Falcon 9 / Dragon, First Commercial Man-Capable Spacecraft from low-Earth orbit

[rodsky]

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ORIGINAL POST:
Launch of SpaceX craft could be milestone for privatized space flight - CNN.com

Good luck to the SpaceX team...Go Elon Go!


UPDATE:

(from CNN)

A space-age first: A commercial craft returns from low-Earth orbit
A space-age first: A commercial craft returns from low-Earth orbit - CNN.com

The first commercial spacecraft to return from a low-Earth orbit splashed into the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday about 500 miles off the coast of Southern California.

The Dragon, a craft developed by the company SpaceX, was concluding a brief but possibly historic flight for the infant commercial space travel industry.

The Dragon in space...


Dragon, cutaway view...



The vehicle hit the water shortly after 2 p.m. ET, a little more than three hours after liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida atop a Falcon 9 rocket.

The launch vehicle, the Falcon 9 rocket...


Before splashing down, the Dragon orbited earth at more than 17,000 mph.

Only six nations or government agencies have recovered a spacecraft from a low orbit: the United States, Russia, China, Japan, India and the European Space Agency.

Wednesday's landing was also the first flight under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. The program aims to develop commercial supply services to the international space station.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden praised the mission.

"These new explorers are to spaceflight what Lindbergh was to commercial aviation," he said Wednesday. "While rocket launches from the Cape are considered a common occurrence, the historic significance of today's achievement by SpaceX should not be lost."

Bolden said the mission reflected a new generation of commercial launch systems that would support the international space station and that could eventually carry astronauts into orbit.

It also coincides with the scaling back of some publicly funded space programs. NASA is set to retire its shuttle fleet in 2011.

President Barack Obama's administration would like to see whether private companies can do the fleet's job cheaper and more efficiently.

"This successful demonstration flight is an important milestone in meeting the objectives outlined by President Obama and Congress, and shows how government and industry can leverage expertise and resources to foster a new and vibrant space economy," Bolden said of Wednesday's flight.

In July, a test launch of the Falcon 9 rocket was "essentially a bulls-eye," SpaceX officials said after the rocket successfully pushed past Earth's atmosphere and deposited a mock-up of its Dragon space capsule in orbit.

NASA has been flying shuttles in low Earth orbit for nearly 30 years and going to and from the space station for more than a decade.

NASA has selected SpaceX and another company, Orbital Sciences, to each develop an orbital vehicle that could be used when the United States no longer has its own way to get to the space station. In the meantime, the United States will be renting space from the Russians aboard their Soyuz spacecraft.

The competition is rabid. SpaceX is the first company to reach the launch pad. By this summer, it had spent almost $400 million to get there. SpaceX currently holds a $1.6 billion contract from NASA to transport cargo, but not people, into space.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, said in July that if all goes well after a series of test flights, SpaceX will be ready to begin flying cargo to the space station next year.

Elon beside the Falcon 9's boosters...I don't know if you guys remember, but Elon Musk was in IRON MAN 2, in a cameo role...Stark greeted him before the Grand Prix race inside a restaurant


Musk says it could begin ferrying astronauts to the space station within three years.

"We want to see a future where we are exploring the stars, where we're going to other planets, where we're doing the great things that we read about in science fiction and in the movies," he said in July.

Other entrepreneurs in the emerging commercial space travel business say flights will no longer be confined to astronauts. Spaceport America, a commercial launch facility in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2011.

The company's main tenant, Virgin Galactic, hopes to launch short tourist excursions into space in the near future.


-RODION

[rodsky]

Video of launch...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-ci9xIgNZM

HD Video from NASA (but no onboard camera)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj1qwDxw9nk

Post-flight press conference...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdgDTgEKPXs



"I want us to be a space-faring & multi-planetary civilization. Making sci-fi true...that's my goal for SpaceX. Not profit." - ELON MUSK

I wish I was an engineer. I'd apply at SpaceX tomorrow if I was.

-RODION

[moklo]

Wow, nice share.. but Rodz asa paingon ang kanang first stage sa luncher bitaw niya kanang engine side? dba mo separate man na? Unsa ilang buhaton ana? diba balik man na paingon sa ground?

[yhokz101]

nice.. wait i need to read more. hmmm but nice info...

[rodsky]

Wow, nice share.. but Rodz asa paingon ang kanang first stage sa luncher bitaw niya kanang engine side? dba mo separate man na? Unsa ilang buhaton ana? diba balik man na paingon sa ground?

There are two stages, plus the capsule, which means the stack is in 3 parts --the two stages (currently) are unrecoverable, but Elon said during the post-mission press conference that they might improve recoverability of stage 1 (just needs more ablatives). During this particular mission, the 1st stage burned up during its fall back to earth. You cannot recover stage 2, because that one fires on into a very elliptical orbit, something like 150km x 11,000km.

-RODION

[moklo]

Hmmm.. tuyuon na nila ug burn or tungod ra sa atmospheric friction?

[rodsky]

Hmmm.. tuyuon na nila ug burn or tungod ra sa atmospheric friction?

Not intended. The burning is due to friction of air during re-entry. Which is why new ablative materials for the 1st stage are needed, if they do want to make it "recoverable".

-RODION

[moklo]

Not intended. The burning is due to friction of air during re-entry. Which is why new ablative materials for the 1st stage are needed, if they do want to make it "recoverable".

