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SpaceX’s SuperDraco Thruster
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- hoorayimhelping 11y agoVideo of 8 SuperDracos performing a pad abort test a year ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_FXVjf46T8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_FXVjf46T8
- deftnerd 11y agoSpaceX's ambitions to land on Mars are exciting, especially using a thruster system. Landing things on Mars is harder than landing on Earth in many ways. The atmosphere is so thin that you don't lose a lot of energy during atmospheric entry (which helps since payloads don't need a lot of heat shielding) but it also means that parachutes don't slow you down nearly enough. That's why the Pathfinder had to land using a complicated airbag system. Even using parachutes and rocket braking, it impacted the surface at over 50mph. If SpaceX succeeds with their thruster landing system, payloads will be significantly easier to put on the ground and won't have to be engineered to withstand such extreme forces.
- scigeek42 11y agoWouldn't it be awesome if future Mars science missions had a nice, constant landing platform they could design around? Like a new rover or stationary science base would just be "one Dragon unit of cargo".
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- scigeek42 11y agoArs has really been getting into the whole Red Dragon mission this past week. I am very hopeful this is a sign of things to come. Namely a greater media focus on advances in space exploration, which hopefully leads to a greater "buy-in" from the public.
- TrainedMonkey 11y agoHere is the hover test using 8 SuperDraco thrusters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07Pm8ZY0XJI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07Pm8ZY0XJI Entire burn is about 4 seconds.