Thursday 8 November 2012

DRAGON FALCON 9

SpaceX's Dragon is a small orbital spacecraft designed for transporting people and goods to and from the ISS. It has two configurations, an unmanned cargo configuration, and a crew/passenger configuration capable of transporting up to seven people. It is being built by a consortium led by SpaceX under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services ( COTS) initiative. Dragon is also equipped with an ISS-compatible dock that is exposed through a removable nosecone. Return to the Earth's surface is achieved through a parachute-assisted splashdown and recovery.
Dragon is delivered into orbit on top of the Falcon 9 two-stage launch vehicle, an expanded version of the Falcon 1 rocket that completed a successful test launch to orbit on 28 September 2008 (after three prior failures). Both stages of the Falcon 9 are intended to be reusable.
The intended use for the combined vehicle is primarily to serve as a replacement for the Shuttle fleet after their retirement, so space tourism is not an overt goal. Unlike vehicles aimed explicitly at the space tourism market, the Dragon/Falcon 9 combination is not fully reusable, and so is unlikely to withstand competition from a fully reusable orbital vehicle such as those proposed by Scaled Composites and others. However, until such time as such vehicles become available it may be the first privately financed space vehicle to be capable of delivering people, space tourists or otherwise, to orbit.


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