SpaceX Starship may never reach the Moon or Mars! Here's why...

It turns out that the current Starship design can't haul 100 tons to orbit! It's a lot less than that!
What can be done to rectify this, and how will this affect Elon Musk's ambitions for the Moon and Mars?
#space #nasa #spacex

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[noppornwongrassamee]

Maybe it's just the sci fi nerd in me, but I feel like a better use for Starship's lift capacity (whatever it ends up being) would be to lift components for a dedicated interplanetary ship (say, something with a nuclear engine) into orbit rather than use Starship itself for interplanetary journeys.

[judedornisch]

Startship and Super heavy have not even entered the optimization phase.

[Rod_Knee]

Starship is still deep in the prototype stage. There is a long way to go before most people would view it as "Version 1.0". Let's give SpaceX a bit longer before we write of their performance ambitions.

[timchance]

OMG!!! Why cant you be totally honest with acknowledging that Starship is still in IFT Phase! There are 2 more iterations of the future ship that take all these issues in account.... Stop Gaslighting on a TEST Article!!!!

[TCarneyV]

So as a long time view I remember Angry's rant about the raptor 3 and why Space X just needs to settle on a design and get it fully developed.... Looks like they knew what they were doing. Booster 10 for ITF-3 was first spotted in July of 2022. We are working on 2 year old prototypes.

Trust the Hardware rich design process,

1. SpaceX, has a working prototype, which looks like it will be either partially reusable and rapidly refurbished at worst by the end of the year.

2. SpaceX is cash flow positive due to star link

3. SpaceX has a mass production factory built and already partially operating

4. The last test said 2 layers of ablative heat shield survived reentry. Which means if you had to you could ditch the tiles and settle for rapidly refurbishable.

If you read the full comment make your prediction where they will be in 18 months (Jan 2026)

[codedlogic]

This video's logical fallacy is CATEGORY ERROR. These are prototypes. Starship can't yet lift 1 TON to orbit. Much less "only 50 tons". The goal here is to build a rapidly reusable system. AND THEN fine tune it to achieve its objectives. Not the other way around. For example, Falcon 9 has doubled its lift capacity since it first flew. You are just mindlessly criticizing a prototype for not being the end product yet.

[johnanderson]

Just like Falcon, this will be a steady development process of incremental mass reduction and increases in payload. Right now the design focus is mission success. Mass optimisation comes later.

[FroddeB]

I dont find the rapid refueling hard to believe. The recent EverydayAstronaut tour of Starbase really showed how big the factories are going to be. They're preparing to ramp up production big time... As long as they can deliver a huge amount of a Starships and they have a framework that works for rapid reusability, then rapid refueling will become quite easy.

There's a few ifs in there, but I'm sure SpaceX will figure it out. Starship is their new main product, SpaceX falls with Starship if it fails to do what it's supposed to.

[richardsmith]

And hey, is this really doubt or is this drama? drama....These aren't the ships that are going to be used...but you knew that

[rolanddeschain]

Bezos: I'm tired...
ULA: tag me in!

[texican]

I think that SpaceX' success has jaded us. We may be losing sight of the ambitiousness of what they are doing. The science and engineering needed to create the technologies for almost every system being used is mindboggling. Despite what NASA, politicians and even Elon himself love to forecast, the technology will take as long as it takes to be developed and proven.

[criver]

Based on a technical assessment from ULA?

Given their recent years of utterly abysmal performance why would anyone assign credibility to THEIR ASSESSMENTS?

[Codysdab]

The current version of starship is a test article, you know that, you even know the upgrade path, what the hell are you trying to assert here with click bait like this?

[DavidWilliams-xweu]

Yeah. The original payload to LEO for Falcon 9 was only 9 tons whereas block 5 can now go 22.5 tons. 50 tons is worst case at the moment on a vehicle still in heavy development. Lets see where future iterations performance lands.

[tombloemker]

Naa, It's way too early to assess the final stats for starship. Really, they are still trying to nail down the design requirements. I am surprised they say the payload is data. They dont even have a final design, how can they worry about the flight/glide envelope? Version two will help build a thrust table that will clarify numbers of engines versus higher champer pressure improvements that will impact version 3.

[eddie]

Im still positive space x will reaches his goals in the future

[christopherleveck]

50 metric tons is still 7.5 elephants in low earth that .5 elephant that scares me.

[privateerburrows]

Well, the refueling protocol would not be the Lunar Starship waiting in orbit for dozens of refueling Starships to come feed it, as you seem to suggest. There would be a large tank in orbit that would be fed by Starships until full. This tanker satellite would have the sunshield, insulation and cooling system. Then Lunar Starship would launch and dock with the tank satellite, fuel up, and go on to the Moon.

[Jaxvidstar]

Elon was planning a version 3 of Starship/Super Heavy. So I am not worried about it's future.

[Zhiroc]

One thing to mention is that hot-stage ring is temporary. As I understand it, newer boosters will just have the main body include the structure, which should remove some weight as this would be just part of the hull and thus doesn't need to be independently strengthened. And the same goes for extra engine shielding--as Raptor reliability improves, there's no need for it, just like there's no shielding around Merlins.