I’ve never heard the LAS suggested as a solution, but it’s a fascinating idea. I love the Space Act stuff we’ve seen with Bigelow, SpaceDev, and others. And I’d love to see some of the Constellation systems grabbed up by someone who can put them to use. My suspicion is that while Musk has made some comments on being open to mating his hardware with other systems, he generally stands by having a 100% in-house system with the possibility of compatibility. There’s a lot of legacy stuff out there with a track record that he’s passed up in favor of starting from scratch. I imagine he’s probably been approached with collaborative offers as well, though I have no actual evidence of that. The point is if he ever did anything with LAS I suspect it would be only after he had his own escape tower coming off his own assembly lines.

What would your priority be if you just won the CRS contract for ISS cargo service vs. crewed service with no contract?

Finally and just for fun: Say Orion is canned so to speak. Yet the LAS for Orion has been in development for some time now. If it can be shown that a variant of Orion’s LAS can be safely integrated with Dragon, how long would it take to field a crewed Dragon? I don’t know, just asking…

http://spaceports.blogspot.com/2010/01/musk-speaks-to-falcon-9-safety.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Spaceports+%28Spaceports%29

In it he reiterates the 2-3 year development timeline on the escape system several times and basically makes the same sort of points I ususally do re: SpaceX vs Constellation in that even with huge engineering time margins on top of his estimates, he would still beat out even the optimistic estimates for Orion. That does put to rest the nagging worry of the NASA caveat to his manned Dragon. The only thing that does worry me a bit about it is that it is the same 2-3 year span he put forth to Augustine over half a year ago. In other words it appears the dev window has slipped. I may also be reading too much into that, but I’m doing what I can to tease details out of the scraps SpaceX and others throw out to the media and there’s some meta details in his statements that might speak louder than the statements themselves.

That said, I am greatly relieved as a SpaceX junky to find the same timeline sans funding contingency reiterated multiple times ‘from the horses mouth’ so to speak.

Since you asked…
Unfortunately the TPS isn’t my area. I work with the Avionics and GNC sub-systems, so I don’t know off the top of my head how thick the heat shield is, sorry. I can tell you that it’s not actually a constant thickness. It’s thicker on the “windward” side, since that’s the side that faces into the “wind” and therefore takes more of the brunt of re-entry.

As far as Dragon goes, now that I think of it, PICA might work for its heat shield for lunar return as well as LEO because it is quite a bit lighter than Orion. I still don’t know if its designed from the start for lunar return, and I don’t know that Musk or anyone else has said for sure, FWIW.

Look don’t mind what others tell you including me. Base your ideas on facts, well known, tangible facts. Not on the delusion (constrcutive imagination?) of some journalist or blogger. Especially when it comes to technical comments. They are journalissts not engineers working at any specific firm knowing the requirements for a mission or a vehicle. See? Get your facts together and make up your mind. Journalists feed you whatever they are being fed by “sources” or in better cases by fact checking investigation. Remember that they also reecive absolute disinformation from sources. Look at the Time invention of Year thing. How does that scale in your values? Again it does not matter who they are. If you can corroborate what they say with other facts then fine otherwise…

And for the record, I give Rob Coppinger a good deal of credit. He’s not exactly Paula Zahn. Neither is Doug Messier. His area of expertise is more aerospace policy than engineering, but he’s no slouch either. Journalists they may be, but you could do a lot worse for reliability of opinions on space companies.

Read Loki’s statement about Orion. The emphasis is on block 1, to ISS. Not the Moon. Now if you’ve worked on such programs before and if you know about the cash issues you should know that it means that probably they are giving 0.75 EP to 0.90 EP to ISS capability and the rest to the Moon. I would even say 1.00 EP to ISS and that the Moon vehicle is most likely being supported via IRAD. I agree it is speculation. If so, IRAD or anything in the future is most likely overlooked by either NASA or LMT. Loki willing to share his thoughts? I am happy to be wrong even if it’s moot now.

PICA was indeed the primary choice for TPS because NASA could not revive AVCOAT then and had the most recent experience was with PICA. There are a lot of difficulties with PICA to be overcomed. However PICA on its own can sustain lunar return – difficulties are elsewhere. Can Loki comment on the TPS thickness currently looked at for the heatshield? And that required for lunar return on Orion? Are they actually building a vehicle that, mass-wise, can be put in orbit to go to the Moon. TPS = mass = cost and if there is no cash there is no Moon, hence the focus on ISS.

As far as SpaceX goes, would you expect Musk to give you his exact plan? Whatever is in writing to the Augustine panel is probably closest to the “truth” as far as those things are concerned. Not whatever is given to the media. So again, how do you know Dragon is not designed for lunar return? ALL of your quotes are NOT Musk’s!!! They are the journalists’! What kind of support is that to your argument? Again you give credence to journalists over the SpaceX CEO. Not a good sign.

Look you are free to believe what you want but I suggest you get a more critical eye on things and maybe get answers from the people in this business rather than on journalist. It will enlighten you more.

“and I see nothing like what you claim for example slide #24. Make sure you read the slide and you will find this statement: “and NASA is not the only customer”. Does that mean anything to you?”

It’s not in the slide, it was in his presentation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O81Zq02eStg

In this video we see Musk’s actual talk with Augustine. As you suggest at 2:15, 6:00, 9:42, and 10:40 there are indications of his intent to do manned one way or another. However, the one and only point he gives any kind of timeline is on the slide you mention at 11:00 where he says it will take 2 years plus 6 to 9 months buffer “from the moment NASA says Go”. He also uses a lot of could’s throughout from 11:00 on. Now yes, that’s making a big deal out of one statement, but I’m far from the only person who’s highlighted that statement. And I think it’s important that the only time Musk’s given a timeline on manned Dragon is with that qualifier. He never mentions that timeline anywhere else in that speech or any other I’ve read, with or without the qualifier.

