Posting this here because it's Tom Mueller and essentially a Falcon 9 third stage
I'm curious about the market for this. I guess it's basically every Falcon Heavy flight?
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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Yeah, it really removes the centaur advantage. I'm actually sort of surprised SpaceX hasn't done this in -house prior.
It's also a new methalox engine.
The main difficulty for this kind of tug is finding the market. There is currently only a very limited market for such missions:
- If the customer is big enough, then the rocket itself can do the injection. Otherwise, you can try to find another customer on the same orbit
- If it is a geo satellite, then it will have electric propulsion and adding a separate stage is hard to justify just by shortened transfer time
- If you are planning on reusing the same tug for multiple missions, you are fighting the rocket equation. This thruster here makes it really hard, you need more efficiency.
The market fit is quite difficult, and this requires high investment. So very hard problem until we have an actual space economy with people on the moon.
I think there'll be a market for higher energy insertions: lunar missions, or beyond. Basically any part of the market served by the centaur upper stage. I also think it'll combo well with Starship, maybe with a stretched tank.
I wonder how much work it'll be to pipe methalox up to the payload on a Falcon pad...