• kingthrillgore@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    Question: what the fuck is Starship trying to accomplish over Falcon or Falcon Heavy? It seems like the design is a major regression in every imaginable way and its shimmering body screams another rushed, ugly EM pet project that’s an expensive boondoggle like his ketamine fueled AutoCAD nightmare on wheels.

    • Ludrol@szmer.info
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      6 months ago

      Reusable second stage, and more economic rockets with better turnaround.

      Elon is stupid and has a lot of money. SpaceX somehow got competent people managing him to somehow steer the company in decent direction.

    • Jramskov@feddit.dk
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      6 months ago

      Making space exploration 1000x cheaper basically. Not kidding, that’s roughly the goal I believe. That’s needed to make it possible to send enough stuff and people to Mars to make us a multi planetary species. It’s a completely crazy goal/idea, but that’s actually been the goal of SpaceX from the start. Getting Starship to work seems incredibly difficult and almost impossible, but so did landing a big booster rocket on a drone ship and today they do that so often it’s almost become boring.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      It’s fueled by LOX which can be made from water, making it suitable for refueling anywhere we can find ice in the solar system.

      • ylph@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        LOX is liquid oxygen, which is not a fuel, but an oxidizer. Starship is fueled by liquid methane. Methane can not be made from just water, you need a source of carbon. On Mars for example methane could be produced from CO2 in the atmosphere and water from ice.

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          I thought the ship had been designed to be able to use water only as input to its fuel generation.