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I was surprised to see this article: http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/1/11549456/spacex-falcon-9-heavy-launch-capabilities-weight-mars Long story short, they've re-spec-ed the Falcon 9 so that it can haul quite a bit more mass into low orbit. 22 metric tons versus the old 13 tons. And the F9-Heavy will be able to lift even more onto Mars. I know that most rockets operate with a good safety margin, but I'm a bit confused as to how they could have gotten this much extra out of it. Elon Musk's tweets say that they haven't' substantially changed the machinery of the engines themselves. I take this to mean that they're just pushing them harder, which would mean a higher thrust and maybe higher exhaust velocity? Does anyone have more data on the old specs and the new specs? On wikipedia it currently lists the Merlin engine as having 282 s at sea level. No idea if this is the new one or the old one.
