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> I imagine the idea of Starship as an earth return vehicle in general will probably be abandoned, so they can optimize it for interplanetary transport and luna
by p1mrx 3y ago
> I imagine the idea of Starship as an earth return vehicle in general will probably be abandoned, so they can optimize it for interplanetary transport and lunar operations.
Starship will need several launches of methane+oxygen to travel beyond LEO. That model requires a reusable orbital tanker to make sense economically.
- imtringued 3y agoMost of the engines are on the booster. The upper stage is the cheapest part of the entire rocket. At a worst case of 2 million per engine you're talking about 66 million dollars for the booster. I honestly don't understand this whole post chain. The booster needs to survive because it is the most valuable part of the rocket and yet we are supposed to praise it for exploding? The hot staging concept isn't viable over the long term because it goes counter to the goals of reusability. I don't need people to rewrite history by claiming that if the booster of the SLS exploded, it would be considered a success since nobody intends to reuse it. Yeah, that is how you get a two billion dollar launch tag. You can't convince congress to drop the SLS if you keep losing boosters.
- p1mrx 3y agoThey attempted a novel hot staging sequence where the booster grid fins interact with the second stage exhaust to rotate the booster. The booster rotated too violently, and shook up the tanks like a can of beer before exploding. They need to improve the control systems so the rotation happens more smoothly. I wouldn't praise the booster for exploding, but I would praise the engineers for getting it all the way to staging without engine failures. That's all most boosters are expected to do. SLS isn't expected to explode because it's based on space shuttle parts that stopped exploding decades ago.