Jeff Findley wrote on Thu, 26 Apr 2018
20:15:20 -0400:

In article ,
says...

On 2018-04-26 17:14, Fred J. McCall wrote:

Without a destination in LEO, I wouldn't expect a huge market for LEO
trips. Falcon Heavy/Dragon V2 could do a Moon flyby with free return,
but the bulk of that trip is going to be boring. You'll spend very
little time near the Moon and the system doesn't have the capability
to make that longer.

That means the 'work horse for manned space flight will by default
wind up being SLS/Orion, which massively sucks.


Considering SpaceX is much better at delivering stuff on time and on
budget, wouldn't it be able to deliver a Dragon service module with the
extra oumph! to permit Moon orbit/return before the "real" service
module is delivered for Orion?

Big problem. It simply won't work. You see, neither Dragon nor Dragon
V2 has a "service module". They have a "trunk" which is little more
than a hollow tube to which the solar arrays are attached. Everything
that's in Orion's service module is *inside* Dragon and Dragon V2.
That's because SpaceX reuses everything they can. Throwing away a
couple solar arrays and an empty tube is a lot cheaper than throwing
away an entire Orion service module.


If they're going for lunar missions they're going to be throwing away
an entire Falcon Heavy, so throwing away a Service Module probably
isn't a big deal.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw