With 6x more propellant and 4x the power of today’s Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX was selected to design and develop the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle for a precise, controlled deorbit of the @Space_Station
Looks like there will be 30 draco engines on the back of that thing. Pretty Kerbal!
Edit:
LOL, they just stretched the trunk and put a sh*tload of draco thrusters on the back. Definitely Kerbal AF.
I wonder how they'll launch it? Will Falcon 9 be enough, or Falcon Heavy be required? Will they also need a custom stongback? It will be a taller stack than a regular Dragon.
For the strongback, they've made changes in the past, like recently running liquid methane up it for Intuitive Machines, so that shouldn't be too big of a deal.
There's junk in that trunk
NASA is not paying SpaceX enough to design a new engine for this, so they may as well use what they have.
For $0.8 billion I'd design a new engine! (Would have to learn rocket science first but I'd be able to afford the best teachers, so doable.)
https://www.youtube.com/live/Dw1JXZwo00o?t=34m48s (34:48) Seems to imply Falcon 9 is insufficient.
But later on the SpaceX person is asked about launch and just says something about the "Falcon product line", IIRC.