SpaceX Tries Out Its New SuperDraco Rocket Engine 118
cylonlover writes "SpaceX, the California company that is developing the reusable Dragon spacecraft, recently test-fired its new SuperDraco engine. Presently, the Dragon capsule is equipped with less-advanced Draco engines, which are designed for maneuvering the spacecraft while in orbit and during reentry. The SuperDraco, however, is intended to allow the astronauts to escape if an emergency occurs during the launch."
Impressive (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps all that talk of a moon base, trips to Mars, etc. aren't that far-fetched after all.
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Informative)
Actually their first ISS rendezvous mission was scheduled for this month, but it recently got postponed to March. On this first mission they will only "berth" with ISS, rather than docking. (They'll fly up close enough so that the ISS manipulator arm can grapple the Dragon capsule and haul it in.) If that goes well, they'll be allowed to actually dock with ISS on the next flight.
And you're right, they are already underselling every other vendor on the launch market. Even the Chinese say they can't possibly beat SpaceX's price-per-pound to orbit.
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The Chinese will soon "learn" the secrets to mimic SpaceX's techniques. Supposedly there was a British company with a reusable launch vehicle that were claiming to have even lower costs than SpaceX's- but they were only in the feasibility stage with ESA last year. If they can actually get past that and to the launch stage we could have a real healthy battle going on. Although- knowing Britain- the unions will somehow get involved and tripple the costs- and then it will never get built- or the Germans wil
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Informative)
That would be Skylon, they've been at it for years on minuscule amounts of funding, trying to develop a revolutionary engine that can use atmospheric oxygen for the first part of the ascent. They can trace their roots back to HOTOL. What they need is a billionaire investor.
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
SpaceX is specifically avoiding patenting any of their innovations because they are well aware the Chinese would just use the patents as a guide to copy and steal their technology. Assuming they can keep their networks secure and they don't have any rogue employees selling their secrets they have a reasonable chance of keeping their less obvious, more technical, innovations from the Chinese at least for a time. SpaceX's fairly compact operations and work force along with avoidance of third party suppliers also reduces somewhat the potential for secrets being stolen.
Never really understood why clueless western politicians let China in to the WTO when it was so obvious that IP theft was at the core of their plan to bury the west.
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Never really understood why clueless western politicians let China in to the WTO when it was so obvious that IP theft was at the core of their plan to bury the west.
They let China into the WTO so they had some way of at least partially controlling them. You think the Chinese are incapable of sifting through the US Patent Office's public online records without being WTO members?
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They should have either not been allowed in to WTO if they were going to continue rampant IP theft since I'm pretty sure its frowned on under WTO protocols, or they should have been subjected to trade barriers preventing them from selling their products based on stolen IP in the West.
The West pretty much bent over for them, let them steal all their IP, removed all the trade barriers for goods coming out of China, while letting China retain massive barriers preventing western goods and companies from enterin
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Well spoken, Bruce.
From what I've seen online, I gather that SpaceX is very aware their IP risks, and take steps to minimize such leaks. I hope it works for them.
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Also, iff they go out of business, then the tech would be sold off to pay off their debt.
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An innovation specifically referenced was a major advance in the PICA-X heat shield on Dragon which should allow hundreds of reentries without needing to be replaced. Good article here [airspacemag.com] where I read it.
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If Musk can figure out a new way to mine minerals, then yes, it would be possible to lower their costs. Why do you call spaceX liars WRT pica-X?
Well, as for not inventing anything, then do not sweat it. There is NO reason for China or anybo
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You sound pretty bitter dude. Let me guess, you either work at NASA, Boeing or Lockheed, right?
I admit to being guilty of being something of a SpaceX fanboy but thats because I haven't seen anything happen the U.S. as far as launchers go worth cheering since Apollo died. SpaceX may crash and burn but I sure hope they don't because NASA, Boeing and Lockheed aren't doing much except milk the status quo.
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Although- knowing Britain- the unions will somehow get involved and tripple the costs- and then it will never get built- or the Germans will build it instead.
No, there will be a hostile take-over of the company by a greedy and corrupt competitor or venture capital firm that will asset-strip the company, pay the new board of directors vast salaries, bonuses and share issues, meanwhile radically cutting back the workforce and letting the company fail.
The bankrupt remains of the company will then be sold off
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the unions will somehow get involved and tripple the costs
I don't see how, and in any case, as the head of a then-nonunion airline said 30 years ago, "any company that gets a union deserves one." Treat your employees with respect, pay them well and give them good benefits and they won't form a union. Treat them like commodities and they will.
