/sci/ - Science & Math

>>16210081
The extra mass needed to make the ship reusable has a huge impact on payload, much larger than the the payload penalty you get from making the booster reusable. That's the whole reason why falcon 9 worked so much better than shuttle. Falcon 9 is a medium lift rocket resuable or not reusable, since the payload impact of first stage recoveryis not huge. On shuttle they launched a superheavy class stack to deliver a medium class payload, because of the insane payload penalty that a reusable upper stage causes. The orbiter weighed like 75 tons and the payload was around 25. Starship can't escape the payload penalty caused by a reusable upper stage. They don't have large wings like the shuttle orbiter, but they need to carry about 300m/s of fuel to land, and they need a huge shield just like the orbiter.
Stretching the ship won't fix it. They will never deliver 150t to leo with the present design, their mass to leo is actually less than SLS block 1 funnily enough. I think they will acheive 150t to leo and mars colonization in the future if they do the 18m wide starship. Present ship will deliver starlink but it doesnt have the performance to fulfill the artemis contract, nor does it have the performance to actually return from the surface of mars to earth.
Before retards jump down my throat, I'm not fudding, I've been a massive fan of SpaceX for well over a decade. I'm just taking a sober look at what actually exists. If we are lucky then Musk will build the gigantic rocket which can colonize Mars by the time he is on his death bed as his last magnum opus. If not then we will not have a surface base on Mars by the time we are all dead.

There is no competition,

>>16142151