SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft has splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean, marking the successful completion of its mission in which a number of historic firsts were achieved. The splashdown came at approximately 11:42 US EDT, with the unmanned capsule landing in the waters roughly 500 miles (805 km) off the coast of Baja, California.
After its launch on May 22 atop a Falcon 9 rocket, the Dragon capsule became the first commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) on May 25. While attached to the ISS, 1,146 pounds (520 kg) of non-critical cargo that included food, other crew provisions and student experiments were unloaded, making room for the 1,455 pounds (660 kg) of cargo that was then packed onto the spacecraft to be returned to NASA. With other cargo vehicles servicing the ISS all destroyed after leaving the ISS, the reusable Dragon spacecraft is the only one capable of returning significant amounts of cargo to Earth.
While the journey to the ISS took 3 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 23 seconds, the return trip, from detaching from the ISS to splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, took just under six hours. After detaching from the ISS’s robotic arm at 5:49 am US EDT, a deorbit burn was carried out at 10:51 to decelerate the spacecraft. At 11:36, the spacecraft’s chutes were deployed and it splashed into the ocean six minutes later, awaiting recovery by boat.
“This really couldn’t have gone better,” said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk after the successful landing. “We look forward to doing lots more missions in the future and continuing to upgrade the technology.”
After recovery, the spacecraft will be transported to Texas. Musk has said the capsule will be put on display as a historic artifact, with other Dragon capsules to be built for future flights.
It is time to put NASA out of the Launch business.
The point is Space X is is the first US company in commercial competitive launch business after several decades (commercial(!) - not taxpayer subsidized, as NASA, or military paid for USAF). This area has been domain for the Russian, European or Chinese providers. Space X can cut the cost of a launch by an order of magnitude in comparison to other "standard" options in the US. Even the Chinese cannot compete with Space X on costs.
Additionally, you have Falcon Heavy in the works (essentially three Falcon 9s combined)- the currently largest and third historically largest rocket in the world (after Saturn V and Russian Energia). It is not true that Falcon Heavy is unfunded: just recently (May 29th press release) Space X signed an agreement with Intelsat to place new class of geostationary satellites in orbit with Falcon Heavy. As mentioned above, reusable first and second stages are in development. (That is better than shuttle, which was not really "reusable" but merely "reflyable". You do not fish out the SBRs out of the Atlantic and deal with salt water damage and splash shock - but they soft-touch down on the landing pad). Finally you have an air launch platform, in which Space X is also involved.
I do not see that much of a third world country here. (That is ...unless somebody moved to lightcraft, magnetic launch, space loop or space elevators real fast. But that would have been a completely new ball game which is not on the horizon anytime soon.)
Any of you experts out there know why it's got a 'crack' across the top? has some of the heat-shield been lost?