO Jeff Bezos announced Friday night.

The New Shepard rocket flew to the edge of space at 333,582 feet before returning both crew capsule and booster for a controlled ground landing in Texas, according to the release.

Bezos tweeted "can a used rocket fly?" Friday night with the official announcement and a video.

The commercial space company launched and landed the very same New Shepard rocket less than two months ago. In December, SpaceX became the first company to launch and land a rocket during a orbital mission. Now Blue Origin is the first to relaunch a used sub-orbital rocket.

In preparation for Friday's launch the crew capsule parachutes were replaced as well as the pyro igniters. Blue Origin conducted functional and avionics checkouts, and made several software improvements, according to the news release.

One very important software update was made to allow for a smoother landing, by targeting the center of the pad and setting down where it needs to instead of making unnecessary correction so close to landing.

From the announcement:

"It's like a pilot lining up a plane with the centerline of the runway. If the plane is a few feet off center as you get close, you don't swerve at the last minute to ensure hitting the exact mid-point. You just land a few feet left or right of the centerline."

The video also shows the crew capsule separation and touch down in West Texas. The capsule parachute deploys slowing it down from 15 mph to 3 mph before landing.

In September, the Amazon-billionaire announced plans for a $200 million factory and launch complex at the old Launch Complex 26 site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The complex will help bring 330 jobs to the Space Coast starting in the next few years.

Bezos and Blue Origin's goal is to see people "living and working in space" and "You can't get there by throwing the hardware away."

New Shepard will be launched and landed again and again this year, said Bezos.

Copyright © 2016, Orlando Sentinel

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Launch. Land. Repeat: Blue Origin posts video of New Shepard's Friday flight

by Brian Berger — January 23, 2016

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=74tyedGkoUc

Blue Origin launch and landed its New Shepard reusable launch vehicle Friday (Jan. 22) at its West Texas test facility. The notoriously secretive company did not announce the mission ahead of time, but FAA airspace restrictions pointed to a Friday or Saturday attempt.

The company posted a video Friday of the launch and landing .

"The very same New Shepard booster that flew above the Karman line and then landed vertically at its launch site last November has now flown and landed again, demonstrating reuse," Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said in a statement. "This time, New Shepard reached an apogee of 333,582 feet (101.7 kilometers) before both capsule and booster gently returned to Earth for recovery and reuse."

Here's his full statement:

The very same New Shepard booster that flew above the Karman line and then landed vertically at its launch site last November has now flown and landed again, demonstrating reuse. This time, New Shepard reached an apogee of 333,582 feet (101.7 kilometers) before both capsule and booster gently returned to Earth for recovery and reuse.

Data from the November mission matched our preflight predictions closely, which made preparations for today's re-flight relatively straightforward. The team replaced the crew capsule parachutes, replaced the pyro igniters, conducted functional and avionics checkouts, and made several software improvements, including a noteworthy one. Rather than the vehicle translating to land at the exact center of the pad, it now initially targets the center, but then sets down at a position of convenience on the pad, prioritizing vehicle attitude ahead of precise lateral positioning. It's like a pilot lining up a plane with the centerline of the runway. If the plane is a few feet off center as you get close, you don't swerve at the last minute to ensure hitting the exact mid-point. You just land a few feet left or right of the centerline. Our Monte Carlo sims of New Shepard landings show this new strategy increases margins, improving the vehicle's ability to reject disturbances created by low-altitude winds.

Though wings and parachutes have their adherents and their advantages, I'm a huge fan of rocket-powered vertical landing. Why? Because — to achieve our vision of millions of people living and working in space — we will need to build very large rocket boosters. And the vertical landing architecture scales extraordinarily well. When you do a vertical landing, you're solving the classic inverted pendulum problem, and the inverted pendulum problem gets a bit easier as the pendulum gets a bit bigger. Try balancing a pencil on the tip of your finger. Now try it with a broomstick. The broomstick is simpler because its greater moment of inertia makes it easier to balance. We solved the inverted pendulum problem on New Shepard with an engine that dynamically gimbals to balance the vehicle as it descends. And since New Shepard is the smallest booster we will ever build, this carefully choreographed dance atop our plume will just get easier from here. We're already more than three years into development of our first orbital vehicle. Though it will be the small vehicle in our orbital family, it's still many times larger than New Shepard. I hope to share details about this first orbital vehicle this year.

