My Idea is to combine the DragonFly program with a program to mature/ certify the F9 first stage for land landing. Instead of a lot of helicopter flights (what was it 8 (4 parachute and 4 propulsive landing) and lots of flights of the dragon alone. only a couple of helicoper and solo dragon flights are used. The dragon is tested in a more realistic scenario because it reenters from about 90km (300k ft).

At the same time the first stage is used for proving land landing. And instead of just spending money on tests. Microgravity and medium-high G-force payloads get a test opportunity, for a fare price. This way the program pays for itself a bit.



The current position of SpaceX might be that they don't want to do suborbital flights. Mostly because the orbital flights generate work enough. Next to this they don't see a market as of jet. But if the market develops and it's an easy way to generate profit (not revenue but really $$$). I think they will change their minds quickly, because they need a lot of capital to develop the technologies needed for a mars mission. Especially live support systems are by far not ready for mars missions, the ISS has proven that these systems are not reliable and unexpected phenomena happen during spaceflight. Only in space testing for long periods proves that systems work reliably.

If I'm not mistaken SpaceX postponed the DragoFly program so they could do it as a Nasa/Darpa program instead of on their own funding. To me this proves financial credibility is more impotent than technical credibility or a drive to go to mars. No company can innovate without generating income on another program on the long term. I don't think they can generate enough with orbital flights alone, so if suborbital is an easy way to generate profit they will do it. Time will tell who was right on this.