SpaceX Dragon Genius Landing Method Somehow Shocked NASA...

That's exciting! SpaceX is resurrecting one of its craziest ideas. Propulsive landings on Dragon spacecraft that were initially intended to serve for the company's long-term Mars plans. So, how will this happen? Find out everything in today's TechMap episode. But before we begin, let's subscribe to the channel to stay up to date with the latest space news. Space is inherently dangerous to human beings, and spaceflight is too risky. But it doesn't mean space travel is just spent for professional astronauts and legacy companies. The rapid growth of the unicorn SpaceX, who is the pioneer for the private crewed spaceflights, is the obvious proof of that. However, great things always come with challenges, and one of the biggest challenges that SpaceX has faced is the safety matter. You know, in this field, even a small negligence can lead to terrible consequences that last not only in a short time, but can last for years. It's a reason why SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said, astronaut and personnel safety is SpaceX's highest priority. This is reflected in the way they make their already reliable Dragon spacecraft more reliable every day. Recently, NASA's Steve Stitch revealed a new Dragon contingency, the Crew Dragon's propulsive emergency landing capabilities. We have a unique capability for the first time on Crew 8 and Crew 9. It's an emergency contingency capability for landing, where if the main parachutes were all to fail, the SuperDraco thrusters will fire right before the vehicle would make contact with the water, and then it would be an emergency configuration to save the crew on a really bad day. Eight powerful SuperDraco thrusters used in this case are normally only used in the unlikely instance of a launch abort. Steve Stitch, NASA's Commercial Crew Program Manager, said the emergency propulsive landing capability will be enabled for the return of the Crew 8 mission, which has been at the space station since March. Adding details about the new emergency landing capabilities, SpaceX's William Gerstenmaier shared that, We've actually flow it on several other Dragon flights before this. This is the first time it flies on a NASA mission. He outlined that the way it works is, in the case all the parachutes totally fail, this essentially fires the thrusters at the very end that essentially gives the crew a chance to land safely and essentially escape the vehicle. So it's not used in any, you know, partial conditions. Since the Dragon can land with one chute out, we can land with other failures in the chute system. The system works when the capsule detects that there's a problem, and it fires the, essentially the Draco thrusters at the very end and then provides a tolerable landing through the crew. So it's a, it's a true deep contingency, outlined Gerstenmaier. This news is certainly able to fire any SpaceX enthusiastic up who has followed SpaceX long enough to know that the plans for With it brought back from the dead, is there anything exciting waiting for us in the future? But before answering the question, we should find out why they need a backup option for their landing procedure. SpaceX has stuck to the parachute-assisted ocean splashdowns since the Dragon 1 era, and now this approach has become the best selection for Dragon landing. But that doesn't mean there are no risks. Parachutes on spacecraft can be prone to failure for several reasons, despite decades of experience with their use in aerospace applications. It might be from external factors such as aerodynamic forces, wake turbulence, and varying descent speeds appearing in a highly dynamic and chaotic environment as the spacecraft descends. These can affect how parachutes inflate and stabilize, not to mention the technical failures in design and assembling. Compared to the complex technology packed into a modern spacecraft, you would think the simple parachute would be the easiest part of the design. But in fact, it's one of the biggest challenges. Parachutes, they look easy, but they are definitely not easy. Elon Musk said at a 2019 press conference at SpaceX, we've had so many engineers quit over the parachutes. Another risk regards cutter failures, where lines controlling parachute expansion do not cut as intended and can prevent proper inflation. For example, in Blue Origin's NS-25 mission on May 19 flight, one parachute failed to fully inflate because a controlling line was not severed correctly. Even over time, materials used in parachutes can experience wear and tear, leading to potential failures during deployment. SpaceX's Dragon capsule met the parachute's issues during a drop test in April 2019 when it had to crash land in the Nevada desert because three main parachutes didn't inflate. Both Boeing's Starliner and Blue Origin's New Shepard also hit the parachute's issue. Of course, SpaceX is afraid of such incidents happening again on its safest spacecraft, so they came up with the idea of using SuperDracos for redundancy, but with a little bit of modification compared to the past idea. SpaceX initially planned for the Crew Dragon spacecraft to utilize propulsive landings using its SuperDraco engines, which would allow for a controlled landing on solid ground. However, this concept was ultimately scrapped primarily due to the safety concern. NASA did not accept a propulsive landing as safe enough, at least not without a lot more tests. Also, the landing legs would have extended out from the bottom through the heat shield, which could be a failure point for the heat shield. Therefore, the use of the SuperDracos to soften a water landing, as we see now, seemed very sensible. By remaining the splashdown approach, SpaceX doesn't need an additional part like landing legs that will add weight to the spacecraft and make