Also this year, we'll start full-engine testing of the BE-4 and launch and land our New Shepard rocket – again and again. If you want to stay up to date with all the interesting work that our team is doing, sign up for email updates at www.blueorigin.com/interested.

Gradatim Ferociter!

Jeff Bezos

 

Blue Origin reflies New Shepard suborbital vehicle

by Jeff Foust — January 23, 2016

 

Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle lands at the company's West Texas test site after a suborbital flight Jan. 22. Credit: Blue Origin

WASHINGTON — Blue Origin successfully launched and landed Jan. 22 the same New Shepard vehicle that flew in November, a demonstration of the vehicle's reusability and the latest round of one-upmanship in its rivalry with SpaceX.

The suborbital New Shepard vehicle took off from Blue Origin's test site in West Texas early Jan. 22 and reached a peak altitude of 101.7 kilometers. The vehicle's conical crew capsule separated and parachuted to a soft landing, while the cylindrical propulsion module made a powered vertical landing on a landing pad several kilometers from the launch site.

"The very same New Shepard booster that flew above the Karman line and then landed vertically at its launch site last November has now flown and landed again, demonstrating reuse," company founder Jeff Bezos wrote in a blog post late Jan. 22. The von Karman line, an altitude of 100 kilometers, is a commonly used, although not universally accepted, boundary of space.

The same vehicle also flew a suborbital flight on Nov. 23 from the same site, reaching a peak altitude of 100.5 kilometers. That flight was the first time the vehicle's propulsion module made a successful powered landing, after a hydraulic problem prevented a landing during an April flight.

Bezos' post was the company's first acknowledgement of the test flight. The company provided no advance notice of the test, a practice it has followed in earlier test flights. A temporary flight restriction published by the Federal Aviation Administration Jan. 21, limiting access to airspace around the test site for two days for "space flight operations," was the only official hint of an impending test.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=74tyedGkoUc

That November test escalated an existing a rivalry with SpaceX and its founder, Elon Musk. After that test, Bezos tweeted a link to the video and called New Shepard "the rarest of beasts – a used rocket." Musk objected in a series of tweets, noting low-altitude vertical landing tests of SpaceX's Grasshopper vehicle as well as the differences between suborbital and orbital flight.

On Dec. 21, SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, ten minutes after liftoff on a mission to deliver 11 Orbcomm satellites into orbit. The stage is significantly larger than the New Shepard propulsion module and traveled much higher. "Congrats @SpaceX on landing Falcon's suborbital booster stage," Bezos tweeted after the flight. "Welcome to the club!"

The latest New Shepard flight is the first time a vehicle that flew at least suborbitally and made a powered vertical landing repeated that feat. While SpaceX performed a test firing of the landed Falcon 9 stage on its Cape Canaveral pad Jan. 15, Musk said in December there were no plans to refly this stage.

New Shepard is not the first reusable suborbital vehicle. SpaceShipOne, built by Scaled Composites and funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, made three flights to altitudes of at least 100 kilometers in 2004, including two within a week in late September and early October that won the $10 million Ansari X Prize. The U.S. Air Force's X-15 made 199 flights between 1959 and 1968, including back-to-back flights in 1963 that flew to altitudes above 105 kilometers.

Both SpaceShipOne and X-15 were winged vehicles, launched from aircraft and gliding back to runway landings. Bezos, though, wrote in his blog post that the vertical landings demonstrated by New Shepard are preferable to wings or parachutes. "Because — to achieve our vision of millions of people living and working in space — we will need to build very large rocket boosters. And the vertical landing architecture scales extraordinarily well," he wrote.

Bezos subtly suggested that the powered landing performed by New Shepard was a more difficult achievement than SpaceX's Falcon 9 landing last month. "And since New Shepard is the smallest booster we will ever build, this carefully choreographed dance atop our plume will just get easier from here," he wrote.

Blue Origin is working on an orbital launch vehicle. The company has disclosed little information about the vehicle, but at an event at Cape Canaveral in September to announce the company's plans to build and launch rockets there, the company showed illustrations of a two-stage rocket whose first stage featured landing legs to enable a landing. Bezos wrote that he hopes to provide more details about that vehicle later this year.

