4 ms·
Generally, capsules that burn up in the atmosphere rather than landing are useful for boosting, but if you have to have a heat shield on the bottom of your spac
by sephamorr 5y ago
Generally, capsules that burn up in the atmosphere rather than landing are useful for boosting, but if you have to have a heat shield on the bottom of your spacecraft (and the docking port generally on the top), you can't have thrusters that point along the center of mass line of the station. Dragon's thrusters aren't quite so well pointed due to this problem, so boosting with dragon would be very inefficient.
- breput 5y agoYou're probably not wrong but there are Draco/Super Draco engines all around the Dragon capsule and some combination of those could probably be used to for any thrust vector.
- wumpus 5y agoStarliner has a heat shield and a thruster that points in the correct direction... in the service module, which is dropped before landing. Dragon has a very minimal trunk with no thrusters. As a result, the best thrusters it has are 30 degrees off.