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No plans for a shuttle type spacecraft then?
Presumably the "crew capsule" is much cheaper to produce/deliver as the control/passenger requirement is smaller anf lighter?
All other "deliveries", equipment or additional humans, could be carried in a cargo module or launched independently and remotely controlled, yes?
Or did the shuttle add additional aspects?
Russian rocket to kick off Europe's historic search for life on Mars
PUBLISHED
14/03/2016
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(Launch Coverage here: http://www.space.com/17933-nasa-tele...-space-tv.html)
Europe's historic search for life on Mars is set to take off on Monday as a heavy-lift Russian rocket blasts into space from Kazakhstan.
The Proton rocket will launch the first of two ExoMars missions, together costing 1.2 billion euro (£924 million), designed to uncover signs of past or present life on the Red Planet.
An orbiter carried on the ExoMars 2016 mission will hunt for methane in the Martian atmosphere and show if it is likely to have been generated by geology or biological processes.
Then in two years' time, ExoMars 2018 will send a British-built rover bristling with cutting- edge technology to Mars.
Equipped with a drill that can burrow deep below the radiation-baked Martian surface, it will look for the chemical fingerprints of life.
If the scientists find evidence of life - even primitive life that existed billions of years ago - it will be one of the biggest discoveries of all time.
Humanity will have to re-assess its place in the universe, just as it did when Copernicus showed that the Earth and its sister planets orbited the Sun.
While American rovers have paved the way by investigating whether the Martian environment is or ever was suitable for living microbes, none of them has been equipped to search for life itself.
Planetary scientist Dr Peter Grindrod, from Birkbeck, University of London, who is funded by the UK Space Agency, said: "It's incredibly exciting.
"This is a series of missions that's trying to address one of the fundamental questions in science: is there life anywhere else besides the Earth?
"Finding that life exists elsewhere in the solar system would be a huge discovery, so the evidence has to be strong.
"As they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
The ExoMars missions are being undertaken jointly by the European Space Agency (Esa) and Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos.
Monday's launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome will send two unmanned probes on a journey across space lasting seven months.
One Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) will sniff the Martian atmosphere in search of methane, water vapour and other trace gases.
The other, Schiaparelli, is a lander whose primary job is to undertake a trial run of the parachute and retro-rocket technology needed for the later rover mission.
Methane is quickly broken down by sunlight and has to be continually regenerated from some source to persist in a planet's atmosphere.
On Earth the primary source is life. Billions of microbes, including many that thrive in the guts of animals such as cattle and termites, belch out the gas.
But methane can also be released by volcanic activity and geological chemistry.
TGO is equipped to look for methane hotspots on the Martian surface, and using highly sensitive instruments, test whether it is likely to be the product of biology or geology.
Sue Horne, head of space exploration at the UK Space Agency, based in Swindon, said: "We hope TGO will answer once and for all the question of whether the methane has a biological or geological origin.
"If it is shown to be biological, created by life, that would be amazing."
The orbiter also carries a high resolution colour 3D camera called CaSSIS (Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System) that can snap photos of surface objects as small as 15 to 20 metres across.
CaSSIS will look ahead and behind the spacecraft to build up stunning 3D maps of craters, mountains, dunes and other surface features.
Dr Grindrod said: " We can definitely expect some spectacular pictures."
Scientists will need to be patient. Although the TGO is due to reach Mars in October, it will have to undergo a lengthy series of orbital manoeuvres before the five year scientific mission can begin in December 2017.
Schiaparelli meanwhile is programmed to detach from the orbiter on October 16 and land on a flat region of Mars known as Meridiani Planum three days later.
The disc-shaped descent and landing demonstrator module measures 7.8ft (2.4m) across with its heatshield and weighs 1,300lb (600kg).
It will deliver a small science package to the surface designed to probe the weather around it - measuring wind speed, humidity, pressure, and the amount of dust in the air.
But its chief purpose is to test technology to be incorporated into the ExoMars 2018 landing system.
Landing on Mars is so fraught with difficulty, the scientists are leaving nothing to chance.
Like the rover-carrying spacecraft, Schiaparelli will use a parachute to brake its descent through the atmosphere and then fire clusters of retro rockets shortly before touch-down.
The six-wheeled rover, weighing 680lb (310kg), is being built by the British division of Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage.
It will have a drill capable of extracting soil samples from a depth of 6.5ft (2m).
If bugs do live on Mars, they could only be found beneath the radiation-baked surface.
