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Elon's response to that tweet was more than a little bit epic:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/461279062837968897

followed by:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/461283368693669888

Not sure what Rogozin thought about them apples, but this sure isn't boring!



It takes a lot of discipline to keep something like that under wraps until the exact right time to bring it out.


Of course, we all knew it was coming. Human spaceflight inside Dragon has always being a goal. The unmanned resupply missions are steeping stones to certifying the rocket and capsule for human flight (though unmanned resupply missions and other launches will continue of course).


"Not sure what Rogozin thought about them apples, but this sure isn't boring!"

Probably nothing.

The Soyuz rockets they use are so old they are literally still named after the Soviet Union. This might seem like a bad thing but in rocketry old means reliable and new means "Your payload will probably explode in one of the first 5 missions. Hope it wasn't important!"

In short, it won't be sometime before 2018 before the Dragon Mk 2 rockets become safe enough for Astronauts to use regularly to get to the space station.


They can fly Falcon 9 with cargo Dragons as well as unmanned Dragon 2 capsules many times before 2018. Demonstrated safety is hard to argue with.

There have been relatively recent failures with Soyuz launchers as well (though none with Soyuz FG). Russians have also been developing new things, both as upgrades to the Soyuz launcher and Soyuz spacecraft but also new developments. (Soyuz-2-1v and PTK)


I saw his tweet about Dragon Mk 2 but had no clue what he was talking about with the trampoline comment. Now it makes sense.




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