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I wonder if they'll use the belly-flop maneuver to land the astronauts back on Earth, or if the astronauts will depart the ship in a more traditional capsule an
by elihu 6y ago
I wonder if they'll use the belly-flop maneuver to land the astronauts back on Earth, or if the astronauts will depart the ship in a more traditional capsule and land separately from the Starship?
I guess they have quite a while to figure out the details, and if the belly flop maneuver isn't deemed to be safe enough by the time the mission is ready, it shouldn't be that big a deal to take a more conservative approach.
- nickik 6y agoThis is already known. Austronauts launch on SLS/Orion and transfer to moon orbit, transfer to Lunar Gateway or Starship and then land on the moon. Starship launches from surface back to lunar orbit, gives astronauts over to Orion and Orion will then land on earth. Lunar Starship will stay in Lunar orbit and potentially be reusable or just land on the moon to start building a Basecamp.
- elihu 6y agoOkay, that makes sense to do a (mostly) one-way Starship trip. Rockets are expensive, but not so much so that it wouldn't be worth it be able to haul more cargo instead of more fuel, and maybe have a nice big stainless steel tube on the moon or in the general vicinity, that could be used for all sorts of things.
- aynyc 6y agoWhy can’t they just dock with ISS and use the crew dragon to bring the astronauts home?
- gnzoidberg 6y agoToo expensive to brake to LEO, and a bazillion failure modes.