Spaceships, scenes and commercial manned past and present lives.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “Jia Zi light years” (ID: jazzyear) , Author: Liu Jingfeng.
At 15:23 on May 30th, Eastern Time (3:23 am on May 31st, Beijing time), at the 39A launch pad of the Kennedy Space Launch Center in Florida, humanity has achieved the first commercial manned launch!
This time, it was Musk who made history again.
The second-generation manned “Dragon” spacecraft (hereinafter referred to as the second-generation manned Dragon spacecraft) under the spaceX company he founded just carried two astronauts, Douglas Hurley and Robert Benken successfully entered space. This is the first manned space mission carried out by the United States on the mainland after 9 years since 2011; it is also the first time in the world that a private enterprise has achieved this mission. People launch.
For the successful launch of the Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX has been preparing for a full 6 years:
In 2014, signed a contract with NASA to formally build a manned space project;
In January 2016, the spacecraft parachute test was completed.
In March 2019, the second-generation Dragon spacecraft successfully carried a test flight with a dummy, but a month later, this successful test spacecraft suddenly caught fire and exploded during routine static ignition;
In January 2020, it carried the dummy test escape system, and actively detonated the rocket Falcon 9 carrying the spacecraft, dedicated to the “most expensive fireworks” in history;
Not to mention the previous thousands of static engine ignition tests, nearly one hundred parachute tests and dozens of sea rescue and recovery spaceship tests …
Huge technical and engineering challenges have also delayed the launch of the Dragon spacecraft repeatedly, from the original optimistic vision of 2015 to today.
The launch mission originally scheduled 3 days ago (Eastern United States at 16:33 on May 27) was also urgently cancelled due to weather conditions before the launch on that day.
On the day before the launch of the Dragon spacecraft (13:49 US Eastern time on May 29), the SN4 prototype of SpaceX ’s Starship exploded during the test. The scene was so full of fire that the fireball even engulfed the rocket carrier.
Good things happen, but fortunately, the explosion of the interstellar spacecraft did not affect the launch process of this manned dragon spacecraft.
A week ago, Musk, who was full of enthusiasm for launching, once wrote on Twitter “open your eyes and look to the sky”.
Good! He did not disappoint us.
It ’s worth mentioning that SpaceX also announced another good news this Tuesday-a new $ 350 million in financing. The space madman’s dream of interstellar exploration adds more weight.
The launch of the Dragon spacecraft was successful, and new financing was received. After 18 years of establishing SpaceX, the space madman Musk is one step closer to Mars.
1. Historic moment
Half an hour before launch, two astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Benken had already sat in the Dragon spacecraft early, waiting for the final launch.
As the first astronauts to perform commercial manned flight missions, Bob Benken and Doug Hurley not only have 20 years of space experience, but also have operated space shuttles.
Douglas Hurley is a lieutenant colonel and test pilot of the US Marine Corps. He has piloted the space shuttle Endeavour and the Atlantis, including the final flight of the US Space Shuttle in 2011, the closing flight performed by the space shuttle Atlantis. task.
Robert Bunken is a doctor of engineering and a colonel in the Air Force. He has participated in the space shuttle Endeavour mission twice and has conducted six spacewalks for more than 37 hours. They were selected by NASA for the first flight of the Dragon spacecraft as early as 2018, and it has been waiting for this flight mission for 2 years.
The interior design of the Dragon spacecraft is white minimalist, much like a high-end coupe. The spaceship has 7 seats and 3 round windows. Above and in front of the seat is the display and control module of the spacecraft.
The two astronauts ’space suits are designed by Hollywood costume designer Ho who has designed movie suits for comic heroes such as Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Captain America Ce Fernandes fencing. Of course, this cool spacesuit must also pass NASA ’sVarious rigorous tests to meet the functionality and safety required for aerospace missions.
