4 ms·

> ..lifting a Dragon 60m into the air to integrate it back onto its launcher. Why would you need to do that? Why not land the Falcon (Edit: Actually, it might

• phire 11y ago
  Raptor is the engine. Though it's unlikely anything baring the Falcon name will ever leave low earth orbit, it's just too specialised for the job of leaving earth's surface. It's not even designed to stay in LEO, they go out of the way to make sure it falls back into earth's atmosphere within a orbit or two (often less than a single orbit). You want to design a new craft from the ground up with the job ascending from mars. Ideally to save weight you want the stage's rockets to be used as many times as possible: Mars ascent, Mars Landing, Potentially orbital manoeuvres to get from LEO to mars and maybe the final part of earth ascent. But making a rocket fire that many times requires the ability to refuel, perhaps even twice (both LEO and on mars). You also have to be confidant about re-igniting the engine that many times over 5+ years.
  • greglindahl 11y ago
    I know what you meant to say by "unlikely anything baring the Falcon name will ever leave low earth orbit", but note that the Falcon 9 upper stage drops off the satellite in Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) for every geosynch launch. Presumably DSCOVR's launch to L1 also involved some kind of not-low transfer orbit. And the 2nd Falcon heavy launch is planned to send the upper stage to much higher than LEO, where it will drop off a variety of small satellites, including Lightsail-B. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_transfer_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_transfer_orbit