No way. The amount of handwaving-refuel needed is gargantuan. SpaceX isn't all Musk, but it might as well be. Even in good rocket outfits, errors happen and problems come up. Management interferes. Bad decisions get made ( Hello O-rings! ). And that's with competent, happy, and capable employees. The folks doing all this work at SpaceX may be completely competent, but this is space. Not the imaginary world of Elon Musk where FSD works, new Tesla models get introduced, ground-based new tech battery packs get created, thermal roof tiles get installed, FSD works (yeah, I know I added it twice.. it's that far behind ), cyber trucks get pretty and sell well, lots of Starships don't blow up on the ground, Telsa freight trucks get shipped, FSD, Roadsters happen, Optimus happens, Grok happens, and space based data centers happen x 100??? Right. I know I risk anti-Musk ranting, but this isn't even the full failure list. This is the real world. A place where things find a way to explode, sometimes with people in them. Where stuff that has never been done needs actual PROOF, not PR that says "No problem. We'll fail often and fast." They have done that part well, but the point is to NOT fail eventually. It's not to put fragmentation tankers in LEO. This stuff is serious. The CONSEQUENCES of failure are larger than money spilled on the ground. And NUMBER of chances being taken are HUGE. The compounded PROBABILITY of failure is LARGE. And it's being promoted by a gent whose hobby is making success noises about his failure realities. Wanna bet the farm on that? Unwise... to be kind.. Oh, and FSD.
I like how utterly idiotic those numbers get when you actually try to estimate what would it take to make this work. Just a random thought wouldn’t this persistent boil off cause the starship to be in a cloud of flammable gasses which could also ignite spontaneously?
What is wrong with NASA? They just successfully sent four astronauts around the moon without Musk’s Starship and they want to wait on this complex plan of refueling, etc., from a company best known for exploding rockets? Here’s a comparison: I ordered the hybrid Jeep XE because I thought it combined post-family-minivan vibe with EV “responsibility.” Then the lithium batteries started catching fire. I went through one “repair,” but when the same issue prompted another recall, I traded that loser in for a good old reliable Honda. Why aren’t the geniuses at NASA as capable of walking away from a bad decision as I am?
The underlying problem is that there is no need for humans to be in space. We (a handful of us) have been to the moon and back, and we've run space stations for decades without achieving much that couldn't be done by robots. There's no real possibility of going even to Mars, let alone to the stars as we once hoped. If China wants to replicate what the US did 50+ years ago, they can afford it, but there is no real point.
Reading this, the oft mentioned "space elevator" of science fiction crosssed my mind and I wondered why no one had taken a serious stab at it... always happy to be pointed in the right direction before haring off on my own. 😬
No way. The amount of handwaving-refuel needed is gargantuan. SpaceX isn't all Musk, but it might as well be. Even in good rocket outfits, errors happen and problems come up. Management interferes. Bad decisions get made ( Hello O-rings! ). And that's with competent, happy, and capable employees. The folks doing all this work at SpaceX may be completely competent, but this is space. Not the imaginary world of Elon Musk where FSD works, new Tesla models get introduced, ground-based new tech battery packs get created, thermal roof tiles get installed, FSD works (yeah, I know I added it twice.. it's that far behind ), cyber trucks get pretty and sell well, lots of Starships don't blow up on the ground, Telsa freight trucks get shipped, FSD, Roadsters happen, Optimus happens, Grok happens, and space based data centers happen x 100??? Right. I know I risk anti-Musk ranting, but this isn't even the full failure list. This is the real world. A place where things find a way to explode, sometimes with people in them. Where stuff that has never been done needs actual PROOF, not PR that says "No problem. We'll fail often and fast." They have done that part well, but the point is to NOT fail eventually. It's not to put fragmentation tankers in LEO. This stuff is serious. The CONSEQUENCES of failure are larger than money spilled on the ground. And NUMBER of chances being taken are HUGE. The compounded PROBABILITY of failure is LARGE. And it's being promoted by a gent whose hobby is making success noises about his failure realities. Wanna bet the farm on that? Unwise... to be kind.. Oh, and FSD.
I like how utterly idiotic those numbers get when you actually try to estimate what would it take to make this work. Just a random thought wouldn’t this persistent boil off cause the starship to be in a cloud of flammable gasses which could also ignite spontaneously?
Thanks for the timely update following the Artemis II splashdown yesterday!
Given Starship's problems, do you know if it is plausible for its role to be replaced with a second SLS rocket to deliver the moon lander?
This all seems rather absurd, remembering watching a Saturn V propel the original moon landing, now almost 57 years ago.
Good time to IPO - before the shit hits the fan.
What is wrong with NASA? They just successfully sent four astronauts around the moon without Musk’s Starship and they want to wait on this complex plan of refueling, etc., from a company best known for exploding rockets? Here’s a comparison: I ordered the hybrid Jeep XE because I thought it combined post-family-minivan vibe with EV “responsibility.” Then the lithium batteries started catching fire. I went through one “repair,” but when the same issue prompted another recall, I traded that loser in for a good old reliable Honda. Why aren’t the geniuses at NASA as capable of walking away from a bad decision as I am?
The underlying problem is that there is no need for humans to be in space. We (a handful of us) have been to the moon and back, and we've run space stations for decades without achieving much that couldn't be done by robots. There's no real possibility of going even to Mars, let alone to the stars as we once hoped. If China wants to replicate what the US did 50+ years ago, they can afford it, but there is no real point.
Reading this, the oft mentioned "space elevator" of science fiction crosssed my mind and I wondered why no one had taken a serious stab at it... always happy to be pointed in the right direction before haring off on my own. 😬