SpaceX Dragon touches down completing the first private flight to the ISS

It was interesting to watch the test phase unfold & compare it to our own work. All the aspects of position sensing, attitude hold, & communication were the same ones encountered by the UAV hobbyist.

Their accuracy was the same as UAV hobbyists: 1 meter. You could see it overshoot the distance targets, then oscillate around the target distance, but never exactly hit it. Instead of fixed velocity, their numbers floated around, just like the real thing.

As they got closer to the station & enabled more accurate instruments than GPS, the thrusters burned like crazy. The LIDAR caught stray reflections from windows & had to be hacked, as usual. The FLIR didn't work & needed some hacking, as usual. The hold button got a workout.

We all imagine spacecraft being perfectly simulated to burn exactly the right amount of propellant to achieve exactly the right movement, but Dragon looked like it was over correcting a lot.

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Comments

Andrew Rabbitt June 1, 2012 at 1:34am

C'mon Monroe! Crack on with that Arduino coding... It's easy peasy! ;)
Jack Crossfire May 31, 2012 at 3:01pm

It was interesting to watch the test phase unfold & compare it to our own work. All the aspects of position sensing, attitude hold, & communication were the same ones encountered by the UAV hobbyist.

Their accuracy was the same as UAV hobbyists: 1 meter. You could see it overshoot the distance targets, then oscillate around the target distance, but never exactly hit it. Instead of fixed velocity, their numbers floated around, just like the real thing.

As they got closer to the station & enabled more accurate instruments than GPS, the thrusters burned like crazy. The LIDAR caught stray reflections from windows & had to be hacked, as usual. The FLIR didn't work & needed some hacking, as usual. The hold button got a workout.

We all imagine spacecraft being perfectly simulated to burn exactly the right amount of propellant to achieve exactly the right movement, but Dragon looked like it was over correcting a lot.
Ellison Chan May 31, 2012 at 1:50pm

Yay! NASA has successfully handed the keys to space, into the hands of a private corporation. Will they rename SpaceX to Weyland Industries, after this? ;-)
Alex Arevalo May 31, 2012 at 1:11pm

I was otherwise occupied, so thanks for posting!

This reply was deleted.