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Takes on a whole new significance what with the shuttle closing down in a few flights, Team Obama reconsidering major parts of the Constellation program and Russia upping the cost of Soyuz ISS flights to over $51 million/seat.
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Update
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
It's been an incredibly busy year so far at SpaceX and we continue to move full steam ahead. Of particular note are recent developments with respect to the Dragon spacecraft.
The image below shows the first joining of a full flight fidelity Dragon capsule and trunk section earlier this year on the manufacturing floor at our Hawthorne headquarters.
(note: Dragon in crew mode has 2 decks capable of carrying 7 astronauts: 3 below and 4 on the flight deck)
Standing over 23 feet tall in flight configuration, the stack included the Dragon qualification capsule and first flight trunk section, topped off with the carbon composite nose cap. The cap protects the spacecraft's common berthing mechanism ring, which enables it to join securely to the ISS, so that astronauts can access the interior of the capsule.
The trunk section then travelled to our Texas site where it completed structural testing in preparation for the first Dragon flight under the NASA COTS program, currently scheduled as the second Falcon 9 launch. During that flight, Dragon will make several orbits of the Earth, reenter the atmosphere and splashdown off the coast of Southern California. The gap between the capsule and trunk in the photo above will be filled by our lightweight, high performance PICA-X heat shield panels which will protect the capsule during reentry.
The engineering heat shield shown above has precisely machined test tiles fitted into place in their flight configuration. With 17 Dragon flights presently on our manifest, our PICA-X lab is operating non-stop to meet all our mission needs. SpaceX has come a long way since starting out in 2002 — all the way to Earth orbit. Our team now numbers over 700 and we're still hiring.
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
It's been an incredibly busy year so far at SpaceX and we continue to move full steam ahead. Of particular note are recent developments with respect to the Dragon spacecraft.
The image below shows the first joining of a full flight fidelity Dragon capsule and trunk section earlier this year on the manufacturing floor at our Hawthorne headquarters.
(note: Dragon in crew mode has 2 decks capable of carrying 7 astronauts: 3 below and 4 on the flight deck)
Standing over 23 feet tall in flight configuration, the stack included the Dragon qualification capsule and first flight trunk section, topped off with the carbon composite nose cap. The cap protects the spacecraft's common berthing mechanism ring, which enables it to join securely to the ISS, so that astronauts can access the interior of the capsule.
The trunk section then travelled to our Texas site where it completed structural testing in preparation for the first Dragon flight under the NASA COTS program, currently scheduled as the second Falcon 9 launch. During that flight, Dragon will make several orbits of the Earth, reenter the atmosphere and splashdown off the coast of Southern California. The gap between the capsule and trunk in the photo above will be filled by our lightweight, high performance PICA-X heat shield panels which will protect the capsule during reentry.
The engineering heat shield shown above has precisely machined test tiles fitted into place in their flight configuration. With 17 Dragon flights presently on our manifest, our PICA-X lab is operating non-stop to meet all our mission needs. SpaceX has come a long way since starting out in 2002 — all the way to Earth orbit. Our team now numbers over 700 and we're still hiring.