COTS - status

SpaceNut · 2019-12-07 16:18:38

Watch SpaceX Test-Fire Its Crew Dragon Abort Engines in This Up Close Video

The next stage of the vehicle's progress will be an in-flight abort trial, which will happen at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It's an important test to show that astronauts could blast away to safety in case of an emergency during launch. During the procedure, Crew Dragon will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Then, the spacecraft will tear away from that rocket using the SuperDraco escape thrusters on the vehicle.

What boeing has not done is send its ship to orbit yet something that space x has at least done....

RobertDyck · 2019-12-07 21:20:53

Test launch of Orion. Unmanned on Delta IV Heavy. (4 minutes, 23 seconds)

Atmospheric entry, parachutes & splash-down. (5 minutes, 18 seconds)

I criticize Orion for being too expensive and too heavy. It's weight means the only launch vehicle that it can ride is SLS, the most expensive. However, both Dragon v1 and Orion have been in space; Boeing's Starliner hasn't. Starliner can ride Atlas V to space, but this is me saying "Get off your ass!"

SpaceNut · 2019-12-14 19:17:12

Its about time that starline is going to fly.

Boeing's CST-100 Starliner space capsule is ready for its maiden voyage as early as Dec. 20, NASA officials said Thursday. The space agency said the capsule passed a flight readiness review Thursday. The review included dozens of managers and engineers from the space agency, Boeing and launch provider United Launch Alliance. The scheduled launch date is Dec. 20, but alternate dates because of potential delays go into the Christmas holiday, including Dec. 21, 23 and 25 through 28.

Launching on an Atlas V rocket.

Starliner is smaller than Dragon, which SpaceX adapted for human use after using it for years to send cargo to the space station. Starliner is 16.5 feet high when coupled with its service module. Crew Dragon is 26.7 feet high with its trunk.
Boeing holds a contract for two test flights and six missions to the International Space Station. Future Starliner missions depend on NASA's needs for station crews and commercial demand.

That is small but why are they only focusing on Nasa missions sales?

According to Boeing, Starliner is designed to fit up to seven people, but NASA missions will carry a crew of only four or five.
Three astronauts have been designated for Starliner's first missions: Mike Fincke, Nicole Mann and Chris Ferguson.
Boeing also plans to fly private passengers, selling an extra fifth seat on NASA missions. The company says potential customers include commercial and government-sponsored astronauts or private citizens flying as tourists.

Hopefully the price tag per seat will keep it filled

Unlike Crew Dragon or the Apollo-era capsules, Starliner won't land in the ocean. It has parachutes and airbags to drop it into desert landing zones at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, Willcox Playa in Arizona or at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Starliner crew modules are designed to fly up to 10 missions. Service modules are made for each mission.

Landing on land does make for recycling but what is the chances of the air bags failing and causing structural damage?

SpaceNut · 2019-12-15 18:54:47

Not all of the parts are made by those that hold the contract as Aerojet Rocketdyne gears up for first flight of Boeing's Starliner

A dual-engine Centaur powered by two RL10 engines manufactured in West Palm Beach, Florida, will be making its debut on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket during the Starliner OFT mission. The dual-engine Centaur provides additional thrust to enable safe abort options along the entire ascent profile. Aerojet Rocketdyne AJ-60A solid rocket boosters will provide a total of more than 750,000 pounds of thrust as part of the boost propulsion for the Atlas V.
Aerojet Rocketdyne in-space propulsion will be used to orient and maneuver both the crew module and the service module. Aerojet Rocketdyne thrusters on the service module will also be used to reboost the International Space Station.
Additionally, the composite overwrap pressurant vessels on the launch vehicle, crew module and service module, built by Aerojet Rocketdyne subsidiary ARDE, located in Carlstadt, New Jersey, are manufactured based on a long history of proven flight safety and reliability. ARDE designs have flown more than 700 times on launch vehicles and spacecraft around the world.
Aerojet Rocketdyne propulsion on the mission includes:
+ Atlas V Rocket: Two AJ-60A solid rocket boosters that provide more than 375,000 pounds of thrust each, manufactured in Sacramento, California. Helium tanks for the first and upper stages built by Aerojet Rocketdyne subsidiary ARDE, located in Carlstadt, New Jersey. Reaction control engines built in Redmond, Washington, and two RL10 engines built in West Palm Beach, Florida, for the dual-engine Centaur upper stage.
+ Crew Module: 12 reusable thrusters manufactured in Redmond, Washington, which generate a total of 1,200 pounds of thrust to properly orient the spacecraft for re-entry into the atmosphere. Eight pressure control subsystem tanks to store nitrogen, oxygen and nitrox built by ARDE.
+ Service Module: 28 reaction control system engines, which provide 85 pounds of thrust each to enable on-orbit maneuvering and International Space Station reboost. Twenty orbital maneuvering and attitude control engines, providing 1,500 pounds of thrust each, are used for abort, maneuvering and stage separation. Four launch abort engines, with 40,000 pounds of thrust each, are used only in the event of a launch emergency to propel the crew capsule away from the launch vehicle. All of these types of engines are built in Canoga Park, California. Additionally, ARDE provides 4 fuel, 4 oxidizer and 2 pressurant service module tanks

