this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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That would be a bit of an anticlimactic maiden flight. Launch, rendezvous with the ISS, wave its stubbly little wings at the astronauts looking out the cupola, and then just go home again.
Not so bad, really. Apollo 10 made it within 15km of the lunar surface.
Yes, but that was always their plan, right? Imagine if Apollo 10 was supposed to land, but got changed to the flyby mission last minute because they couldn't certify their prop system.
Worth it if it'll get them actual flight data. I'd rather have Dreamchaser do a little wave and come back home than go up with the goal of berthing, then run into a problem that flight testing could've discovered and be forced to abort. Sims and groundside testing run into diminishing returns eventually, while flight data can be fed back into the sim parameters.
I get the vibe that the holdup with the propulsion system is "sufficient margins". If that's the case, fly her, see how she performs, and fly a berthing mission on the second go with improvements to the entire craft. But if it's an uncertainty that the thrusters will perform as they expect at all, yes, groundside testing and development is the way to go here.
The first Dragon 1 was just a free flyer. This is one of those weird effects of NASA letting the suppliers define most of their own test plan. In hindsight, Starliner and Dreamchaser should have planned on a free flyer demo first.