by florid_snow » Wed Oct 23, 2024 10:10 pm
The argument is that landing on the launch mount is better for rapid re-use, as opposed to just normal slow re-use. If landing in the chopsticks is approximately the same order of magnitude difficulty as landing with legs, then you gain both the mass advantage from not carrying the legs, but also on the time until next launch, because it's already on the launch mount. Maybe that factor alone would be break-even vs. landing on legs and just having a big crane very near to the refueling site, but combining both does (theoretically) give a net advantage for rapid re-use. It's really mostly the mass I'd bet, the rocket equation is so cruel to initial mass.
Edit: More on the LEO refueling plan: For the Artemis missions, the idea is to launch the landing ship into LEO, and then it gets refueled by 5-7 other starships. This process will take more time for orbit matching, docking, fuel transfer, and undocking, compared to launch, so it will make sense to have more than one starship in a transfer orbit to deliver fuel, especially to minimize boil-off. This leads to having maybe 5 times more starships than boosters, so the turn-around time for the booster on Earth becomes important for re-fueling time for the LEO ship.
And personally, I'm one of those people who strongly disagrees with Elon's politics, but I also recognize the huge benefits SpaceX is bringing to astronomy and science. If you are bothered by how narcissists rise to the top on all 6 sides of every issue, and you want to influence these types of people, no matter what side, you are never going to do it with criticism, the trick is no matter what you say they will just find a way to be right, so use that. Give them praise in an area adjacent, and leading to a change in perspective, and they will do mental flips to pretend to be all along a slightly different person who deserves that praise and more. If you get groups of people to give this type of psycho-social praise to certain individuals, you can more easily affect public policy.
The argument is that landing on the launch mount is better for rapid re-use, as opposed to just normal slow re-use. If landing in the chopsticks is approximately the same order of magnitude difficulty as landing with legs, then you gain both the mass advantage from not carrying the legs, but also on the time until next launch, because it's already on the launch mount. Maybe that factor alone would be break-even vs. landing on legs and just having a big crane very near to the refueling site, but combining both does (theoretically) give a net advantage for rapid re-use. It's really mostly the mass I'd bet, the rocket equation is so cruel to initial mass.
Edit: More on the LEO refueling plan: For the Artemis missions, the idea is to launch the landing ship into LEO, and then it gets refueled by 5-7 other starships. This process will take more time for orbit matching, docking, fuel transfer, and undocking, compared to launch, so it will make sense to have more than one starship in a transfer orbit to deliver fuel, especially to minimize boil-off. This leads to having maybe 5 times more starships than boosters, so the turn-around time for the booster on Earth becomes important for re-fueling time for the LEO ship.
And personally, I'm one of those people who strongly disagrees with Elon's politics, but I also recognize the huge benefits SpaceX is bringing to astronomy and science. If you are bothered by how narcissists rise to the top on all 6 sides of every issue, and you want to influence these types of people, no matter what side, you are never going to do it with criticism, the trick is no matter what you say they will just find a way to be right, so use that. Give them praise in an area adjacent, and leading to a change in perspective, and they will do mental flips to pretend to be all along a slightly different person who deserves that praise and more. If you get groups of people to give this type of psycho-social praise to certain individuals, you can more easily affect public policy.