One minute after launch, the rocket pushed the spacecraft into a height of 8.1 kilometers, and the speed of the spacecraft had reached 1,000 kilometers per hour. After 5 minutes, the spacecraft’s flight speed has exceeded 10,000 km / h and entered 200 km of low-Earth orbit. At the same time, the “Falcon 9” rocket was also successfully recovered on the offshore platform.
The spacecraft will fly in space for 19 hours and dock with the International Space Station at 10:00 U.S. Eastern Time on May 31.
The dragon spaceship launched this time adopts a two-cabin design, which can work for 1 week when flying independently, and can work for 210 days in docking state.
In the next 19 hours, the two astronauts will orbit the earth and will dock with the International Space Station at 11:29 am EDT
At present, SpaceX and NASA have set August 30 this year as the target date for the next Dragon spacecraft launch. At that time, four astronauts will be sent into space, three of them will be NASA astronauts and one will be Japanese astronauts.
2. How is the Dragon Spaceship different?
In fact, humans have already had the technology of manned spaceflight, so how is the dragon spacecraft launched this time different from the previous ones?
Looking down, the dragon spacecraft has created multiple world firsts:
The first reusable manned spaceship;
The first manned spacecraft manufactured by a commercial company;
The first manned spacecraft that successfully passed the escape system test;
Thanks to this mission, SpaceX became the world ’s first commercial company to send astronauts into space;
In a sense, the success of the Dragon spacecraft heralds the return of the United States to the ranks of manned spacecraft.
In today ’s world, there are only three countries that can achieve manned spaceflight: China, the United States, and Russia.
China and Russia have chosen the spacecraft route. At present, this spacecraft can only be used once; the United States chose to use the spaceship to transport astronauts before 1972, but because the spaceship can only be used once at that time, it turned after 1972. The advantage of the shuttle route is that it can be reused.
But the development of the envisaged space shuttle program was counterproductive.
The space shuttle is more like a rocket-driven aircraft, which is the key to its reusability-the large wings control the speed with the assistance of equipment such as decelerators, and then control the magnitude and direction of the lift, adjust Flight attitude andPosition so that the space shuttle can accurately land on the runway. But after it was really put into use, its shortcomings began to be exposed. Not only did the cost not drop, but the safety could not be guaranteed.
How expensive is the space shuttle? Through a set of data, the United States has spent a total of 196 billion US dollars for the space shuttle project since 1972, and carried out 135 flight missions. The cost of each launch is about 1.5 billion US dollars, which is equivalent to each launch. Burn 1.5 “unicorns”.
More worrying is the safety of the space shuttle.
In 1986, the space shuttle “Challenger” exploded after being launched, and 7 astronauts were killed; in 2003, another space shuttle “Columbia” exploded and disintegrated again after being lifted off. All were also killed. Two accidents not only lost two of the five space shuttles in the United States, but also lost 14 astronauts. People are full of doubts about the safety of the space shuttle: 135 flights failed twice, and the calculated accident rate of the space shuttle reached 1.5%, far exceeding the NASA estimated 1 failure per 100,000 flights at the beginning of the design.
The space shuttle accident became a lingering pain in American hearts. This is why NASA will value the safety performance of the manned spacecraft in the future.
In 2011, after the Space Shuttle Atlantis completed its last mission, the United States terminated all space shuttle services.
Since then, NASA has collaborated with Boeing and SpaceX on the “Commercial Crew Program” to launch a reusable manned spacecraft project.
The first to make achievements is Boeing with a deep industrial heritage. In November 2019, Boeing’s manned spacecraft named “Starliner” was the first to conduct an emergency escape system test, but encountered a failure during the test. One of the three parachutes in the spacecraft’s return cabin was not opened.
One month later, the “Starliner” encountered another setback in its first unmanned test flight-it failed to dock with the International Space Station as planned and had to return early. NASA was disappointed by the two test failures.
The failure of “Interstellar” gave the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft the opportunity to re-use the manned spacecraft.
The dragon spacecraft’s escape system test was shown to the world with a “most expensive firework”.
