Is it worth trying land such a large rocket/ship when a small capsule does the job? Is it possible at all?
I get that SpaceX aims for re-usability, but if they have ambitions, go big and recycle materials in space to build space parts/ships/stations in-situ.
recycle materials in space to build space parts/ships/stations
If you mean in orbit, that’s orders of magnitude harder than reaching the Moon, and possibly harder than colonizing Mars.
We don’t have some scifi “gravity plating”, with some force fields to keep air in, to build a space dock, or a factory on a space station. Microgravity is fun for the first half hour, after that moving stuff around is a whole challenge on itself, something like screwing in a screw, or a lightbulb, is a separate challenge. Most of the knowledge about processes and logistics we use down the gravity well, with an atmosphere made primarily of nitrogen, goes out the window in microgravity.
The nearest “practical” place to recycle any materials, would be the Moon.
Yes it’s hard, which I acknowledged by saying if they have ambitions, go big and recycle materials in space. But you make it sounds like it’s nearly impossible, which I doubt.
We know how to keep air in space stations and capsules, without involving force fields or any other sci-fi tech.
For sure, building in space it different from building in earth gravity, but that doesn’t necessarily make it impossible. There already have been experiments and small-scale demonstrations in space:
Another example is a microgravity extrusion experiment in the ISS between from 2021 to 2023,
I assume it’s easier to start by building small parts, and progressively build larger parts, until hopefully we’re able to build most ships parts. The assembly can presumably happen in the vacuum of space, without air. There’s potential for ultimately building ships in orbit larger than anything we could lift with a rocket.
SpaceX, in a perfect world, just wants to be the railroad to facilitate others who want to build stations, bases, mining, recycling, etc.
As far as the greenness of rockets, recycling would be 5th in the 5 R’s:
- Refuse: refuse to use wasteful rockets? I don’t really know how to apply this one.
- Reduce: I suppose rideshares and vehicles with multiple hosted payloads are good
- Reuse: See: SpaceX
- Repurpose: Wet workshops?
- Recycle: energy intensive and would need tons of infrastructure to process and use on orbit
The SLS worked the first time.
The single launch also cost more than all of Starship to date.
the sls has been in development for 13 years, and 24 billion dollars spent, and it has managed one uncrewed launch, and the cost per launch is expected to be 2 billion. i do not like elon musk, but spacex (and other launch startups) are clearly more innovative and get things done faster and cheaper.
In 2018, right? When’s the 2nd launch supposed to be?
