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Are they going to need legs when they land the Starship on the moon or Mars?
by chrisco255 2y ago
Are they going to need legs when they land the Starship on the moon or Mars?
- jmercouris 2y agothe booster does not need legs, only starship does
- modeless 2y agoYes, also the lunar variant won't need a heat shield so that will compensate for the extra leg mass. Not sure what their plans are for a heat shield for Mars.
- cwillu 2y agoThey're planning on catching starship as well however, as the in-orbit refueling will require a lot of starship launches that aren't going anywhere except orbit and back.
- murkt 2y agoYes, Starship needs legs to land on the Moon or Mars. They will be lighter than legs for Earth landings, as Moon/Mars have lower gravity. Not sure about the amount of fuel needed to land, as there is much less atmosphere on Mars, and none on the Moon. I would still guess that it needs less fuel there as well.
- __m 2y agoDon't they also need fuel to lift off again?
- perryizgr8 2y agoI think Elon has said that it's going to be a one way trip to Mars.
- lutorm 2y agoThat will have to happen through in-situ resource utilization. aka making the fuel on Mars.
- liminvorous 2y agoAn atmosphere reduces the amount of fuel needed to land, because you can use aerobraking to slow down rather than carry fuel to do it. See the Apollo return capsule, which landed without any rockets, only parachutes and a heat shield.
- preisschild 2y agoYes. Starship HLS will have them. But the other Starships don't and adding them would make a big difference. Since you need a huge fuel tank in orbit that needs to be refilled by multiple starships to refuel Starship HLS to actually land on the moon adding legs on those refueling Starships would decrease payload capacity, and thus you'd need even more Starships to refuel the tank for a single lunar landing.