SpaceX ISS Cargo Mission Will Bring More Solar Power

SpaceX is scheduled to fly a cargo Dragon 2 to the space station starting June 3. Crew Dragon’s system of SuperDraco abort thrusters and other gear were removed from the human flight Dragon 2 to enable more cargo.

Falcon 9 booster B1067 will take more than 3300 kg of cargo. They will bring new roll out solar panels to the space station. Eventually six new solar panels will add 20-30% more power to the station.

SOURCES- SpaceX, NASA, Ben Cooper
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

20 thoughts on “SpaceX ISS Cargo Mission Will Bring More Solar Power”

  1. Should we go to Mars before the Moon? Should we go to lunar orbit or the Moon surface? Should we do things in micr0g? Should we collect energy in Space? Should we get water, C and materials from the Moon? Or launch stuff planet to planet? O'Neill questions! About the first things we should be doing. And we are getting the answers mostly wrong.

  2. O'Neill thought experiment. We arrive ftl at the new *solar* system. We have a good but small ship, so no drastic emergency of starvation or such. The new system is exactly like ours, but with one difference, humans did not make it, died out after a million years from chimp common ancestor. Where do we dig the first mine? Where do we collect energy? Where do we grow food? Oh, and we need room for at least a trill.

  3. Primal Science is "hard science". When I started, they took a swab for the records. These will collectively show the epigenetic changes that happen when the experiment is successful, the Primals. I was present when a patient reported that a toenail that had been missing all her life appeared while in birth experience. There was little reaction, as it is so common for such things to happen. The mere claim brands one as a total quack to the jeering public. Yet, Primals exist, that stuff happens, and more importantly, the patient is cured. Life extension, greatly enhanced by removal of chronic stress.

  4. Oh, please. Even were I to concede that primal therapy was legit psychology, rather than a fad that came and went, the idea that any kind of psychology can be described as a "hard science" is silly. 

    O'Neill isn't science, it's semi-speculative engineering. Quite reasonable as such, so long as one doesn't transform it into a cult.

    The observation that planets are extremely inefficient ways to use mass for habitation is valid. It should eventually result in orbital habitats of some sort dominating. It does NOT mean that they are the first thing you should be doing, any more than the superiority of rail over feet implies that the West should have been colonized by building rail lines into the wilderness.

  5. As to understanding O'Neill or Janov, there is a difference. Janov is hard science, like Physics except the experiment is far more straightforward and revealing without interpretation. The experimenter uses his own body and the changes are to his own body, permanent and clear. O'Neill uses Physics to demonstrate several clear advantages to free Space, but it does take some combo thinking to get the answer. Most do not even know the question, however, and even with claims to the contrary cannot pass a simple quiz about O'Neill. So yes, understanding O'Neill is rare, often claimed w/o being there. Is the surface of a planet the right place for an expanding tech civ? It is not even big enuf! On the specifics of the HLS, Bezos is only supplying the lander itself, not the crew elements, so I suspect those are the risk seen. Lander is first anyway, uncrewed important stuff, not practice for Mars.

  6. Even if somebody understands O'Neill, (Which, despite your obsession, does NOT imply agreeing with O'Neill.) you have to actually accomplish these things to merit enthusiastic coverage.

    Once Bezos starts launching into orbit, he will rate as an actual competitor to Musk. Right now, at best, he's an engine manufacturer for others. 

    Nasa may have rejected Dynetics on the basis of cost, but they rejected Blue Origin on the basis of risk. They weren't sure he could deliver!

    That really had to burn. Hopefully it will motivate him to put hardware in orbit and prove Blue Origins IS more than an engine manufacturer and producer of over-engineered sounding rockets. Because, much as I like SpaceX, we need more than one company capable of pulling off that sort of work.

  7. I could see it going either way. How many of these capsules do they keep in stock, anyway? You'd want to have one or more ready to go for a manned flight on short notice, even if you were just money grubbing; Rescue missions would pay well.

    So, wouldn't shock me if they had taken a manned capsule "off the shelf", and literally did remove various gear; They've run cargo missions with full man rated equipment before, after all.

    However, looking at the photos, the capsule has a new outer skin that lacks the Draco rocket ports. So I'd have to conclude it likely it never had the thrusters.

  8. You actually do stuff, it get reported on.

    Go launch something to the ISS, and Brian will report on you, too. Get busy!

  9. There will be more enthusiastic coverage of Bezos when he actually starts sending things into orbit. Not before.

  10. It goes to the fact that the general idea of both Musk and Bezos is to design for crew, and not have separate basic stuff for cargo. This then makes cargo flights tests of crew hardware, and is simpler. So, yes, the thrusters were "removed" from the design of the crew dragon.

  11. O'Neill, as in orbital, micr0g? Seems like that is viable right now, and should have been long ago. Is it on the surface of a planet? If not, it is O'Neill. Is it Mars? It is not O'Neill. Many who have heard of O'Neill do not understand O'Neill. Have you read "The High Frontier"?

  12. Everyone understands O'Neill. People who actually work in the industry don't think it is viable for now. Maybe in a few decades.

  13. Sorry, your favourite hero, whoever they are, are not doing much to advance the next big future of humanity. Elon is.

  14. I don't have any definite knowledge of the spacecraft, but I imagine that was just poor wording of the statement. It probably should have said something like "the SuperDraco abort thrusters and other gear are not included in Cargo Dragon 2 capsules, increasing their cargo capacity".

  15. The article suggests SuperDraco abort thrusters and other gear will be ‘removed’. Is this a typo, or are they repurposing a Crew Dragon capsule? The cargo version of the Dragon does not have these and other crew-critical systems by design.

  16. There will be even more enthusiastic coverage of Bezos, as he understands O'Neill and has a workable plan for Space.

  17. Add material from the Moon or NEO to the Additive Mfg device feed and less and less gets launched from Earth. Space Solar then comes back down, solving global weirding and opening Space. And then on to Mars.

  18. Those iROSA solar panels are quite interesting on their own as well, in terms of deployment mechanism and materials used.

    But, when Made in Space debuts their Archinaut technology for making and deploying solar arrays on a test flight soon (Archinaut One mission for NASA in 2022), that will change the game considerably. That demo will feature a 3D printer building deployment trusses ("trusselator") that drag out a rolled up solar array, then a robot arm will flip the printer over to print another boom to drag out the other rolled up solar array. Since the solar array is sent up rolled with no deployment mechanism inbuilt, it's much lighter and packs smaller.

    https://madeinspace.us/capabilities-and-technology/archinaut/

Comments are closed.