I wonder if SpaceX is a union shop? Probably not, they haven't been around long enough to start abusing their workers yet.
I was 6 when the Russians sent Sputnik up, 17
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I think SpaceX have too few employees at the moment for a formal union to be necessary. My comments about British unions was more tongue in cheek than anything really though- parallelling how unions killed Britain's once thriving car manufacturing industry to the point now where Britain has no major production car brands based in that country... although they do make cars for other companies. Shame if space transport went the same way.
Obviously there are pros- and cons to unions. In the late 19th century
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That's the trouble with world-wide free trade -- labor is cheap in places where rent is thirty bucks a month, or there's a repressive political regime. Neither American nor European workers can compete with workers in an impoverished country.
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Maybe so, but somehow a large chunk of manufacturing companies that leave Britain (and stay in Western Europe) seem to relocate to Germany for one reason or another.
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Informative)
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Thanks for the clarification. I knew there was some distinction between this and future crewed flights, but apparently I got the details wrong.
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Funny)
Canadarm! Canadarm! One word!
Lovely post, thank you for the info, but just gotta correct the name because "Canadarm" is an awesome name for an awesome piece of equipment.
Side note to anyone from DARPA listening: When you build your first orbital weapon, please call it the "Americannon". You don't have to give me anything for the name! It's yours! A Distinguished Service award or somesuch would be nice though...
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, the ISS can rocket-punch.
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
Usually they do this by adding a small module for docking. IIRC the space shuttle specifically had to carry along a docking module in the front of the cargo bay if they wanted to dock the shuttle. In that case the module was on the craft not the station. I suppose they could just make a little extension module for it.
But remember the current setup is an international standard that everyone is designing around. So your idea may just plain be suggested too late. Imagine the amount of testing that goes into such a critical system as a docking apparatus? It's probably one of the most difficult and critical things up there. Not only does a failure risk BOTH vessels and all the crew aboard both, but it has to be able to handle mechanical stress between two very large masses. So I bet they're not too enthusiastic about redesigning it once they've got something they're satisfied with.
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Actually they did. It's just that the design puts absorbers on both halves.
There both are androgynous and non-androgynous connector designs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_docking_and_berthing_mechanism
The androgynous designs let you dock with anything using the same connector. You don't have to match male-female. That means you can meet up with another shuttlecraft and dock with it - but in that case you both need shock absorbers so that you can be sure that at least one of you has them.
Both sides
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Re:Impressive (Score:4, Insightful)
I had understood that they were planning on carrying some ISS consumables up this flight, on the assumption that they'll succeed.
If they do succeed, they've delivered their first cargo to ISS. If they fail, nothing really important lost (the cost of the consumables is peanuts next to the cost of the launch).
They are also, as I understand it, planning on delivering a couple small satellites to orbit on the same launch....
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That's because most of things you hear about are things like this engine test that would simply be swept under the rug if they didn't go right. I.E. minor 'successes' spun for PR value. When it comes to real successes, like their launch record, the situation isn't nearly so pretty.
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You are not making a fair comparison. The dragon capsule is for delivering goods. For delivering "modules" you would use something else.
VEHICLE - PAYLOAD TO LEO
Falcon Heavy - 53,000 kg
Space Shuttle - 24,400 kg
Falcon 9 - 10,450 kg
http://www.spacex.com/falcon_heavy.php [spacex.com]
In short, it's a more than adequate replacement. To use your car analogy, the Space Shuttle was an El Camino (with flames) kept long past its prime, and the SpaceX offerings are more like the rental flatbed trucks from the local U-Haul.
Re:Impressive (Score:4, Informative)
Hope it's Not Vaporware (Score:1)
I'm glad Elon Musk is such an inventive individual, but I'm worried that new promises come flying out of his mouth faster than he delivers on existing commitments. Sometimes it seems like he has ADHD.
It seems like it would be more credible if he were to slow down on the new promises, and give his organization time to fufill existing commitments.
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You mean like when he had yet to get Falcon 1 reliable, yet to even build Falcon 9 and he was talking about building Dragon? I scolded him similarly when he first announced dragon for just what you said, but i was wrong.
He did deliver on those promises, now he's planning the next phase and talking about it. Would you prefer he kept things secret?
As an example in the branch of engineering I work (ASIC design) it can easily take 4 years from "hey this is a cool idea, let's draw it on the whiteboard" to it bei
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And still lacks the majority of the capabilities of the Shuttle.
