That is cool. Reminds me of the tooling requirements I was exposed to when working on defense contractor jigs, fixtures, and components as a tool and die maker years ago.
Maybe I'm an old fashioned dude from the 60's, and I know NASA has become an overstuffed political nightmare - but I have some reservations with Elon and the SpaceX program. With today's political and litigious climate, I doubt NASA could even go back to the moon, much less Mars. I read a great book a few years ago called "Flight" by Chris Kraft, the flight director during Mercury and Gemini, and then manager of flight operations during Apollo. Even back then the politics were almost stifling with some very poor decisions being shoved down their throats by politicians who held the purse strings. Just a small example: Why was mission control moved to Houston instead of staying Florida where it originally was? LBJ. Why North American for the Apollo capsule instead of the much more experienced McDonnell Douglas (oh here ya go Mac, how about another F4 contract)? The Lunar Module built by Grumman? Heck the escape rocket for the Apollo in case of a problem during launch was built by Lockheed! They had many, many problems with compatibility. That is why they changed the flight program for Apollo 7 to circumnavigate the moon - the Lunar Lander was not ready with a load of problems. But hey, all those politicians got re-elected. What a cluster....
However, having said all that, other than Apollo 1 and 13, NASA still managed to get us there. If you read the book by Kraft you can see the extraordinary detail that went into the management of that colossal enterprise and the complete frustration of someone trying to get the job done. The workmanship guide linked here was the culmination of lessons learned in those early and later years.
So now we have SpaceX doing some pretty cool stuff. However, looking at their "Mission Control" during the last launch, it looks like a bunch of kids with a Science Fair project. He launched his car? Why? There are scientists begging to get funding or room on a launch vehicle for their projects. What a self absorbed waste. Another detail not talked about - the "unexpected" longer burn of the final stage that completely changed the elliptical orbit of the car. You can land a booster on a ship, but don't know how long one of the stages is burning? That might be a problem when you have a real human up there. I just have to think that Chris Kraft is rolling his eyes over this whole venture. The other thing that is burning my butt is that without the billions of $ in government funding, Tesla and his other associated ventures would still be a non-existent dream. The guy has made millions off of my hard earned contributions and I don't remember being asked if that was OK... Are private companies the future of space exploration, undoubtedly. I'm just not sure this is the right one.
Rant over!
Jim
Topic: NASA workmanship pictorial guide. (Read 5148 times)