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Unread 04-10-2008, 17:35
Ian Curtis Ian Curtis is offline
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Re: Falcon 1 makes orbit!

Quote:
Originally Posted by EricH View Post
Actually, the Dragon is planned to be man-capable. They're also working on Falcon 9 (heavy), which uses a pair of Falcon 9 first stages for extra boost.

Oh, and the first stage is recoverable. I would assume that also means reuseable. (Someone was saying something about reuseable liquid-fueled rockets a few minutes ago?)

The site is pretty interesting; they've got a lot of information about their projects.
Planned, yes (they even put windows in it!), but if you read the interviews, Elon said they need a good 2 or 3 years* to actually have it man-rated.

*I can't find the source for this, as I've got to go, but it's somewhere on SpaceX's media page.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Elon Musk
SpaceX is one of two companies with contracts under the NASA COTS program to develop launch and delivery capability to the international space station. Elon has told me (and NASA) that he expects to have cargo transport capability by 2010, and that he could have crew transport a year or two later. But to do that, he would need some additional COTS funding -- described in the initial Space Act agreement that set up COTS -- to make Falcon 9 human rated. But NASA has not made the funds available to this point, because it has its own budget problems and because, as Mike Griffin told me, he's not sure yet that SpaceX will succeed (though he very much wants it to.)

The additional funds would be needed to develop and build the crew launch abort mechanism, and would entail about $300 million. There have been some efforts in Congress to force NASA's hand regarding this aspect of COTS funding, but no success at this point.
Source

As far as recoverability of the first stage goes, I'd assume that a good chunk of the system still needs to be overhauled after they pull it out of the water. I emailed them to see if they actually recovered the first stage from this flight, and am waiting to see if they get back to me after the weekend.
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