This is enough to do interesting things with.
Attach *this* to the front of your Orion capsule+SM+upper, and you can burn from 89.8T wet to 50.9 dry at 345s, for another 4174m/s dV, bringing your dV total to 7343m/s. The Falcon Heavy we are positing would be able to bring 40T of fuel to orbit aboard its upper stage, subtract the docking port and you get 39T fuel and 5.9T dry mass, for 44.9T wet mass.
Assume this costs 1T for the sake of argument. This would require special grappling capability that hasn't been built, perhaps something like a NASA Docking System port attached to the front of a Falcon upper stage. Now, let's assume we have a *second* Falcon Heavy launch, which sends an upper stage to rendezvous, and act as an Earth Departure Stage. It is sufficient for reboost even *very* large LEO satellites if they can take the extreme thrust of an M1D-vac, but not much more. Orbits other than LEO which are served by this amount of dV tend to take astronauts into the Van Allen belts repeatedly, severely limiting the desirable missions this could perform. The EM and ES lagrange points, escape velocity, they're all out of reach by less than 1km/s. That gives 3169m/s and running for the whole system.ģ169 m/s is just a little below what would be necessary to do interesting things with. That means if you leave the upper stage attached, you could ship up 40-21.25 = 18.75 tons of fuel, representing another 1829m/s dV for a burn from 44.9T wet to 26.15T dry at 345s Isp. The F9 family upper stage is estimated to have 4.9T dry mass, and to work at an Isp of 345s. I'm going to arbitrarily assume that two-stage reuse with crossfeed would be used to bring up 40 tons (not based on rigorous math) This is not counting the dry mass of the upper, as it would only separate once orbit is achieved. Subtract some for two-core reuse, or a considerable amount for 3-core reuse. Falcon Heavy is said to be technically capable of lifting 53T to LEO if crossfeed is working, or 45T if it's not, without any margin for reuse. With the fully fueled service module, Orion-as-planned weighs in at 21.25T and possesses 1340m/s dV.
by engines) during the refilling process.įuel transfer enables refuelling stations in orbit. The fuel in either tank can still be used (ie. Thus, only one fuel tank can be refueled at a time. To cancel refueling, tap on either of the fuel tanks. Time Warp will also speed up the transfer accordingly. The fuel will transfer from the first fuel tank selected to the second one at a rate of about one tonne per second. To use the feature, tap on two fuel tanks. Fuel transfer can occur anywhere as long as it is between two tanks of the same spacecraft, meaning the tanks must be docked via Docking Ports or from the same blueprint structure. Fuel transfer is a feature where players can transfer fuel from one fuel tank to another.