Main Engine Cut OffDragon 2, CRS-2, and Propulsive Landings
Jeff Foust, for SpaceNews:
Those missions will use a version of the Dragon 2 spacecraft SpaceX is developing for commercial crew missions, Reed said, with greater cargo volume than the current Dragon spacecraft.
Those CRS-2 Dragon missions will use “propulsive” landings, where the capsule lands on a landing pad using its SuperDraco thrusters rather than splashing down in the ocean.
The rest of SpaceX’s CRS-1 missions (after SpX-10) will be flown with reused Dragons, so they can switch their whole production line over to Dragon 2. That’ll be a massive help for all the various kinds of Dragon 2: cargo, crew, and Red.
As for propulsive landings, I’ve been wondering how SpaceX was planning on introducing that. They’ll obviously be doing a ton of propulsive descent testing necessary for Red Dragon, but I was concerned that NASA wouldn’t allow it for commercial cargo missions because of Dragon’s critical downmass capability. This shows just how great it will be to have redundant downmass with Dream Chaser included in CRS-2.
All in all, this is a great roadmap for Dragon 2. Get the production lines flipped over and introduce new landing capability to the cargo missions first, since they’ll have 20 cargo flights and a ton of Falcon 9 landings under their belt once CRS-2 kicks into high gear.