-RODION

Grabiha jud diay ka init kung mo enter ka sa atmosphere sa earth. SO we expect nga material nga gamit sa 3rd stage mas lig-on compare sa 1st ug 2nd.

Another question Sir ROdz, why is that during sa lunch, sa pag paingon sa gawas pa lang wala ma sunog? Is it tungod sad sa speed nga mas kusog ang pag ka hulog kay sa speed sa pag launch?

I don't know kung asa jud ang mas init aning duha kai ala ko alamag aning ingon ani. Ang ako lng nalibgan ngano mahilis ug apil ang nozzle sa 1st stage as we all know nga made ni sa special material unya wala man gani mahilis sa dihang nag launch pa unya grabeh ang heat ug pressure ang gi handle sa nozzle.. Sa ako lng Idea basin pariha ni sa Gas stove (LPG) nga ang nozzle dili kaayo init kay ang naa sa nozzle is ang pressurize gas pa, wala pa ma burn.

[yhokz101]

I just read this.. hope this can clear a thing or two...

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relative airspeed and friction. You can come down a lot faster than you can go up.

As an example, the SR71 aircraft reaches airspeeds that heat the aircrafts structure to extreme levels. It never leaves the earth's atmosphere (although it is often high enough that the sky is no longer blue) and encounters enough friction from the air that pilots must be cooled!

For an orbital vehicle, its not the speed going up. Why? Because it takes quite a while, even after the vehicle has left the atmosphere for it to attain the speeds necessary for orbiting the earth. How do you slow down from those speeds? Simply use the friction from the air so that you can slow down in a predictable controlled manner.

I guess the shuttle moved at something like 18000 mph. The SR71's top speed is obviously top secret, but pretty commonly believed to be well over Mach 3 (roughly 2100 mph!) I don't think the space shuttle attains that speed until after it has left the atmosphere.


Re-entering Earth is all about attitude control. And, no, this doesn't mean astronauts need to keep a positive attitude (although that's always helpful). Rather, it refers to the angle at which the spacecraft flies. Here's an overview of a shuttle descent:

• Leaving orbit: To slow the ship down from its extreme orbit speed, the ship flips around and actually flies backwards for a period of time. The orbital maneuvering engines (OMS) then thrust the ship out of orbit and toward Earth.

• Descent through atmosphere: After it's safely out of orbit, the shuttle turns nose-first again and enters the atmosphere belly-down (like a belly-flop) to take advantage of drag with its blunt bottom. Computers pull the nose up to an angle of attack (angle of descent) of about 40 degrees.

• Landing: If you've seen the movie "Apollo 13," you might remember that the astronauts return to Earth in their command module and land in the ocean where rescue workers pick them up. Today's space shuttles look and land much more like airplanes. Once the ship gets low enough, the commander takes over the computers and glides the shuttle to a landing strip. As it's rolling along the strip, it deploys a parachute to slow it down.

NASA
The leading edges and nose of the shuttle use RCC material.

The trip back to Earth is a hot one. Instead of the ablative materials found on the Apollo spacecraft, today's space shuttles have special heat-resistant materials and insulating tiles that can sustain re-entry heat.

• Reinforced Carbon Carbon (RCC): This composite material covers the nose and edges of the wing, where temperatures get the hottest. In 2003, Columbia's RCC was damaged during liftoff, causing its burn-up on re-entry, killing all seven crew members.

• 
  
  
  High-temperature reusable surface insulation (HRSI)*: These black silica tiles are on the bottom of the shuttle and various other places that can reach up to 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit (1,260 degrees Celsius).

• Fibrous Refractory Composite Insulation (FRCI): These black tiles have replaced HRSI tiles in many places because they are stronger, lighter and more heat resistant.

• Low-temperature reusable surface insulation (LRSI): These white silica tiles are thinner than HRSI tiles and protect various areas from temperatures up to 1,200 degrees F (649 degrees C).

• Advanced Flexible Reusable Surface Insulation (AFRSI): Made of silica glass fabric, these exterior blankets are installed on the forward upper section of a shuttle and withstand temperatures of up to 1,500 degrees F (816 degrees C). Over the years, these have taken over for much of the LRSI material on a shuttle.

• Felt reusable surface insulation (FRSI): This material sustains temperatures of up to 700 degrees F (371 degrees C) and is made of heat-treated white Nomex felt (a material used in firefighters' protective clothing).

source here

[rodsky]

Nice post by yhokz101, and it does give you some of the answers. However, to get to the core of the problem, try to read up on projectile motion or parabolic motion, and just throw a stone up into the air, and you'll see this in action.

When you throw a rock into the air, the stone is speeding up to the air and slows down to a certain point, its highest point (if this was an orbit instead of an arc, this would be the apogee). However, upon reaching this high point, the rock would start coming back down again. Notice that this time around, the rock is SPEEDING UP on its descent towards the earth. Now here lies the problem. Ok lang ning bato, because it's small and the v is slow kay labay-labay lang ta, and the difference in atmospheric density is negligible. But what about a 10 ton spacecraft? This capsule is now increasing speed as it enters thicker and thicker air. So you see, reversed man gud sa launch--when a rocket launches, whether it is going faster or slower upwards, you ALWAYS head out to thinner and thinner air (i.e. leaving the atmosphere). Meanwhile, sa re-entry, bali na sad, you are going faster and faster into thicker and thicker air...now imagine the friction involved, and voila...heat.

-RODION