Orbital's Cygnus freighter reaches International Space Station

Re:Orbital's Cygnus freighter reaches International Space St... by chm on Sunday September 29, 2013 @12:34PM (#6465606)

I'm not an expert in the field, but I think one advantage SpaceX has over Orbital is that its capsule is reusable.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Orbital's Cygnus freighter reaches International Space St... by zhaphod on Monday September 30, 2013 @07:38AM (#6468936)

For orbital supplying cargo to ISS is a purely business decision. Make money doing it. Nothing wrong with that approach. It is clearly one reason why they are using 30+ year old stock of Russian engines for Antares. There is no reason for them to innovate.

On the other hand, for SpaceX, these are just milestones on the highway to much greater things, like Mars. Cue they build almost everything that makes up Falcon and Dragon in house. I will cheer SpaceX over Orbital for this one reason alone.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Orbital's Cygnus freighter reaches International Space St... by JulianMorrison on Sunday September 29, 2013 @02:24PM (#6466018)

Another is that, according to the BBC website, "Upmass: 6t" for Dragon versus "Upmass: 2.7t" for Cygnus - a shade under half as much cargo carried to orbit.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Orbital's Cygnus freighter reaches International Space St... by TorKlingberg on Sunday September 29, 2013 @02:38PM (#6466067)

According to the Wikipedia article, the Dragon's cargo capacity to the ISS is 3.3t. 6t is for separate "DragonLab" missions.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Orbital's Cygnus freighter reaches International Space St... by pbreit on Monday September 30, 2013 @02:28AM (#6468084)

Well, the big advantage there is that spacex can return to earth with cargo (and in the future, people).

[ Parent | on HN ]