Super fountain deluge is at the OLM for Booster firings, this was a Ship test at the suborbital pad.
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Tank farm activity has started, but no frost lines yet on B10.
Right now it’s hard to know exactly how SpaceX will use a pair of towers. One scenario could be that after a launch the same tower catches the booster and then a tanker Starship is moved next to it and lifted up and stacked and fueled.
Soon after the first launch, the other tower launches a tanker Starship to refuels the ship that is now in LEO. That booster returns to the tower and its ship returns and is caught by that tower, re-stacked and re-field.
So then you have two towers being used for tanker Starships for multiple in-orbit refuelings of the first ship that was launched.
I fully expect them to use them interchangeably, with a booster assigned to each tower. A Starship will be stacked, the stack fueled, and off it goes. Five minutes later, the booster comes back, is caught and stacked, ready for another Starship. After launching some number of Starships, the booster will be taken out of service for refurbishment, with another booster taking its place. Towers are rifles, boosters are cartridges, and Starships are bullets.
That's the simple bit.
The Starships themselves get complicated because they have to be loaded, do something on orbit, then deorbit such that they reach the launch site. Loading a tanker is easy, but cargo and passenger Starships will be much more involved logistically. Returning Starships would need to be unloaded, then loaded with new cargo and passengers. Do they load them like airliners (while stacked, but empty), or do they use the Airbus patent for slowly preloading a module that is quickly mated to the aircraft?
The use of modules allows fast transfer of cargo and passengers to and from Starships, but leisurely loading of the modules themselves. So a module would permit the cargo and passengers to be loaded nearby, then, when a cargo Starship has landed and has had its cargo module removed, the new module can be loaded. This avoids tailoring entire Starships for specific loads. Just create a module appropriate to each load. Pure cargo modules, pure passenger modules, mixed modules, satellite deployment modules, etc.
HLS could be just another module, though the Starship itself would be designed for operations on the Moon. Given a lightweight tower on the Moon, an HLS Starship could have its module removed and placed on the surface as a habitat, complete with its residents onboard. Cover with lunar soil. Repeat ad nauseum.
For the timing of everything, we have to remember that Starships will do stuff on orbit. Any rendezvous with another vehicle will take time, and will also determine the timing of the launch in the first place. Then there's deployment of satellites, transfer of cargo and passengers, or whatever else the Starship is set up to do. Once that's complete, a Starship has to time its return to reach the launch site, which will introduce more delays.
In the case of refueling HLS Starship (in LEO?), they've got to time things for launch, then take time to rendezvous (fastest space station rendezvous to date is 3 hours), then hours of transferring propellants, then time things for return. I wouldn't be surprised to see them take a couple days per tanker mission, so getting HLS fully fueled could take a week (using two or more tankers that overlap their missions).
I like the concept, though the current Starship towers do not appear to be designed to handle the “modules” you describe. As a future process it sounds good, though for Mars colonization launches perhaps it is more complex than is necessary?
The towers would lift a Starship with its module already loaded. That would be as high as 250 tons. We know that the towers can lift at least 200 tons because that's the mass of a booster. Modules would be loaded and unloaded away from the towers.
For Mars colonization it certainly makes sense. You've got 600 Starships going to Mars. When they get there, either you can have 600 Starships that are purpose-built for the trip to Mars or you can have 600 Starships that can be used for any purpose desired (subject to whatever sorts of modules you can create on Mars). One alternative is to build the Starships so that their interiors can be reconfigured on the fly, where the modules are smaller than the entire cargo area. That would be great to have, but it would probably increase the mass of the structure.
A final alternative is to use the traditional tools for reconfiguring things. Cutting torches and welders.
In fact, I wonder what SpaceX plans to do with all those Starships on Mars.
A small fraction could be used for return trips with humans.
The problem with trying to turn some of them into habitats is their lack of sufficient shielding for long term use by people.
I expect most will simply be abandoned, having served their purpose. By the time hundreds of Starships have been built the cost of the vehicle hardware will be relatively low, so it may be too expensive to refuel them and return them to Earth empty.
