Space X - Dragon Launch Today

[Eric Mc]

That's the whole point ofv the Dragon capsule. It will be the basis of a manned spacecraft which, of course, will have to be recoverable.

They recovered the Dragon capsule safely after its first test mission a year or so ago - so we know the heatshield does work.

It's now undocked and on its way to beginning the re-entry trajectory.

Edited by Eric Mc on Thursday 31st May 13:42

[Eric Mc]

De-orbit burn in 55 minutes.

[Eric Mc]

Re-entry under way. They hope to have live images of the splash down in the Pacific.

Just like the old Apollo days.

[Eric Mc]

And live mages now coming in..

(I feel like I'm talking to myself here).

[Eric Mc]

Picture quality not great but at least we are seeing it live. The Apollo images from the late 60s early 70s were a lot better but I suppose this is a operating on a much lower budget regarding available TV cameras and satellite bandwith etc.

[Eric Mc]

In the water. Let's hope it doesn't do a Gus.

[Eric Mc]

qube_TA said:

when will they know if it's OK?

When they can get some people into the water beside it I suppose. They have visual contact with the capsule in the water so it looks OK at the moment. But you can never be sure with splashdowns (hence my reference to Gus above).

[Eric Mc]

They have detached the parachutes. That's good as you don't want them dragging the capsule across the ocean or even worse, under the ocean.

[Eric Mc]

It's because the media are essentially ignorant and do not understand these matters.

A "significant" event to a media person is finding out that their telephone has been hacked.

[Eric Mc]

I love the smell of liquid fuelled rockets in the morning.

They are so much more civilised too.

[Eric Mc]

Does the heatshield of the Dragon capsuile surround the entire spacecraft or is it just attached to the base - as was the case with Apollo, Gemini etc.

[Eric Mc]

Some decent video of the splashdown here

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/shuttle_station/index.h...

I hope the live coverage of these spashdowns improves.

[Eric Mc]

TheHeretic said:

jmorgan said:

Me Mac don't want to play. What is wrong with it?

The dreaded flash? It was pretty crappy camera work. Never saw the splashdown, as he was zoomed in too much.

I wouldn't be too hard on them. They were shooting from an aircraft travelling at around 200 mph tracking a fairly small object from a distance of at least two or three miles. There would have been a safety exclusion zone around the expected splashdown point. The weather was a factor too. They were able to follow the capsule pretty well until it went through a cloud layer - which they were flying above in the aircraft. That was the reason they lost it just before the actual splashdown.

I think the filming was a credible effort overall. The live feed was pretty poor however with far too much breakup and pixellation. That side definitely needs improving.

If you think back to the Apollo splashdown coverage, which was 40 odd years ago, the spacecraft was only picked up from a camera at sea level - sitting on the recovery carrier - which is a much more stable platform than a moving aircraft.
The earliest point of the re-entry they managed to get was the reefing of the three main parachutes - and they had years of practice. These guys managed to follow the capsule all the way from just before drogue release - which I thought was quite impressive.

[Eric Mc]

TheHeretic said:

The live film at the time looked like it was done via a Nokia from the mid 90's. Weird how you can get crystal clear imagery from it in orbit, but such crappy pictures from its landing.

Not weird at all. The whole point of this project is that the budget is relatively small - much smaller than what it would be if NASA themselves were running it.

In this case, whilst in orbit and attached to the ISS, they had access to the full communications and technical backup that goes with a full international, multi-government sponsored space project which includes access to the TDRS communication satellites and ground based links.

During the re-entry phase they were more or less runnning the show themselves. Notice that virtually all the shots showed the Spacex control room rather than Mission Control, Houston. The links were much more basic and pared back. The important thing to the Spacex controllers would have been telemetry data showing that all the various sequences needed for a successful recovery were carried out on time and correctly. Images were a low priority.

I'm sure the image side of things will improve over time.