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No one knows how to do fuel transfer in zero g, but there must be ways. Here's one: lash the orbiters and make them spin as a centrifuge and, of course, drain
by cryptonector 3y ago
No one knows how to do fuel transfer in zero g, but there must be ways. Here's one: lash the orbiters and make them spin as a centrifuge and, of course, drain from the donor where the fuel piles up.
- idlewords 3y agoThe problem is not a lack of ideas, it's in the engineering details of how to do it. "Lash together spacecraft" and "spin x as a centrifuge" are also hard technical problems. What makes this particularly difficult is it can't really be tested and prototyped on Earth, you have to make all your mistakes the expensive way.
- cryptonector 3y agoIt doesn't have to be that expensive. They could start with a small scale demonstrator that could fly on Falcon 9 just to explore feasibility and make the mistakes at less cost. Or once Starship is operational they could fly several different small scale prototypes just to test them in one go, and they could even do this on an early flight that they wouldn't use to launch commercial payloads. Still expensive, because it might need two flights for them to get the confidence they need to go with one design. But not as expensive as "the expensive way".