With 6x more propellant and 4x the power of today’s Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX was selected to design and develop the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle for a precise, controlled deorbit of the @Space_Station
Looks like there will be 30 draco engines on the back of that thing. Pretty Kerbal!
Edit:
LOL, they just stretched the trunk and put a sh*tload of draco thrusters on the back. Definitely Kerbal AF.
I wonder how they’ll launch it? Will Falcon 9 be enough, or Falcon Heavy be required? Will they also need a custom stongback? It will be a taller stack than a regular Dragon.
NASA is not paying SpaceX enough to design a new engine for this, so they may as well use what they have.
For $0.8 billion I’d design a new engine! (Would have to learn rocket science first but I’d be able to afford the best teachers, so doable.)
For the strongback, they’ve made changes in the past, like recently running liquid methane up it for Intuitive Machines, so that shouldn’t be too big of a deal.
There’s junk in that trunk
https://www.youtube.com/live/Dw1JXZwo00o?t=34m48s (34:48) Seems to imply Falcon 9 is insufficient.
But later on the SpaceX person is asked about launch and just says something about the “Falcon product line”, IIRC.