back to article Dragon capsule makes fiery entrance, safe splashdown

The second Dragon capsule to visit the International Space Station has landed safely in the Pacific around 250 miles off the California coast and has been picked up by the SpaceX rescue ship. SpaceX Dragon capsule release 'So long, see you later' Over the last week the astronauts on the ISS, including Strummin' Chris …

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  1. JDX Gold badge
    Pint

    Lots of these drunk no doubt

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
      Pint

      And rightly so!

      I'll see your pint and raise you another one!

      That image brings back very fond memories of the Apollo era.

      Go SpaceX, go!

  2. Horridbloke
    Boffin

    Your science is rubbish

    " around 3,000 pounds – on earth, that is"

    The pound is a unit of mass, not weight.

    (I assume the article wasn't making some bizarre monetary valuation.)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Your science is rubbish

      Actually, the slug is the Imperial unit of mass, and the pound is a unit of force.

      (as an EE, I hated Thermodynamics, because all the steam tables were still in Imperial).

      But then again, this site routinely speaks of the number of grams to pull a magnet loose, so....

      1. GBE

        Re: Your science is rubbish

        > Actually, the slug is the Imperial unit of mass, and the pound is a unit of force.

        I worked on fire-control SW for the USN a couple-three decades back, and in the ballistic calculations the units for air density were slugs per cubic meter. Well, _I_ found that amusing.

        1. Grikath
          Joke

          Re: Your science is rubbish, slugs/m³

          Well a high number of slugs per cubic meter would make the air quite dense, and quite unhealthy if their vector is in your general direction..

          1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
            Coat

            Re: Your science is rubbish, slugs/m²

            slugs/m² make more sense to me, especially in my garden, and quite a few snails as well (I'm not french so I don't eat either of them)

            Thanks for the update about slugs, I always associated slugs with units of steam in power generation as in 'supply the turbine with n slugs of steam'.

            Mine's the one with a pocket full of slug pellets

        2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: Your science is rubbish

          and in the ballistic calculations the units for air density were slugs per cubic meter"

          imperial/metric mish mash aside, it sounds more like it should be a measure of rate of fire for a minigun or chain gun or some other high rate of fire death dealing machine.

          Coat. The full metal jacket, obviously.

        3. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: Your science is rubbish

          Did you prefer salt or beer to keep them under control?

    2. TheOldBear
      Holmes

      Re: Your science is rubbish

      " around 3,000 pounds – on earth, that is"

      The pound is a unit of mass, not weight.

      (I assume the article wasn't making some bizarre monetary valuation.)

      Actually, in the old style engineering units popular when the Saturn V was flying, the pound is a unit of force, not mass. [Units of Force, TIme and Length are fundamental in the old engineering system]

      The 'slug' is the unit of mass - and it is a derived quantity [the amount of mass that a force of one pound accelerates at one foot per second squared].

      This is one reason the MKS [Meter - Kilogram - Second] units are more popular today, even with these new fangled calculators to help out.

    3. ridley

      Re: Your science is rubbish

      Apart from anything in low Earth orbit the weight of something is near as dammit the same as here on the surface of the Earth.

      1. Steve Knox
        Holmes

        Re: Your science is rubbish

        You're all wrong.

        The pound is a unit of currency.

        1. Crisp

          Re: You're all wrong.

          The pound is a unit of thumping.

          1. Ken 16 Silver badge

            Re: You're all wrong.

            How many bitchslaps to the thump?

  3. Stevie

    Bah!

    Who scooped it out of the ocean?

    1. The lone lurker
      WTF?

      Re: Bah! "Who scooped it out of the ocean?"

      The people taking the picture?

      I assume they had a boat or something...

  4. ecofeco Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Well Done

    Well done.

  5. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Happy

    ... and no problem with batteries not being sufficiently charged.

  6. Don Jefe
    Boffin

    Broken Tools

    I wonder what tools break? I'm sure they must be specialized & the fault analysis would be fun.

    I also wonder how much wrenching they really need to do up there?

    1. John Sturdy
      Boffin

      Re: Broken Tools

      There used to be a story about a Swiss Army Knife being used in space, on Victorinox's site, but the page google returns for that doesn't have the content any more. And duct tape was used on the moon (to attach extensions to the wheelarches of a moon buggy)... so spannering in space is probably much like spannering elsewhere, apart from largely missing gravity and air.

  7. Herby

    Tools??

    Make sure they are Craftsman, then if they break, you can take them to your local Sears store for a free replacement.

    The talk with the sales droid would be interesting....Where did you use these?????

    1. Don Jefe
      Happy

      Re: Tools??

      Oh. Sorry sir. I are you took these tools off planet. We won't be able to honor your warranty.

  8. Pet Peeve
    Coffee/keyboard

    Dirty Laundry and Empty Packaging?!

    That part is a joke, right? Since lifting items to space costs nearly as much as the item's weight in gold, one hopes they unbox everything on the ground, and put their undies in the wash at the top of the gravity well.

    1. Richard Ball

      Re: Dirty Laundry and Empty Packaging?!

