Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) - a high-tech rocket and spaceship company started by Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk - is just hours from a historic launch that will shape the future of humanity in space over the coming generation. The flight is scheduled for a very narrow launch window at 1:55 AM PDT / 4:55 AM EDT, so if any delays occur in the lead-up, the mission will have to be rescheduled for a few days later. Nevertheless, the event is imminent enough and important enough to be worth explaining its significance.
This is the situation: The United States right now has no independent manned spaceflight capability since the retirement of the Space Shuttle, and its main alternative - the Atlas V rocket operated by "United Launch Alliance (ULA) - both has no operational manned spacecraft attached to it, and the rocket's operational costs have been skyrocketing. ULA is widely condemned among entrepreneurial space companies for the failure of its progenitor companies (Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and their constituents) over decades to reduce the costs of space launch, and continues to follow politically-based, highly expensive practices that have failed to make their flights more affordable.
ULA has sought to exploit the possibility of using Atlas V through the efforts of Boeing to create a manned spacecraft capable of being launched on it, the CST-100, but a great deal of skepticism has surrounded these efforts: Boeing has indicated a lack of commitment to the system by implying that it would only move forward to the extent NASA directly supports its development, and does not appear interested in fully committing company resources to building a fully independent capability if NASA does not fund it. This is roughly the same picture for other "mainstream" contractor programs seeking to replace the Space Shuttle, in particular the ATK/EADS-Astrium Liberty rocket, which is an as-yet-unbuilt capsule put on top of a surplus solid rocket booster from the Space Shuttle program. Orbital Sciences Corporation is also competing with its Antares rocket to launch its Cygnus spacecraft, but does not appear to be in a position to proceed without NASA, and has not stated any intentions to go further than currently-competed services.
Just to keep things limited to reality, all of the spacecraft we are talking about are space capsules launched on top of rockets - there are no radical leaps forward, at least in terms of appearance. At least at first, all of the rockets are expandable. And two NASA services are in play: One is the provision of "upmass" or cargo delivered to the International Space Station from Earth, along with "downmass" delivered back to Earth from ISS; and the other is launch and delivery of human crew to ISS, followed by their safe return to Earth. Funded contracts called COTS have already been awarded to SpaceX and Orbital for well over a billion dollars, and unfunded contracts have been given to other companies for the cargo portion of the services, and still more money has been given and remains to be won for delivering and returning crew, despite no system yet being in a position to make a crewed flight.
It needs to be made clear that no other company is anywhere near SpaceX, its Falcon 9 rocket, or the Dragon spacecraft it will launch in terms of readiness to deliver and proceed to more ambitious prospects. The Falcon 9 rocket has successfully launched to orbit twice, the Dragon spacecraft was launched unmanned into orbit and recovered once, and the spacecraft's avionics, on-orbit operations hardware and software, and maneuvering systems are finalized and have been in full-op dress rehearsal testing with the collaboration of NASA for months. The hardware for remotely controlling Dragon from the ISS has already been installed and ISS personnel trained in its operation - a system called CUCU (COTS Ultra-high-frequency Communications Unit) developed in conjunction with NASA.
Nor is any other company as committed as SpaceX: For most this is just a lucrative piece of limited business, but SpaceX has made it clear that their ambition is nothing less than to open up the solar system to mankind and colonize other worlds, and it has committed to investing its own resources in doing so. Companies like Boeing, however, have made clear that their committment is exactly equal to the amount of external funding they receive and no more - they do not regard it as an entrepreneurial venture, but just another contract they can take or leave. So the fact that it's SpaceX on the verge of launching tonight is very important, and has wide-ranging implications.
On the pad at Cape Canaveral right now is the Falcon 9 rocket with unmanned cargo version of the Dragon spacecraft on top. The Falcon 9 is a medium-lift, liquid-fueled, two-stage rocket with 9 engines (each rocket nozzle you see at the base corresponds to an engine), which was done because each engine (called the Merlin engine) is identical and could thus be made cheaper and more reliably by making them en masse. Its very development from the ground-up has resulted in significant cost savings, and by the time of the rocket's first commercial flight it had already reduced the price of launch to low-Earth orbit (LEO) by a factor of three (and the price continues to drop as additional innovations are made). This was possible because SpaceX was designed from the ground up as a business to seek its profits from internal cost-reductions, not from monopolizing niches or lobbying to gobble up share of uncompetitive public business.
The Merlin engine, now on its fourth version (the 1D) and soon to transition to the Merlin 2 in later flights:
The rocket itself seems like nothing special, apart from how incredibly cheaply it was developed, how low its price is compared to its competitors, and the fact that it's full of the most advanced hardware and software available while other rockets are still running on 1960s technology:
Of special importance is the Dragon spacecraft, which has been designed from the very beginning as ultimately for human transport. On this mission it will only be carrying cargo, but these unmanned missions will be used to work out many of the systems and processes that will be critical for human uses. The intention is that it will be able to comfortably carry seven people to LEO (as a starting point), although hints have been dropped that augmented versions may be used as command modules for deep space missions - possibly even as Mars landers.
