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alapsa | 5 years ago

Sorry for the confusion! There are plenty of space vehicles that have had "down-mass" capacity - Gemini, Soyuz, Apollo, Dragon, Shuttle, X-37B, etc. They are all spacecraft, although Shuttle is a close in-between. The distinction here is this is a true upper stage, which can also return items from orbit.

We are looking to serve a complementary market to New Glenn and are not planning to fly on that vehicle.

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sandworm101|5 years ago

>> X-37B

So the X-37 has a down-mass capacity. That means it has either docked or at least intercepted with something else in space close enough to transfer material. I was unaware that it could perform such maneuvers. I certainly haven't read anything in the open source about such missions.