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Well, at 1/10th the price, that still sounds like it's half the cost.
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Or, to put it in the terms of Slashdot's favorite form of analogy: No water. Less space than a shuttle. Lame.
FTFY
Close to home (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Close to home (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandenberg_AFB_Space_Launch_Complex_4 [wikipedia.org]
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I think they're planning to do the launch of the Falcon Heavy [wikipedia.org] from Vandenberg sometime in 2013. I'm not sure if this has anything specifically to do with their plans for reusability, though I'm sure they'd like all their rockets to be reusable eventually.
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The reason is that SpaceX has everything else ready for the conversion of dragon to human launch: controls and software, seats, and ELCSS.
My understanding is that LIDS is also ready to go.
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I still don't understand why they would do that, it absolutely slaughters performance to return to the launch site. You're much better off landing downrange, and then refueling it and sending it back if need be.
Propulsive landings... (Score:5, Interesting)
Summary misses the point... yes, they need a launch-abort system to meet NASA's human-rating specs, but the real goal of the SuperDraco engines is to enable propulsive landings with pinpoint accuracy. They claim that a Dragon capsule so-equipped will be able to land on "any surface" in the solar system.
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I know this is facetious, but a statement like the claim "that a Dragon capsule so-equipped will be able to land on "any surface" in the solar system" leads me to wonder about Jupiter and the other gas giants.
Probably a more important capability would be to not only be able to land on any surface in the solar system but to also take off and return to orbit. Has there been any talk about this?
myke
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I'd say it's more of an exaggeration than a "facetious" comment. I'm just quoting from SpaceX's PR propaganda... that's why I put the phrase in quotes. Obviously it depends on the conditions, but in theory they have enough delta-V to land on any "hospitable" surface... eg: Mars. (I've seen some scenarios where they use strap-on tanks to increase fuel/payload capacity.)
In any case, it's a pretty cool hack to use side-mount thrusters for launch-abort instead of a tower system (like Apollo). Not only does it a
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Agreed - although I would call it a design feature (and not a "hack").
I haven't read much on the Dragon, does this mean that the proposed return process is:
1. Re-entry using traditional heat shields,
2. Braking parachutes to reduce speed from supersonic to a few kmhs,
3. SuperDracos for soft touchdown?
I can see that would minimize the damage to the spacecraft significantly compared to a water/ground landing and allow it to be reused much more cheaply and quickly.
myke
Re:Propulsive landings... (Score:4, Informative)
Likely.
Recall that the Soyuz [russianspaceweb.com] capsules use essentially the same approach although the 'soft landing engines' are quite a bit less sophisticated than the Super Dracos.
An interesting aside, the Falcon / SuperDraco system could be repurposed to a general non manned lander for Mars, Venus and the other smaller planets. Might make for some 'economies of scale' to have a basic platform that worked.
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SpaceX Reusability [spacex.com]
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But for e.g. Mars, the atmosphere is so thin step 1 will contribute very little delta-V. Are they claiming they can brake from orbital speed to 0?
(SpaceX can be frustratingly vague about such things)
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AFAIK, their plan does not involve parachutes. They use heat shields to reach terminal velocity, then rockets to land from there. (Parachutes are just a backup system in case the rockets fail.)
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I would call it a design feature (and not a "hack").
That's actually correct. You don't design a "hack," a hack is using equipment or a tool to do what it was never designed to do. Using the Apollo 13 LEM as a return vehicle was a hack. Using the command module's scrubbers that didn't fit the LEM was a hack.
Using a butter knife as a screwdriver is a hack. See? Your grandma's a hacker!
Running Linux on your X-Box is a hack. Running it on your PC is not.
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Any surface or any solid surface? The surface of the moon is a fair bit different than the surface of most of the Earth (water) or the sun, if you can consider it to have a surface.
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They claim that a Dragon capsule so-equipped will be able to land on "any surface" in the solar system.
In *theory*, sure. But if they tried to land on Mars, the intelligence arm of Mars' Planetary Defense Agency would arrange for the capsule to have one of their trademark "mysterious accidents".
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it's loud (Score:1)
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Names... (Score:2)
Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I'm not impressed by names like SuperDraco which sound like somebody I'd find on Twitter expounding upon their amazing Pokemon collection.
Can we go back to decent rocket names? Something like A-1 or Z-2?
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You're a fuddy-duddy.