Seems Aerojet is the main builder.....

SpaceNut · 2019-12-19 13:09:44

Boeing will launch its Starliner crew spacecraft for the first time

http://www.boeing.com/space/starliner/launch/index.html

GW Johnson · 2019-12-20 09:04:39

Well, it appears that Boeing has had an engine problem like Spacex did. The engines failed to fire instead of exploding. The outcome is completely in doubt, as this is an ongoing mess, in space right now.

OK, that means Spacex has sent an unmanned Dragon to ISS, and Boeing has probably failed to send an unmanned Starliner to ISS. Both have had serious troubles with their capsule's engines, and Boeing also had a chute problem because somebody failed to rig the chute right. (Parachuting is about a century old, now, so I see little excuse for that error.)

The whole shmear is managed by NASA, and at least 2 years behind schedule (more than that if you consider the intent at project start). It's a combination of real troubles at the companies, and foot-dragging by NASA to make sure Boeing flew first with a crew, Boeing being their favored contractor.

The biggest foot-dragging item was deletion of Spacex's powered landing in favor of chutes, so that a long program to "prove" the chute system could be imposed to slow them down, and the added expense of ocean recovery could more-equalize seat prices. This actually just delayed finding the problem with the Super Draco's.

Provided that Spacex actually has fixed the leaky NTO check valve problem with its Super Draco's, then it might still beat Boeing to ISS with a crew aboard by several months. Unless NASA can find another excuse to slow them down.

Not a very promising state-of-the-art.

This is the agency that wants you to believe it can put a space station into a distant halo orbit about the moon (I rather doubt they can do it with killing a crew during a solar flare), and that we actually need such a boondoggle in order to go to Mars (we don't, and everybody here on these forums knows that).

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2019-12-20 09:18:04)

GW Johnson · 2019-12-20 17:09:11

From PBS Newshour website 4:40 PM CST Fri 12-20-19. Brackets around key points are mine. I also bracketed three notes for comment afterward. GW

Nation Dec 20, 2019 9:56 AM EST

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — [Boeing’s new Starliner capsule went off course Friday during its first test flight, spoiling a crucial dress rehearsal for launching astronauts next year.]

The capsule will stay in orbit for a few days but [won’t dock with the International Space Station] as planned. It will return to Earth as early as Sunday, landing in the New Mexico dessert, NASA and company officials said. They said the capsule was stable and safe.

Friday’s blastoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, went flawlessly as the Atlas V rocket lifted off with the Starliner capsule just before sunrise. But a half-hour into the flight, Boeing reported that the capsule didn’t get into the right orbit. Officials said the spacecraft’s timer didn’t work properly and it burned up too much fuel to safely make the trip to the space station.

This was Boeing’s chance to catch up with SpaceX, NASA’s other commercial crew provider that successfully completed a similar demonstration last March. SpaceX has one last hurdle — a launch abort test — before carrying two NASA astronauts in its Dragon capsule, possibly by spring.

A successful Starliner demo could have seen Boeing launching astronauts by summer. But that might not be possible now. At a briefing, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said it was too early to know if another test flight would be needed before flying astronauts.

“I’m not ruling it out,” Bridenstine said on whether the next Starliner might carry crew or go empty.Had astronauts been on board, they may have been able to take over, correct the problem, and get the capsule to the space station, he said.