Instruments on the rover will analyse the samples and look for signatures of life, including mineral residues left by long dead microbes and organic molecules with the correct left or right "handed" configuration.
The ExoMars mission has had a bumpy ride so far. Originally it was supposed to have been a partnership between ESA and Nasa, but the American space agency dropped out in 2012 because of budget cuts.
A year later, ESA signed a new deal with Roscosmos, which is now responsible for the rover landing system.
Dr Manish Patel, from the Open University, who heads TGO's small team of British scientists and is in charge of the probe's ozone-mapping ultraviolet (UV) spectrometer instrument, said: "This is a fantastic mission; massive.
"I spent the last 13 years of my life working on it so I am somewhat excited and nervous.
"You're strapping an instrument you've devoted your life to on top of a great big bomb.
"It's scary but it's why I'm in this business.
"There won't be many nails left on launch day."
Russian rocket to kick off Europe's historic search for life on Mars - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk
Smaller, lighter, cheaper and much safer.Quote:
Originally Posted by OhOh
Yes, cargo like space station modules and supplies go up separately. Launch vehicles can be much cheaper that way. Less advanced tech to achieve the same goal.Quote:
Originally Posted by OhOh
It added risk for the crew and huge cost. It was a vehicle driven by politics more than engineering. Though at that time engineers at NASA were still in the mindset they can achieve anything given unlimited budget. The missed the fact the times of unlimited budgets for NASA were over after the moon landing was achieved.Quote:
Originally Posted by OhOh
Another difference between capsules and space planes is that space planes can only go to LEO (low earth orbit). They are not sturdy enough to survive reentry at higher speed coming back from the moon or Mars.
The US built the SpaceShuttle. The Soviets built the Buran, a somewhat similar capability vehicle. They flew it once on a test flight without crew and then abandoned it because of cost. The chinese approach is a good one.
Another difference between capsules and space planes is that space planes can only go to LEO (low earth orbit). They are not sturdy enough to survive reentry at higher speed coming back from the moon or Mars.
SpaceX is going for another approach though. Their plans are really megalomaniac, no less. They want to build a vehicle larger than the ISS and send it to Mars, land it there and then let the whole vehicle return to earth for reuse. And they want to do that for less money than Russia is presently charging for launching one Astronaut to the ISS, assuming there would be many flights. The first few would be more expensive.
Send your best wishes. It will be needed.Quote:
Originally Posted by harrybarracuda
Pictures of the Proton rocket.
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Let's hope this mission will break the bane that seems to be on russian Mars missions. They have a record of 100% failures on many attempts to Mars. In early attempts they at least got their probes to the vincinty of Mars or even landing before they failed. In recent decades they failed even before the probes were leaving the vincinity of earth.
They did have some spectacular successes at Venus with landers though that were not matched by NASA.
Another link to the launch:
ExoMars launch on Livestream
Just started broadcasting.
Launch at around 10:30CET
35 minutes to catastrophic explosion er I mean launch.
Unt ve, er, sorry too many Germans on the stage, and we are inside 20 minutes.
Wonder why they haven't got a clock on the ESA screen?
Now the chirpy bint on stage said it's four minutes to take off.
All that decent HD video and then we get some grainy shite from the launchpad.
Bloody brilliant, with all the echo it sounds like a Bond movie.
Looks like the first part went A.O.K.
That was good. Glad I got to see it.
With Proton it is usually the upper stages that fail. We can hope that after recent failures the resulting shake up resolved many of the issues. Chances are quite good. But there is a number of things that need to go right and it will take time until Exo Mars is on its way there.Quote:
Originally Posted by harrybarracuda
The Indians have done it so maybe ESA and Roskosmos can do it too.
If the jinglies did it, Stevie fucking Wonder could do it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeovers
:)
After a total of 4 burns the launch vehicle of Roskosmos has just completed its part of the task. The probe, both an orbiter ExoMars and a lander have separated from the stage and are on the way. The trajectory looks fine and the probe has initiated its operations and sent the first signal.
A complete success so far. On Oct. 19 will be Mars arrival.
New Three-Man Crew Arrives at Space Station
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From left: NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, Russian cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin, and Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos, members of the main crew of the expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), walk to report to members of the State Committee prior to the launch of a Soyuz TMA-20M at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, March 19, 2016.
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft has arrived at the International Space Station with a three-man crew, including an astronaut about to break an American record.
By the end of his six-month mission on the space station, Jeff Williams will have spent more accumulated time in space - 534 days - than any other astronaut in U.S. history.
