[ExI] Recovered Dragon Capsule

[Jordan]

On Sun, Jun 03, 2012 at 04:12:12AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 1:39 PM, Dan <dan_ust at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > From http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbHj4P81voA&feature=plcp it
> > looks like the parachute might be attached to the where the
> > gash was, in part. It might be a harness of some sort. But from
> > this vid, it's hard to tell if the parachute was store nearer
> > to the heat shield. My guess is no and that it's merely a
> > harness stored under some covering that goes when the parachute
> > is deployed or later during recovery.

This might be more an issue of not having room for a chute
compartment up front.

Dragon has a torus-shaped unpressurized section in back, just
behind its heatshield, where the conical pressure vessel tapers
inward to form more of a cylinder shape.  This surrounding ring
houses the the fuel tanks, thrusters, avionics, rendezvous and
navigation sensors, and a lot of other hardware that would have
gone in the "service module" (or orbital module) on previous
vehicles like Apollo and Soyuz and been discarded before reentry. 
Although the solar panels do get jettisoned, keeping everything
else in the capsule proper is a step forward for reusability.

The forward part of Dragon is all pressurized volume, all the way
up to its docking/berthing hatch (and the "Common Berthing
Mechanism" used on this cargo variant is much wider than the
docking rings used on any previous capsule, leaving little room
for a parachutes container or deployment opening at that end).

This spec sheet from SpaceX contains more detail on the compartment
layout than I've seen elsewhere, along with other interesting
details:

 http://www.spacex.com/downloads/dragonlab-datasheet.pdf

 
> Cool video... is the bit with the small parachutes followed by the
> larger parachutes kind of standard?

Yes.  Look up "drogue parachute" for the reasons behind it.

-- 
Jordan.