Not everyone, though, agrees with Blue Origin's preference with vertical landings. "Our spaceship comes back and lands on wheels. Theirs don't," Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, said of competition with Blue Origin and SpaceX during an interview with CNBC Jan. 22 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Branson was referring to SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic's suborbital vehicle, which like SpaceShipOne is air-launched and glides to a runway landing. The company plans to unveil in February a second SpaceShipTwo vehicle, replacing one destroyed in an October 2014 test flight accident.

"People will have a choice of which spaceships they want to use to get to space," Branson said. "Because ours is shaped like an airplane, we hope to do point-to-point travel one day. Theirs is not."

 

 © 2016 SpaceNews, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

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Blue Origin Launches Rocket Into Space and Lands It Safely for 2nd Time

by Tariq Malik, Space.com Managing Editor   |   January 23, 2016 01:11pm ET  

Blue Origin has done it again. The private spaceflight company has launched a private rocket into space and landed it back on Earth. And as a bonus, Blue Origin reused the same rocket from its first launch-landing test flight.

"Launch. Land. Repeat," company officials wrote in a statement announcing the epic space feat on Friday (Jan. 22). The statement accompanied a spectacular video of the Blue Origin launch and landing.

Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket approaches landing at the company's West Texas landing pad on Jan. 22, 2016 during a launch and landing test flight. It was the second flight for this New Shepard booster.

Credit: Blue Origin

Blue Origin's billionaire founder Jeff Bezos announced the test flight success in a blog post, revealing that it used the same suborbital New Shepard rocket and crew capsule the company launched and landed last year. Both flights launched from and landed at the company's proving grounds in West Texas. [See more photos of Blue Origin's test flight]

"The very same New Shepard booster that flew above the Karman line and then landed vertically at its launch site last November has now flown and landed again, demonstrating reuse," Bezos wrote. The Karman Line is the widely recognized border between Earth and space, about 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface.

Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket and capsule lift off from a West Texas launch pad during a suborbital test flight on Jan. 22, 2016.

Credit: Blue Origin

Would you ride Blue Origin's private spaceship the New Shepard on a suborbital space trek?

Blue Origin is one of several commercial spaceflight companies pursuing reusable rocket and spacecraft technology to dramatically lower the cost of space travel. In Blue Origin's case, the company aims to launch passengers into space on its New Shepard spacecraft, which will seat six people.

Blue Origin made history last year when its New Shepard booster launched into suborbital space and returned to Earth. That Nov. 23 test flight reached an altitude of 329,839 feet (62.4 miles or 100.5 km). The Jan. 22 flight went a bit higher 333,582 feet (63.2 miles or 101.7 km) "before both capsule and booster gently returned to Earth for recovery and reuse," Bezos wrote in the statement.

Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket and crew capsule are suborbital spacecraft, meaning that they can launch into space, but cannot orbit the Earth. The New Shepard booster is designed to launch and land vertically, while its crew capsule separates in space and returns to Earth to make a parachute landing.  

Another private company, Blue Origin's rival SpaceX founded by Elon Musk, has successfully launched and landed its Falcon 9 rocket - which does fly all the way into orbit - in the pursuit of reusable rocket technology. SpaceX aims to launch, land and reuse a Falcon 9 booster sometime this year. The company already tried to land a Falcon 9 once this year during a Jan. 17 flight, but a landing leg failed to latch securely, causing the rocket to tip over and explode after touching down on a drone ship platform.

In his statement, Bezos wrote that there are some compelling reasons why Blue Origin is pursuing vertical launch and landings as its approach to reusable spaceflight systems.

The crew capsule for Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft makes a soft landing with parachutes and retro rockets in West Texas during a Jan. 22, 2016 test flight.

Credit: Blue Origin

"Though wings and parachutes have their adherents and their advantages, I'm a huge fan of rocket-powered vertical landing," Bezos wrote. "Why? Because — to achieve our vision of millions of people living and working in space — we will need to build very large rocket boosters. And the vertical landing architecture scales extraordinarily well."

According to Bezos, New Shepard may be the smallest rocket Blue Origin has flown, but it the foundation for ever-larger and more capable reusable space vehicles. The company plans to launch and land New Shepard "again and again" this year while also beginning full-up testing of its new, more powerful BE-4 rocket engine. New Shepard uses a single BE-3 engine for launches and landings, Bezos added.

"We're already more than three years into development of our first orbital vehicle," Though it will be the small vehicle in our orbital family, it's still many times larger than New Shepard. I hope to share details about this first orbital vehicle this year."

 

Blue Origin's New Shepard Rocket Lands Again: 2nd Test Flight Photos

2016, January, 23 10:07

On Jan. 22, 2016, the private spaceflight company Blue Origin launched and landed its New Shepard rocket and crew capsule in a successful test flight that also reused a spaceflown rocket. See images from the test flight here.

http://www.space.com/31718-blue-origin-new-shepard-rocket-2nd-flight-photos.html

 

Blue Origin Booster Reused! Lands Safely After 2nd Launch | Video

2016, January, 23 06:44

On Jan 22nd, 2016, the private spaceflight company launched its New Shepard booster and capsule to an altitude of 333,582 feet (101.7 km).

http://www.space.com/31716-blue-origin-booster-reused-lands-safely-after-2nd-launch-video.html

 

 

Copyright © 2016 TechMediaNetwork.com All rights reserved. 

 

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Fwd: Europe to invest in Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser cargo vehicle

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: January 23, 2016 at 8:03:35 PM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Europe to invest in Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser cargo vehicle

 

Europe to invest in Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser cargo vehicle - SpaceNews.com

by Peter B. de Selding — January 22, 2016

Sierra Nevada VP Mark Sirangelo and Johann-Dietrich Woerner, then head of Germany's DLR, sign April 2015 MoU on Dream Chaser cooperation. Woerner now heads ESA, which is investing in Dream Chaser. Credit: SNC Corp.

PARIS — Sierra Nevada Corp.'s win of a NASA contract to ferry cargo to the International Space Station will trigger a $36 million investment by the 22-nation European Space Agency following a cooperation agreement to be signed in the coming weeks, ESA said.

Once the agreement is signed, ESA will begin work building the first flight model of the International Berthing and Docking Mechanism (IBDM), which Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser Cargo System will use to attach itself to the space station.

ESA said it would spend 33 million euros ($36 million) to complete the design of the IBDM and build a flight model for Dream Chaser's first cargo run. Future IBDMs will be financed by Sierra Nevada, ESA said.

ESA and Sierra Nevada in early 2014 agreed to adapt the IBDM to Sierra Nevada's winged Dream Chaser, which was originally designed to carry astronauts and more recently has been adapted for unmanned cargo missions.

The agency spent about 8 million euros on the early work, which slowed after Sierra Nevada failed to win a NASA contract to send commercial crews to the space station.

ESA said it had spent some 20 million euros in total in recent years working on IBDM and on preparatory work for Dream Chaser.

But Sierra Nevada's surprise Jan. 14 win of the second round of NASA's Cargo Resupply Services (CRS-2) business, which promises at least six missions to the space station for the Dream Chaser Cargo System through 2024, breathed new life into the agreement.

ESA Director-General Johann-Dietrich Woerner said the NASA contract revives not only the IBDM collaboration, but also studies of future launch of the Dream Chaser inside the fairing of Europe's Ariane 5 rocket.

Louisville, Colorado-based Sierra Nevada Space Systems has designed the Dream Chaser in configurations to launch aboard  United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 and the European Ariane 5 rockets. To fit under the Ariane 5 fairing, the Dream Chaser would fold its wings.

"There is a memorandum of understanding not only with ESA and SNC, but also between SNC and some of the other national space agencies [in Europe]," Woerner said during a Jan. 18 press briefing here. "These are looking at different technologies, coming from Europe, to be used in Dream Chaser, as well as using Dream Chaser for European purposes such as microgravity research.

"There is also the launching aspect," Woerner said. "The idea is to have Dream Chaser also launched with an Ariane. We have checked and that is possible. There is already a plan to have folded wings. There was some discussions about whether this would be possible with astronauts, but that is not what we are discussing now, although even that would be possible."

Before arriving at ESA in July 2015, Woerner was head of the German Aerospace Center, DLR. In April 2015 he signed a cooperation agreement with Sierra Nevada Corp.

In response to SpaceNews inquiries, DLR said Jan. 22 that NASA's selection of Dream Chaser for cargo supply would not trigger any immediate investment by the German agency.

"DLR appreciates that Dream Chaser will now get its chance to prove itself in real-life service," DLR said. "It is an innovative concept. However, no immediate actions on DLR's side are foreseen. We will closely monitor the progress of the Dream Chaser project and we will evaluate if a more involved cooperation makes sense for both parties. No formal contract is foreseen, and thus no budget is allocated to this kind of work."

