In-flight abort is a more challenging scenario. If you need to get far from the rocket, you'll have to factor in its own acceleration. The pad won't try to run you over, but an ill-behaved rocket could. Hopefully, the SuperDraco engines will be able to steer the Dragon away from whatever direction the Falcon decided it'd go.

It's really not as hard as you think off, an ill behaved rocket won't be like a balloon flying around in "random" directions, even if there is loss of vector control at the nozzle the existing inertia of the rocket would keep it flying relatively quite straight.

Considering that the capsule still has the inertia from the main engine at the time where the separation/landing boosters fire it doesn't need that much to outrun the existing rocket since it pretty much just needs to get out of it's way.

In-Flight Abort is nice, but this is the 1st and only human piloted craft that has it, even if it will have quite a bit of risk attached to it it's still better than the competition.

> In-Flight Abort is nice, but this is the 1st and only human piloted craft that has it...

Apollo had it - at least for during the first stage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_%28spacecraft%29#Launch...

Mercury had it. Gemini (and Vostok) had ejection seats. Soyuz has it, but it first flew well after the Apollo's first used them.

That's not correct. The maximum acceleration of a Dragon mission has been 5G, so if you abort at that time you need 5G just to get your butt off the launch vehicle. You can't abort sideways.

The abort system for the Dragon capsule provides 4.5G of acceleration (human dragon space flight will not reach 5G, don't mix in cargo launches, irrc SpaceX said that the nominal max acc. for human flight will be below 3G similar to an STS launch) and it does kinda abort side ways, as soon as it clears the main rocket it tilts and gets the heck out of the way because it's quit important to be as far away from the rocket as possible in case it explodes (also to prevent any chance of rocket derby catching with the capsule during decent) and out-running it upwards isn't a possible in the long run.

If the point is to abort, you can't rely on the engines being throttled down to the accel limit -- you have to be able to successfully get out of any reasonable scenario and the engines running away does not seem unreasonable. (I don't know exactly what the abort requirements are, but the point is just that it's not easy.)

Also, during an abort scenario, the aero drag is pushing Dragon back onto the launch vehicle, so you actually need more thrust to overcome that, too. (Although that obviously depends very strongly on the dynamic pressure at which you abort.)

I don't disagree, but SpaceX has proven (at least, I think) that they can programmatically handle vectoring multiple craft in close proximity with their barge return attempts.

True.

If there is anyone that can pull this off at this fast pace, it's these guys.

BTW, if I ever charter a flight to the ISS, I'll have the Pan Am logo painted on the spacecraft.

That was an excellent demonstration, and the static firings seem to have gone as expected as well. I would guess that the in flight ejection is mostly about being able to maintain both an escape route and the capability to execute it during an unplanned orientation divergence and rapid disassembly :-). Given the low cargo capacity (100kg) it seems like the 'trunk' is dedicated to the eject capability.

As for finding a space tourism company, I'd be interested if anyone had approached SpaceX with that as a business plan. I would certainly consider investing in something like that given the right team and opportunity.