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2025 doesn't make sense. SpaceX has a Raptor 2 run-rate of 250/yr today, and they're ramping up, so you're talking about them sitting on around 750 engines, or
by Veedrac 5y ago
2025 doesn't make sense. SpaceX has a Raptor 2 run-rate of 250/yr today, and they're ramping up, so you're talking about them sitting on around 750 engines, or about 18 full Starship stacks on the low end. The only way things would take that long is if they had a severe blanket roadblock like having to move their entire production somewhere else and spin it up from the beginning. Musk's time estimates are generally terrible, but not perpetually-in-the-future terrible. SpaceX isn't going to build a bunch of super heavy launchers and then just not launch them.
- ncmncm 5y agoThey will launch Starships and discard them, at first. Probably for the first couple of years, the Starships carrying Starlink satellites will be one-shots, with just three vacuum Raptor bells and no central gimbal system, heat shield tiling, or flaps. Those might have smaller fuel/oxidizer tanks to leave more room inside for the satellites. The only expensive bit is the three Raptor movements, but those are getting cheaper all the time. Until they work out a good, new tile system, there won't be any quick turnaround Starships.
- Veedrac 5y agoI'm pretty certain that they'd rather try and fail to land than not try at all.
- ncmncm 5y agoThere is little doubt they could land, if equipped. At issue is how much it costs to have the capability and to get ready to loft again. A SS with flaps, tiles, full-size tankage, and a gimbaled sea-level Raptor triplet will cost a lot more to build, fly, and refurbish than one with none of those. If you could fit 50 more birds in a custom throwaway, in place of tankage, it would be hard to justify not. (Which is not to say Elon won't insist, anyway.) So landing and turning (a few of) them around will be a marketing play.