Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX Corp. unveiled a new manned Dragon V2 spacecraft during a major media event Thursday evening.
Billionaire Elon Musk, founder and CEO of the private space transport company SpaceX, hosted a worldwide media event for the unveiling of the company's ground-breaking Dragon V2 spacecraft. The event was held at the SpaceX headquarters in California and was broadcast via livestream. SpaceX is short for Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
The new space vehicle, which could carry up to seven astronauts, is an upgraded version of the Dragon cargo craft. The Dragon has successfully performed four unmanned resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS) over the past couple of years.
Since NASA shut down the Space Shuttle program in 2011, the space agency has been totally dependent on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to get U.S. astronauts to and from the space station at the enormous cost of more than $70 million per person. Recently, Russian officials have threatened to stop shuttling NASA astronauts to the ISS in response to economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. following Moscow's decision to annex Ukraine's Crimean peninsula.
'After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest to the USA to bring their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline,' Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Roxine tweeted in April.
Two other companies-Boeing with its CST-100 and the Serra Nevada Corp. With its Dream Chaser spacecraft- also are competing for contracts with NASA to develop private space transport able to carry U.S. astronauts to the space station by 2017.
SpaceX's new Dragon V2 uses the SuperDraco thruster, which has just completed qualification testing, according to a report by gizmodo.com. The engine 'will power the Dragon spacecraft's launch escape system and enable the vehicle to land propulsively on Earth or another planet with pinpoint accuracy,' the company said in a statement.
Progress by private space transport companies is not as fast as many would like because lawmakers have not provided NASA with the funds needed for the effort, said John Logsdon, professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at George Washington University in a report by the Associated Press (AP). He also said that U.S. reliance on Russian spacecraft should come to an end.
'It's essential to have our own capability to transport people to space,' Logsdon said, adding that the unveiling of the SpaceX transport capsule is 'an important step in that direction.'
Posted by Unknown on Friday, May 30, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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