Just a few feet of Martian regolith is supposed to be an effective radiation shield, but burying a Starship seems unrealistic. Heavy ”earth moving” equipment (“Mars moving”?) and large cranes to reposition a ship are not going to be available on Mars for a very long time.
Why can't they ship those in?
Could possibly go with an airbag system for gentle tip over/ movement and conveyors for burying.
Medium bulldozer is 30 tons
Crane with soil counterweight or large outriggers
A-Frame style is low mass
Buckminster
Well-Known Member
You could move into onto its side with just simple winches surely. I dismissed the idea initially but I think it could work really well. Dig a trench with an excavator, drop it down and cover it up in regolith.
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I doubt burying a Starship on its side would work out. The tanks would have to be reinforced, and the cargo or passenger section would have to be designed for that orientation as well as for the stresses of launch and landing. This is why I suggested the modules. Pull out the modules, put them on the surface upright, then push soil against them until they're buried. That leaves you with a bunch of working Starships that can be used to ferry ice from the poles.
Design some of the Starships to serve as storage depots for cryogenic liquids as well as water. Bury them vertically (or mound soil around them). As mongo observes, a colony is going to have to start with some essential tools, including stuff like soil digging and moving equipment.
Nothing that goes to Mars should be considered waste. It's never, ever, going to be cheap. Every last gram of material should be planned for multiple uses.
Design some of the Starships to serve as storage depots for cryogenic liquids as well as water. Bury them vertically (or mound soil around them). As mongo observes, a colony is going to have to start with some essential tools, including stuff like soil digging and moving equipment.
Nothing that goes to Mars should be considered waste. It's never, ever, going to be cheap. Every last gram of material should be planned for multiple uses.
TunaBug
Member
I have a different mental model for the problem you're solving with modules: I think they'll make different versions of the starships. One for passengers, one for freight, one for NASA & the moon, and a giant Pez dispenser for StarLink. Much like today with large aircraft: you can buy a passenger version or a cargo version. They share a majority of components, but on the inside and how they are loaded is completely different. More to the point: once you've built one for cargo it is not converted to passenger, or vice-versa.
There probably will be modules for cargo, but I think of them as the uber-containers that hold a lot of cargo boxes (or suitcases): they're loaded away from the ship and have standard size and mounting points in order to easily load them onto the aircraft/spacecraft. In other words, they exist to help address logistical issues with loading/unloading.
I agree that they won't bury the starships to make habitats: they just are not structurally designed for that. Look at the photos of the recent images of B1058 for how the body collapsed. I cannot imagine they will be discarded though: it's too expensive to move all that mass from earth to mars. At the very least cut them up and use the steel for something (the cutting equipment can be packed in between the bulldozers
).
There probably will be modules for cargo, but I think of them as the uber-containers that hold a lot of cargo boxes (or suitcases): they're loaded away from the ship and have standard size and mounting points in order to easily load them onto the aircraft/spacecraft. In other words, they exist to help address logistical issues with loading/unloading.
I agree that they won't bury the starships to make habitats: they just are not structurally designed for that. Look at the photos of the recent images of B1058 for how the body collapsed. I cannot imagine they will be discarded though: it's too expensive to move all that mass from earth to mars. At the very least cut them up and use the steel for something (the cutting equipment can be packed in between the bulldozers
).
Buckminster
Well-Known Member
Steel tubes is the definition of structural and could easily be reinforced internally if needed. They collapse due to differential pressures in the other direction.
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TunaBug
Member
After my previous post I started thinking and realized I was being dumb. Assuming we can't bury a tank, I suggested we'll cut them up and create something else we would bury. But most likely that thing's shape will also be cylindrical? So...dumb.
But I'm having trouble with the pressure differential part. Rockets are cylinders designed with a high pressure inside. We're proposing burying them with just 1atm inside to keep the pressure out, that there's your differential. But I have no experience or training here to know how difficult a problem that is to solve.
Internal reinforcement: well we'll want floors, walls, bulkheads anyhow, so that can be reinforcement as well, right? At which point the question is about how much of that is in place when it leaves earth, vs shipped as cargo and installed on site?
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