Quote:
Originally Posted by sc_rufctr
Yep... Absolutely incredible achievement but I have a question (wearing flame suit now).
Why?
Why complicate things and ad the extra risk?
- Is there a real benefit to catching a rocket like this as opposed to landing it as before?
To be clear I certainly appreciate the precision and difficulty!
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starship only works outside earths orbit if they can launch enough of them, and refuel them in space, very rapidly, like hours. this is because in space, the fuel tanks essentially leak like crazy, so you have to launch 3 support refueling missions for every single starship you try to send outside of earth orbit.
so you need to land them, and refuel them, and then launch them again, in a few hours.
for the whole thing to work. otherwise star ship is a redundant, expensive, and pointless satellite launcher.
one of the critical issues with starship from the planning phase is that everything has to work perfectly, or it fails. the minimum viable product if you will, is total success, reliably. no matter what happens. with 60+ engines per starship, over and over again, with basically no inspection or repairs. a few engines on a support launch dont work ... all for nothing. one of the starships takes some damage on entry or retrieval? total failure. like the mission profile is bonkers, even under the best of circumstances is unlikely. this was already stockton rush levels of mis-engineered.
so no wonder the thing doesn't work, and its years behind, and 10s of billions over budget.
could it work? i mean you throw enough money at anything and it eventually *could* work. maybe elon's ego is big enough he will spend the billions, if he still has them.
meanwhile we have artemis over here. thats already orbited the moon. works. and its paid for. scheduled to take astronauts for a moon flyby in September 2025. NASA just over here, doing the work, for cheaper, faster, and far more reliably.