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Not even that — seeing how cheap Starship launches would be per kg of payload (I've seen a figure of $10), we could as well build a huge orbital station and jus
by grishka 5y ago
Not even that — seeing how cheap Starship launches would be per kg of payload (I've seen a figure of $10), we could as well build a huge orbital station and just manufacture and/or assemble arbitrarily sized stuff in there or even in space. No atmosphere, and especially pesky oxygen, to deal with, no contaminants to keep out, no gravity to fight against. I'd imagine that any scientific and fabrication processes that need a deep vacuum would also greatly benefit from being done on a space station.
- inglor_cz 5y agoZero gravity engineering is going to be an interesting challenge, and a source of many funny videos. (Possibly some less than funny, too.) I would definitely love to see something like the Space Station V from Kubrick's 2001 - A Space Odyssey IRL. AFAIK it was almost a quarter of a mile in diameter. This seems to be suited for in-orbit fabrication and assembly.