This is Williams' third time aboard the space station.
He and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin are joining a three-man crew already in the station and will carry out hundreds of scientific and biological experiments.
Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka holds the world record for the most days spent in space - 879.
New Three-Man Crew Arrives at Space Station
I think Pluto will be very upset.
Mysterious Gravitational Tug on Saturn May Help Find Planet Nine
Astronomers are homing in on the whereabouts of a hidden giant planet in our solar system, and could discover the unseen beast in roughly a year
By Shannon Hall on April 5, 2016
The hunt is on to find “Planet Nine”—a large undiscovered world, perhaps 10 times as massive as Earth and four times its size—that scientists think could be lurking in the outer solar system. After Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, two planetary scientists from the California Institute of Technology, presented evidence for its existence this January, other teams have searched for further proof by analyzing archived images and proposing new observations to find it with the world’s largest telescopes.
Just this month, evidence from the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn helped close in on the missing planet. Many experts suspect that within as little as a year someone will spot the unseen world, which would be a monumental discovery that changes the way we view our solar system and our place in the cosmos. “Evidence is mounting that something unusual is out there—there's a story that's hard to explain with just the standard picture,” says David Gerdes, a cosmologist at the University of Michigan who never expected to find himself working on Planet Nine. He is just one of many scientists who leapt at the chance to prove—or disprove—the team’s careful calculations.
Batygin and Brown made the case for Planet Nine’s existence based on its gravitational effect on several Kuiper Belt objects—icy bodies that circle the sun beyond Neptune’s orbit. Theoretically, though, its gravity should also tug slightly on the planets.* With this in mind, Agnès Fienga at the Côte d’Azur Observatory in France and her colleagues checked whether a theoretical model (one that they have been perfecting for over a decade) with the new addition of Planet Nine could better explain slight perturbations seen in Saturn's orbit as observed by Cassini.* Without it, the other seven planets in the solar system, 200 asteroids and five of the most massive Kuiper Belt objects cannot perfectly account for it.* The missing puzzle piece might just be a ninth planet.
So Fienga and her colleagues compared the updated model, which placed Planet Nine at various points in its hypothetical orbit, with the data. They found a sweet spot—with Planet Nine 600 astronomical units (about 90 billion kilometers) away toward the constellation Cetus—that can explain Saturn’s orbit quite well.* Although Fienga is not yet convinced that she has found the culprit for the planet’s odd movements, most outside experts are blown away.* “It’s a brilliant analysis,” says Greg Laughlin, an astronomer at Lick Observatory, who was not involved in the study. “It’s completely amazing that they were able to do that so quickly.” Gerdes agrees: “That’s a beautiful paper.”
The good news does not end there. If Planet Nine is located toward the constellation Cetus, then it could be picked up by the Dark Energy Survey, a Southern Hemisphere observation project designed to probe the acceleration of the universe. “It turns out fortuitously that the favored region from Cassini's data is smack dab in the middle of our survey footprint,” says Gerdes, who is working on the cosmology survey.* “We could not have designed our survey any better.” Although the survey was not planned to search for solar system objects, Gerdes has discovered some (including one of the icy objects that led Batygin and Brown to conclude Planet Nine exists in the first place).
Laughlin thinks this survey has the best immediate chance of success. He is also excited by the fact that Planet Nine could be so close. Although 600 AUs—roughly 15 times the average distance to Pluto—does sound far, Planet Nine could theoretically hide as far away as 1,200 AUs. “That makes it twice as easy to get to, twice as soon,” Laughlin says. “And not just twice as bright but 16 times as bright.”
And the Dark Energy Survey is not the only chance to catch the faint world. It should be possible to look for the millimeter-wavelength light the planet radiates from its own internal heat. Such a search was proposed by Nicolas Cowan, an exoplanet astronomer at McGill University in Montreal, who thinks that Planet Nine might show up in surveys of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the pervasive afterglow of the big bang. “CMB experiments have historically used solar system giant planets to calibrate their instruments, so we know that current and planned CMB experiments are sensitive enough to measure the flux from Planet Nine if it is as bright as we think it is,” Cowan says.
Already, cosmologists have started to comb through data from existing experiments, and astronomers with many different specialties have also joined in on the search. “I love that we can take this four-meter telescope and find a rock 100 kilometers in diameter that is a billion kilometers past Neptune with the same instrument that we are using to do extragalactic stuff and understand the acceleration of the universe,” Gerdes says.
