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posted by takyon on Thursday May 07 2015, @03:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the down-to-earth dept.

The Dragon ship was propelled to a safe distance, lowering itself softly into the Atlantic via three parachutes.

SpaceX expects to start launching astronauts in 2017. It is one of two companies that have been contracted by the US space agency (NASA) to develop vehicles to ferry people to and from the International Space Station (ISS). The other firm is Boeing. Both have to demonstrate effective launch escape technologies for their rockets and capsules to receive certification. Only with the necessary assurance will Nasa permit its astronauts to climb aboard.

Pad abort systems used in prior capsules were always dead weight, bolted on top, and jettisoned a few minutes after launch. By using the Dragon's own internal engines, SpaceX hopes to save weight on a system that everyone hopes is never used.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday May 07 2015, @05:22PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Thursday May 07 2015, @05:22PM (#179993)

    I'm merely pointing out that the future powered landing feature isn't covered in the "it's better to use the onboard engines" explanations. Every article on the topic says that SpaceX is cool because they invented the idea of not having to discard the Launch-Abort Ugly Overhead Tower.
    It's kind of trivial to consider that your landing engines could be your emergency engines, if they can be designed to fire up quickly. The copy-paste-releases press doesn't bother and just repeats the same "discarding is less nice" line.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday May 07 2015, @06:06PM

    by frojack (1554) on Thursday May 07 2015, @06:06PM (#180005) Journal

    The engines used for launch abort aren't the powered landing engines. These are the orbital maneuvering engines, (and/or) they use the same fuel supply.

    If you watched the launch video [engadget.com] (second video on that page - Skip to the 15:50 minute position - WARNING: Loud!) you can see that they are using a engine mode that they would be unlikely to use in normal maneuvering while in space.

    I suspect, but don't know for sure, that these are pulse engines, and for this purpose, they just put them into continuous operation.

    So this is a true weight saving, and less space junk solution.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Adamsjas on Thursday May 07 2015, @07:42PM

      by Adamsjas (4507) on Thursday May 07 2015, @07:42PM (#180047)

      The first video on the page is better, no scrolling to a specific time, and better views.

      I could watch that dozen times. I'll never get that sound out of my head!