Dragon 2

[Reorte]

On 27/05/2020 at 21:22, woodenhead said:

So they might dress Star Trek and have a sci fi interior but we are still have the same frail old rockets to get us off the Earth.

 

An Aliens style space marines drop from a mother ship into a storm is a long way way away.

 

Let alone x-wing fighter style craft racing from 1.0 gravity into space, manoeuvering like a fighter plane and returning to ground without heat shields.

 

Why I believe we are forever trapped on this planet and probably the same for any other intelligent species in the universe.

Whilst scifi ships don't look like being plausible (sadly) I do think some day we'll have at least settlements elsewhere in this solar system.  There are fancier drives than rockets around once you're in space, ion drives are reality and concepts like laser propulsion sound feasible. They provide thrust for a long time, just not a lot of it, so can't be used for getting off the ground but are ideal for unmanned probes at least. I do think some day we'll manage to send probes to nearby stars, there are concepts there that require significant improvements in technology but that's arguably more an engineering than science problem.

[rockershovel]

8 hours ago, 57xx said:

Yeah, have noticed that on the ship landings. Wonder if the rocket exhaust is doing something to the signal. Ground landings are fine as the cameras aren't bang up close to the boosters.

 

I’d guess that they simply turn it off, especially considering the failure rate of these things. One failed during the last publicised mission, after all; they won’t see any value in advertising THAT. 

[57xx]

3 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

I’d guess that they simply turn it off, especially considering the failure rate of these things. One failed during the last publicised mission, after all; they won’t see any value in advertising THAT. 

 

I'd disagree on that, they are very open about their failures, to the point of hosting videos of them on their Youtube channel. They don't try and hide anything.

 

Also, they're not that bad as far as failure rates for something so unique and ground breaking. 84% recovery rate overall and 87.5% for the latest Block 5 and that includes ones where they knew they'd be making no attempt at recovery.

 

Edited May 31, 2020 by 57xx

[woodenhead]

10 hours ago, Reorte said:

Whilst scifi ships don't look like being plausible (sadly) I do think some day we'll have at least settlements elsewhere in this solar system.  There are fancier drives than rockets around once you're in space, ion drives are reality and concepts like laser propulsion sound feasible. They provide thrust for a long time, just not a lot of it, so can't be used for getting off the ground but are ideal for unmanned probes at least. I do think some day we'll manage to send probes to nearby stars, there are concepts there that require significant improvements in technology but that's arguably more an engineering than science problem.

We've shown with Voyager we can build interstellar spacecraft, but they can take a long time to get where they are going, for us organics we simply don't have the means to sit inside a metal box for thousands of years to get to a rock that isn't habitable.

 

 

3 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

I’d guess that they simply turn it off, especially considering the failure rate of these things. One failed during the last publicised mission, after all; they won’t see any value in advertising THAT. 

 

When they lost connection last night, I thought the same thing, no-one wants to see another rocket explode this week even if there is no danger to life in this particular case.   I was a bit surprised that SpaceX were testing SN4 this week given the destructive capacity those rockets have had during testing, they'd had been better waiting till the Falcon launch was completed but I suppose for the astronauts in Dragon they know the risks they take especially as test pilots.

 

What really impressed me was the seemingly smooth ride the astranauts had in the early stages of the flight, in the shuttle they used to bounce about a lot more than in the Dragon, it looked like they hadn't actually taken off (one for the conspiracy theorists, though explain the floaty dinosaur later).

 

I was reading an article last night about space flight, depending on where you determine space to be will adjust who were the first people to send a craft to space, but if you look at the linear line that led to the Russian and American Ballistic missile programmes, which gave us manned space flight then it began in Germany during the second world war.   The V2 rocket could reach at leat 50 miles vertically so would in some cases be deemed spaceflight, I'd read somewhere that some got a lot higher in vertical testing.  But if you look at general history spaceflight starts with Sputnik, Gagarin and Gemini - even though the Americans and Russians had been flying V2s or copies of V2s since the end of the war.  It's not that the history is hidden but I don't think people want to talk about the debt they owe the people who died building those initial rockets that eventually led to us sending people to the Moon.  Plenty of animals had also been sent to space before Sputnik became famous because it was the first object to orbit the Earth, before that everything that went up came straight back down in some form or another.

[Barry Ten]

There's a story that a manhole cover above an underground nuclear test may have been the first artificial thing to achieve escape velocity:

 

https://www.theregister.com/2015/07/16/america_soviets_space_race/

[woodenhead]

8 minutes ago, 57xx said:

 

I'd disagree on that, they are very open about their failures, to the point of hosting videos of them on their Youtube channel. They don't try and hide anything.

