SpaceX

BlueAbyssal said:
If there's enough justification to build a base, presuming one of the companies currently developing hardware for lunar water mining pulls it off, I'd rather see purpose-built habs delivered from Earth, even though gravity would make refurbishing a Starship core easier.
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Even with lunar gravity cannot see how you plan to cut out tank wall tanks, put up walking decks. and all the other stuff
And all this in a space suit and in a 9 meter high tube.
Robots will help sure but this sounds impossible
 
I think* SpaceX is mainly preparing the public that they are going to discard massive chunks of metal on a deserted planet.
Musk has all the incentives in the world (literally) to tiptoe past any environmentalist's new buzz word.

*well, more accurately, I hope as Starship conceptual Lunar applications have proven to be poor so far in ingenuity...
 
BlueAbyssal said:
If there's enough justification to build a base, presuming one of the companies currently developing hardware for lunar water mining pulls it off, I'd rather see purpose-built habs delivered from Earth, even though gravity would make refurbishing a Starship core easier.
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If they're there you may as well use them for something. You'd want to try to use ANY mass you delivered to the moon, even if you just scrapped them and made them into something else.
 
TomcatViP said:
I think SpaceX is mainly preparing the public that they are going to discard massive chunks of metal on a deserted planet.
Musk has all the incentives in the world (literally) to tip-toes past any environmentalist new buzz word.
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We've already done that. Crashed Saturn V 3rd stages there.
 
Sferrin said:
If they're there you may as well use them for something. You'd want to try to use ANY mass you delivered to the moon, even if you just scrapped them and made them into something else.
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Sure, assuming that they won’t be reused for transport, and I’d use them to store propellants, as they’re already very well suited to that.
 
You might also want see the video here, with a much Deep through analysis.

The real strains on the rocket are in fact much lower than generally assumed by the industry for a Starship sized lander.

Preventing a tip over for smaller vertical landers is also just a question of appropriatly designing your landing legs, understanding that a balance in design choices must be made at a fairly small amount of increased mass.
If factually proven imbeciles were not in charge of such in many startups, this would have stayed an unnoticeable challenge for the general public just like it did since Apollo...
 
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SpaceX has just uploaded this video about the tenth flight test:


Starship’s tenth flight test lifted off on August 26, 2025, at 6:30 p.m. CT from Starbase, Texas, taking a significant step forward in developing the world’s first fully reusable launch vehicle. Every major objective was met, providing critical data to inform designs of the next generation Starship and Super Heavy.​
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Over the course of a flight test campaign, success will continue to be measured by what we are able to learn, and Starship’s tenth flight test provided valuable data by stressing the limits of vehicle capabilities and providing maximum excitement along the way.​
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"With Arms Wide Open" might be best for chopsticks

IFT-10's SuperHeavy return challenged CFD models
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvcAWLil580


The latest research on shock waves
https://phys.org/news/2025-10-behavior-precise.html

Shock waves should not be shocking—engineers across scientific fields need to be able to precisely predict how the instant and strong pressure changes initiate and dissipate to prevent damage. Now, thanks to a team from Yokohama National University, those predictions are even better understood. In work published on Aug. 19 in the Physics of Fluids, the researchers detailed how computational models used to simulate shock wave behavior represent the very weak shock waves in a way that is distinctly different from both theoretical predictions and physical measurements.

More on CFD
https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/2025/09/30/new-cfd-methodology-supersizes-results/ https://applyingai.com/2025/08/spac...ectives-challenges-and-industry-implications/ https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20240007678/downloads/2024_AIAA_Aviation_Exascale_Paper.pdf https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cfd-mania_????????-???-???-????-activity-7366888781515251713-CVyP https://cfd.university/blog/the-6-biggest-and-unoslved-challenges-in-cfd/
 
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Booster 15.2 on Move to Launch pad one
G2vuZrhWwAApRik
 
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Just thought about something slightly disturbing, related to Starship in-orbit refueling.

Starship V1 / V2 / V3 keeps growing bigger an bigger, hence it needs more and more propellants to fill it (1200 mt, then 1500 mt etc. etc.)
Problem is, the max payload deliverable to orbit is stuck at 200 mt, 250 mt best case.
Bottom line: more and more tanker flights for each individual Starship.

What disturbs me : Musk dismissal of a permanent orbital propellant depot in low Earth orbit. One that could be filled and refilled, say, with 3000 mt of methalox, hence a single Starship would not empty it.
There would be two ways of doing it.
-1 Fifteen Starship tankers pour 3000 mt of methalox into a central tank;
-2 Fifteen Starship tankers dock side by side to a long truss with common plumbing, with methalox flowing to a single refueling port

That is: how about stockpiling methalox in orbit in advance ? It would remove pressure from the tanker flights and the related ground infrastructure.

One major advantage : it dissociates refueling from specific missions. Which would do some good to Starship-HLS in its race with the chinese to return to the Moon...

If your Starship needs 1600 mt of methalox, that is, 200 mt * 8 : the said eight flights, if poured into a permanent depot, don't need to race against the mission and against boiloff, too. In passing, a robust anti-boiloff system can be attached to the permanent depot to limit losses and related additional flights.
 
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IIRC the plan for the first Starship HLS flight is to launch a tanker, refuel that tanker into orbit over the course of several flights, and then transfer the full fuel load from the tanker to the HLS for Earth departure. I don't specifically remember seeing anything from SpaceX about a specially modified depot tanker, although plenty of people have proposed it.
 
Archibald said:
Just thought about something slightly disturbing, related to Starship in-orbit refueling.
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i not see big problem
Starship/Superheavy has bring 10000meter/sec to get in orbit
here you need propellant around 10000 metric ton (surface to Orbit)
from here you need lower speed for transfer to Moon or Mars need only 4300 meter/sec (Moon orbital injection - Mars Aerobrake)
Raptor has ISP of 3700 meter/sec or needed Propellant factor 3.1968
with mass of around 300 ton in orbit we need around 659 metric tons of fuel or 3~4 refuel flights with Tanker

on Mars the Starship is refuel for return with local Lox and Ch4, ironic needing less Propellant for Return trip...
in Moon orbit the Starship could tank Lox if needed.
Lox from Moon in low orbit or Moon Orbit would reduce the need for Tankers by Half sine only Ch4 is launch.
 

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