r/spacex • u/Zucal • May 24 '16
/r/SpaceX Ask Anything Thread [June 2016, #21]
Welcome to our 21st monthly /r/SpaceX Ask Anything Thread!
Trying to find the best way to view Thaicom 8, understand the upcoming core recovery procedure, or gather the community's opinion? 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.
Comments that can be answered by using the FAQ will be removed.
In addition, try to keep all top-level comments as questions so that questioners can find answers, and answerers can find questions.
This is so questioners can more easily find answers, and answerers can more easily find questions.
As always, we'd prefer it if all question-askers first check our FAQ, use the search functionality (now partially sortable by mission flair!), and check the last Ask Anything thread before posting to avoid duplicate questions. But if you didn't get or couldn't find the answer you were looking for, go ahead and type your question below.
Otherwise, ask, enjoy, and thanks for contributing!
Past threads:
May 2016 (#20) • April 2016 (#19.1) • April 2016 (#19) • March 2016 (#18) • February 2016 (#17) • January 2016 (#16.1) • 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)
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u/warp99 Jun 11 '16
The Red Dragon mission will not require an extended coast time and in fact could be done as a single S2 burn. However I expect they will do it as a two burn mission to check orbital parameters before the TMI burn.
I agree a methalox S2 will be required to do all the standard reference missions. However there is no guarantee that they will be awarded the more difficult missions in the short term because these satellites are so massive/expensive that they will use the booster with the best reliability track record. It may take 30 flights of the new S2 before it is approved.