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It's not just about money though, it's also about operational complexity. We don't have experience launching that many ships in that short of a timeframe (prope
by Denvercoder9 5y ago
It's not just about money though, it's also about operational complexity. We don't have experience launching that many ships in that short of a timeframe (propellant boil-off is a real issue), and any one failed launch breaks the whole plan.
- cryptonector 5y agoMeh. Give it a couple of years and it will be routine.
- cnlevy 5y ago90% will be tanker launches, and will be reused. If one fails, you just launch the next one coming out from the Starship assembly line instead of reusing.
- socialdemocrat 5y agoBut this can be done before any humans are launched into LEO, so they have the luxury of screwing this up without putting any humans at risk. If it doesn't work, cancel the mission without ever launching humans into LEO, get back to the drawing board and fix the refueling issue.
- socialdemocrat 5y agoThey don't need to use the huge starship though. In principle they could build a dedicated space craft which is fitted on top of Falcon Heavy and delivered to LEO. Being smaller than Starship you should not need refueling. Astronauts arrive to LEO using F9 and dragon, where they dock and transfer to this dedicate space craft which takes them to the moon. They could even send the same kind of vehicle ahead of schedule to the moon as a backup for when the astronauts are going home.
- panick21_ 5y agoPropellant boil-off is not that big of an issue unless you somehow blow up multiple launch sites. And just saying 'its complex' therefore lets spend 40 billion on development and then limit our options by paying 3 billion per launch is an insane plan. Overall complexity is reduced by not having those two legacy systems.