SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk, unveils the Dragon V2 spacecraft in Hawthorne, Calif.
Alan Boyle, the science editor for NBC News, writes Mars Ahead? SpaceX Unveils Dragon V2 Capsule for Astronaut Trips. SpaceX, the second company founded by CEO and billionaire, Elon Musk, who also founded Telsa electric car company, revealed the Dragon V2, the spacecraft it hopes will take NASA astronauts to the International Space Station and colonists to mars.
The Dragon V2 could be one of the first U.S-built spaceships to carry NASA fliers since the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2011. SpaceX and two other companies, the Boeing Co. and Sierra Nevada Corp., have been receiving more than $1 billion from NASA to develop replacements for the shuttle.
Sometime in the next few months, the space agency is expected to decide which projects will move on to actual spaceflight in about 2017. In the meantime, NASA has to pay the Russians more than $70 million per seat for rides on Soyuz spacecraft. All three U.S. companies say they can beat that price.
Image: SpaceX Dragon cargo craft NASA VIA AP
SpaceX has been flying first-generation Dragon cargo capsules to and from the space station for two years, with the company's Falcon 9 rocket providing the oomph to put the Dragons into orbit. Those gumdrop-shaped spacecraft are not designed to carry people, however.
Musk said the cost per astronaut would start at $20 million per seat and could fall from that point as the number of flights increase.
The Dragon V2 was created by upgrading the original Dragon cargo spacecraft adding seven seats, a life support system, and a SuperDraco thruster system that can "push the capsule ... and crew to safety if something went wrong during the ascent. These thrusters have been qualified for flight.
If all goes well and NASA choose SpaceX's design, Elon Musk said it could be ready for a first unmaned flight by the end of 2015, and then with test pilots by 2016 - ready in time for NASA's 2017 deadline.
Image: Musk inside Dragon SPACEX
Author Alan Boyle mentions a "leg-equipped" version of the Dragon, called the DragonFly that is undergoing FAA approval. What? I know, kogs, I'm checking it out, and will let you know as soon as I discover something. LOL
Musk also imagines the Dragon V2 also serving other private-sector space station, such as is being designed by Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace.
"This is going to be a fabulous machine," Robert Bigelow, the billionaire founder of Bigelow Aerospace, told NBC News after trying out the Dragon's seats. "SpaceX deserves all the credit in the world. ... This is really a fork in the road for space exploration."
SpaceX is working on a Falcon Heavy rocket, a BFR, Big Falcon Rocket. This Elon Musk fellow seems to have a certain knack for marketing and engineering vision doesn't he?
I wonder if this is what it felt like to be watching the start of the auto industry at the turn of the previous century. In 1975 I met an old fellow in Boston, who always sat in the cafe across the street from the store I worked in. On an extra long break, I bought him coffee and asked him about his life. It turned out he was born in Portugal in the 1885 or there about, had come across the mountains on a mule, made it to the U.S. and fought for us in World War I.
It turned out he show the transition from horse and buggies to paved roads and automobiles, the electrification of the country, the advent of commercial radio, TV, the airline industry, computers, integrated circuit chips, telephones, video games and much of the technology we take for granted that most people back in 1900 probably never imagined.
This article has me wondering what people of 2100 will be taking for granted that we haven't even imagined yet. Will we have thriving space colonies, and economy, probably starting with mining?
2:53 PM PT:
Here's a link to SpaceX's website: DRAGON V2 MAY 2014
I found these photos on SpaceX's website.
Still photo taken from video of Dragon V2 landing on mars. (Simulated conception, I'm trying to get this video for us.)
Cockpit of seating for seven astronauts inside Dragon V2
3:14 PM PT: Please check out some of my other posts of the last 24 hours.