SpaceX has another historic achievement under its belt – being first to re-fly a commercial spacecraft to the International Space Station and back.
Before anyone laughs: when SpaceX makes history, what they do is historic. And if all goes well, they will carry on doing all the historic things that others have neglected to do since Apollo.
To be more precise the achievement is that of reflying a commercial spacecraft anywhere.
For the moment Dragon and the Shuttle have been basically dismantled between flights.
The next achievement in this domain will be to refly a spacecraft "as is".
From this point of view, the competition is on between SpaceX Blue Origin a,d CST-100.
The Starliner has an innovative, weldless structure and is reusable up to 10 times with a six-month turnaround time.
whereas
Musk indicated that Dragon 2 could be reused "with minimal rework and fueling" about 10 times between overhauls
(I can find the quote in various places but not sourced)
X-37b is close from what's known about it. Just the way it dances in orbit over years implies it's restarted dozens of times on orbit, implying built in reusability.
We may later get similar for Dream Chaser, but these are years from becoming manned transport. Not saying this will never happen, but only Dragon or CST-100/Starliner are likely to be first. Also shouldn't a reusable spacecraft be working for reuse from the first stage up ? If so, only SpX and Blue Origin are in the running.
In twenty years there could also be China, India, Russia and Europe. But its like for discovery of exoplanets there is only one to get there first (Switzerland)
techcrunch.com
Before anyone laughs: when SpaceX makes history, what they do is historic. And if all goes well, they will carry on doing all the historic things that others have neglected to do since Apollo.
To be more precise the achievement is that of reflying a commercial spacecraft anywhere. For the moment Dragon and the Shuttle have been basically dismantled between flights. The next achievement in this domain will be to refly a spacecraft "as is". From this point of view, the competition is on between SpaceX Blue Origin a,d CST-100.
whereas
(I can find the quote in various places but not sourced)
X-37b is close from what's known about it.
Just the way it dances in orbit over years implies it's restarted dozens of times on orbit, implying built in reusability.
We may later get similar for Dream Chaser, but these are years from becoming manned transport. Not saying this will never happen, but only Dragon or CST-100/Starliner are likely to be first. Also shouldn't a reusable spacecraft be working for reuse from the first stage up ? If so, only SpX and Blue Origin are in the running.
In twenty years there could also be China, India, Russia and Europe. But its like for discovery of exoplanets there is only one to get there first (Switzerland)
Huge breakthroughs in neural network inference has put solar gravitational lensing on the table.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCAL_(spacecraft)
A small fleet could simulate stupid huge inference arrays.
SpaceX's internet fleet will certainly have to work out those math details just to make their mesh work. Porting should be easy.
We might be watching aliens from millions of years ago walk their alien dogs in our lifetime.