Author Topic: Possibility of used F9 + Dragon V2 joyrides  (Read 32019 times)

Offline Jim

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Re: Possibility of used F9 + Dragon V2 joyrides
« Reply #60 on: 05/25/2015 03:19 am »
No, they won't get bruised. They won't be that our of control

Offline Manabu

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Re: Possibility of used F9 + Dragon V2 joyrides
« Reply #61 on: 08/26/2015 10:46 pm »
I just wanna do the cost calculations from another angle:

It has been estimated that the cost of a fully reusable falcon 9 launch would be around $7 mi (before they canceled the second stage reusability). I will assume the cost of a F9 first stage + Dragon V2 launch be the same, including all types of cost and profit. That is $1 mi per person (w/o pilots). Quite steep price for a few minutes joy ride... but at least much less than an full orbital ride so there MIGHT be some market.

It could be made more viable by making a new capsule for 30+ people, but NASA won't pay for that and it would be quite costly to develop (more than the revenue of the market estimated in this thread). The only reason SpaceX would develop such a capsule would be for space turism, be it this suborbital market (unlikely) or a much bigger orbital turism market. But by the time the orbital turism market claims for anything bigger than the 7 seats of the Dragon V2, the MCT will probably be complete and it would be a whole new craft that can't be launched on a F9 first stage.

So the answer is that we probably will never see something like that.

Offline cdleonard

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Re: Possibility of used F9 + Dragon V2 joyrides
« Reply #62 on: 09/27/2015 06:14 pm »
Has anyone done the math to determine just how high and fast a Falcon 9 1st stage could throw a Dragon and still do RTLS?

I wonder if it would be possible to get into a regime relevant to Mars EDL testing. This could be used to prove the feasibility of using the Dragon as a Mars lander using the SuperDracos for supersonic retropropulsion.

If practiced successfully multiple times it could also be sold to the public as "Mars Descent Simulation".
« Last Edit: 09/27/2015 06:16 pm by cdleonard »

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