4 ms·
Apparently the SuperDracos have the necessary thrust and fuel to bring Dragon to a stop from terminal velocity, Dragon just lacks the landing gear. So then why
by zaroth 8y ago
Apparently the SuperDracos have the necessary thrust and fuel to bring Dragon to a stop from terminal velocity, Dragon just lacks the landing gear.
So then why not use that to slow down just before a splash down?
Perhaps if you throttle them down to the point where the G-force is reasonable, the losses to gravity add up too quickly and you run out of thrust. Too bad :-(
- Faark 8y agoThe primary reasons they don't do this are likely economic, but the hypergolic fuel used by SuperDracos also isn't particularly healthy [0]. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/29qwj9/how_toxic_will_the_superdraco_exhaust_be/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/29qwj9/how_toxic_wi...