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Boooooo! Which is more likely to get public interest?
AB-745 - or thunderdemon? C-11 - or firedragon.
I'm sorry- but I want my manned mission to mars to be on something memorable like the thrustdoomfireballcruncher not the X-23. Now if the "Pikachu, I choose you" mission takes man to Titan, then I'll be disappointed. "Pikachu of Doom" rocket might be more acceptible.
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I don't think I'd want to ride in ANY vehicle with "doom" in the name.
ThunderDoom or X11X? I'll take the second flight, please.
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How about Little Joe, Redstone, Thor, Juno, Minotaur, Pegasus, Taurus, Vanguard, or Ariane?
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"'You name the satellites after gods?' he asked.
Shah shuffled uncomfortably but Sirsikar beamed at Baedecker. 'Of course!' Recruited while Mercury flew, trained during Gemini, blooded in Apollo, Baedecker turned his eyes back to the steel symmetry of the huge antenna.
'So did we,' he said."
--Phases of Gravity by Dan Simmons
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Yes, meaningless letters and numbers are way cooler. My mistake. If I have a daughter, I'll name her ZX-32, not something stupid like Jennifer or Lizzy.
Re:Names... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh don't be stupid. ZX-32 is a boys name, she'll be teased.
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I grew up in Akron, Ohio, where one of the local heros was Art Arfons. He raced jet cars on the Bonnieville Salt Flats, and several times held the world land speed record. He may have eventually raced jets, but his earlier cars used aircraft piston engines.
He named is daughter "Allison" after an aircraft engine maker that he liked, and presumably because he thought it an acceptable girls name. I believe she goes by the name "Dusty", but have no idea if was because she didn't like "Allison", or some other
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He named is daughter "Allison" after an aircraft engine maker that he liked
Said company is named after its founder, James Allison.
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Can we go back to decent rocket names?
You mean like Saturn, Mercury, Atlas, and Titan? I agree we need more awesome names like that.
I personally really like the names of the Falcon rockets with the Kestrel and Merlin engines -- two types of falcon, you see.
How does Draco not fit in?
And when you make something that's like the thing with the cool name, but way above it, "Super" is often applied.
When Boeing made a new long-range bomber to follow on the B-17 Flying Fortress, they called it the Superfortress. Super [wikipedia.org] actually seems a pretty popular
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And when you make something that's like the thing with the cool name, but way above it, "Super" is often applied.
Meh. I'll wait for the SuperDuperDraco.
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Dude! SuperDuperDraco is a looooong way off. Duper technology isn't even out of university research labs yet!
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Real life and renders collide (Score:5, Interesting)
It's really interesting that if you look at the arguably real shot [gizmag.com] of the test firing, it seems to look almost like a rendering from a game! It probably means that fire/smoke rendering in games is getting good, or perhaps nature is just recently slacking in presenting itself to us :)
Re:Real life and renders collide (Score:4, Informative)
The physics of shock diamonds [vt.edu] is well understood. If you can model the physics, you can show it on a computer screen. Turns out it's fairly easy and doesn't require a lot of computer horsepower.
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The way I understand it: shock diamond is merely a result you get when you do appropriate solutions to the set of equations that model gas flow. It's like saying that since the Bernoulli effect is well understood, you can easily render, say, the velocity field in a flow that goes into and out of the gap between two pieces of paper. I wasn't even talking about shock diamonds, but about pretty much everything else: the variations in optical density of the smoke are really strikingly similar, at the edge of th
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dumolLDfWw4 [youtube.com]
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I know I'm feeding a troll, but please get serious. The compression artifacts are quite irrelevant to how it looks.
Shock diamonds (Score:2, Offtopic)
Alohamora! (Score:1)
No way you can win now Harry! Best hide, because SuperDraco is out to get you!
*grin*
Sucks? (Score:2)
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SpaceX is doing everything they are doing for a tiny fraction of the money NASA squanders. In particular NASA spent billions on Ares 1, it was a horrible design, they wasted years on it, they managed one faked suborbital launch before the program was wisely killed.
SpaceX isn't NASA's problem, NASA's hopeless bureaucracy is their problem. SpaceX is just a long overdue solution, to get America innovating in space exploration again after 30 years of disturbing decay caused by NASA's stagnant bureaucracy and
Interesting specs (Score:2)
Estimated thrust of 15,000 pounds-force (67,000 N) makes this second most powerful engine developed by SpaceX, more than 200x[4] more powerful than regular Dracos. By comparison it is more than 2x more powerful than Kestrel engine, and about more than 1/9 of Merlin 1D engine. [wikipedia.org]
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Is that you, Hipster Cat?