13:50 talks heavily on using commercial to take LEO so NASA can go beyond, which really puts the focus on LEO operations. Does it say it’s not in the designs in some way? No, you’re right, it doesn’t. But he really puts the emphasis on his business plan aiming for LEO. And while I’ve heard tell of other customers, I’ve yet to hear of a single one asking for manned Dragon beyond LEO, even Bigelow, whom I’m also a fan of.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11699810/

“At 3.6 meters in diameter, Dragon would be smaller than the 5-meter diameter Crew Exploration Vehicle. But then Dragon is only intended for comparatively short jaunts to the space station, not longer expeditions to the Moon and points beyond.”

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2008/07/10/musk-dragon-development-progressing-moon-trip-could-cost-under-100-million/

“There also would be significant modifications required for the Dragon spacecraft, which is designed for orbital use.”

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/hyperbola/2008/07/musk-80-million-to-go-to-the-m.html#more

“you are not going to want to be strapped in to a capsule for what would have to be at least a week long trip there and back and so you need a habitation module, you need an Earth departure stage to get the hab and capsule out to the Moon, and you would need a number of changes to the Dragon spacecraft such as a larger heatshield for the higher speed reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere.”

That article is also interesting in that it mentions Musk putting a pricetag on manned cislunar flight. It’s also interesting because, as the comments point out, his own website says it will cost more than that to do cislunar on F9 Heavy, manned or not.

“Again are you working on Orion? In active development toward the Moon??? ”

That the Orion is being developed for Lunar operations is far from a secret. It’s common knowledge. I didn’t really feel the need for a citation. As for it’s ability to get beyond the tower, that’s based entirely on the issues already highlighted by the Augustine commission and others as well as comments and funding from both congress and the president. It’s speculation, but I thought I was being pretty clear on that.

For the record, while the above references are based on what Musk has said and in some cases are direct quotes from Musk himself, what I think will happen is a different story, as you suggest. I think Musk will build a manned system with or without NASA and I really do hope he does it on the 2-3 year timeframe. I think NASA will still launch Ares I and probably Ares V and I have faith that Orion will launch with it. And I think we’ll still go to the Moon, even if we don’t do it until into the next decade. And man, I really hope we meet the schedule found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Constellation_missions . I also think Musk will refit Dragon to go to the Moon as the above articles suggest.

But what I know, having read all of the above when they were first written and stashed it away in my memory banks, is that Musk hasn’t put a non-NASA contingent timeline on manned Dragon publicly, the Dragon spacecraft is currently aimed at LEO from and engineering and marketing standpoint, and Constellation has been consistently in doubt of ever getting the support from the government necessary to fly to the moon and has at least some chance of not flying at all. I made the comments I made precisely because I wanted to be cautious and ground what I said in what I’ve read and discussed in the past, and not just spout off what I think or believe.

“As for Dragon capability beyond LEO, it’s not currently designed to carry the sort of supplies necessary to make that kind of trip, nor is its heat shield really designed to handle lunar re-entry speeds. ”

According to Spacex’ Dragon fact sheet (http://www.spacex.com/downloads/dragonlab-datasheet.pdf) the heat shield is made from PICA-X, which was considered at one time for Orion’s heat shield. We went with Avcoat because testing showed that it performed better for high speed lunar re-entries. It is possible to make a heat shield out of PICA that can withstand the heat, but it would be heavier than Avcoat. We also decided to go with Avoat for the ISS (aka Block 1) version mainly for commonality with the lunar (Block 2) version.

I can’t say for sure if the Dragon’s heat shield will be designed for lunar return from the start (since I don’t work for Spacex), but I kind of doubt it. Musk seems to be pretty smart about taking things one step at time. First Falcon 1, then F-9 and cargo Dragon, then he’ll do manned Dragon for ISS/ LEO and probably will later come out with a Lunar Dragon when the time is right, and maybe eventually Mars Dragon. I know he also wants to make Falcon 9 re-usable sometime down the road as well, probably through gradual block upgrades. That’s the same strategy we were planning for Orion, btw. Speaking of which;

“” Orion … at least is a program in active development toward the Moon.”

Again are you working on Orion? In active development toward the Moon??? ”

As I alluded to above Orion is being developed in “blocks”. Block 1 is ISS, block 2 is lunar. You’d think that would mean we’re designing block 1 now with block 2 coming later, but no. For the most part we’re working on both in parallel. The main differences between them are in the Service Module, due to the different delta-v and consummable quantities required for the 2 missions. About 1.5 or so years ago (can’t remember exactly when, sorry) we were under direction to concentrate our efforts on the block 2 design and block 1 would essentially be a “downgrade” of the block 2 vehicle. But, NASA decided to change direction and directed LM to complete the block 1 design (and by extension anything that is common between the variants) and leave the block 2 upgrades for later. So, in a way, Aremis is right about that, but wrong at the same time.

Since the bulk of the design is “common” between the 2 variants when you work on one you’re also working on the other, just not directly. You’ll probably be able to say the same for Spacex’ Dragon. I’m sure any future lunar Dragon variant will have as much in common with the initial LEO version as possible, since that only makes sense.

Take your meds, please.

FWIW…