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It's not even just that it's cheaper to launch, but the full reusability and planned ability to refuel in orbit really make it a game-changer. A fully fueled St
by themgt 5y ago
It's not even just that it's cheaper to launch, but the full reusability and planned ability to refuel in orbit really make it a game-changer. A fully fueled Starship in LEO can take a huge payload to the Moon, Mars, etc and ideally land itself, potentially refuel in-situ and get back to Earth. They can make minimally-customized modifications for tanker Starship / Lunar Starship / Mars Starship / etc and it's like a space swiss-army knife.
Just look at the National Team / Dynetics HLS proposals with a bunch of expensive, novel custom hardware vs. Space X proposal which was "basically just Starship". It could obviate a huge amount of resources being poured into one-off disposable space hardware and let us instead focus on actually doing stuff in space.
- engineer_22 5y agoWhere can I see the HLS proposal?
- mikepurvis 5y agoWP references are never a bad place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynetics_HLS#References https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynetics_HLS#References
- engineer_22 5y agoIt's not in there
- nickik 5y agoThis video goes into a lot of detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSg5UfFM7NY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSg5UfFM7NY
- engineer_22 5y agoThanks