Dragon is also designed to be reusable, and SpaceX is modifying it to carry crew as well as supplies. The company hopes NASA eventually uses Dragon to launch its astronauts to low-Earth orbit. The country has lacked this capability since NASA's space shuttle fleet retired in July and currently depends on Russian Soyuz vehicles to provide this taxi service.
Musk did not say when he hopes the reusable rocket would be operational, or how much its development would cost. But SpaceX is going to give the enterprise its best shot.
"We have a design that on paper — doing the calculations, doing the simulations — it does work," Musk said. "Now we need to make sure those simulations and reality agree because generally, when they don't, reality wins."
- The Falcon and Dragons of SpaceX
- SpaceX: Fully Reusable Rockets in the Works
- Spaceships of the World: 50 Years of Human Spaceflight
© 2011 TechMediaNetwork.com. All rights reserved.
See what we're tweeting about
6 Comments
Add CommentNasa gave up on the design . It might work if they find an alternative to retro rockets.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAccording to this proposal all three sections will have to carry a significant amount of extra fuel to power the landing rockets, which in earth's gravity will have to be pretty powerful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is a lot of fuel to liftoff with on top of the fuel to achieve lift off ....
Whthin the article it states that "Mars is a prime candidate for human settlement." That may be true. But saving money on the initial launch vehicle is meaningless. If we're ever going to get to Mars we first need a much faster propulsion technology - something that would take weeks (or a few months) rather that at least a year. We have to protect the astronauts from the long exposure to deep space radiation. Once on Mars, this is still an issue. How can humans expect to colonize even this close rocky planet if we don't take this into account? Plus the extremely low atmospheric pressure, the periodic global dust storms, the wide swings in temperature, and the apparent lack of any usable water pose additional concerns. Humans will just not accept living in "bubbles" on different worlds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems like a good time to dust off our copies of Arthur C. Clark's "The Sands of Mars."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAdd some arms and it kinda looks like that Android phone icon. Does it do call-forwarding?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this.
There isn't as much fuel needed as your suggesting. It is much harder to go up then to come down. Elon said their data said the first stage kind of belly flopped on the atmosphere and broke apart. So they need to fire the retros to slow it down enough to ease it into the atmosphere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen it can free fall until it reaches terminal velocity where the air resistance matches the pull of gravity. When I went sky diving it was about 120 mph. I imagine it falling something like an arrow. With the heavy rocket engines at the bottom and the empty fuel tanks at the top it should not want to roll end over end. Then only as it approaches the ground the retros rockets need to fire again to take it from terminal velocity to landing speed. Also the difference between take off weight and landing weight should be dramatic. At take off your not just lifting the rocket but all the unspent fuel.
On the Apollo, there was no air on the moon to help slow down the decent of the LM. So the rocket engine had to fire all the way down to the lunar surface to keep the LM from continuing to accelerate the whole way down.