[It’s been nearly nine years since NASA astronauts have launched from the U.S].[***1] The last time was July 8, 2011, when Atlantis — now on display at Kennedy Space Center — made the final space shuttle flight.

Since then, NASA astronauts have traveled to and from the space station via Kazakhstan, courtesy of the Russian Space Agency. The Soyuz rides have cost NASA up to $86 million apiece.

The space agency handed over station deliveries to private businesses, first cargo and then crews, in order to focus on getting astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars.

Commercial cargo ships took flight in 2012, starting with SpaceX. Crew capsules were more complicated to design and build, and parachute and other technical problems pushed the first launches from 2017 to now next year. Last April, a SpaceX crew capsule exploded during a ground test.

The U.S. needs companies competing like this, Bridenstine said Thursday, to drive down launch costs, boost innovation and open space up to more people. He stressed the need for more than one company in case of problems that kept one grounded.

Thousands of spectators jammed the launch area Friday, eager to witness Starliner’s premiere flight. The United Launch Alliance rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and was visible for at least five minutes, its white contrail a brilliant contrast against the dark sky. The mood quickly turned somber as news of the setback trickled out.

All three astronauts assigned to the first Starliner crew were at control centers to watch the launch: NASA’s Mike Fincke and Nicole Mann and Boeing’s Chris Ferguson. Ferguson commanded the last shuttle mission. He’s now a test pilot astronaut for Boeing and one of the Starliner’s key developers.

“This is why we flight test, right?. We’re trying to get all of the bugs removed out of the system,” said Fincke at the briefing. “There’s always something.”

Built to accommodate seven, the white capsule with black and blue trim will typically carry four or five people. It’s 16.5 feet (5 meters) tall with its attached service module and 15 feet (4.5 meters) in diameter.

For the test flight, the Starliner carried Christmas treats and presents for the six space station residents, hundreds of tree seeds similar to those that flew to the moon on Apollo 14, the original air travel ID card belonging to Boeing’s founder and a mannequin named Rosie in the commander’s seat.

The test dummy — named after the bicep-flexing riveter of World War II — wore a red polka dot hair bandanna just like the original Rosie and Boeing’s custom royal blue spacesuit.

The flight was designed to test all systems, from the vibrations and stresses of liftoff to the touchdown at the Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, with parachutes and air bags to soften the landing. Even the test dummy is packed with sensors.

On the eve of the flight, Bridenstine said he’s “very comfortable” with Boeing, despite the prolonged grounding of the company’s 737 Max jets. The spacecraft and aircraft sides of the company are different, he noted. [Boeing has long been involved in NASA’s human spacecraft program, from Project Mercury to the shuttle and station programs].[***2]

Boeing began preliminary work on the Starliner in 2010, a year before Atlantis soared for the last time.

In 2014, Boeing and SpaceX made the final cut. [Boeing got more than $4 billion to develop and fly the Starliner, while SpaceX got $2.6 billion for a crew-version of its Dragon cargo ship].[***3]

NASA wants to make sure every reasonable precaution is taken with the capsules, designed to be safer than NASA’s old shuttles.

“We’re talking about human spaceflight,” Bridenstine cautioned. “It’s not for the faint of heart. It never has been, and it’s never going to be.”

---------------------

GW’s notes:

#(1) When “W” announced retirement of the shuttle, he expected at most a gap of a year or two after it quit flying, before a capsule and rocket would be ready. It’s instead been a decade. Does that not suggest that “management” here might really be more accurately spelled “mismanagement”?

#(2) Boeing did not actually do Mercury, or shuttle. McDonnell Aircraft did Mercury and Gemini, and later became part of McDonnell-Douglas, in turn later gobbled up by Boeing in a corporate acquisition. North American Aviation/Rockwell International did both Apollo and shuttle. Rockwell was later gobbled up by Boeing in a corporate acquisition. If you believe that any of that Mercury/Gemini or Apollo/shuttle expertise survived those acquisitions to enrich Boeing’s engineering departments, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Remember that a short, succinct synonym for “corporate hype” is “lie”.

#(3) As much as anything, note the disparity in budgets offered. If Boeing really had any “experience” from Rockwell’s Apollo, there should be little difference between what is needed to reprise a budget Apollo, and to convert a Spacex Dragon into a crew carrier. The favored contractor simply got a much bigger budget to get into the game as a Spacex competitor. If you don’t believe that, I have some beachfront property in Atlantis to sell you. Beautiful ocean view, 1200 feet straight up.

