Solid points, the whole in-flight refueling process is still completely untested. Many people are probably still under the impression that Starship could fly around the moon, return and land on just its original fuel load. The rant doesn’t elaborate on why rocket reusability in general is a bad idea though - Falcon is a proven reusable vehicle that has reduced launch costs by an order of magnitude. Maybe a better system design for Starship (I hate that name, it’s not a fucking "star"ship) would have been as a launch vehicle for something like a VASIMR or other more advanced low-fuel engine for the interplanetary portion of a mission.
Starship (I hate that name, it’s not a fucking "star"ship)
Same. Mars Colonial Transporter, Interplanetary Transport System, and Big F****n Rocket were more appropriate names.
something like a VASIMR or other more advanced low-fuel engine
I’d love to see some more advanced engines, but I think that the capability to reset the rocket equation in LEO has merit.
LEO reset does have merit, it just never gets away from the fundamental problem of lifting fuel into orbit.
I would really prefer a space travel dev approach that doesn’t prioritize getting humans somewhere as the immediate goal. We already know we can shoot people to the moon and land them. We can use LEO to study problems of interplanetary travel such as prolonged weightlessness and confinement. I think we should be sending robots to the moon and Mars to mine and refine local material, print permanent structures, pressurize them and grow food in them. Then send people once they can just show up and live in them. Mere survival shouldn’t be their main task.
Every single current effort for a Mars journey is poorly planned PR nonsense.
We’re putting the cart before the horse. We should not be wasting this much resources & effort into human spaceflight beyond the moon. We should be working to capture mineral rich asteroids, bring them into a Lagrange point, and start working on autonomous mining/refining/manufacturing from the asteroids.
This is key to human colonization of the solar system. Trying to launch everything we’ll need from out of the gravity well is stupid. Once we have autonomous space manufacturing perfected, we can have massive spacecraft delivered to earth, and all we need launch is the personnel and their food (with autonomous farming, we could grow the food long before human crew arrival). We can also have bases built at our destination point long before any humans arrive.
I mean SpaceX is only about 5 years and $5 billion behind in their timeline and budget to go to the moon. So, Starship doesn’t seem to be a serious vehicle.
i mean…going to the moon be expensive
the u.s. spent about 96 billion on launch vehicles alone so getting stretching those 5 billion as far they did is pretty impressive in comparison!
sure, it’s taking longer than musk claimed, but pretty much everyone else said from the very beginning that musk’s timeline is unrealistic…
god i hate that idiot…spaceX could be so much better at what it does without him…
People love bringing up that Starship was supposed to be doing round trips to the Moon and Mars by now, but when has anything space ever been on budget, in time, and working perfectly on the first try? Every new launch vehicle takes longer and more money than initial optimistic predictions state. Damn near every probe and telescope is years over deadlines and often a significant percentage of first estimates over budget.
Ignoring the onvious fact that Starship has been designed from the beginning for going to Mars and SLS only to go to the Moon…
Didn’t even the first Starship generation theoretically have a higher payload capacity than the SLS Block 2? And that doesn’t even include the further enhancements to the ship design and Raptor updates since.
Didn’t even the first Starship generation theoretically have a higher payload capacity than the SLS Block 2?
No? SLS block 2 is 130 tons to LEO. Starship “block 1” did “about 50 tons” according to one of Musk’s update videos with SpaceX, promising Starship 2 would do 100 tons.
Its current design is very much not designed to go to mars. Right now its designed as a test bed SSTO, thats it.
He’s being generous by assuming 100% fuel transfer and no boil off.
I’m sure that leaking methane into the upper atmosphere will have only beneficial affects to our climate.
oh they’ll be way past the upper atmosphere when transferring fuel
Is it true that starship will have less payload weight to LEO than all other SpaceX rockets?
I don’t think so.
Even Starship v1 (which have already ceased production) had an estimated payload to LEO comparable to a reusable Falcon Heavy (~50 tonnes). Starship v2 (scheduled to launch in January) has a projected payload to LEO around 100 tonnes, and v3 will be higher still.
Okay then why did they only launch a banana as cargo? I thought the EV was a standard test payload
it’s very goofy to see the difference in attitude for any post involving obviously spacex things between lemmy and normal spaceflight communities lmao
Some people still think musk has any decision making authority in SpaceX.
please properly censor their name, you can see their name by just upping the brightness of the image.
That was Berger’s doing, not mine :)
Even if it were properly censored, it would not be difficult to find, and people have already done so.
