How Much Does A Dragon Capsule Cost? Which ensured Sunita Williams’ successful return to Earth
How Much Does A Dragon Capsule Cost; Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore, Alexander Gorbunov and Nick Hague have arrived back on Earth. Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore started their mission on the ISS on 6 June 2024. Alexander Gorbunov and Nick Hague reached the station on 29 September 2024. Sunita Williams, who was stranded for nine months, has returned to Earth now.
They were all retrieved by the Dragon Freedom capsule of Elon Musk’s SpaceX. It has been launched 49 times since its build. The Dragon capsule has gone to the International Space Station 44 times. But do you know how much it costs?
How much does the Crew Dragon capsule weigh in kilos?
NASA has chosen SpaceX’s Dragon Crew Capsule to bring back all four astronauts. The capsule has the capacity for seven astronauts at a time. It is the world’s first home-built plane that regularly carries cargo to and from the space station. The capsule weighs 7,700 kilograms when empty. When flying with cargo and astronauts, its total weight is 12,500 kilograms. The capsule has the capacity to carry two to four astronauts normally, but in case of an emergency, it also has the capability to seat seven.
How much is Elon Musk’s capsule?
SpaceX has the duty of bringing the astronauts back home, so of course, it would need to incur the costs. They reclaimed them on Earth through the Crew Dragon SpaceX capsule and Falcon 9 rocket. At that time, Falcon 9 was 580 crores-69.75 to millions of dollars for the launch. The cost of the Crew Dragon capsule was estimated at 1170 crores or 140 million dollars. According to the report, the per-unit cost of Dragon spacecraft by SpaceX is somewhere in the neighborhood of 55 million(around 45 billion rupees).
SpaceX reuses its capsules:
SpaceX and its company, Elon Musk, reuse rockets and capsules, which saves it money. But this time it was transformed into an emergency mission in which four lives were in danger, so a large sum of money was used on safety and other facilities. That is why this time the mission has been more expensive. The Crew Dragon capsule is specifically utilized to take individuals to and from space, so it has redundant systems, life support systems, and emergency evacuation systems, because of which its expense goes up.
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