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Starship and the booster already collectively carry 70 kiloton-tnt-equivalent masses of liquid methane and oxygen. As a weapon of mass destruction, it's hard to

Starship and the booster already collectively carry 70 kiloton-tnt-equivalent masses of liquid methane and oxygen. As a weapon of mass destruction, it's hard to beat relativistic impact.

idlewords 3y ago
That's like saying they carry 4400 tons of mass-energy, which could destroy the planet.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  Would you not realize a lot of damage by just pointing Starship somewhere instead of at the sky?
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Surprisingly little, as the thing is mostly fuel — by the time it hits anything[0] it's almost empty and therefore very light. It wouldn't even be like the effect of the planes on the WTC in 9/11, as planes use fuel continuously during flight, whereas spacecraft use almost all of it just to take off. [0] which implicitly assumes the self-destruct still isn't working right
rsynnott 3y ago
> As a weapon of mass destruction, it's hard to beat relativistic impact. > relativistic impact You... er, realise they're not actually starships, right? At the speeds they go at (or would go at if they could take off without exploding) there is no significant relativistic effect.
dgacmu 3y ago
How do you calculate this? Starship has a propellant capacity of 1200 metric tons - 1.2 kilotons. Super heavy booster has 3400 tons, total of 4.6 kilotons, per wikipedia [1]. By weight, you need about a 4:1 ratio of O2:Methane for complete combustion (Starship is rumored to carry 22% methane). Which means you're getting about 0.92 kilotons of methane completely combusted. At 50-55MJ/kg, that gives you - roughly - 50 thousand gigajoules. A ton of TNT is 4.184 thousand gigajoules[2], which means that Starship+Super Heavy carries the energy-equivalent of about 12 kilotons of TNT [3][4]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent [3] It can't explode all at once unless pre-mixed in perfect proportion, of course. What you'd really expect is an awfully big fireball + fire but not the same massive force all at once of a nuclear detonation. [4] Or 50 terajoules (the ship) and .184 terajoules (TNT), which come out to the same thing, but I find gigajoules both more intuitive and more a more fun BTTF reference.

Starship and the booster already collectively carry 70 kiloton-tnt-equivalent masses of liquid methane and oxygen. As a weapon of mass destruction, it's hard to beat relativistic impact.

idlewords 3y ago

That's like saying they carry 4400 tons of mass-energy, which could destroy the planet.

renewiltord 3y ago
Would you not realize a lot of damage by just pointing Starship somewhere instead of at the sky?
- ben_w 3y ago
  Surprisingly little, as the thing is mostly fuel — by the time it hits anything[0] it's almost empty and therefore very light. It wouldn't even be like the effect of the planes on the WTC in 9/11, as planes use fuel continuously during flight, whereas spacecraft use almost all of it just to take off. [0] which implicitly assumes the self-destruct still isn't working right

rsynnott 3y ago

> As a weapon of mass destruction, it's hard to beat relativistic impact. > relativistic impact You... er, realise they're not actually starships, right? At the speeds they go at (or would go at if they could take off without exploding) there is no significant relativistic effect.

dgacmu 3y ago

How do you calculate this? Starship has a propellant capacity of 1200 metric tons - 1.2 kilotons. Super heavy booster has 3400 tons, total of 4.6 kilotons, per wikipedia [1]. By weight, you need about a 4:1 ratio of O2:Methane for complete combustion (Starship is rumored to carry 22% methane). Which means you're getting about 0.92 kilotons of methane completely combusted. At 50-55MJ/kg, that gives you - roughly - 50 thousand gigajoules. A ton of TNT is 4.184 thousand gigajoules[2], which means that Starship+Super Heavy carries the energy-equivalent of about 12 kilotons of TNT [3][4]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent [3] It can't explode all at once unless pre-mixed in perfect proportion, of course. What you'd really expect is an awfully big fireball + fire but not the same massive force all at once of a nuclear detonation. [4] Or 50 terajoules (the ship) and .184 terajoules (TNT), which come out to the same thing, but I find gigajoules both more intuitive and more a more fun BTTF reference.