In the meantime Batygin and Brown are proposing a dedicated survey of their own. In a recent study they searched through various sky maps to determine where Planet Nine cannot be. “We dumpster-dived into the existing observational data to search for Planet Nine, and because we didn't find it we were able to rule out parts of the orbit,” Batygin says. The zone where the planet makes its farthest swing from the sun as well as the small slice of sky where Fienga thinks the planet could be now, for example, have not been canvassed by previous observations. To search the unmapped zones, Batygin and Brown have asked for roughly 20 observing nights on the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. “It's a pretty big request compared to what other people generally get on the telescope,” Brown says. “We'll see if they bite.” If they do, Brown is convinced he will have his planet within a year.
“I really want to see what it looks like,” says Batygin, who adds that his aspiration drives him to search for the unseen world. But Laughlin takes it a step further: “I think [the discovery] would provide amazing inspiration for the next stage of planetary exploration,” he says. We now have another opportunity to see one of the worlds of our own solar system for the first time. “If Planet Nine isn't out there, we won't have that experience again.”
*Editor's Note (4/8/16): The headline and asterisked sentences in this story were edited after its original posting to correct an error. The original stated that perturbations in the Cassini spacecraft's orbit around Saturn could be caused by Planet Nine. It is not Cassini's orbit, however, but perturbations of Saturn's orbit around the sun that may be explained by the presence of Planet Nine.
Mysterious Gravitational Tug on Saturn May Help Find Planet Nine - Scientific American
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SpaceX did it again. Second landing of a first stage, first time successfully on the barge "Of Course I Still Love You".Successful launch of a Dragon capsule to the ISS for cargo as well. Dragon carries an inflatable SpaceStation module built by Bigelow Aerospace.
Video of the landing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8y6nANi32U
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Good effort that,they don't take long to solve the problems of barge landing.
In the post launch/landing press conference Elon Musk said they plan to do 10 test fires in Florida and then possibly launch the stage again as early as june, possibly even with a commercial payload. I did not see the press conference yet, it's only from posts I read.Quote:
Originally Posted by reddog
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft enters emergency mode 75 million miles from Earth
NASA engineers have declared a mission emergency for the agency's planet-hunting spacecraft Kepler, which has somehow switched into emergency mode.
NASA?s Kepler spacecraft enters emergency mode 75 million miles from Earth | The Verge
A NASA image shows the International Space Station as it flew over Madagascar, showing three of the five spacecraft docked to the station in this photo taken by the Expedition 47 Flight Engineer Tim Peake of ESA on April 6, 2016 and released on April 8, 2016. The station crew awaits the scheduled launch today, April 8, of the third resupply vehicle in three weeks: a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft.
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The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from launch complex 40 at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, April 8, 2016. The rocket will deliver almost 7,000 pounds of science research, crew supplies, and hardware to the International Space Station.
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The New Shepard rocket and capsule blasts off in this handout photo provided by Blue Origin, from a launch site in West Texas on April 2, 2016. Jeff Bezos’s space transportation company Blue Origin successfully launched and landed for the third time a suborbital rocket capable of whisking six passengers off their home planet, taking another step on the company's quest to develop reusable boosters
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On the latest supplie flight by a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft among other items the Bigelow BEAM expandable module was delivered and is now attached to the ISS for tests.
First photo is the module as it was sent up in the Dragon trunk.
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The graphic shows it expanded providing extra volume to the module. The front side shows the docking adapter that connects it to the ISS.
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Note that the builder Bigelow Aerospacae insists on calling the process expanding not inflating like a balloon. Thecombination of layers will provide better protection against micrometeorites and radiation than the conventional aluminium can habitats do.
Some clever stuff...
Something about that logo reminds me of Wall-E...
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Cassini gears up for final fiery plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere
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By Andy Coghlan
The countdown has begun. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has spent more than a decade orbiting Saturn, dipping in and out of its rings and peering at its moons. But in just one year, it will begin its grand finale, a daring series of manoeuvres that will bring views of Saturn like never before – and end with the spacecraft plummeting to its death in the gas giant’s atmosphere.
“It’s going to be a tough day,” says project manager Linda Spilker of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who presented details of Cassini’s last act in Vienna on 20 April at the European Geophysical Union meeting.
The so-called Grand Finale programme will begin next year, following six months studying Saturn’s outermost F ring, including 12 close fly-bys of Titan, Saturn’s biggest moon, which sports rivers and lakes filled with liquid hydrocarbons.