Last edited by GW Johnson (2019-12-20 17:11:40)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-20 17:23:32

What really is bad is the funds for what was constellation is the starting point in 2004 for all that we see now....

louis · 2019-12-20 18:35:47

Good notes GW! If I was an American taxpayer, I'd definitely be asking some questions!

The only good thing about it all is that it does underline what a stupendous achievement the Apollo programme was, put together in well under a decade and with engineers having to invent a lot of things along the way.

GW Johnson wrote:

GW’s notes:
#(1) When “W” announced retirement of the shuttle, he expected at most a gap of a year or two after it quit flying, before a capsule and rocket would be ready. It’s instead been a decade. Does that not suggest that “management” here might really be more accurately spelled “mismanagement”?
#(2) Boeing did not actually do Mercury, or shuttle. McDonnell Aircraft did Mercury and Gemini, and later became part of McDonnell-Douglas, in turn later gobbled up by Boeing in a corporate acquisition. North American Aviation/Rockwell International did both Apollo and shuttle. Rockwell was later gobbled up by Boeing in a corporate acquisition. If you believe that any of that Mercury/Gemini or Apollo/shuttle expertise survived those acquisitions to enrich Boeing’s engineering departments, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Remember that a short, succinct synonym for “corporate hype” is “lie”.
#(3) As much as anything, note the disparity in budgets offered. If Boeing really had any “experience” from Rockwell’s Apollo, there should be little difference between what is needed to reprise a budget Apollo, and to convert a Spacex Dragon into a crew carrier. The favored contractor simply got a much bigger budget to get into the game as a Spacex competitor. If you don’t believe that, I have some beachfront property in Atlantis to sell you. Beautiful ocean view, 1200 feet straight up.

kbd512 · 2019-12-20 19:23:43

GW,

I'll grant you that the results thus far are a little disappointing, but I think we'll get through this. Let's give Commercial Crew another year and see where we are. I have a feeling that the issues will be worked out by then. You already said it best. The best time to make mistakes is now when nobody can get killed as a result.

I always thought that retirement of the Space Shuttle without a replacement was a mistake, but it was so old and complicated that it was becoming a liability. Recall that it was supposed to be replaced by Lockheed-Martin's Venture Star SSTO in the 1990's, but for non-technical reasons that never happened. Apart from SpaceX's BFR, which wasn't even a paper concept when the Space Shuttle was retired, nothing else on offer provided equivalent capability to STS. Delivered cargo tonnage is an important capability metric, but so is the ability to return large pieces of cargo to Earth. BFR has yet to fly, just like a crewed Dragon V2 or Starliner or Orion. However, in the next 2 years we're likely to see the fruit of all the blood, sweat, and tears that went into these independent development efforts.

We've been living and working in space continuously aboard ISS for 20 years. Whether you believe it or not, that's a very real achievement. All of these capsule system technical issues are minor by way of comparison. We're going to "get there". Believe it.

kbd512 · 2019-12-20 20:03:25

Louis,

As an American tax payer I am pleased that our return to space efforts are going so well and accept that the first test of a brand new system may not be 100% perfect in every respect.

As you rightly noted, the Apollo program was a stupendous achievement, but that achievement cost the lives of three American astronauts before their capsule system ever left the ground. Nobody has died aboard a Dragon V2 or Starliner or Orion capsule as a result of what was learned in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle programs.

SpaceNut · 2019-12-20 20:27:52

ventur star was the composite tanks which could not hold up under refueling tests as they cracked under the cyrogenic fuels.

If it have been with the softer fuels of methane it would have flown but when would we have developed the engines would have been the next hurdle.

shuttle was also do for a total recertification which meant ripping it down to veiw all surfaces inside and out. with many a needed electronics wish list to be updated.

Oldfart1939 · 2019-12-20 22:13:45

I inadvertently began a new topic regarding he Boeing Starliner FAILED test flight. One of the administrators may kill it or transfer these comments there.

SpaceNut · 2019-12-21 08:28:55

no worry as we can continue there for Boeing specific issues.

