In article ,
says...

In article ,
says...
Oh, I agree. SpaceX has no reason to undertake the diversion of
developing and certifying a Service Module for Dragon V2 any more than
they need to undertake the diversion of man rating Falcon Heavy.
Dragon V2 is intended to be a purely LEO system, which means that
Falcon 9 is more than adequate. SpaceX direction for deep space work
is BFR/BFR Spaceship. Anything that distracts from that that isn't
needed or part of the long range plan is wasted time and money.


Agreed. Now is not the time for them to get distracted by developing
hardware that's a dead end. Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon 2 are
"good enough". Spending additional development resources on expanding
their capabilities just doesn't make any sense when they have BFR/BFS
development ahead of them.

Yeah, I know, replying to myself. Bad netiquette. Sorry...

I suppose the exception for SpaceX is hardware recovery. After the last
Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral, there were pictures at Port
Canaveral showing what looked like two fairing halves. And we know
they're working on 2nd stage recovery.

The exceptions are easy to explain. They are tests performed *after*
the primary mission objectives have been met for the hardware being
tested. The fairings and 2nd stage will continue to perform their
primary mission before attempts to recover them.

Adding a service module to Dragon, in place of the simpler trunk, would
be possible, but it would be adding to Dragon's primary mission
capabilities and the crew's lives would depend on the proper functioning
of the service module. As such, it would have to be fully "crew rated"
in a way that relatively benign recovery devices simply do not.

Jeff
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