Cassini’s last act will be its most daredevil mission yet. From April 2017 to September, the probe will zoom 22 times between the planet and the innermost of Saturn’s famous rings. “No spacecraft has flown in that region before, so it’s very exciting,” said Spilker.
Enduring mysteries
The scientific payback will be enormous. Flying closer than ever before to the gas giant’s surface – some 64,000 kilometres from its centre – Cassini will gather information previously unobtainable to help solve Saturn’s enduring mysteries. These include such basic questions as whether it has a rocky core, how its weather works and the precise length of its day.
“We’ll have the opportunity to study Saturn’s internal structure, measure its gravity and magnetic fields and hopefully measure Saturn’s rotation rate for the first time,” says Spilker.
At such close quarters, Cassini’s instruments can gather unprecedented information about the composition of the planet’s ionosphere and atmosphere. The craft will also collect data on radiation belts girding the planet, and will be in a position to use gravity measurements to give the best estimate yet of the mass of the rings.
“I am especially interested in Cassini’s measurement of the mass of Saturn’s rings,” says Larry Esposito at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado. Knowing the mass will help determine whether the rings were recently created, or whether they are as old as the solar system – Esposito’s favoured idea. “It will be a major scientific discovery either way, with implications for the formation of planets in proto-planetary discs.”
And the images it will send back should be spectacular. “We will get some of the highest resolution images ever obtained of the inner D ring,” says Spilker. “We’ll get wonderful views with the sun high in the sky for the solstice.”
Daredevil descent
In terms of derring-do, the only comparably hazardous mission was in 2008, when Cassini flew through enormous plumes of warm water 100 kilometres across gushing from the surface of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons.
The risk was worth it, because the data collected from that and subsequent fly-bys demonstrated that Enceladus has a salty ocean containing organic material, energy and a hydrothermal system at the base of the ocean – all ingredients necessary for life.
Ironically, that potential for life is part of why Cassini must die. After a decade of orbiting and two mission extensions, Cassini is almost out of fuel.
“We are ending the mission by burning up in Saturn’s atmosphere to protect two worlds, Enceladus and Titan, that might have oceans suitable for life,” Spilker says. “NASA required that we dispose of Cassini… in a way that would protect Enceladus and Titan from a later impact.”
Sentimental goodbye
The mission will end on 15 September, 2017. “Even in its final plunge, it will continuously download data until the last few minutes,” says Spilker.
The team speaks of the end sentimentally. “As Mephistopheles told Faust, ‘all that exists is worthy to perish’,” Esposito says. “This is a worthy ending for Cassini that allows us to take more risk to discover new results.”
“There’s something romantic about the idea of Cassini sailing on forever, but it’s trapped in Saturn orbit and can’t roam the cosmic void,” says Jonathan Lunine of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. “There’s some solace in thinking that Cassini’s atoms will merge in Saturn’s interior with atoms that have been there since the beginning.”
“On the day, we’ll gather at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with the Cassini family, and when the signal stops, there will be a moment of silence for the loss of a dear friend we’ve known since 1990,” says Spilker. “It will be a sad day, but it’s achieved so much over the course of many years, we’ll say goodbye with a mixture of sadness and pride.”
https://www.newscientist.com/article...-CASSINIPLUNGE
Incredible stuff...Quote:
Originally Posted by kingwilly
Again, wow...That moon sounds like a Mexican Restaurant...Quote:
Originally Posted by kingwilly
Enceladus
Enceladus was one of the Gigantes, the Giants, in Greek mythology, son of Gaea and Uranus. All the Giants were born when Cronus, son of Uranus, castrated his father and the blood fell onto the earth (Gaea).
During the Gigantomachy, the great battle between the Giants and the Olympian gods, Enceladus was the primary adversary of goddess Athena, who threw the island of Sicily against the fleeing Giant and buried him under it. Another source, however, mentions that it was Zeus that hurled a thunderbolt against Enceladus and killed him. Many sources claim that Enceladus was buried under Mount Etna, although others thought it was the monster Typhon or Briareus, one of the Hekatonheires, that was buried there. In any case, Enceladus was considered to be the main cause of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and when Mount Etna erupted, it was considered to be Enceladus' breath.