RobertDyck · 2019-12-21 10:29:48

GW Johnson wrote:

I have some beachfront property in Atlantis to sell you. Beautiful ocean view, 1200 feet straight up.

I'm a nerd. My father was interested in Atlantis, so I researched it. The only information we have on Atlantis is "Dialogues of Critias" published by Plato in year 360BC. Everything else is fiction. That dialogue describes an island, which appears to describe Thera, now called Santorini. A major city was built on the central island in the lagoon. The island had geothermal heat, which locals used to smelt bronze and cast bronze swords. Modern knowledge is that island is the top of a magma dome of a caldera, aka super volcano. So it didn't sink, it exploded. There are indications locals tried to evacuate, but ships were caught in the pyroclastic flow and sunk. Vast numbers of shipwrecks and artifacts litter the sea floor around the island. But the volcano is building again; the magma dome has formed a new island called Nea Kameni. Technically uninhabited, there's a couple docks and tourists arrive every day to hike the summit. Someone built a church near one of the docks.

GW Johnson · 2019-12-21 10:59:59

Kbd512 is quite right to point out my comment about finding the problems early with early failures. That is indeed what has been happening with Starliner and Crew Dragon.

My disappointment with COTS progress comes from it taking this long to do these jobs. There is no new engineering ground being broken with capsules for Earth orbit recovered by parachutes. We (and the Russians) have been doing that since 1961-1962. You'd think half a century's experience doing this would have made it a fast process, but it didn't.

One of my points above was that the initial successful expertise did not survive the corporate acquisition processes that obliterated the original engineering departments that did this. Besides corporations firing all the line engineers and keeping only top management in these acquisitions, there is also attrition: the ones with the knowledge and experience have all retired, been fired out of the industry, or died. After half a century, most have died.

Why is this important? Because rocket science ain't just science. It's only about 40% science (which is knowledge written down). It's about 50% art (knowledge never written down, because nobody wanted to pay for writing it down), and about 10% blind dumb luck. And that's in production work. The art and luck factors are higher in development work. I know this to be fact, because I did this kind of work myself.

The art doesn't get passed on except as one-on-one mentoring on-the-job (something I myself benefitted from as a youngster, then later did for many newcomers, as an experienced hand). That doesn't happen if the acquisition upheavals come too quickly (and they did, I was there and saw it in the industry from the inside). It also doesn't happen if there is age discrimination (the old guys are the ones in possession of the art, not the younger ones). Been there and seen that, too.

I have not seen or heard anything in public about the "fix" for the leaky check valve in the Spacex Super Draco oxidizer system, except that they were going to replace it with some sort of positive-shutoff valve. We'll see that "verified" by the flying abort test scheduled for next month.

Boeing seems not to have had an engine failure, but a failure in a clock. A clock failure! Really? Have we humans not been building fully-accurate timepieces since the 17th or 18th century?

The contract stipulates that flight safety is "verified" by a successful unmanned trip to ISS, and a successful in-flight abort test. It is understood that component failures need to be corrected and "verified" by successful test.

For NASA to waive contract requirements for one contractor, but not the other, is blatant favoritism. Watch for it, they may try to do that for Boeing, vis a vis the unmanned ISS trip.

Spacex has already visited ISS unmanned, but has not flown the in-flight abort test. They have yet to "verify" the reworked Super Draco failure. Both will be accomplished (hopefully) by a successful in-flight abort test flight in January. If successful, that clears the way to complete the contract by flying a crew to ISS. Supposedly, that would be followed by a service contract to deliver many crews to ISS.

Boeing will have to repeat the unmanned ISS flight successfully to actually meet the terms of the contract. I may be wrong, but I don't believe they have done an in-flight abort test, either, although I remember them doing an abort test off the pad with no rocket booster, just like Spacex did. So, technically, they still have two big required items to complete, before flying a crew to ISS.

For both contractors, I put "verify" in quotes because one successful demonstration is not proof of any level of reliability. Period. End of issue. You cannot prove reliability in one short development and demonstration contract, that takes an extended service history.

For one example I am personally familiar with: the old retired satellite launcher "Scout" had one flight test failure out of 4 test flights in the development contract. They then went into production and commercial launch service. In 30 years' service (hundreds of launches) there was never another failure of the Scout launcher, in any of its configurations (and it grew considerably over 30 years). THAT is proof of reliability. Not the 3 out of 4 tests. The decades-long service record.

