The International Space Station (aka ISS) - floating several hundred miles above the earth - had a setback several weeks ago. Now that the last Space Shuttle has been retired, it is up to the Russians to bring supplies to the ISS. The Russians are using their outdated unmanned Soyuz rockets to deliver much needed supplies. The last shipment was unsuccessful, it exploded after take off. The Russians are saying they will not send up another one till they fix the problem that blew up this one. So the crew of the ISS are left without supplies, which will run out in November.
Now for the really cool part - The Dragon. The Dragon and Falcon9 are products of SpaceX - see http://www.spacex.com/ for more details. SpaceX is attempting to be the first privately funded manned spacecraft, and it plans on docking with the ISS some time in December.
The Falcon 9 is the rocket that will boost the Dragon spacecraft into orbit.
Here is a great picture of the Dragon capsule:
Here are the details:
Now the bad news - The Dragon will not be ready in time to save the ISS mission. The dragon will not be ready for docking till December. The ISS crew will need to leave the ISS by November 19th if the Russians can't get their act together and deliver supplies.
But if the Russians can deliver supplies, there will be people on board the ISS able to help with the docking. So we may see the first commercial
Reader "David" posted some interesting extra details in the comments. I will re-post his comment here. Thanks David!
Just a couple of corrections and some interesting details. First, last year became the first private company to launch a vehicle into orbit and renter that vehicle to a safe and successful- touchdown on Earth. Until now only the Russians The U.S. and the Chinese governments have been the only entities to do so. The Soyuz rocket did not explode during launch. It's upper stage failed to ignite and therefore could not reach orbit. The cause has been determined to be a faulty gas generator. The gas generator supplies the turbo pumps with their initial rotation until the flow of fuel or exhaust takes over the job. Also there are three other spacecraft being developed by private companies under contract with NASA in what is called the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Program (COTS); Boeing has a capsule, Sierra Nevada is developing a small space-plane called Dream Chaser (way cool!) and Orbital Sciences is developing a non-reusable cargo ship. SpaceX has also entered Dragon and their rocket,the Falcon 9, into the Commercial Crew Development program (CC-Dev)which is for future manned missions.
Another couple of cool points about Dragon and the Falcon 9 are that Dragon will eventually land using it's rocket thrusters built into the side of the ship which will also be used for the emergency escape system and its main thrusters when in space and secondly, their other plan is to reuse the first stage. This will require the first stage to do a 180 degree flip after its upper stage has been separated, restart it's engines to slow down, flip again to reorient for reentry and then land in the ocean on a parachute system. Both of those things are super cool!
SpaceX is designing another rocket called the Falcon 9 Heavy which will be basically the same as Falcon 9 but with two more identical booster rockets strapped to either side of the main core stage. This will be the most powerful rocket in existence and second only to the Apollo era Saturn V. Furthermore SpaceX will have launch facilities in Cape Canaveral in Florida, Vandenburg Air Force Base in California which is currently under construction, and another facility, possibly in Texas. This is because SpaceX already has a huge number of manifested launches already on the books for satellite companies and others. They believe that they will be producing one rocket per week when they ramp everything up to full production Now for the absolute best part of all of this. They are doing everything for about 10% of what NASA would cost to do the same. They plane to achieve the Holy Grail of the space industry, launches for $1000 or less per pound. Historically the cost has been about $20,000 per pound per launch.
Photos courtesy of SpaceX/NASA
The SpaceX mission in December will NOT be manned. But still it is an important mile stone.
ReplyDeleteLate 2013 is the best hope for a manned flight from SpaceX (or any other US vessel)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteYou are correct! Unmanned it is! i made a correction to the text.
ReplyDeleteJust a couple of corrections and some interesting details. First, last year became the first private company to launch a vehicle into orbit and renter that vehicle to a safe and successful- touchdown on Earth. Until now only the Russians The U.S. and the Chinese governments have been the only entities to do so. The Soyuz rocket did not explode during launch. It's upper stage failed to ignite and therefore could not reach orbit. The cause has been determined to be a faulty gas generator. The gas generator supplies the turbo pumps with their initial rotation until the flow of fuel or exhaust takes over the job. Also there are three other spacecraft being developed by private companies under contract with NASA in what is called the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Program (COTS); Boeing has a capsule, Sierra Nevada is developing a small space-plane called Dream Chaser (way cool!) and Orbital Sciences is developing a non-reusable cargo ship. SpaceX has also entered Dragon and their rocket,the Falcon 9, into the Commercial Crew Development program (CC-Dev)which is for future manned missions.
ReplyDeleteAnother couple of cool points about Dragon and the Falcon 9 are that Dragon will eventually land using it's rocket thrusters built into the side of the ship which will also be used for the emergency escape system and its main thrusters when in space and secondly, their other plan is to reuse the first stage. This will require the first stage to do a 180 degree flip after its upper stage has been separated, restart it's engines to slow down, flip again to reorient for reentry and then land in the ocean on a parachute system. Both of those things are super cool!
SpaceX is designing another rocket called the Falcon 9 Heavy which will be basically the same as Falcon 9 but with two more identical booster rockets strapped to either side of the main core stage. This will be the most powerful rocket in existence and second only to the Apollo era Saturn V. Furthermore SpaceX will have launch facilities in Cape Canaveral in Florida, Vandenburg Air Force Base in California which is currently under construction, and another facility, possibly in Texas. This is because SpaceX already has a huge number of manifested launches already on the books for satellite companies and others. They believe that they will be producing one rocket per week when they ramp everything up to full production Now for the absolute best part of all of this. They are doing everything for about 10% of what NASA would cost to do the same. They plane to achieve the Holy Grail of the space industry, launches for $1000 or less per pound. Historically the cost has been about $20,000 per pound per launch.
It's late. Please pardon the typos.
ReplyDelete