4 ms·

Ultimately, at least 10 miles out to sea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0 (And to make this fast enoug

• MayeulC 7y ago
  It would be cool to see ground-effect seaplanes (ekranoplan) used to that effect. I bet they could quickly transport a full starship payload... But that's an engineering problem for an other day (and they require calm weather).
  • growlist 7y ago
    What about a ground effect Starship :)
    • MayeulC 7y ago
      Well, how would that work? First, it wouldn't be a starship anymore (well, not a spaceship, at least). Then, the main advantage it has being a spaceship, is that it can "coast" in space without running its engines for a long time. This advantage disappears if you were to try leveraging the ground effect. That said, I imagine that ground effect helps a lot at low heights (like during the landing, and early ascent phase). It could probably help much more by deploying some sort of sleeve/skirt for the booster. And I guess that if you just want to move your rocket a few hundred meters and don't care for the ground, you could leverage it as well. Going back to the sleeve idea (which would be like a nozzle for the rocket, a chute or a flying saucer), I would like someone to run the numbers on that. And I always wondered if firing current rockets inside a cannon (or just a trench) would help with initial acceleration (as there is a pressure differential that helps, just like the ground effect).