Talking about test demonstrations as "proof" of reliability is utter nonsense. For anything, not just rocket boosters.

So yes, this spaceflight thing is, and always will be, extremely dangerous, until and unless any given spacecraft and booster combination can demonstrate a failure-tolerant service record stretching out over many years, more-or-less the way that Soyuz/R-7 has for decades since the last fatality (a crew died from depressurization during reentry in the late 1960's).

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2019-12-21 11:10:03)

GW Johnson · 2019-12-21 11:04:14

I'm pretty sure RobertDyck is correct pointing to Thera as Atlantis. The destruction of the Minoan city there, followed by the tsunami that destroyed its capital city 80 miles away on Crete, is very likely the set of original events that were the source of Plato's story. And the others.

Even Jacques Cousteau's people have dived on the site and seen the artifacts. I've seen the video footage they took of it.

GW

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-21 11:38:25

At the risk of further veering wildly off topic, the comments by RobertDyck and GW Johnson, and in particular about the magma bubble under the likely site of "Atlantis" reminded me that the United States has its own super volcano in remission right now, under Yellowstone National Park and nearby regions.

https://phys.org/news/2011-08-radioacti … earth.html

I called up the link above (thanks Google) to confirm that about half the heating inside the Earth is due to radioactive decay.

The drawing off of heat energy from dangerous magma protrusions would be a neat trick.

Unfortunately, we humans seem currently able to pull off only parlor tricks with geothermal energy, compared to the industrial scale projects that are needed to head off an explosion at any of the percolating super volcanoes in the world.

A nation that could pull off an energy tap operation on the scale that is needed should be able to live comfortably enough to share with the least productive members without casting aspersions upon them, as is current practice.

Humans who are rich can afford to be generous. The miracle is that so many humans are generous without being rich.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-21 19:37:20

At this point though we can not even get off this rock to anything other than what is in LEO. So we will never graduate to planet hunting for a magma dome or vent to tap for energy anywhere else. That is sad that we can not get a rocket to orbit but for cargo ship....

As for a clock there is lots of ways one can be made but the electronic version have lots of failing points from bad coding to just using the wrong parts to start the machine running at a given clock rate to make the code work. I have seen digital engineers use an oscillator without its temperature compensation resistor cause units to fail until they reached a warm temperature. I have seen the wrong devide down of the master frequency cause to wrong cycle to make the counters output incorrect.

GW Johnson · 2019-12-22 09:35:43

Spacenut:

And yet I have owned very inexpensive Timex watches for 5 decades now, that all kept very good time for many years, before they quit. That's both mechanical and electronic devices, over that many decades.

Maybe Boeing ought to buy their clocks from Timex.

GW

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-22 10:47:45

For GW Johnson re #245

A report I ran across in the past day said that the issue with the timing was NOT mechanical. The software (apparently) fetched the wrong time from the Atlas.

I (personally) find it curious that the engineers working on the capsule system would have built such a dependency into their plans. Considering the cost of the overall system, saving a couple of bucks by not having their own timer source seems surprising.

I'll bet that particular detail will be examined closely before the next flight.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-22 12:02:21

So its a calculated time frame from launch of the rockets first stage to when the next stage takes over. This is not a time but fuel comsumption data for speed of flight number being passed so that momentum equations for burns are correct.

SpaceNut · 2019-12-22 12:50:38

Trying to move conversation to Boeing Starliner unmanned orbital test flight
as to why Boeing machine is in trouble....as much as we will look at Spacex dragon in its not much better.

Crewed Dragon topic Space X have go ahead for Crew Dragon mission

SpaceNut · 2020-01-16 18:41:37

For the up and coming escape rockets test... Why SpaceX is blowing up a Falcon 9 rocket shortly after it launches Saturday, during what it hopes will be the final unmanned test flight before the private aerospace company can send NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.

stage seperation followed by retro rockets

SpaceNut · 2020-01-18 11:33:43

SpaceX delays Crew Dragon abort test launch to Sunday due to bad weather

at the mission’s launch site. The next attempt will be on Sunday
"Now targeting Sunday, January 19, with a six-hour test window opening at 8:00 a.m. EST, 13:00 UTC."

GW, is this a fuel limitation for the launch window?

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#226 2019-12-07 16:18:38

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