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I'm not an expert in the field, but I think one advantage SpaceX has over Orbital is that its capsule is reusable.
by chm 13y ago
I'm not an expert in the field, but I think one advantage SpaceX has over Orbital is that its capsule is reusable.
- JulianMorrison 13y agoAnother is that, according to the BBC website, "Upmass: 6t" for Dragon versus "Upmass: 2.7t" for Cygnus - a shade under half as much cargo carried to orbit.
- TorKlingberg 13y agoAccording to the Wikipedia article, the Dragon's cargo capacity to the ISS is 3.3t. 6t is for separate "DragonLab" missions.
- pbreit 13y agoWell, the big advantage there is that spacex can return to earth with cargo (and in the future, people).
- zhaphod 13y agoFor orbital supplying cargo to ISS is a purely business decision. Make money doing it. Nothing wrong with that approach. It is clearly one reason why they are using 30+ year old stock of Russian engines for Antares. There is no reason for them to innovate. On the other hand, for SpaceX, these are just milestones on the highway to much greater things, like Mars. Cue they build almost everything that makes up Falcon and Dragon in house. I will cheer SpaceX over Orbital for this one reason alone.