SpaceX is definitely on a roll with its tests. After a successful round trip in Florida and another (less successful) water landing attempt, the company released a video testing the ‘Dragon 2’. This is an important step, since SpaceX plans on putting actual humans inside of one.
The pod, which did a timed hover test to check its eight ‘SuperDraco’ thrusters, is designed to create force and hover to sustain things like safe crew landing. In the long run, that will be the final piece to the Falcon 9 rocket that actually makes it habitable for a human crew. If everything goes smoothly, that day will actually come sometime in 2017.
The test, which happened in November, was a five second hover that generated around 33,000 pounds of thrust.
When the test concluded, the slo-mo captured the lingering flames on the pod.
Neat.
Of course, SpaceX still has a long road ahead before it begins actual manned spaceflight operations. But in a not too distant future, you might get into a pod for a round-trip on commercial spaceflight.
➤ Dragon 2 Propulsive Hover Test [Youtube]
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