Remember Friday, when JF Mezei asked plaintively:
I recall that prior to Dragon, the PMA docking ports got some add-on to
allow the Dragon to dock.
Today, the Boeing plane will also dock to that port.
Out of curiosity, who drove the design for new the port adaptor? At the
time this was decided, I take it SpaceX and Boeing were still on equal footing in terms of who would be first?
Did SPaceX come first with need to redesign and forced it on Boeing? Or
did both work together on what would be needed for automated dockings? I
take it that they then furninhed their needs to NASA who agreed?
Or was this a NASA developped docking system and NASA then gave the
specs to SpaceX and Boeing who had to develop their automated dockimg
based on what NASA gave them?
A little look at WP reveals that the current docking adapter, IDA-2 and
IDA-3, are the Boeing implementation of the NASA design (NASA Docking
System) conforming to the International Docking System Standard
prepared by th Multilateral Coodrination Board.
Starliner and Orion were both developed to use these ports, as was
Dragon.
/dps
--
"I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a thing I mean it"
_Roughing It_, Mark Twain
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)