tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3476622805364190755.post991841037343970681..comments2023-08-03T09:55:54.810-06:00Comments on Animated Film Reviews: SpaceX Dragon V2 AnimationUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3476622805364190755.post-4327917727875696572014-06-24T13:00:30.793-06:002014-06-24T13:00:30.793-06:00No apology necessary, I relish any opportunity to ...No apology necessary, I relish any opportunity to wax lyrical about SpaceX - I hope you don't feel bad about it!<br /><br />And yeah, BFR - I think officially, they'd claim it's "Big Falcon Rocket", but I think we all know what they were going for (they haven't gone on record what it stands for).<br /><br />As for sense of humour, the Dragon is so called because, when Elon Musk explained his ambitions to investors in the early days of the company, they said he must have been smoking something - so he named the spaceship he was designing "Puff The Magic Dragon", which quickly became just Dragon.<br /><br />Falcon 9 is so called because Elon is a Star Wars fan, and his favourite ship in those films is the Millenium Falcon.Destructor1701https://www.blogger.com/profile/04884229558116545994noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3476622805364190755.post-80934899335801289282014-06-24T07:27:56.626-06:002014-06-24T07:27:56.626-06:00Thank you for the clarifications. I probably shoul...Thank you for the clarifications. I probably shouldn't venture into explanations as I did with this animation, that isn't my field. My goal is to present the best animations I can find on a variety of topics and discuss them a bit. I'm not a rocket scientist and make no claims in that field. You've set forth a detailed presentation that should send anyone interested in the right direction for further study. I apologize for misunderstanding the nomenclature. Thanks for pointing out some things in the animation I did not notice, too.<br /><br />BFR - Big F'in' Rocket? LOL, glad someone at the company has a sense of humor.James Bjorkmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14749118745932210527noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3476622805364190755.post-36925876873706481232014-06-24T06:40:24.802-06:002014-06-24T06:40:24.802-06:00I had to break my message in two because I suffer ...I had to break my message in two because I suffer from verbal diarrhoea!<br /><br />Part 2:<br /><br />Aside from understandable misconstuances, you've got a great article here. I love CGI, so it's heartening to read the opinions of someone in that field on SpaceX's sexy animations.<br /><br />Sorry for gushing, but I'm totally blown away by SpaceX's drive and ambition. They're not in this simply to make a buck - their goal is to ensure the future of humanity, by "backing up the biosphere", as Musk puts it, by founding a colony on Mars. <br /><br />To that end, they have a spacecraft in development called the MCT - the Mars Colonial Transporter, which will be lofted on the largest rocket ever built, the BFR (I'll let you figure out that acronym). The MCT will carry 100 humans, in an internal volume 100 times the size of an SUV, to Mars, land, drop them off, extract fuel from the Martian atmosphere, take off, and return to Earth to pick up a fresh load of colonists.<br />The ambition is insane, but if anyone can do it, SpaceX can. I wait with bated breath for every new announcement from Hawthorne.Destructor1701https://www.blogger.com/profile/04884229558116545994noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3476622805364190755.post-83550836810579264582014-06-24T06:39:12.430-06:002014-06-24T06:39:12.430-06:00Hello, sorry about this, but I feel the need to co...Hello, sorry about this, but I feel the need to correct a number of inaccuracies in your article. Please don't take any offence.<br /><br />The Falcon series are just the rockets that launch payloads into orbit. Those payloads can be private or government satellites, or spacecraft. There have been three models of Falcon, the single-engine Falcon 1, and two versions of Falcon 9: 1.0 and 1.1. Falcon 1 was discontinued in 2009, and Falcon 9 1.0 has been superseded by the 1.1 as of late 2013. The Falcon 9 is a human-rated rocket.<br /><br />SpaceX's own line of Spacecraft are called Dragon. They function as payloads atop the Falcon 9. <br />The Dragon in the above video is Dragon Version 2, but you can see the Version 1 docked to the space station at another docking port while the V2 is coming in to dock in the video.<br />Dragon V1 is rated for cargo, though Musk has stated that, were a human to stowaway on board, they "would be fine", as the ship has life support systems, and the safety level would be "similar to the shuttle".<br />Dragon V1 has flown to the ISS 4 times since 2010, with a fifth mission scheduled to launch in July. <br /><br />The Falcon is the launch vehicle for the Dragon, and drops back to Earth in stages without itself reaching a stable orbit. Falcon has never visited the ISS - it cannot.<br /><br />One incredibly awesome innovation SpaceX is making with Falcon 9 is the development of landing systems for the various rocket stages that are traditionally allowed to be destroyed by the elements on the return to Earth, or in the case of the upper stages, allowed to languish in orbit for weeks or decades, waiting for their orbits to decay. This means that the stages can be refueled, restacked, and flown again. Musk hopes, when all the development is finished, to be able to turn a whole rocket around within a day.<br />This feature is still in the early stages, and the rockets just started sporting sexy carbon-fibre chevron-shaped landing legs as of the last ISS mission. <br />That first-stage landed gently on the surface of the Atlantic, amid a storm so severe that no NASA aircraft could be on scene, and the recovery ships intended to be at the site were stuck dozens of kilometers away. The only aircraft in the area was Elon's private jet, which received garbled video from the landing rocket. A two-month long video recovery project has revealed a picture-perfect soft-landing on the ocean's surface in hellish conditions! Search "CRS-1 First Stage Landing video recovery" to find the latest and best iteration of the recovered video.<br /><br />The other thing to note is that Dragon V2, as depicted in the video, is nearly ready to fly. The video was debuted at the SpaceX press conference where they unveiled an actual flight-hardware Dragon V2, not a mock-up.<br />The craft has to undergo performance and qualification testing for a couple of years before the FAA and NASA will allow humans on board, hence the wait period.<br />That period will not be uneventful behind-closed-doors development, as you suggest. There will be videos of most of the tests, using a cash-test-capsule called the Dragonfly, which will look nearly identical to V2.<br />To get a flavour of what the tests will be like, there are many videos on YouTube depicting the testing of the Falcon 9 first-stage landing systems with two craft called "Grasshopper", and "F9r-Dev". <br />If you like the sound of a skyscraper-sized rocket hovering in the sky, jinking left and right, and then landing on a dime, seek those out, they look like CGI, but they are gloriously real!Destructor1701https://www.blogger.com/profile/04884229558116545994noreply@blogger.com