20 thoughts on “The Caravels Of Space”

  1. Not even close. The Dragon, fine as she is, is more like a Chinese junk or a costal ship.

  2. The Dragon is like the little dingy that people use to traverse the surf from their ship to shore. Now all we need are some ships.

    1. ~Just log right in and you’ll hear a tale,
      ~~ a tale of a fateful trip.
      ~That started from an orbit port,
      ~~ aboard this tiny ship…

  4. And yet Chinese junks and coastal ships are quite capable of ocean voyages when one is prepared to accept the risks and limitations of the craft. The point made was that the caravels were small and versatile enough to be affordable compared to the larger ships available at the time. Given the willingness to accept the high degree of discomfort and risk of the caravel explorers, a modified Dragon could make it to Mars or a NEO.

    It would only make sense to do so if more capable ships do not become available. In the time of the caravel explorations, it was common to lose a very high percentage of the crew even on successful voyages, with even the survivors suffering malnutrition and disease to a degree that no rational person would accept today. IMO, the Dragon will be the caravel of the next few decades if, and only if, no more capable ships come available, and then only by private actors bypassing the risk aversion of the nanny states.

    I’m sure that none of us would have believed four decades ago that the Shuttle mark 1 would still be considered the most advanced space ship in the world in 2012 by most people. The polynesians settled much of the Pacific in vessels quite inferior to even the caravels.

  5. I thought it was one of their better articles even if the analogy was somewhat flawed. So the Dragon is one step below a Caravel. What would that ship be. Don’t say dinghy because that would really be an insult to the Dragon which has a lot more going for it. While it has limited space and limited crew (uh, like the Caravel) it seems right sized for the emerging market (uh, ditto.)

    Zubrin even points out that by itself it could land two on mars (just add some inflatable space for a bit more comfort.) I think we can afford a better ship for the trip and it makes more sense to send many more people, but that little Dragon is quite the boat. The lander version may open up the solar system for decades. A stretch version, even without reuse, may be the cheapest way to LEO for quite some time.

    Now if people with the desire and resources understood economics was about more than import/export. They might realize that a few billion spent now would have perhaps trillions in return after a few decades (and it has nothing to do with mining even if mining itself is profitable.)

    To think the earth is all there is, is amazingly small minded. To think that half the equation, cost, is the whole is also. Opportunity cost is probably the major expense of all civilization throughout all of time. Good to see we haven’t lost our touch.

  6. The Caravel, like the Dragon is right sized for its current market. It is, or will be versatile in that it will carry both people and cargo both internal and external. There is no reason the think other version won’t be built with different capabilities. The free market will see to that as time goes on. And like the Caravel economics will make it successful. When we begin to take the risks inherent in space travel, like those first explorations did there will be losses just as there were then. The economics of the Caravel allowed for failure. Loss of life is always undesirable, but progress will demand some blood. Almost every engineering feat that has been accomplished was paid for with lives. What keeps the endeavors on course is sound economics. That is why we are going back to a capsule model. That is also why the shuttles are now relegated to museums, while the military flies the same machine concept for a many months per flight. There is a right size for everything.

    3. Paragon is working under CCDev on ECLSS for seven man capsules, is supporting Dragon, Bigelow, as well as Orion and other projects. Paragon projects

      SpaceX also doesn’t currently have a cup holder for Dragon, but I don’t think it will become a hold up on their critical path.

    4. As it takes is what? A Sokol suit and an oxygen system? Plus a diaper (don’t want people pissing on their spacesuits ala right stuff).

    1. A door in the heat shield, opposite the existing docking adapter on the nose, would be difficult, and introduce a nasty failure mode. The side hatch, used for ground access, does not appear designed to accommodate a docking adapter.

    2. Dragon can have as many docking ports as you want… from Robotguy…

      4-, 6-, 8-, 12- or 20-sided universal docking nodes – (the numbers chosen are the number of faces on the Platonic solids)

      Just have Dragon’s one port attack to one of a universal docking node.

      Build any Lego ship you need from parts in orbit that just snap together.

  9. Dragon is more like a Cog than a Caravel. What I am more interested is if there will be a follow up including in-orbit assembly of space stations or space ships.

  10. That is an excellent article. I really enjoyed it. It makes me think that maybe I’m not so crazy to be so enthused about SpaceX.

    Even though the Shuttle was a magnificent machine, and I was fortunate enough to read The Right Stuff just before STS-1, my excitement was tempered by the fact that I knew that NASA had no real plans to go back to the Moon at the time. But with Dragon, I sense that COTS 2+ was only the beginning. The Falcon/Dragon system is designed to be upgraded and expanded, unlike Shuttle.

    Hell, I was even thrilled by COTS 1. I remember seeing a lot of comments at the time like, “Two orbits and a splashdown? So what? NASA did that 50 years ago with Mercury.” Actually I regarded that as a feature, not a bug. I’m a little too young to remember Mercury, and that flight gave me a small taste of what it must have been like.

    I didn’t know that about Ponce de Leon’s landing site. Looking at Google Earth, 10 miles south of LC39A is right smack in ICBM Row, near LC11. Incidentally, Google Earth’s current photo of LC40 shows the COTS 1 Falcon standing on the pad. It was taken on Dec. 3, 2010.

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