Dragon has been successfully berthed with ISS.
Dragon has successfully berthed with ISS.
The naysayers will focus on the thruster problems on Friday. The yaysayers will focus on the fix and berthing today. The bottom line, however, is that this mission once again proves that SpaceX is a real player in the space business. Every other company has to match its achievements, most especially in price. The result will be the eventually lowering in the cost to low Earth orbit, which will then make all things possible.
And in fact, we are already seeing this, with the appearance of many new private companies or organizations, proposing all sorts of new space efforts, such as mining asteroids or sending people to Mars. The lower cost allows dreamers to consider their wild new ideas more doable. And they then go ahead and try to do it.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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Dragon has successfully berthed with ISS.
The naysayers will focus on the thruster problems on Friday. The yaysayers will focus on the fix and berthing today. The bottom line, however, is that this mission once again proves that SpaceX is a real player in the space business. Every other company has to match its achievements, most especially in price. The result will be the eventually lowering in the cost to low Earth orbit, which will then make all things possible.
And in fact, we are already seeing this, with the appearance of many new private companies or organizations, proposing all sorts of new space efforts, such as mining asteroids or sending people to Mars. The lower cost allows dreamers to consider their wild new ideas more doable. And they then go ahead and try to do it.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Is it true that their eventual plan is to make the first stage recoverable and possibly reusable?
Or at least parts of it reusable.
And I can not find it but I have heard that the engines were originally soviet era ICBM engines that sat for many years never being installed and all they did was make a cheap offer for them and have them rebuilt in the states.
After the rebuild and certifications they just renamed them Merlin.
And that they only have about 120 of them total. And if they don’t start recovering and reusing them they stand a chance of running out of them before the final launches.
They are trying.
Their plan is to make both first and second stages reusable.
Whether they succeed or not is still to be decided.
SpaceX’s Grasshopper is all about teaching a first stage to land gracefully and not like a brick.
No. The Merlin is a brand new engine designed and built entirely in house by SpaceX.
You’re thinking of the Aerojet AJ26 engine which is to be used on Orbital’s Antares rocket. That was the engine originally built in Russia, bought by Aerojet and updated with modern electronics. etc. The Antares has 2 AJ26 engines.
The Falcon 9 has 9 Merlin 1c engines.
By the way this was the last flight of the merlin 1c engine. SpaceX’s next flight (june) will be the Falcon 9 v1.1 which will feature the new Merlin 1D engines.
The merlin 1c had 53 flights for 52 successes. 51 if you count F1.003 as a failure. The Merlin performed flawlessly on that flight but the 2nd stage recontacted the first stage after seperation leading to loss of mission.
In this case you are mistaken. The Merlin engine is the first new American-built rocket engine in decades. The engines that are refurbished Soviet-era engines are the engines on Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket.
SpaceX has been attempting to recover its first stage from day one, with little success. This is why they are testing Grasshopper, which they say will return to the ground vertical.
Thanks, I knew I had heard of ICBM engines being used I just didn’t know who was using them.
Thanks for the clarifications.
One more clarification: The refurbished Russian engines that Orbital Sciences is using were not developed for an ICBM, but for the N1 rocket the Soviets tried to build to compete with the Saturn 5. See: http://www.orbital.com/Antares-Cygnus/ (scroll down to January 2013.)
The N1 was intended as their rocket to transport astronauts to the Moon, but it failed at every launch and was abandoned. The failures were not related to the engines themselves but to other quality control issues.