a hole in the spacecraft's bottom. More importantly, the benefits of propulsive landing systems over traditional parachute landings are significant, such as more precise control over the landing, so minimizing the impact forces experienced by the spacecraft. On the other hand, some raise skepticism about its feasibility because NASA hasn't certified it. Perhaps we will need more testing here, which is not simple. Anyway, it would be great to reuse a safety system for a different purpose in addition to the launch escape system. It shows SpaceX's strong commitment to human safety, thus reaffirming its position as the world's most reliable and safest vehicle launcher. Also, this makes us think NASA has come around a bit and decided that the thing it was originally designed to do can be used as an emergency backup. This is an interesting development considering how averse NASA is to trying new things, even if it's a 1% of a 1% of a 1% chance. Talking about this interesting idea, SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk wrote on X, Jared Isaacman, Polaris Dawn's commander, also expressed excitement. We were always confident in the chutes, but this backup capability is pretty impressive. So how about you? Are you sold on the idea of SuperDraco's assisted ocean splashdowns? Drop a heart icon in the comment section below if you are. With reconsidering the power landing idea, one wonders if this is the beginning of a pathway that leads to landing Dragon on land, similar to the original Dragon plans. My guess is no, SpaceX possibly keeps loyal to the traditional splashdown. Besides minimizing the need for the landing legs, landing in water helps absorb some of the impact since the properties of water provide more cushion than solid ground. So far, splashing down into water remains one of the most common ways astronauts return to Earth. So, how did researchers figure out the splashdown method? Before it can perform a safe landing, a spacecraft returning to Earth needs to slow down. While it is careening back to Earth, a spacecraft has a lot of kinetic energy. Friction with the atmosphere introduces drag, which slows down the spacecraft. The friction converts the spacecraft's kinetic energy to thermal energy, or heat. All this heat radiates out into the surrounding air, which gets really, really hot. Since re-entry velocities can be several times the speed of sound, the force of the air pushing back against the vehicle turns the vehicle's surroundings into a scorching flow up to thousands of degrees Celsius. Unfortunately, no matter how quickly this transfer happens, there's still not enough time during re-entry for the vehicle to slow down to a safe enough velocity not to crash. So, the engineers resort to other methods that can slow down a spacecraft during splashdown. Parachutes are the first option. NASA typically uses designs with bright colors, such as orange, which make them easy to spot. They're also huge, with diameters of over 100 feet, and each re-entry vehicle usually uses more than one for the best stability. Even then, the rocket can't crash against a hard surface. It needs to land somewhere that will cushion the impact. Researchers figured out early on that water makes an excellent shock absorber. Thus, splashdown was born. September 28th was a memorable milestone, not only for SpaceX enthusiasts, but for the entire space industry. This day 16 years ago marked the first successful Falcon 1 launch after three failures, which is also the first successful orbital launch of a privately funded and developed, fully liquid propelled carrier rocket. Thanks to this success, SpaceX has made a breakthrough to save itself from the brink of bankruptcy, paving the way for a new era of commercial spaceflight. Fast forward to 2024, and space exploration has once again reached a new milestone since. Under the Crew-9 mission, SpaceX Falcon 9 launched a NASA astronaut and Russian cosmonaut to the ISS from a historic Cape Canaveral pad. It was the first ever astronaut launch from SLC-40, SpaceX's first Florida launch pad, which has seen many uncrewed launches over the years. SpaceX and NASA spent two years upgrading the pad with a new crew launch tower, access arm, and emergency escape slide to prepare it for astronaut flights. Simultaneously, Crew-9 was the 15th crewed launch by SpaceX, including the eight previous ISS crew rotation missions, Demo-2 test flight for NASA, three private astronaut missions to the ISS for Axiom Space, and the Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn private missions. Unlike 14 previous missions, the 9th crewed Dragon mission has a very special meaning, which is to rescue two stranded NASA astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who flew to the station on Boeing's CST-100 Starliner in June. The mission's Dragon capsule, named Freedom, ferried just two people to the ISS instead of the usual four, leaving two seats for Butch and Suni on the trip back down to Earth in February 2025. Frankly, the two empty seats on Dragon were another reminder of how badly Boeing had botched the commercial crew contract and of SpaceX's stunning victory over a company with more than 100 years of history. Since then, the old space's dominance era has indeed receded to make way for the strong rise of the new space with SpaceX as its representative. More broadly, this mission marked peaceful cooperation between the Americans and the Russians to rescue two American astronauts. This happens despite disruptions on the Earth's surface, demonstrating the apolitical nature of space exploration and promising a future of only peace and unity in service of the noble goals of humanity. What an auspicious day, folks! Given such a great day, it would be hard for a retired astronaut who was the first Canadian to perform extravehicular activity in