Hadfield Impressed With Dragon, Sees Much Work to Do
Dragon Version 2. (Credit: SpaceX)
C/NET.com has an interesting interview with Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield about the unveiling of SpaceX Dragon V2 spacecraft on Thursday. Don’t be misled by the headline [Astronaut: Musk’s capsule no substitute for Soyuz (Q&A)]; Hadfield is actually quite complimentary. However, he does provide some really excellent insights into what it takes to get from what Elon Musk unveiled last week to a functioning spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts into space.
Hadfield: It’s really impressive what Elon Musk and SpaceX have done. They’ve only been around a dozen years, and they’ve done what most countries have been unable to do: build a rocket that can take heavy payloads to Earth orbit, build a spaceship that can navigate and dock with the Space Station, and then undock, and return to Earth.
What we saw yesterday shows the vehicle’s shape, which is really important. That constrains everything. It shows the possibility of seven people fitting inside. It shows the possibility of what an avionics display might look like. Of course, it’s missing all the critical stuff: the lights, and all of the integration and complexity that goes into making that habitable and safe for crew. And there’s all sorts of engineering questions that weren’t addressed yesterday. But you have to start somewhere, and they have a really impressive track record over the last 10 or 12 years, and they’ve put together a really capable group of people.
Musk sort of admitted something similar the other night, saying it would take about a billion dollars to get the ship ready to carry crews into space. That’s a far cry from a few years ago, when SpaceX was claiming it needed only a few hundred million dollars to make Dragon crew ready. However, that was prior the finalization of NASA’s certification process. In the meantime, Dragon have evolved from plopping down on the ocean to making a propulsion touchdown on land.
Musk said the other night that he anticipated a test flight in late 2015, followed by a crewed flight to the International Space Station (ISS) in mid-2016. If all went well, the first Dragon V2 would ferry crews to the space station on a commercial basis by the end of 2016, about a year ahead of NASA’s current schedule.
Given Musk’s past optimism and the tendency of SpaceX’s already crowded manifest to slide to the right, I would expect that schedule to slip. Aiming to fly a year earlier will provide a margin for the company to meet NASA’s schedule.
16 responses to “Hadfield Impressed With Dragon, Sees Much Work to Do”
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I really appreciate Hadfield’s candor. He was able to praise SpaceX and their work while still emphasizing a caution towards safety. He did it without bashing the company or Elon, unnecessarily.
I feel like Chris was right on the money with his comments.
I’m not a particular fan of SpaceX but they did a fantastic job, as capsules go, this is one of the best (in my opinion). I suspect that the ratio of paper work/management/compliance to actual bending of metal is probably close to 1:1, thus a few hundred million can easily grow to 1 billion. All in all SpaceX and Musk did a great job.
Chris isn’t close to SpaceX or their employees. He’s not privy to the engineering or design and can only call it like the outsider he is. Therefore I’d be cautious in accepting his opinion which is only that.
When you look at the milestones left on the roadmap to firstly an uncrewed flight and then a crewed flight, the major ones are not the interior of the vehicle, it’s the 2 abort flights and then on to the real flights. Timelines can slip but I suspect SpaceX already has the majority of the internals done.
In addition to that, SpaceX are flying real hardware to and from the ISS. There’s nothing better than experience.
Cheers.
Yeah, I was under a similar impression.
I am trying to figure out what remains after the 2 reports, along with the 2 aborts. It seems like the next phase would be to launch it and return it empty, followed by human launch.
So, why all of the BS associated with this, that is not associated with Orion, or any other system that we have had?
It seems like private space is being driven by ppl that want to take them into the ground fiscally.
Agreed.
All I can do is add my impressions and that is that I think those that are supporting Orion definitely see Dragon and now in particular Dragon V2 as a threat. DV2 now has capability that is unmatched by any other vehicle either in design or in production or it will have shortly.
In addition, EM and SpaceX have a road-map that adds additional capability that will make the vehicle truly beo. EM sees the vehicle as being used in a multi-planetary (including Moon which isn’t actually a planet) capability. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see an mockup SM for the vehicle appear within 12 months or so.
Here’s hoping he succeeds. Looking good at the moment.
Cheers.
may i note that the “trunk” would serve as an excellent housing for a SM? it doesn’t even take much imagination. put some extra life support equipment and some fuel tanks in there, perhaps with a cluster of Super Dracos sticking out the end, and you’ve got an excellent SM for TLI and LOI…
Great observation.
A lot more details went out with the Q&A video, the $1 billion number is the total cost, they just need $500 million to complete this thing. The number is higher than their original estimate probably because their new plan is go to full propulsion landing from the start, no more water landing for V2 unless it’s an emergency.