      Bet they end up with a lot of used plastic bags though, all things considered.

    2. Terry Barnes
      Alien

      Re: Dirty Laundry and Empty Packaging?!

      Apparently some of the instruments and kit they use on the ISS are kind of fragile. Being launched into space by a rocket can be a little bumpy. I'm not sure that binning the packaging is such a good plan. Sending the item and packaging might be expensive, but it's almost certainly cheaper than sending the item twice.

    3. imanidiot Silver badge

      Re: Dirty Laundry and Empty Packaging?!

      Given that a lot of the experiments require extreme particle cleanliness, you can expect them to be packaged in at least a single bag. Most of them will actually be double bagged. (And a single PU or PE bag won't exactly break the bank in terms of weight)

      Also, what do you think all that food paste, crackers, soup, etc comes packaged in?

      In terms of doing laundry in space, they DO wash some stuff themselves, but large objects like coveralls become nearly impossible to wash properly and dry out IIRC. It becomes more economical to just shoot a few fresh ones up every now and then and bring the remainder back down or burn it up in the atmosphere.

      1. ravenviz Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: Dirty Laundry and Empty Packaging?!

        Re: laundry and drying times, surely they could use some sort of multi-million dollar washing line, it's quite warm outside when the sun's out!

        1. JDX Gold badge

          Re: Dirty Laundry and Empty Packaging?!

          It can't be fun being the guy who has to unpack it all, scientific equipment padded out with soiled underpants...

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Dirty Laundry and Empty Packaging?!

      Packaging doesn't have to weigh much. Remember that all this is riding on top of a controlled explosion. Sacrificing some volume for protection is probably a very good idea for launch. Thing is, space is at a premium in space (pun intended) so you really want to send the packing back.

      1. Grikath
        Holmes

        Re: Dirty Laundry and Empty Packaging?!

        Makes sense.. Ever packed boxes for moving? All those old newspapers/folders/plastic bags sure come in handy to secure the fragile stuff.

        That ride down is rough. It makes perfect sense to use laundry and empty packaging to fill up the holes to secure and protect the real (valuable!) cargo.

        1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
          Holmes

          Re: Empty Packaging?!

          All the plastic bags and no bottles greater than 100ml, them's the rules.

  9. Anonymous John

    This was the third Dragon to visit the ISS, not the second.

    The first was a demo flight last May, but it did take some cargo up and down. The second (regular) fight was last October.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: This was the third Dragon to visit the ISS, not the second.

      Whilst this is the second CRS mission (Cargo ReSupply), the COTS2 Demo Flight Launched May 2012 and was berthed for 5 days. So it's true that this is the 3rd Dragon to visit the ISS.

      See launch list.

  10. Tank boy
    Pint

    Good for them

    Cheers, and keep up the good work.

  11. Crisp
    Go

    Elon Musk owns his own spaceship

    Yes... I am jealous much.

    1. Ken 16 Silver badge

      Re: Elon Musk owns his own spaceship

      but does he have an underground lair?

      1. bjornl

        Re: Elon Musk owns his own spaceship

        Well, don't know about that, but I did hear a cat meow in the post mission teleconference, so there sure is something to the diabolical mastermind theory...

  12. mfritz0
    Meh

    A pound is a pound - (Gravity Determines Weight)

    On Earth a pound mass is a pound weight. You can use any unit of measure you want, including triple decked buses. Weight is defined as the mass of an object under the acceleration of a gravitational field. The Earth by definition has a gravitational field of 1g (32 feet per second per second or 980 cm / sec^2 in a vacuum. This sometimes varies slightly at various locations). On Mars the gravity is about 38% that of Earth so a triple decked buss mass would weigh 38% of a triple decked bus on Mars. Hope this clears up any misconceptions (assuming there ever were any). NASA recently crashed a couple probes into the moon which mapped the gravitational field of the moon and there are very detailed maps of the gravitational variations of our moon now, but even there, mass is mass, and weight is mass under the effect of gravity.

  13. wiggers
    Coat

    Tautology?

    "Salty brine"

  14. Dom 3

    Docking

    To be pedantic - Elon & co. have managed rendezvous. The docking is performed by the ISS, using its "arm".

    1. James Hughes 1

      Re: Docking

      I dunno, reckon there is quite a bit of 'docking'/Berthing action going on in the Dragon during the grabbing process (clamps etc)

  15. MahFL22

    Trash ?

    I was under the impression trash was not sent down, they use the Progress resupply capsules for that as they burn up over the ocean. The stuff sent down was likely items that could be re-used or evaluated as to why they failed. Also science experiments. They do not have a laundry on the ISS.

  16. Alan Brown Silver badge
    Devil

    They do not have a laundry on the ISS.

    Unless you're a Cat, then you can do your own.

  17. cortland

    A weighty matter

    Say 93.167701863354037267080745341615 slugs, then. Or round it to 32 1/6 slugs.

    Slugs being the FPS unit of mass.

    Snails are slugs with a shell on. Unit of garlic, maybe.

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