^ If you're looking for nearby alien sea creatures, try Europa (Jupiter) and Enceladus (Saturn). Likely hydrothermal vents on an ocean seabed. If live evolved there it would likely be translucent, without vision, the rest would be more of a guess. :)
so they already have something in common with us.....Quote:
Originally Posted by Luigi
For the past five years, Russia has been building a new spaceport in its Far East, about 3,500 miles (5,500 kilometers) away from Moscow, called the Vostochny Cosmodrome. Russia is seeking to reduce its dependence on the existing Baikonur Cosmodrome, located in Kazakhstan, for both civilian and military launches. The first successful launch took place late last week, on April 28, 2016. The building-out of Vostochny continues, as many support facilities and another six launch pads are planned.
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God is with us. (Russian national motto)
SpaceX Successfully Lands Rocket
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This image posted to Twitter by SpaceX shows an unmanned Falcon 9 rocket that landed May 6, 2016 on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean.
SpaceX has once again successfully landed a booster rocket on an ocean platform. The feat was accomplished after the rocket deployed a Japanese communication satellite into orbit.
The unmanned Falcon 9 rocket landed early Friday on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean off the southeastern U.S. coast of Florida.
Last month, internet entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully landed a used booster rocket after it launched a unmanned cargo ship to the International Space Station.
SpaceX is striving to perfect the technique of landing the booster rockets, making them as reusable as aircraft rather than dumping the expensive equipment into the ocean after each launch.
SpaceX Successfully Lands Rocket
Quote:
Originally Posted by misskit
This second barge landing is significant, because it shows that they can repeat their success and because this is a landing with very small fuel margin. This was a very heavy satellite while the first two landings were achieved after launching light payloads that gave them a lot of fuel to use for landing.
I have not seen any video yet because of a poor internet connection but heard the landing was spectacular compared to the last one because they used a fuel saving 3 engine maneuver with much faster braking. People said on video it looked almost as if the landed rocket appeared out of nowhere.
^ WOW! Found the vid. Hope you can see it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix_Q_tSQc1Y
Another chance to blind yourself...
Mercury Is About to Sail Across the Sun—Here’s How to Watch
Quote:
Originally Posted by misskit
Thanks. Yes with a lot of patience I got it loaded. Will watch it repeatedly.:)
BTW the people in the background chanting are the people who actually built this thing. Also the presenters they use during the live show are SpaceX technicians, not professional presenters.
Following their sounds they too thought for a moment with the bright flash, it exploded. Only after the camera dimmed it down and the rocket became visible they started to cheer again.
That rocket comes down from more than 100km in free fall. From powering up the engines to landing it is only about 8 seconds. That's how precise the timing got to be to get it landed safely. Also switching off the engines only a split second late would cause ther rocket to lift off again and then crash.
They come in fast, brake to speed zero at zero altitude and turn off the engine at precisely that moment too.
A bit similar to driving for a brick wall at max throttle, then do max braking to have your bumper touching the wall but not dented. Plus being penalized for failure when stopping 10cm early.
What's the plan for landing astronauts?
In a separate landing module that is ejected before landing and parachutes down?
Presently they are working on a manned version of their Dragon capsule. It will launch people to the ISS and bring them back. Other capsules have external escape rockets that pull the capsule away to safety from the launch vehicle in case of failure. The capsule then descends under parachutes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Luigi
SpaceX builds engines in the side walls of the Dragon capsule. Those engines would pull Dragon to safety and then land under parachutes. In case of a normal landing Dragon has a variety of options.
It can come down under parachutes into the ocean like Apollo did. It is the easiest method and is presently favored by NASA.
SpaceX wants land landing because dipping into the sea makes reuse much harder. They can do that in two ways. One is coming down under parachutes and do a short burst of the engines for a soft landing. SpaceX assures the parachute landing even if the engines fail would not be harder than present landings of the russian Sojus capsules. But NASA being ultra conservative does not accept that.
The really preferred option by SpaceX is fully powered landing on the spot with helicopter precision. Though it would be very safe. There are 8 engines of an extremely robust and reliable type. Only 4 of those engines would need to work for safe landing. SpaceX proposes to test fire the engines at an altitude where they still can deploy the parachutes. If anything at all is off they would switch to parachute landing. Once that test is passed they have to rely on at least 4 of the engines to work on landing. NASA is even more sceptical of that and SpaceX is working on demonstrating those landing types until NASA is satisfied and accepts it.
Long term, for landing on Mars, people would actually be on a rocket that lands on its main engines but that will be a new vehicle under development. Details are announced to be released this year in September. The space community is waiting for that. The architecture will be way in advance of anything NASA is even contemplating.