If the only locomotives in the past were built by huge government programs, cost way too much to operate, and primarily carried just a few select government employees then, yeah, it would be interesting.
It's not the technology (althogh Space X *is* advancing that even if you are unable to recognize it) being reworked here so much as the business case.
If you're so bored, go get an appropriate degree and help advance things.
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Is SpaceX really advancing the technology? I've gotten the impression that much of what they've done is pick up NASA research and bring it to fruition. That plus they've applied more modern management practices to bring something to market quickly, cheaply, and efficiently. None of that is to denigrate them at all, simply making space access more affordable is a tremendous achievement.
But "cheap" and developing new technologies from scratch don't generally mix well. Once they're established and have a r
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
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I didn't say that cost wasn't important - for now even of primary importance. I agree with you completely on that. I was just taking mild exception to the "technology development" comment in the post I responded to. Right now the space technology we need most is low cost.
Personally, I'd declare a tax holiday on any space-based manufacturing, mining, etc. We're not getting any tax revenue from it today, and it's so dogonned expensive that we're not moving any Earth-based manufacturing up there, unless th
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Define advancing technology. /. car analogy, so let's use a motorbike one instead: When BMW release a new bike that has >190HP vs the competition's approx 185HP is that advancing the technology? When Honda manage to release a bike that is $100 cheaper than the competition because they've managed to improve their manufacturing through better tools and materials tech is that not advancing technology?
I hate to use a
It sounds like you'd claim that today's internal combustion engine is no better than the ones
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I'm separating incremental advancements, which SpaceX is doing, as well as Honda and BMW, from leapfrog enhancements. SpaceX is certainly using some leapfrog enhancements, such as their fabrication techniques for the main tanks, but they didn't do the initial development.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with incremental advancements, and improving the practice of existing technology. It's all admirable. I sit on a patent review board where I work. Every inventor is in love with his own ideas, me include
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It's not like they've come up with a new high-thrust ion engine or something.
Even if they did I suspect some people would just say "Yawn, it's just a new higher thrust ion engine, it's not like they've come up with a new drive mechanism"
or "Yawn, they're just taking all they've done with chemical engines and running it from a nuclear reactor. NERVA was in the 50s, you think we'd be doing better than that by now."
I'm sorry to labour the point but this kind of Hipster view of Engineering just really annoys me.
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Again, you seem to think that I'm denigrating that the primary thrust of SpaceX is changing the cost structure. I'm not at all, changing the cost structure of space access is the single most important thing needed in space technology right now. I'm not taking the hipster view, I'm taking the pragmatic view.
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So sit in your basement and fume. Who cares? Meanwhile others will shoot for orbit.
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You still grumbling and whining like a little tool? Get back to your dark, backward thinking basement and let those with vision do their thing.
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There is no compelling business case for private space. It's already handled by a few corporations who deal with reality.
LOL, yeah, the existing launch companies are "dealing with reality", but the company that's going to come along and eat their lunch with significantly lower launch costs is delusional.
I doubt you'll see fewer satellites launched once launch costs go down.
And like it or not, NASA wants rockets to go to the ISS with people in them and that's just reality. They'll probably have uses for rockets like the ones SpaceX is building (manned or not) after the ISS program ends, and this is also reality.
I don't think
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Interesting)
You'd be amazed to learn, then, that there coal-fired boilers have improved quite a bit over the last century, in terms of thermal efficiency (the percentage of heat extracted at high temperature), combustion efficiency (the less CO out the stack, the better), cost of operation (autofeed systems, diagnostics), and durability.
Now, since SpaceX is the only company that has ever made space launches so cheap, I'd hardly call it a "modern anachronism". It has never been done that affordably, ever. They are the first ones who apparently grok how to run an integrated aerospace manufacturing and launch business to control costs and schedules.
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In other words, it is not Space X that is part of the steam age of space travel, but the cargo they carry to remain profitable, that is, humans. Human oriented space travel is the anachronism.
I'm not at all dismissing what Space X has achieved, it is amazing and quite en
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Not CO2, CO!
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Coal locomotives are dead because they were supplanted by much better designs. Space Age rockets are dead because they weren't. Huge difference.
If a private company unveiled a locomotive engine whose performance-to-price ratio was an order of magnitude better than the current st