131–140 of 298 posts
Got lost in a rabbit hole after reading this news. Most incredible thing to me was that due to the reusability the per launch costs may end up being $2M (vs $185 million in 1969–1971 dollars - $1.23 billion in 2019 value for the Saturn V).
Where did you get that $2M number from?
> The fully integrated Starship/Super Heavy launch vehicle will be approximately 400 feet tall and 30 feet in diameter. For reference, the Saturn V rocket from the Apollo program was 363 feet tall. It was 33 ft wide at the first stage, while Starship is 30 ft wide all the way to the top. It's just massive. And it's fully reusable. What a game changer.
I've walked along the length of the rocket at NASA in Houston. It's massive and to think it took all that power to get that tiny capsule to the moon with a few men. Pretty amazing... The Starship is designed to carry 100 people. SpaceX will be able to send more people to the moon in one mission than all the moon landings ever sent. Wow...
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Nice use of "factoid". Most people use this world incorrectly.
If most people are using a word to mean something different, doesn't that mean the meaning of the word has changed?
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The Saturn V can carry those 3 people way further, though.
> The Saturn V can carry those 3 people way further, though. Saturn V: 3 people to the Moon; Starship: 100 people to Mars (unproven, of course). Mars is a little further than the Moon. Granted, that's with in-orbit refueling.
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The Saturn V can carry those 3 people way further, though.
Nope, cause it didn’t have a second stage they could refuel in orbit, a reusable second stage they could use as a tanker, or a reusable first stage that provides the cadence to do in orbit refueling. Because of in-orbit refueling each Starship will land over ten times the payload on Mars as each Apollo mission landed on the moon.
Also, the Saturn V came back. That requires quite a bit more delta v. Actually, going to the moon and back is not that far off a one way trip to Mars.
An interesting thing here is SpaceX are building TWO launchpads. Which will definitely help prevent delays if an when there is an AMOS-6 [1] or Orb-3 [2] type explosion that destroys the launchpad. It may also help for rapidly testing orbital refueling in 2022, though the plan is to do orbital refueling with 1 launch pad, 1 Super Heavy and 2 Starships (1 standard, 1 refueler) with 1 hour turnaround times between laun…
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Salt water is also corrosive.
Much of Texas has brackish water when pumped from wells. It’s the reason a lot of desal tech originated there, FL and CA.
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I prefer Mercury.
Ironically Mercury is definitely more inhabitable than Venus.
Although hydrogen would be hard to come by, the atmospheric concentration is very low. That said, I doubt there's that much hydrogen on Mercury either.
So who knows, maybe Venus is a better place for a human base than Mercury?