/sci/ - Science & Math

HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT ITS HABBENING ITS HABBENING ITS HABBENING ITS HABBENING ITS HABBENING

Actual Timeline :

14th April : Launch Loicense
Between Now and 17th : FTS instalation
17th April : Launch attempt
18-21 Backup

WE ARE GOING TO THE MOON BOIS
So much waiting , so much suffering , YEARS waiting ! From piles of dirt and Mexican levels of welding , to an Interplanetary Transportation System

Doing some math right now. It takes 3.2 km/s to reach a trans lunar injection. 2.5 km/s to land straight from this (no braking into orbit, etc). It takes 2.5 km/s to launch straight from the lunar surface back to Earth.
So assuming it takes 30 tons of prop to land from the bellyflop, and Starship masses 120 tons, and carries 50 tons of payload, we have a total starship DRY mass of 200 tons.
Starship carries 1200 tons of propellant, so at an ISP of 375 seconds (conservative RapVac value), we have a delta V of 7.1 km/s.
The total round trip Delta V from LEO to Earth return is 8.1 km/s. A fully fueled Starship with 50 tons of payload can go to the lunar surface and return AS LONG AS it has a 1 km/s “boost.”
This translates to a parking orbit with an apogee of 5500 kilometers, which has an injection Delta V of 1 km/s.

A final part of the puzzle is refueling in high orbit. A 120 ton tanker starship with 30 tons of landing prop, and carrying 100 tons of fuel (total dry mass: 250 tons) needs 100 tons of extra propellant (375 second isp, again) to reach the 250X5500 km parking orbit. That translates to 1 LEO tanker + 1 HEO Tanker. 2 launches for every 100 tons of prop for our Lunar Starship

Thus, a lunar Starship needs 24 tanker launches to fully refuel in elliptical Earth Orbit in order to land on the moon and return. 25 launches total.

Long story short, Starship can go to the moon and back as long as it refuels in an elliptical, 250X5500 km orbit with 50 tons of payload. This requires 24 tankers, for a total of 25 launches.

SOURCES:
>Orbit Calculations
https://www.satsig.net/orbit-research/delta-v-geo-injection-calculator.htm

>Delta V calculations
https://strout.net/info/science/delta-v/intro.html

>Starship data
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship

Okay lads I am a senior CE and want to get a job doing space shit. I don’t want to be a simulink monkey so no control systems. What should I start studying. I have been doing a lot of embedded Linux shit recently and it’s pretty fun. what else should I be doing?