On January 19, 2020, the Dragon spacecraft carried a dummy astronaut with the help of the “Falcon 9” rocket. Subsequently, the “Dragon” spacecraft took the dummy off the rocket, and the rocket exploded immediately, forming a huge fireball in the air, which was dubbed by netizens as “the most expensive firework”.
The spacecraft landed on the Atlantic Ocean and the test was successful.
This escape test is a major breakthrough in the history of manned spaceflight.
The escape test is the most critical part of responding to rocket launch accidents. With this successful test, NASA and SpaceX made up their minds to make a real manned flight.
With security, we must also consider availability-is the cost low enough?
Dragon spaceships are reusable, and as the number of uses increases, the cost will gradually decrease.
A US report shows that the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is priced at US $ 55 million per seat. The Boeing “Starliner” ticket is $ 90 million per person, which is 60% more expensive than SpaceX. If compared with the space shuttle equivalent to the cost of 1.5 billion US dollars per flight, the cost of the Dragon spacecraft is 1/27 of the space shuttle.
Looking like this, the Dragon Spaceship is undoubtedly the most perfect manned spaceship at present.
3. SpaceX and NASA that have achieved each other
SpaceX, which made the Dragon spacecraft, is now brilliant, and its main business has three major sectors:
One is the launching business, which corresponds to Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy.
The second is the manned spaceflight business, corresponding to the second-generation dragon spacecraft launched today and the future larger starship Starship;
The third is a star chain project that aims to create space-based Internet services.
In fact, including SapceX, the prosperity of American commercial aerospace companies is inseparable from the Bole NASA behind it.
Since the 1990s, the U.S. aerospace industry has been monopolized by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and the two companies later joined forces to drive up rocket launch prices, leaving NASA suffering.
In 2003, the bitter Bush administration began to attack NASA and the traditional military giants, which were still monopolized.
The logic behind this is that aerospace projects under government-led and monopoly by military giants have no survival pressure, not only lack ofLack of innovation power, and the cost from the subsystem to the rocket spacecraft is seriously high.
Bush Bush ’s approach is very straightforward, with two decrees issued—the National Space Transportation Policy and the National Space Policy of the United States. The most important role of these two policies is to shift the focus of NASA’s work to the field of scientific research and deep space exploration.
Since then, NASA has gradually given up near-Earth space business and opened related scientific research projects to private space companies. In other words, the United States began to truly liberalize the commercial aerospace market.
There is also an episode behind the United States ’support for commercial aerospace. In the nine years after the US space shuttle retired in 2011, NASA had to rely on the Russian “Soyuz” manned spacecraft to send astronauts to the International Space Station.
And in this seller’s market, the Russian “Union” ferry tickets also began to increase in price, from the unit price of 21.8 million US dollars in 2007 to 2018 reached 81.1 million US dollars.
This is a bit too shameful for the United States, the world ’s number one aerospace power, and its own manned space mission not only depends on the face of others, but also kills them .
To this end, NASA started a horse race-in the core of manned spaceflight, the launch vehicle, cargo spacecraft, manned spacecraft and space station have supported a number of star companies and projects, which can be described as a hundred flowers.
For example, in the field of carrier rockets, there are both “Cosmic God” and “Delta” family rockets, as well as Nogg ’s Antares rockets and SpaceX ’s Falcon series rockets;
In the field of cargo spaceships, based on the basis of the launch vehicle, SpaceX ’s cargo “Dragon” spacecraft and Nogg ’s “Swan” spacecraft are the biggest winners;
In the field of manned spacecraft, there were initially companies such as Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada Group and United Launch Alliance, and finally only SpaceX ’s Dragon spacecraft and Boeing ’s “interplanetary route” were shortlisted;
In terms of space stations, the leader is Bigelow Aerospace, which focuses on the construction of inflatable flexible space stations. In 2016, it sent a 1.4-ton Bigger Inflatable Residence (BEAM) to the International Space Station to provide astronauts with space to work and rest.
SpaceX is the company that received the most funding from NASA in addition to the old aerospace Boeing.