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Starship Flight 4: A Turning Point – By Peter Hague
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoOver the top in terms of implications (we aren’t getting a city on mars or asteroid mining, let alone exportable to earth, any time soon), but on point in terms of magnitude of revolutionary potential. I’m now increasingly convinced (say, 50/50) we’ll see Starship demonstrate in-orbit refuelling before Artemis II [1], delayed on account of Orion [2], does its manned lunar flyby. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_2 [2] https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2024/04/resolving-artemis-ii-issues/ https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2024/04/resolving-artemis-ii...
- Zigurd 2y agoIt might demonstrate partial in-orbit refueling. If everything goes optimally right in payload capacity of Starship, it takes 8 refueling flights to completely refuel Starship. Achieving fast launch cadence and the full 150 ton payload Elon has announced will take years, assuming refueling is fast enough to prevent boil-off of significant amounts of fuel and waste due to incomplete transfer. Early design choices and the goal of 100% rapid reuse of the upper stage makes Starship depend on everything going right on a large number of parameters.