The current mission is simply to launch into orbit, and then maneuver around the ISS according to commands from the station for a period of a few days while its performance is analyzed, and finally come in safely for berthing (a process that is different from docking, in that the capsule comes to a dead relative stop and allows itself to be grappled rather than trying to guide itself into dock). Once it is berthed, its docking seals and environmental controls will be verified, then the cargo unloaded and downmass (the stuff to be sent back to Earth loaded up), and finally it will be released to go back to Earth where it will hopefully be recovered intact.
There are several existing capsules to carry cargo to ISS (e.g., Europe's ATV, Japan's HTV, and some versions of Soyuz), but they are enormously expensive, expendable, and thus cannot bring cargo back - they're one-way systems that load up on garbage to be burnt in the atmosphere, and were never designed to be evolved into manned capsules or exploration systems. Soyuz alone has down-mass, but it's pretty small compared to Dragon, and Dragon will be able to carry more than twice as many crew at a fraction of the cost once it's man-rated.
One important capability of being able to conduct delicate rendezvous operations is that Dragon will eventually be able to rendezvous with other deep space systems, which could make it part of a complex for deep space missions (as the Moon missions had a Command Module, Service Module, and Lander). Although the thrusters on the current version of Dragon are pretty weak, much more powerful versions are in the works for use as both a Launch Escape System, a planetary landing system, and a maneuvering system in powerful gravity fields. This more powerful thruster is called SuperDraco, and it is clearly meant for bigger things than just buzzing around the ISS:
Since manned capsules need the ability to propulsively abort and remove the crew safely from a firing rocket, there are two approaches: A launch escape tower with rockets on top that pulls the capsule away from the booster, or rockets beneath the capsule that launch it off - SpaceX is going the latter route because they intend to use the same rockets as a potential landing system for returning to Earth (or possibly landing on other surfaces!). It's part of their general approach to seeking reusability of all their systems that they hope will result in a tenfold or more reduction in cost (factors of two to three reduction have already been realized). A simulation of approaches they hope to take to eventually realizing stage-reusability - although the current Falcon 9 being launched is expendable (note the Dragon in the video has its own landing rockets and legs!):
Once the rendezvous technology is proven by this upcoming flight and others like it, and once SuperDraco is operational and installed, Dragon could be used as an affordable general space exploration platform - even for robotic missions. SpaceX has promoted the idea of DragonLab, both as a manned or unmanned research station, and it is at least conceivable that in the future additional systems could be attached to it and the complex launched on deep space exploration missions. Obvious possibilities include circumlunar flights, high-altitude Earth orbits beyond the realm of the Moon, visits to asteroids, or even flybys of Mars or Venus. This could be done on an unamanned basis before the systems needed for crew are ready. SpaceX has not committed to any such missions, but the promise is very much there, and SpaceX is explicitly committed to human exploration of Mars.
So once it completes the upcoming unmanned rendezvous, cargo delivery, and return mission (knock on wood), additional milestones will be the Launch Escape System pusher rockets to make Dragon man-rated (along with the more obvious human rating requiremetns), programs to recover and reuse the Falcon 9 stages to drastically reduce costs even further, testing and implementation of SuperDraco as a vacuum engine and landing system, and launch of the Falcon Heavy (or else some form of propellant depot) to deliver high-mass additional modules that would work with variants for the Dragon for deep space missions. It sounds like a lot, and it is a lot, but this is the first time since the 1960s that humanity has been on a course toward space exploration. This particular mission is, I would say, the most significant for mankind since Gemini 8 in 1966- the first rendezvous and docking of two spacecraft in orbit.
However, there will be few Eureka moments, and plenty of nail-biting - once the launch is over, Dragon will spend days moving toward the station and working out its operating software, and once it comes near the station it will literally be run through hoops (commanded to make circuits around the station several kilometers away) before it's allowed to come near and be berthed. So there are days ahead of trials and potential pitfalls. Even if everything goes well, there is a massive amount of work still to do to keep delivering and returning cargo, fix whatever issues are identified on this flight, keep making the Dragon ready for human flight, upgrading the Merlin engines, etc. etc. before even the first manned flight of this new system. But even if this flight fails completely, for the first time in generations we are on a path and can see how it leads to Somewhere.
Elon Musk, who is one of the most successful and brilliant practical geniuses of all time, doesn't see this taking more than 15 years to put humans on Mars. Of course it will likely be longer than that, but his confidence is infectious. SpaceX is on track to make unmanned and eventually even manned access to orbit cheap enough for large universities, corporations, and small governments to afford - and that's even before the savings possible if they succeed at achieving reusability of the Falcon 9. Watch the skies for a signal that tonight our future has begun.
8:38 PM PT: Everything appears still go. SpaceX notes on their Twitter feed that their next Falcon 9 rocket is already completed and waiting in hangar at the Cape.
http://pic.twitter.com/...
8:55 PM PT: The Merlin engine is aptly named. I see the resemblance, don't you?
11:52 PM PT: Counting still proceeding for 4:55 AM EDT / 1:55 AM EDT
Sat May 19, 2012 at 1:42 AM PT: Countdown still looks good.
Sat May 19, 2012 at 1:47 AM PT: Live Stream: http://new.livestream.com/...
Sat May 19, 2012 at 1:50 AM PT:
