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Aug 4, 2024

SpaceX Superdragon and Starship Improvements

Posted by in category: space travel

NASA awarded SpaceX a contract for $843 million to make a giant version of the Dragon Spacecraft to de-orbit the Space Station. It will use 47 Draco engines instead of the 16 on the Crew dragon. It will four times the thrust and six times the propellant. If there was ever a mission to move something as heavy as the space station to a higher orbit from low earth orbit then even more propellant would be needed. Three times the engines for four times the thrust indicates a 33% improvement in thrust for each engine.

SpaceX and NASA could choose to make larger crew Dragons. The Crew Dragon can hold up to seven people but it currently has only moved up to four astronauts. An orbital or Cis-lunar tug with more engines could be built to transport many dozens of people.

The architecture and systems used in Crew Dragon have been designed and tested for higher levels of safety.

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