According to the old saying, ‘The Other Shoe has now dropped’. (Actually, it landed softly, being lowered by parachutes.)
We heard the first shoe drop upon the occasion in which the Obama USA presidential administration canceled NASA development work on rocket vehicles to launch humans into orbit and beyond. (At least that effort was de-funded for a year or more.) Even before that, some of those, who are highly knowledgeable about design of space launch systems, stated that they saw design errors in the program.
Now for that other shoe. A human space flight vehicle, developed and operated by a private company, was launched in early Dec. 2010. It remained aloft for several orbits. It reentered, parachuted to a landing at sea, and was successfully recovered. A number of analysts suggest this is the kind of effort the Obama administration was looking forward to. NASA would be customer, not developer, of space launch services.
Recent major Milestones by Space Exploration Technologies Company (Space-X)
June 2010: Falcon 9 rocket is test flown to orbit.
8 Dec. 2010: Test flight of Dragon reusable space craft occurs. It is boosted to orbit by Falcon launch rocket. After several orbits, the Dragon spacecraft re-entered, parachuted to land at sea, and is recovered. The craft will likely be used again in future flights.
Space-X, Falcon, Dragon
Several decades ago I had the pleasure of checking out and reading a text upon the topic of space launch vehicle and spacecraft design principles. It was available within a library of a university with an aerospace engineering dept., close to my residence. It featured rockets & space technologies of the Mercury, Gemini, & Apollo programs.
The space-x company staff now have had the even more satisfying pleasure of bring to completion their own design projects embodying these principles. The Space-X web site discloses enough data about their current projects to confirm this judgement.
They carried out development and manufacturing projects for space launch services. They designate the rocket launch vehicle as Falcon 9. It employs Merlin rocket engines, which they designed and build. These burn liquid oxygen and kerosene as the propellant mix. They have published a list of launch prices for customers needing items to be launched into low Earth orbit (low inclination or polar), or geostationary transfer orbit.
Additionally, they developed Dragon, a spacecraft similar to Apollo command & service modules.
Configuration 1 of Dragon is for transport of four crew members from ground to orbit, and / or the reverse. Configuration 2 is for transport of supplies, with no crew present.
The Dragon module for crew or cargo, designed for atmospheric entry, constitutes a reusable spacecraft. The 2 launch booster stages, and the service module (which includes solar photovoltaic panels for on-orbit electric power) are all expended on each flight. Earth surface landing is via parachutes, with splash-down at sea.
The International space station would be central among the intended destinations. Customers other than Nasa / ESA, including nongovernmental ones, are among the desired customers sought by Space-X.
A reading of their site made very clear the developmental philosophy – -: least technical risk; highest reliability of operation.
Overall, I would call the Space-X program as “Surprise-Free Engineering Development”. Time will tell whether theirs is the system which will do well in the USA and International markets.
They will launch payloads about 1/2 of the size that typically has been carried in the NASA Shuttles cargo beys. Their published launch price, of 46 to 57 million US$, is in contrast to 1 billion US$ for a shuttle launch, 300 million US$ for launches of certain other space rockets. That is an important price difference.
There are other players with which to compare Space-X. One is the off-spring of the team which won the X-prise. By contrast, it has the performance capability to perform sub-orbital flights only. It is fully reusable, and can re-fly within several days. Technology neat features, though, may be less important than institutional conditions and economics.
– – pwbmspac – –