2 ms·
For no heat tiles I am thinking of the original idea of transpiration cooling, which I suppose ended up too complex or itself too heavy. I didn’t know it was 1
by api 1y ago
For no heat tiles I am thinking of the original idea of transpiration cooling, which I suppose ended up too complex or itself too heavy.
I didn’t know it was 10+ tanker launches. Is it because only a small amount of the tanker’s fuel payload is actually delivered?
That makes the whole thing look less useful for going anywhere past orbit. Still useful, but less of a step change from what we have now.
Maybe it’d be better to spend the whole budget on inertial confined fusion research instead. Get that working and you can really go somewhere.
- modeless 1y agoThey are still testing transpiration cooling for potential use in areas of super high heating but I think they decided a long time ago that the mass penalty of transpiration cooling was much higher than that of ceramic tiles. Nobody knows the true number of tanker launches yet but it's going to be a lot. The ship holds ~1500 tons of propellant and payload capacity to LEO is ~150 tons, so 10 is probably a decent first guess. Less if it doesn't need to be full, more if there are a lot of losses in the process. But 10 isn't so bad if everything is reusable. It's a different way of thinking about launches. What we really need is a propellant factory somewhere other than Earth. That sounds easier than fusion rockets.