The Right Stuff still exists

[Dr Mordrid]

Before the recent COTS-1 Dragon mission it was discovered that the Falcon 9's 2nd stage nozzle had cracks near its rim. Any other outfit would have pulled the rocket off the pad, put it horizontal in the hangar and waited for the factory in California to ship a new nozzle. The delay would have been at least a week. Not SpaceX. They determined that this nozzle would work if just trimmed, but that could still involve bringing down the rocket and taking it apart.

What to do....

Enter Marty Anderson. Marty is an engineer at SpaceX, but Elon Musk describes him as more of an artist. The problem is that Marty hates to fly - he's afraid of heights. Marty decided to suppress his fears for the missions sake;

Marty flew in from California, scaled the Falcon 9 to a height of almost 110 feet using a crane, opened an access panel on the interstage (1st/2nd stage connector), climbed in and did surgery on the nozzle with a pair of snips - removing almost 4 feet of it. All of this was caught on mission cameras inside the interstage.

The next day the Falcon 9 launched Dragon on a mission that's still causing a huge commotion in the international space community, in Washington DC and in the press. Even the ESA has said they need to re-examine how they do things.

Marty Anderson inside the F9 interstage (blue tape = cut line)

[VJ]

Cool!
You may start to wonder why it had the rim in the first place though, if it is not necessary.

Just a small remark: fear of heights and fear of flying are not related. A friend of mine is a flight attended who is afraid of heigts. She never has issues flying, but is scared when she has to open the plane door. Basically, fear of heights is only an issue when you still are in contact with the ground (standing on a chair or elevated thing). As soon as you "lift-off", it should pass - at least, that is what I've been told.

[Brian Ellis]

Cool!
Just a small remark: fear of heights and fear of flying are not related. A friend of mine is a flight attended who is afraid of heigts. She never has issues flying, but is scared when she has to open the plane door. Basically, fear of heights is only an issue when you still are in contact with the ground (standing on a chair or elevated thing). As soon as you "lift-off", it should pass - at least, that is what I've been told.

Agreed. I get vertigo standing on a thick carpet! Seriously, I've had vertigo attacks on a few occasions which were not only uncomfortable, they were literally paralysing and I couldn't move away from the situation causing an ever-increasing fear. On step-ladders, I can't go higher than where I can still white-knuckle the top and I detest working over my head (e.g., helping the other half put up curtains or changing bulbs in a ceiling fitting) as I fear I'm falling all the time.

Yet I have no problem in aircraft or even helicopters. I even prefer window seats (I detest being brushed by the drinks trolley, each time it passes).

[Dr Mordrid]

Well, it's said Marty has both problems.

As for the 2nd stage nozzle; it's that large to extract the last bit of performance when launching larger satellites to geostationary transfer orbits. For a low Earth orbit with Dragon that nth-percent isn't necessary, manned or un-manned.

Also, even with the nozzle cut (material: niobium) the 2nd stage was re-started after dropping off Dragon and 8 other smaller satellites, 5 of them military or intellegence birds, in a 200+ mile low Earth orbit - ending up in a 7,900 mile orbit. Re-start and that kind of margin, not to mention the multi-satellite capability, are a nice feature to have.

As for heights, I looked at skydiving out of airplanes at up to 36,000 feet & off buildings etc. as fun

[KRSESQ]

I'd have no problem going up there, although son Luke and brother Frank couldn't.

The interstage is a lot roomier than I imagined.

[Dr Mordrid]

Dragon is pretty darned roomy itself. It's 3.6 meter diameter doesn't sound like it, but its sides are more vertical than Apollo, Orion or CST-100 and it's higher proportionately.

As a result instead of 1 deck with 3-4 crewmembers like Apollo or Orion, Dragon has 2 decks with 3 & 4 crew each, for a total of 7 while still having a bit of space for some cargo. It also has 1290+ kg of fuel & solar power, allowing for a long free-fly missions.

CST-100 may carry 7-8 passengers, but its fuel is very limited and it only has batteries, no solar, so its missions are limited to 2 day taxi flights.

Orion is, like Dragon, an exploration vehicle capable of long flights but it's development costs are rising so high/fast that it may never fly as often as Dragon, if ever. $10 billion spent so far, it has no rocket (add costs for man-rating Delta IV Heavy here) and it's still 4-6 years from even an unmanned test flight.