 

Also, they're not that bad as far as failure rates for something so unique and ground breaking. 84% recovery rate overall and 87.5% for the latest Block 5 and that includes ones where they knew they'd be making no attempt at recovery.

 

I think they will hide some things from the public, no company spending billions of dollars will make everything public.

 

But yes they are quite open as a company and they have really got a good handle on marketing themselves, they have certainly made spaceflight exciting again which Nasa would sometimes struggle with in later Apollo missions and at some point in the Shuttle programme (though perhaps because they themselves were nervous about those missions later on).

 

The Falcon heavy recoveries were impressive, on land they kept the stream running, on the drone they mentioned the vibration causes issues with connections (come on guys you can land a rocket but not keep your internet running lol).  It still looks like Sci-fi when they land those rockets.

 

 

 

[woodenhead]

6 minutes ago, Barry Ten said:

There's a story that a manhole cover above an underground nuclear test may have been the first artificial thing to achieve escape velocity:

 

https://www.theregister.com/2015/07/16/america_soviets_space_race/

Again it serves to make space travel a reality in the 1950s not the 1940s - history revisions because no-one still wants to say it was the Germans who made the early technology.  Rather like the Americans making noises now about Russion nuclear powered cruise missiles when it was the Americans who first developed them in the 1960s but luckily backed away because the only way to use them would be to lay waste to vast swathes of Western Europe as they got from launch locations to the then USSR.

[Stubby47]

What impressed me was the rate of acceleration. 

 

For the first 2000km/h the 10s were ticking over about 1 per second.

By the time it was over 4000km/h, the 100s were ticking over at 1 per second. And it just got faster and faster.

Edited May 31, 2020 by Stubby47

[Reorte]

2 hours ago, woodenhead said:

We've shown with Voyager we can build interstellar spacecraft, but they can take a long time to get where they are going, for us organics we simply don't have the means to sit inside a metal box for thousands of years to get to a rock that isn't habitable.

 

The Voyagers were designed first and foremost for studying the solar system rather than exploring further, although it's very impressive that they're still going and returning useful data. Have a look at Breakthrough Starshot for a truly interstellar mission idea - large numbers of very small craft that could be accelerated up to a significant fraction of the speed of light, an estimated journey time to Alpha Centauri of 20 - 30 years.

 

That doesn't get people there and there are no sound ideas yet for how that would be possible, but given enough time and the eventual discovery of somewhere definitely worth going outside the solar system I think we will crack that problem, although it'll be long after my lifetime and the required technology is starting to stray in to science fiction territory. But set up shop on the Moon and getting anywhere in space gets a lot easier.

[57xx]

4 hours ago, Stubby47 said:

What impressed me was the rate of acceleration. 

 

For the first 2000km/h the 10s were ticking over about 1 per second.

By the time it was over 4000km/h, the 100s were ticking over at 1 per second. And it just got faster and faster.

 

And just as impressive for me in some ways  (and my brother mentioned it to) was after SECO, you could see the acceleration suddenly drop to zero. Pretty obvious from the physics point of view but seeing it on their "speedo" was another thing.

[rockershovel]

Well, I thought that was all pretty amazing, but where was the Strauss waltz? Or the stewardess picking the pen out of the air? 

[rockershovel]

4 hours ago, 57xx said:

 

I'd disagree on that, they are very open about their failures, to the point of hosting videos of them on their Youtube channel. They don't try and hide anything.

 

Also, they're not that bad as far as failure rates for something so unique and ground breaking. 84% recovery rate overall and 87.5% for the latest Block 5 and that includes ones where they knew they'd be making no attempt at recovery.

 

 

Well, quite. Having had experience of remote operations offshore, I’m always amazed that this sort of thing works AT ALL, let alone 85% of the time. The complexity of the control systems are beyond what most people can imagine. 

[57xx]

5 hours ago, woodenhead said:

But if you look at general history spaceflight starts with Sputnik, Gagarin and Gemini - even though the Americans and Russians had been flying V2s or copies of V2s since the end of the war.

 

Mercury, not Gemini.

 

I read somewhere the only reason that Gagarin was the first to orbit the earth is because the Soviet nukes were inferior in technology to the US ones and weighed a lot more. Their boosters were thus more powerful and able to get the velocity required. The Redstone ICBM booster used on the first two manned Mercury flights was only designed for sub-orbital ballistic trajectories, hence having to wait till the more powerful Atlas booster could be used for the first US orbital flight.

