SpaceX unveils interior of manned Dragon
Capitalism in space: Earlier this week SpaceX unveiled the interior of its Dragon capsule, along with the suits and other details, to reporters in California.
The article at the link has some good videos showing the capsule interior as well as its touchscreen control panel. It also includes quotes from SpaceX’s president Gwynne Shotwell repeating their intention to launch the manned mission by April 2019.
“Whenever we talk about dates we’re always confident and then something crops up,” Shotwell said. “Predicting launch dates can make a liar out of the best of us. I hope I am not proven to be a liar on this one. We are targeting November for Demo 1 and April for Demo 2.”
“I would love to say that this mission is going to be like every other mission, because I want every rocket and every capsule to be reliable, but I can tell you there will be about 7000 extra sets of eyes on the build of this system, the testing of this system and all the interfaces,” Shotwell added.
I would not be surprised if there was a few months slip in that schedule. I will be surprised if it slips more than that.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Capitalism in space: Earlier this week SpaceX unveiled the interior of its Dragon capsule, along with the suits and other details, to reporters in California.
The article at the link has some good videos showing the capsule interior as well as its touchscreen control panel. It also includes quotes from SpaceX’s president Gwynne Shotwell repeating their intention to launch the manned mission by April 2019.
“Whenever we talk about dates we’re always confident and then something crops up,” Shotwell said. “Predicting launch dates can make a liar out of the best of us. I hope I am not proven to be a liar on this one. We are targeting November for Demo 1 and April for Demo 2.”
“I would love to say that this mission is going to be like every other mission, because I want every rocket and every capsule to be reliable, but I can tell you there will be about 7000 extra sets of eyes on the build of this system, the testing of this system and all the interfaces,” Shotwell added.
I would not be surprised if there was a few months slip in that schedule. I will be surprised if it slips more than that.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Regarding the November DM1 date, Eric Berger was the guest on last week’s Off-Nominal podcast Episode 11, and @27:30 he talked about cornering Gwynne Shotwell immediately following Friday’s Commercial Crew assignment ceremony:
She was fired up. She said, “You know, I’ve even got a date when we’re going to launch in November.” That’s how confident she was. But she said, “They wouldn’t let me tell that today.”
The current ISS schedule for November is pretty crowded, but that does sound confident.
This SpaceX visit was a big press event, so there are a lot of articles with great images out there. Here (from Engadget’s article) is a closeup of the cockpit simulator, showing some of the controls under the touchscreen. My favorite is from the “Pyros” panel, where the “Cut Mains” control is accompanied by a “Use Only After Landing” warning label!
That’s how confident she was.
Gwynne is always confident. Three years ago she was confident that SpaceX would build 40 Falcon 9’s that year. They built less than 10. Her optimism is second only to Elon’s.
A good rule of thumb about launch schedules I learned from NASA back in the Shuttle days: Unless an organization has a demonstrated dispatch reliability (e.g. ULA or Ariane), take the amount of time between the present and the scheduled launch and double it to get the actual launch date. So (April – August) * 2 = next December.
Maybe SpaceX will beat that this time, but that technique has served me well in predicting SpaceX schedules.
And for the record: I do expect SpaceX to launch the manned mission next year, and I expect it to be successful.