From: jfindley@cinci.nospam.rr.com
In article ,
jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca says...
>
> On 2021-01-03 09:03, Jeff Findley wrote:
>
> > This is idle speculation. Keep in mind that SpaceX designed and built
> > Falcon and Falcon Heavy in recent times, so they have relevant
> > experience building and flying orbital class launch vehicles.
>
>
> Hughes Aircraft corporation also had a lot of experience building
> planes, and it built the Spruce Goose. At one point, realised it
> woudlnt be great, but still fibnished it so Howard Highes could fly it
> once to declare the equivalent of "mission accomplished".
It was a giant plane made out of wood. Starship is made of stainless
steel, the same material used in the original Atlas ICBM/launch vehicle.
> The Space Shuttle was also completed and flew, despite not reaching all
> its goals of payload, easy re=use, lower costs etc.
Shuttle was a compromised design using LH2/LOX main engines and giant
SRBs. Raptor is a full flow staged combustion LOX/methane engine.
> Not saying Starship/Super Heavy will fail, but curious at what point
> they get confidence that weght creep has ended and they get good idea of
> what sort of actual payload it will have.
>
> This becomes important when you need to calculate how many flights you
> will need to launch to a fuel a Starship.
They can compensate for this by adding/deleting Raptors from the design
of the Super Booster, which we've already seen happen.
> (And in the case of the lunar fantasy project, how many super heavy
> launches from Earth to fuel a Starship that can go to "Gateway" and
> refuel the lunar lander version of Starship.
Cynicism noted.
Jeff
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