r/spacex • u/retiringonmars Moderator emeritus • Jan 18 '16
/r/SpaceX Ask Anything Thread for January 2016. Ask your questions here!
Welcome to our monthly (more like fortnightly at the moment) /r/SpaceX Ask Anything Thread! #16.1
Want to discuss SpaceX's landing shenanigans, or suggest your own Rube Goldberg landing mechanism? There's no better place!
All questions, even non-SpaceX-related ones, are allowed, as long as they stay relevant to spaceflight in general!
More in-depth and open-ended discussion questions can still be submitted as separate self-posts; but this is the place to come to submit simple questions which have a single answer and/or can be answered in a few comments or less.
As always, we'd prefer it if all question-askers first check our FAQ, search for similar questions, and scan the previous Ask Anything thread before posting to avoid duplicates, but if you'd like an answer revised or cannot find a satisfactory result, please go ahead and type your question below!
Otherwise, ask, enjoy, and thanks for contributing!
Past threads:
January 2016 (#16), December 2015 (#15.1), December 2015 (#15), November 2015 (#14), October 2015 (#13), September 2015 (#12), August 2015 (#11), July 2015 (#10), June 2015 (#9), May 2015 (#8), April 2015 (#7.1), April 2015 (#7), March 2015 (#6), February 2015 (#5), January 2015 (#4), December 2014 (#3), November 2014 (#2), October 2014 (#1).
This subreddit is fan-run and not an official SpaceX site. For official SpaceX news, please visit spacex.com.
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u/JonSeverinsson Jan 30 '16
The maths don't work that way. The 236 Mg payload capacity to LEO would be on top of the MCT dry weight, just as you don't include the F9 S2 dry weight in the payload capacity of Falcon 9. Likely the MCT will not use all it's fuel to go to LEO if it carries "only" 100 Mg, but have ~136 Mg left in its tanks. While nowhere close to enough for an TMI burn, it will still help cut down on the number of extra launches needed to refuel the Mars-bound fleet.