Edited May 31, 2020 by 57xx

[Ozexpatriate]

5 hours ago, woodenhead said:

... even though the Americans and Russians had been flying V2s or copies of V2s since the end of the war.  It's not that the history is hidden but I don't think people want to talk about the debt they owe the people who died building those initial rockets that eventually led to us sending people to the Moon. 

Wernher Von Braun's past (and the contributions by his team co-opted to the US space program) were covered contemporaneously and extensively covered in the 50th anniversary documentaries of the Apollo 11 mission.

 

There are television interviews with him at the time asking him whether he was a member of the NASDP and whether he was aware of the forced labour used. And there's always this which was contemporaneous and pretty much on the nose. Tom Lehrer's phrasing of "a man whose allegiance was ruled by expedience" is not only clever but apt.

 

It was controversial then and is controversial still, though at this point, 50 years later it is simply part of the historical fabric. It's not something that can be undone or changed. Not only are there the direct casualties of V2 weapons but the forced labour by concentration camp internees who manufactured at least some components for the programme.

[57xx]

Dock the Dragon yourself...

 

Can't remember if this has been posted anywhere before:

 

https://iss-sim.spacex.com/

 

Uses the same interface that the crew have on their touch-screen controls in the capsule.

[woodenhead]

1 hour ago, 57xx said:

 

Mercury, not Gemini.

Ah yes, my bad

[woodenhead]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Wernher Von Braun's past (and the contributions by his team co-opted to the US space program) were covered contemporaneously and extensively covered in the 50th anniversary documentaries of the Apollo 11 mission.

 

There are television interviews with him at the time asking him whether he was a member of the NASDP and whether he was aware of the forced labour used. And there's always this which was contemporaneous and pretty much on the nose. Tom Lehrer's phrasing of "a man whose allegiance was ruled by expedience" is not only clever but apt.

 

It was controversial then and is controversial still, though at this point, 50 years later it is simply part of the historical fabric. It's not something that can be undone or changed. Not only are there the direct casualties of V2 weapons but the forced labour by concentration camp internees who manufactured at least some components for the programme.

When I was searching for stuff earlier what I found on the web was generally the space race began in 1957 with Sputnik, it'sl like a carefully choreographed airbrushing, no-one will deny the roots of space race but don't talk about it unless specifically asked.

 

As always our history is airbrushed to play a tune, we all know the tune but that's because we know the original tune, bet plenty are young enough to only know the remix not the original.

[Ozexpatriate]

6 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

.., generally the space race began in 1957 with Sputnik

I guess it does depend where you look. The "space race" as a cold war artifact did begin with Sputnik.

 

Rocketry is much older. Many if not most of the documentaries I see will go back to the invention of gun powder by the Chinese and/or Greek fire projectiles and work their way through William Congreve*, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and Goddard, long before talking about Werhner Von Braun and Sergei Korolev.

 

* Who observed rockets developed by Kingdom of Mysore which were sent to Woolich. 

 

As you say, it's not hidden - you just have to look for it. Most history is this way. If you look at the history of early US and Soviet missile development 1945 - 1955, rather than the "space race" it's all there, since it was (former) German researchers doing the work.

[woodenhead]

Watching playback of them preparing to open the hatch - again not like in the movies, this would take up most of a film, so many checks and protocols to adhere to.

[rocor]

Looking at the displays in front of the astronauts reminded me of a certain classic science fiction film released 52 years ago.

[Steamport Southport]

"Something floating about. No idea what it is. I've been told it's a toy dinosaur"

 

I can't remember what channel it was, BBC or SKY. But that was the standard of commentary. 

 

BTW It was obviously a dragon and presumably was a mascot for the mission.

 

 

 

Jason

[rockershovel]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

When I was searching for stuff earlier what I found on the web was generally the space race began in 1957 with Sputnik, it'sl like a carefully choreographed airbrushing, no-one will deny the roots of space race but don't talk about it unless specifically asked.

 

As always our history is airbrushed to play a tune, we all know the tune but that's because we know the original tune, bet plenty are young enough to only know the remix not the original.

 

It was well understood at the time, that the Space Race was an extension of the Cold War. American pioneers like Goddard, and Russians like Tsiolkovosky were interested in orbital flight, but the Germans weren’t. They correctly identified that sub-orbital flight was quite sufficient for their purposes. 

 

The Space Race, in its early days was well known to be a case of “our Germans against their Germans” and that was just how it was.  Von Braun and his team were simply “useful mercenaries”, Malenkov, Kruschche, Castro, Ho Chi Minh and Chou en-Lai were the villains of the hour, Senator Macarthy ruled the airwaves. It was a war, that was all people knew or cared. 

 

Thats why public interest in Apollo collapsed after #11 - the battle was perceived as won, people KNEW the moon itself was worthless. 

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

... generally the space race began in 1957 with Sputnik, it's like a carefully choreographed airbrushing, no-one will deny the roots of space race but don't talk about it unless specifically asked

As you suggest, there's no conspiracy to hide the past and origins of US rocketry.

 

Your comments made me think of an alternative reason that there's not a clear narrative in most easily accessible information sources. I don't think it's choreographed. I think it is because the story is very complicated.

 

LONG POST FOLLOWS:

 

Beginning with the end of the war in 1945, there are many different agencies at work.

 

First is the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. They would become NASA in 1958 (after Sputnik) but before that managed the X planes. The Bell X1 flew in 1946. The X-15 first flew in 1959. After the sound barrier was broken much of the X plane programme focused on high-altitude flight.

 

Other high-altitude manned flight included the high altitude manned balloon programmes run by the USAF like Project Manhigh (1955 - 1958) and Project Excelsior (which culminated in Aeronaut Joe Kittinger's 31km parachute jump in 1960). Medical personnel from Manhigh would work on Project Mercury.

 

On the rocketry side the ABMA (the US Army Ballistic Missile Agency) was where Von Braun and his German team worked on developing rockets like Redstone and Jupiter.  Essentially competing with the ABMA was the US Naval Research Laboratory with Project Vanguard (launches from 1957 - 1959) which was intended as a satellite launch platform. The NRL was chosen for this because Von Braun was perceived as a public-relations risk.

 

Their competition came to a head with Sputnik. A Vanguard rocket was to carry the first US satellite but failed on the launch pad, embarrassingly so and earned the nickname "kaputnik". Eventually Vanguard would fly, but Explorer I would launch on an ABMA Juno vehicle in early 1958. Ultimately the ABMA would be transferred to NASA later in 1958.

 

The US Army had also formed the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a spin-off from Caltech, which they formalized in 1944 to counter V2 weapons. JPL developed the "Corporal" surface-to-surface missile in 1952.

 

Meanwhile the USAF was doing all kinds of things with rockets from interceptor missiles, ICBM development and ejection seats to rocket powered sleds at the Air Force Missile Development Center at Holloman Air Force Base.  Atlas would fly in 1957 but up until then the Air Force itself had not really focused on ICBMs, with more energy and effort placed on strategic bombers: Convair B-36 (1946),  Boeing B-47 (1947), Boeing B-52 (1952), and Convair Hustler/B-58 (1956).

 

Then there were all the military contractors like Rocketdyne and systems suppliers like Convair, North American, Boeing etc.

 

Kennedy's famous "We choose to go to the moon" speech at Rice University in 1962 helped consolidate all the fractious internecine developments into a concerted effort with Projects Gemini and Apollo. 

 

Rather than try to tell this story of inside politics of competing agencies and branches of the defense forces in the 40s and 50s, it's much easier (like Tom Wolfe did with "The Right Stuff") to focus on manned flight with ready-made heroes in the form of astronauts. The narrative that the US could not have got to the moon without the German researchers is overly simplistic as well, though I am happy to stipulate that their experience resulted in the reliability of the Saturn V.

[Reorte]

17 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

Well, quite. Having had experience of remote operations offshore, I’m always amazed that this sort of thing works AT ALL, let alone 85% of the time. The complexity of the control systems are beyond what most people can imagine. 

 

Had a bit of an argument with someone about that a while ago, who seemed rather unimpressed with the boosters landing

[woodenhead]

14 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

"Something floating about. No idea what it is. I've been told it's a toy dinosaur"

 

I can't remember what channel it was, BBC or SKY. But that was the standard of commentary. 

 

BTW It was obviously a dragon and presumably was a mascot for the mission.

 

Jason

Nah I reckon it's Rex from Toy Story in a shiny spacesuit - the mission has been secretly sponsored by Disney - extension of their buying the Star Wars franchise.

 

Next Toy Story will see Buzz Lightyear go to battle with Zurg on the ISS - the two animators NASA Test Pilots have 110 days to complete the filming.