5 ms·
On one hand, 100 tons isn't that much for military logistics - a single tank with packaging, crew and supplies would take a whole cargo load; or perhaps a mech.
by PeterisP 5y ago
On one hand, 100 tons isn't that much for military logistics - a single tank with packaging, crew and supplies would take a whole cargo load; or perhaps a mech. infantry platoon with 3-4 APCs.
On the other hand, it does open up opportunities, and if the price goes down enough, keeping a bunch of "cargo rockets" around and runnning multiple trips per day can be a viable way to get reinforcements to some hotspot very quickly.
- danpalmer 5y agoBeing able to drop a tank anywhere in the world for ~$10m is likely a very desirable thing. (Whether Starship will ever quite reach this price, I don't know, but that's Musk's aim)
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoSpecial forces are pretty decently distributed. Highly specific teams and equipment isn't. Something like this would eliminate the need to try and guess what region of the world you're gonna want some special stuff. Imagine a Kursk type rescue scenario where you need special people and special hardware somewhere quickly.
- 762236 5y agoI wonder what type of environmental damage that would cause. I'm under the impression that it would poison the environment in multiple ways.
- wmf 5y agoMethane exhaust isn't what I would call poisonous although Starship will kick up a serious dust cloud wherever it lands. The noise might be the worst part.
- verdverm 5y agoWhat are the multiple ways you are under the impression of?
- 762236 5y agoIncomplete combustion of rocket fuel. For example, when fetching the astronauts out of their ship after it has landed at sea, SpaceX has to first test for the presence of toxic pollutants.
- PeterisP 5y agoThere's no single "rocket fuel". The Crew Dragon capsule which does the sea landings with people has engines that run on quite toxic hypergolic fuel (monomethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide - for reliability reasons), so for it there is indeed an issue if there's something not combusted. The main engines of Falcon which lift the Crew Dragon up run off of RP-1 which is essentially kerosene, which would be a pollutant if it leaks, but isn't especially toxic. And Starship, which we're talking about here, burns methane, which doesn't have any toxicity issues with incomplete combustion. The toxic hypergolic fuels are not going to be used on the Starship (or, indeed, any other SpaceX ship; even the Cargo Dragon variant does not use them, they're nasty stuff limited only to the Crew Dragon capsule), a leak there on landing would mostly be a fire hazard.
- 762236 5y agoThis sounds pretty good.
- eggy 5y agoI would think something like delivering 4 or more HIMARS systems, munitions, some troops, and medium-sized combat drones to boot. The HIMARS system can currently be transported on a C130, and they weigh 24,000 lbs each (12 shorttons each). The concern I have is how easy would it be to take out a very expensive, very big target like Starship.
- lainga 5y agoThe US military is currently having to rethink its whole power projection approach from "place something here" to "place something near here, but out of A2/AD range, and then go to the place". Because everything on sea and air is kind of getting vulnerable to being taken out now, before you can get the payload ashore. Probably they would use Starship as a "fire brigade" to move things between US-controlled theaters (or from middle of theater to the very edge of defensible airspace) when there was an emergency need for something.
- peteradio 5y agoala Town Portal from HOMM3
- ByThyGrace 5y agoWhat an unexpected, particularly specific video game reference, but also too metaphorical to illustrate this scenario. Town Portal means literal teletransportation :D
- eggy 5y agoWell the Pentagon has admitted UAPs (UFOs, come on!) are more substantial than a TV Show and fringe believers. Why not portals now. We know world governments meet for coffee on Mars already ;) The comment about bringing HIMARS to the edge of defensible air space makes great sense.
- peteradio 5y agoTown portal was about the only way to generally project strong presence in a single turn. Seemed similar for some reason.
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoThus power armor soldiers becomes a lot more interesting from a funding/design/research perspective. Compress as much weaponry, mobility, and armor into one soldier as possible since space launch will be expensive and limited.
- varjag 5y agoIt's 100 tons to LEO. A lot more on ballistic flights.
- adolph 5y agoGiven the predictability of ballistic paths and the intercept-ability of a landing Starship, maybe it would be advantageous to launch to elsewhere and drop something undetectably smaller to an unexpected location in the near vicinity of the path. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_diving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_diving
- _Microft 5y agoYes, I copied a part of the document into a top-level comment already and it contains a piece on that. One of the goals is "investigation of the potential ability to air drop a payload after reentry".
- adolph 5y ago"after reentry" would not be as unpredictable as space-dropping before reentry.
- _Microft 5y agoReentry is not that unpredictable. There are some ways to steer a craft during reentry but it is not like an aircraft that could just turn on a whim. A Soyuz landing in the Kazakh steppe for example incurs most of the deviation from the targeted landing site while hanging from its parachutes and being blown around by the wind.