outer space to hide his emotion. On X, Chris Hadfield shared that, Very good to see Suni and Butch's ride home, safely docked to the space station now for the next six months. So much work to do up there. Well done SpaceX and NASA. His tweet is attached to a 4K video showing Dragon docking to the ISS. In response, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote, It's real but looks like CGI. Williams and Wilmore should have been on an eight-day trip to the ISS instead of going to last eight months unless there were significant problems with the Boeing craft that delivered them. So far, they have been staying in space for over three months and are counting down the days until next February. That will come at some personal cost. Williams' fall plans have included spending time with her elderly mother, while Wilmore noted that he would miss most of his younger daughter's senior year of high school. Both astronauts are expected to be able to cast ballots from space for the upcoming presidential election in the United States. Despite of difficulties, the stranded astronauts are still stoic. We are pushing the edges of the envelope in everything that we do and it is not easy, Mission Commander Butch Wilmore said in a Space to Earth call with the media on September 13. It's not an easy thing to do but that's not why we do it. Maybe we do it because it's hard. We're both Navy. We've both been on deployments, Williams, the mission's pilot, said. We're not surprised when deployments get changed, Williams added. Honestly, they'll have plenty to keep them busy on the International Space Station. Wilmore and Williams have integrated as part of the team on board the space station, which means they're performing routine maintenance tasks and conducting science experiments daily. Maintenance of the space station is an ongoing operation for astronauts on board, according to Terry Virts, a former NASA astronaut and commander of the space station. The station has all kinds of systems that make it possible for humans to survive in space but need repairs and maintenance, fans, air conditioners, electronic communications equipment, carbon dioxide removal systems, and the list goes on. In addition, they conduct experiments to find ways to overcome a lack of gravity in water plants. Given the deep experience that each brings to their role, including extensive previous time in space, the ISS's operations will likely be the better for it. Unfortunately, that leads to a large problem for NASA. After throwing multi-billion dollars out the window and steadfast in his stubbornness in maintaining the contract with Boeing, it's still unclear what value the space agency is getting from the Boeing Starliner project. The main goal of having two operational vehicles in parallel has completely failed. Ten years since NASA awarded SpaceX and Boeing for the commercial crew contract, only SpaceX Dragon has been able to regularly ferry astronauts to and from the ISS under contract. Meanwhile, Boeing's Calypso Starliner spacecraft has been in the testing phase. Oh my god, its first test in 2019 without a crew aboard ended up in the wrong orbit and missed the ISS. Its 2022 redo uncovered more problems and a repair bill that was reported to top one billion dollars. In total, Starliner's losses have totaled nearly 1.6 billion dollars since the program began, and that doesn't include the cost of fixing problems encountered during this mission. The space failure is just one part of the larger picture of Boeing's downfall in recent years. On the key field of commercial airplanes, Boeing has had several catastrophes, including two Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes that crashed, one in 2018 and another in 2019, killing 346 people. This has cost the company more than 2.5 billion dollars in settlements, and the January 2024 incident witnessed a door plug blow off of a Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet just moments after takeoff, forcing an emergency landing. Subsequently, the FAA grounded all of the MAX 9 planes for nearly three weeks, resulting in a serious loss in the firm's business activities. The company is also mired in a labor negotiation with more than 30,000 workers who walked out last week and is attempting risky cost cuts at the same time. As of early September, Boeing stock reported a reduction of seven percent per day, faring worse than its peer Airbus, which was down four percent. The financial downturn has led Boeing to the vital questions. What is the path forward for the Boeing Starliner program? Should they cancel the program? You know, the Calypso's performance in the CFT is too bad that NASA hasn't ruled out the possibility of one more test flight to certify the vehicle. At that point, Boeing could cost about 400 million dollars, based on charges the company booked to redo an earlier test flight. To make matters even more complicated, the ISS will retire in the 2030s, and perhaps until Starliner gets a human rating certification, which could take a long time. NASA will struggle to arrange a suitable schedule for Starliner's missions to the ISS alongside Dragon's busy schedule. Despite the uncertain future, NASA has raised a high determination to keep the program, which is proven through Bill Nelson's absolute confidence. 100% sure Starliner would fly astronauts again. Ortberg voiced support for continuing the Starliner program after the craft is sent back from the space station without people on board. According to Nelson, he expressed to me an intention that they will continue to work the problems once Starliner is back safely, and that we will have our redundancy and our crude access to the space station, the NASA administrator said. And that just about wraps it up for today's episode. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you next time.