 © 2016 SpaceNews, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

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Lost in space | Washington Examiner

What we s/b doing!


http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/lost-in-space/article/2568052


Sent from my iPad

Washington Examiner: Lost in space -- The vast emptiness of America's space vision | Washington Examiner

Great summary of what we ought to be doing!


http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-examiner-lost-in-space-the-vast-emptiness-of-americas-space-vision/article/2568117


Sent from my iPad

Letter From Astronauts and Apollo Veterans Regarding Space Shuttle Retirement and Risk to ISS Operations

Valid today!


http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=37583


Sent from my iPad

. A scaled-up version with an astronaut crew to work outside the vehicle could reestablish America's ability to build and maintain big structures in Earth orbit.

America is not building a second-generation space shuttle but is instead building three space capsules: the Orion and two others, from Boeing and SpaceX. All will land by parachute, like spacecraft of the 1960s, and none will allow space walks comparable to the space shuttle. Unlike Hubble, the next big telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (due for launch October 2018) will have to be right the first time. There will be no way to repair it. It is already more costly than originally planned, and there is no shuttle to take astronauts to save it if something goes wrong.

The U.S. Air Force's Boeing X-37B, which began as a NASA craft but was transferred to the Pentagon in 2004, is an unmanned space plane that looks like a small space shuttle. Like the shuttle, it returns to Earth and lands on a runway. It has been flying successfully for five years. A scaled-up version with an astronaut crew to work outside the vehicle could reestablish America's ability to build and maintain big structures in Earth orbit.

Abbey

Fwd: Dragon crew capsule’s propulsive landing system tested

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: January 22, 2016 at 10:38:35 AM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Dragon crew capsule's propulsive landing system tested

 

spaceflightnow.com

 

Dragon crew capsule's propulsive landing system tested

 

SpaceX released a video Thursday showing a propulsive hover test of a prototype of the company's Dragon crew capsule conducted two months ago, a milestone in the development of the spaceship's jetpacks that will eventually guide the craft to helicopter-like landings.

 

The five-second firing of the Dragon's eight SuperDraco rocket thrusters occurred Nov. 24 at SpaceX's development and test facility in McGregor, Texas.

 

Suspended from a crane near test stands used for ground firings of the Falcon 9 rocket's Merlin engines, the spacecraft testbed ignited its eight SuperDraco engines to generate 33,000 pounds of thrust, putting the ship in a hover before returning to its resting state, according to SpaceX.

 

The hydrazine-burning SuperDraco engines are mounted around the base of the 12-foot-diameter spacecraft in pairs. The four engine pods would be used to propel astronauts away from a failing rocket during liftoff.

 

The thrust level of the SuperDracos during the hover test was about one-quarter the power generated by the engines during a launch abort.

 

If Crew Dragon missions encounter no problems on launch, the fuel in the SuperDraco tanks could be used to slow down the capsule to precision touchdowns at designated landing zones on the ground.

 

That is a stretch goal for SpaceX, which initially plans to recover its piloted Dragon spaceships after they descend under four parachutes to the ocean, splashing down in a similar manner to the cargo version of Dragon. Engineers will certify the Crew Dragon for propulsive landings later.

 

NASA awarded SpaceX and Boeing contracts in 2014 worth up to $6.8 billion to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

 

SpaceX's Crew Dragon will blast off from Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39A atop a Falcon 9 rocket, deliver four astronauts to the space station, then return home after up to 210 days in orbit.

 

The Nov. 24 firing in Central Texas was part of a milestone outlined in SpaceX's contract with NASA. A brief test of the SuperDraco thrusters two days earlier verified the performance of the engines, while the second test demonstrated the capsule's controllability with the engines firing, according to SpaceX.

 

SpaceX refurbished the prototype spaceship flown in May 2015 on a demonstration of the Crew Dragon's pad abort capability for the propulsive landing hover test.

 

Later this year, SpaceX engineers plan to test the Crew Dragon's parachutes, make progress assembling the first three human-rated spaceships for test flights and operational missions, and qualify the ship's life support systems and spacesuits.

 

By the end of 2016, SpaceX aims to fly an uncrewed Crew Dragon capsule on a demo flight to the space station. Engineers will reuse that capsule for an in-flight abort test in early 2017.

 

SpaceX targets the first Crew Dragon test flight with two astronauts in March 2017.