Beautiful New Interior Video of Space-X's Human Spaceflight Dragon Capsule

Earlier this year Space-X and Boeing were awarded contracts under NASA's commercial crew program to develop the American space taxies which will take crews to and from the International Space Station and Low Earth Orbit in the post-Shuttle world.

Below is a very beautiful, almost Star Trekish video of the interior of the Crewed Dragon capsule. This is not your grandparents space capsule:





Here is the interior of a Russian Soyuz for comparison:

Why is it always Dragons...Might as well name it the Quetzalcoatl, it is going to ascend to Space after all...

S n F anyways...

originally posted by: Specimen
Why is it always Dragons...Might as well name it the Quetzalcoatl, it is going to ascend to Space after all...

S n F anyways...

Dragon is the name Elon Musk and Space X picked for their first capsule. Falcon is the name of their boosters.

The more modern control display is nice but with so many controls on display .. if the display goes down you lose it all .. as opposed to discrete switches for each function

originally posted by: zenartist
The more modern control display is nice but with so many controls on display .. if the display goes down you lose it all .. as opposed to discrete switches for each function

'

I could be wrong but I am pretty sure they still have manual backups/overides for life support, spacecraft control, etc.

a reply to: JadeStar

It looks nice, but looks over functional isn't worth squat in high G liftoff.


A lot of fighter jet cockpits still have a large array of manual doohickey controls. lol

I am pretty sure there is a good reason for that, but if it tests well then good for them.

originally posted by: Specimen
Why is it always Dragons...Might as well name it the Quetzalcoatl, it is going to ascend to Space after all...

S n F anyways...

Why not "The Amazing Flying Purple Squirrel Muffin!"

I'd watch that.

Jude

Finally a piece of space tech that doesn't look liike something out of the movie "The Explorers".

I get function over form, but if you can make it look cool, why not do that too?

The soyuz is nothing to scoff at though (as easy as it is being based on a 40+ year old design), there is a good reason why its been used as long as it has. All that analog stuff is actually a nice thing to have as antiquated as it looks. No chance a radiation or power surge is going to break a lever or an actual breaker switch.

I wonder what happens if say a power spike kills the monitors? Would they have analog backups? My guess is a laptop can be plugged in with the right software installed (but what do I know, I don't work for spacex).

Beautiful cockpit though...where can I buy one?

a reply to: sirChill

Nothing will ever beat an old fashioned hard wired switch.

originally posted by: zenartist
The more modern control display is nice but with so many controls on display .. if the display goes down you lose it all .. as opposed to discrete switches for each function

There are actually multiple display panels. A failure of one or more would just require the distributed views be switched to one panel sequentially.

Similarly a single input device could control many separate parameters.

There IS redundancy inbuilt. Also multi-functionality of software defined interfaces allows for great weight reduction.

You must also realize that the majority of the operations of each mission is pre-programmed.

It does look beautiful, though. Far more like a spacecraft than a coal scuttle.

I doubt the people traveling in the rocket will be doing much anyway. I think its pretty much done by the computers.

The difference is that, one is a government agency and the other is a private one with glitz and glamour. Both I am sure performs quite well.

originally posted by: MrMasterMinder
I doubt the people traveling in the rocket will be doing much anyway. I think its pretty much done by the computers.

When I worked at JSC I remember an engineer scoffing at the actual control astronauts had, this person said "if all those people where dead it wouldn't matter we could guide her right back home with or without them..."

..yea this specific engineer was into automated only spaceflight, not the manned kind...I dunno, it takes some of the fun out of it when your just riding a roller coaster and not actually doing anything. Sort of defeats the purpose of going to space in my eyes.

a reply to: sirChill

So you think the purpose of going into space is joyriding not science?

neato....we call it the glass cockpit....this one is too glassy....huh!!

a reply to: JadeStar

No, getting to play with LEGO in space is joyriding!

originally posted by: JadeStar
a reply to: sirChill

So you think the purpose of going into space is joyriding not science?

Who said joyriding couldn't also be science?

a reply to: JadeStar

That's a rather fancy looking high tech coffin

a reply to: JadeStar

this is one of the few rare cases where nasa has asked the public sector for their design ideas for a craft going into space for our national interests at the space station laboratory.
maybe a little of the publics ideas merged with some of nasas existing tech has 'potential' we'll have to wait and see how fast they can get one up in the air
their 'model' does look better than what the russians are currently using