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1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

But that said - I'm a bit skeptical about the aim of landing between towers.  That plan takes absolute precision - whereas a flat barge (or reinforced structure atop a platform) allows for some wiggle room. 

Hover capability covers a multitude of sins.

That is how helicopters can land on helipads mounted on ships or buildings or after all...

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I'm not terribly concerned about the "landing between towers" issue, because:
1) The towers are likely to be removed.  They were originally designed for drilling oil wells, and are unlikely to be suitable for SpaceX's operations.  In fact, very little of the existing topsides equipment and structure are likely to be useful.  These rigs are going to get stripped down.
2) F9 landings are remarkably accurate, and I believe the same will become true for SS.  Heck, with their two attempts to date, they've already been really close.
3) Any new towers could retract a la F9's strongback
4) OCISLY endured multiple hard landings.  Sure, SS/SH will be dramatically heavier, but the fact remains that you can build a structure to take it.

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6 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Two things:

  1. It's a testing program. They've literally only tried this landing maneuver twice before. Just because they didn't quite get there on the first two attempts definitely doesn't mean they're not allowed to announce their future plans for the system, especially when they seem confident that they can land successfully on the next attempt, or the one after that. Remember: Falcon 9 was announced while Falcon 1 was still having launch failures.
  2. The oil rigs will be heavily modified, so they'll likely have a bigger target than a helipad to aim for. I don't even think a regular helipad could survive the vibrations, heat and sheer mass of a spacecraft landing on it.

They will not land between the towers but outside and then moved there by the crane. Part of the plan to catch SH with the grind finds probably. 
But they will need way more infrastructure as in more platforms. 

Something like this:
standard_compressed_ekofisk_complex_pres

Launch, landing, fuel storage, LOX production, hangars and cargo integration, crew quarters just to name some of the facilities, think an hangar ship able to launch high rise buildings. 

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1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

So this is interesting, apparently in Boca there’s a SpaceElevator... <_<

 

I got a good laugh out of that. Yeah, SpaceX has other things  to demonstrate when it comes to Starship, but that sure does make the MDF or whatever the other two are made out of look sophisticated. Whatever happened to that white-painted nosecone, anyway?

Also, calling that thing a Space Elevator would be consistent with the naming of Starship in that it really, really isn't what the name actually means.

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To be fair, wouldn't landing a starship be much easier on moon as it would be normal propulsive landing instead of the experimental flip happening on earth? Considering they make the orbital refueling and other systems work it was already tested and done by maby spacecrafts...

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5 minutes ago, Toonu said:

To be fair, wouldn't landing a starship be much easier on moon as it would be normal propulsive landing instead of the experimental flip happening on earth? Considering they make the orbital refueling and other systems work it was already tested and done by maby spacecrafts...

True, non-atmospheric landing would probably be a lot easier provided they get those landing thrusters working. I don’t doubt they will if the unlikely possibility they are selected for the Artemis HLS bid comes true. We haven’t seen much development on Lunar Starship out in the open at least, and the lack of work on the mockup leads me to believe the project is on the backburner until they go orbital (which I would estimate to happen mid-2022, if the Raptors cooperate).

It’s a BIG step, though, to go from orbital Starship to refueling with tankers for trans-Lunar trips. Orbital refueling has been used in the past, yes, but at limited scale like Progress spacecraft transferring some small amounts of storable hypergolic to Zarya for reboosting orbits, and something similar with MEV-1 and the geostationary sat it serviced.

To do that with cryogenic liquid oxygen and liquid methane on scales similar to that of the Saturn V’s SII is no small undertaking, especially considering the tanks won’t be back-pressurized for ease of flow like I assume Progress and MEV have. (No source on the Progress and MEV tanks, it makes sense to me that way though)

Not to mention keeping up a rapid launch cadence for refueling likely with shorter turnaround than F9 has yet to achieve, but using a vehicle with 34(?) engines that have so far been fickle, partially returning from orbital velocity, and using a thermal protection system which may not be as potentially dangerous or hard to replace as Shuttle’s, but still a potential cause of long delays.

Because of these issues, I don’t find it likely that Lunar Starship will be ready by 2024, 2025, or even 2026 for a landing even if development is pushed hard, and the lack of an HLS contract would probably mean SpaceX has no reason to actually go the Moon, or it wouldn’t be worth the development money they would have to put up for themselves.

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1 hour ago, RealKerbal3x said:

 

Aww c’mon. Have they not read their Jules Verne?  I mean the launch vehicle looks fine, all locked and loaded and properly shell shaped,  but their Columbiad is gonna need a much longer barrel to shoot that thing to the Moon.

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5 hours ago, KSK said:

Aww c’mon. Have they not read their Jules Verne?  I mean the launch vehicle looks fine, all locked and loaded and properly shell shaped,  but their Columbiad is gonna need a much longer barrel to shoot that thing to the Moon.

I guess most of it is underground, like in Verne's story. You know, dug out of the mountains in central Florida.

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