“…because their new plan is go to full propulsion landing from the start, no more water landing for V2 unless it’s an emergency.”
This is very good news. Thanks.
Wasn’t the cost always going to be circa $1 billion : half from NASA and half from SpaceX?. CCiCap suggests that NASA will be paying SpaceX a little over $500 million. Though don’t think that covers test flights, which presumably comes from CCtCap. Perhaps we need to wait for the CCtCap agreements to be published to properly put into context all these numbers and press quotes.
What we see as a pretty spacecraft, Hadfield appears to be looking at in practical day-at-the-office terms. In other words, he’s asking, “where’s the toilet?” and, “where are the snack bars and water station?” These are things that would not have served the purpose of rolling out a brand new beautiful spacecraft to the public with that gorgeous milled aluminum interior. We have seen the car commercial, but he’s looking for the gas cap and cup holders.
Having 50 short-hop and pad abort tests ahead of it in the near term, I suspect having all that is a bit redundant right now when sandbags will do. Meanwhile, another department can design and build the interior on a different work stream.
One thing I thought was cool but should probably be changed – all the refill ports seem to be in a single dock next to the entry. I’m assuming the toxic propellant is not refueled right next to the oxygen/etc. ports, because that could be a disaster. That may be a bit like Steve Jobs being so wed to minimalism that Apple was crippled with no right mouse button support for over a decade. There is such a thing as too pretty. But he could have that port assembly on the back and we’d never know, so they may well have already engineered that in.
“…all the refill ports seem to be in a single dock next to the entry.”
That was the trunk connection ports (check the animation). I suppose it might also double as ground refill ports too, who knows.
“But he could have that port assembly on the back…”
The back, where the windows aren’t, is the “windward” (i.e. downward) facing surface during re-entry, hence the decision to put the trunk services on the leeward (i.e. top/front) surface, because the trunk services connection arm won’t be covering it during re-entry.
The “milled aluminium” interior is the same as V1; it’s the inside wall of the pressure vessel. It’s not made to look pretty, it’s mass removed whilst retaining structural strength. The interior will be covered with another surface material for crew comfort and safety – probably padded, wipe clean and no doubt to match the seats.
Hadfield:
“it’s missing all the critical stuff: the lights, and all of the integration and complexity that goes into making that habitable and safe for crew.”
Don’t see that lighting is such a huge engineering challenge, but then quotes can be misleading.
The toilets and cup-holders are of course built-in to the spacesuits.
Other info from after show press questions – Elon Musk:
“Over time we expect Dragon V1 to be phased out , but we’re going to carry them both of them in parallel for at least a few years”.
Good point on the leeward side. As for milled aluminum, yes, I know it’s mass removed to keep strength/etc. – but it also looks cool, so no point in covering it up if it looks like something from Dr. Who during the PR phase (dry ice, disappearing curtains, etc.). There are places where engineering and marketing psychology converge, and much engineering elegance that evokes emotional responses. Hence the car commercial analogy.
Soyuz has a “camp toilet” and Orion was designed the same way, because you generally have to pee a lot once reaching microgravity due to fluid shift. They also have to be prepared for roughly three days on orbit undocked if anything goes wrong. Relief tubes in entry suits would offer otherwise unobtainable privacy if they dock in hours rather than days, as recent Soyuz launches have been doing. So rapid dock plus entry suit may solve the privacy issue for eventual VIP flights as time goes on.
Thanks for the detail on concurrent V1/V2 operations – someone was asking about that on another list.
It will be interesting to see if any Tesla design elements other than the big rectangular portrait touch screens cross over between Tesla and Space-X, particularly with the leather work. Saab’s “borne from jets” slogan made them more tempting than “Darth Vader’s helmet slept with a Volkswagen, or a Fiat Batmobile” visual feel that they had in the 1980’s and didn’t overcome in time. I suspect Elon can pull off the marketing crossover in the event his Tesla sales ever drop/production raises to the point where he actually has to advertise.
AFAIK SpaceX is planning on doing the “fast track” docking to the ISS. anything more than 6 hours in a capsule that small with 7 people in it is going to be tough, but they’ve said they will carry enough provisions for several days in orbit with 7 people for just such a situation.
I’ll go. To hell with a bit of discomfort and if it takes a bit longer, then the more time to spend floating around and checking out the view. Ahhhh! If only 🙂
Cheers.
Imagine getting a bad preflight meal?
Everyone’s going into the SpaceX cafeteria, but just then you see the food truck pull up outside, thinking, “Hmmm, I’ve never had a ‘Korean Burrito’ — sounds good”….
And then imagine the other 6 ppl in there.