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SpaceX falcon 9 has launched!

bandit4910

By bandit4910
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bandit4910

bandit4910

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This is just beautiful! I\'m glad that a private company is going to take over NASA/US Government\'s rocket launches. Moon trip anyone?

They are most likely due to a moon trip in 2020... They might end up at mars in 2030.

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Foamy

Foamy

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The only concern i have of private space exploration as it\'s not easy to get them to do science properly, enabling NASA or others to do science easier is what we should be aiming for. That\'s why i hop moon/mars missions like that are run and manned by NASA but using SpaceX hardware.

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Kryten

Kryten

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Remember as well, SpaceX is a for-profit company; even if they have the tech and resources, they\'re not going to go to the Moon for the heck of it. Someone\'s got to pay them to do it, and the organisation doing so will probably be NASA, who\'ve already been paying for all of their development costs anyway.

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thorfinn

thorfinn

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The gashes should have been made by the parachute risers, along pre-cut lines: I suppose the chute pack was in that compartment on the side...

Probably it looks worse than it really is, you\'re right.

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silent_prtoagonist

silent_prtoagonist

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There\'s a lot of soot, but it kind of looks like melted/warped plastic to me.

Maybe that\'s just because of all the soot though

One reason that it might look like melted and warped plastic is that Dragon\'s hull isn\'t smooth to begin with, it has a lot of contours in it as seen here:

7272242008_5744ed3e49.jpg

Nadering tot 10 meter. by André Kuipers, on Flickr

And as has been mentioned the large 'cracks' are by design and part of the parachute system.

It does seem more charred than the first flight, though. I wonder what made the difference?

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bandit4910

bandit4910

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One reason that it might look like melted and warped plastic is that Dragon\'s hull isn\'t smooth to begin with, it has a lot of contours in it as seen here:

And as has been mentioned the large 'cracks' are by design and part of the parachute system.

It does seem more charred than the first flight, though. I wonder what made the difference?

I think that\'s because of higher temperature in the atmosphere.

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silent_prtoagonist

silent_prtoagonist

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It could be that, because the first mission wasn\'t meeting the ISS, which is in a relatively high orbit, it reentered from a lower orbit, yielding lower thermal loads during reentry. Or it could just be that this time it took a steeper reentry for any number of reasons.

...Or, looking at pictures of the earlier dragon, they all show it only from the 'hatch side' where as this picture is from the 'parachute side,' which from the pattern of charring looks also to be the 'upwind' side during reentry. So it could be that the 'parachute' side is always significantly more charred, and we just never saw it on the earlier mission...

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