RCgothic

So much opportunity cost to this boondoggle.

WooOOww. Eric really giving SLS both barrels here: And yeah. Hard to disagree with a word.

The rock weighs less, but if it's firmly anchored you need to shear through it. Same energy to do that anywhere in the solar system. A solar farm with a load of multi-purpose swap-in battery packs for an electric vehicle is probably most efficient. Still, a Kerolox supercharged diesel engine would be cool.

Lol, yes, moon. Does it reduce the requires loads to 1/6 though? If you want to bulldoze through a rock it might be harder because your bulldozer weighs less and therefore has less traction.

Because earth movers require a lot of energy, and it may be easier to provide that power from a dense fuel source if you want to prepare a base quickly, rather than wait ages between recharges that are individually only able to accomplish a small amount of work due to limited battery capacity.

So Starship could probably send two D9 Caterpillar Bulldozers to the moon in one go from a payload perspective. Got to move a lot of earth to build a moonbase! But would you necessarily want to go solar-electric for power? Earth movers require a lot. Could you modify an internal combustion engine to run on fuel/oxidiser? Superchargers would be super-effective sucking down to vacuum. Or would a fuel/oxidiser turbine work better with exhaust to vacuum?

Massively over-engined IMO.

Looks like!

SLS Orion really is frighteningly expensive. If NASA cancelled SLS tomorrow and then went to NewSpace and said "Here's SLS Orion's budget, get us to the moon by end of 2024." I'd bet on them to succeed. Vulcan, New Glenn, Falcon Heavy, SuperHeavy, all boosters you can build a moon mission around that are more likely to be flying on a regular schedule by 2024 with a billion dollars dumped into them than SLS. Whereas if you found twice SLS Orion's budget to give to Boeing I'd still be 50:50 on them cocking it up.

You left off the cost of the SRBs.

You'd need a heck of a lot of gimball - 35° off-axis just to get to 80% thrust.

However it happens it sure is damp. For a project we had to build up a temporary concrete plinth and line it with anti-dust compound and aluminium plate to take an air-skate. Contractor: "Don't paint this for at least two months." Us: "Unfortunately we have to have to use this within a fortnight." Contractor: "Well." Six months later our aluminium liner is curling up at the edges and the anti-dust paint is still tacky from the moisture. Us: "Well."

The water has to be allowed to come out of regular concrete. It sweats as it cures.

I suppose Orion could also dock into a port opposite the lift. That way there's one airlock level with the crew compartment above.

Not necessarily. Shut them down in pairs opposite sides of the COM. With 8 engines you then have 4 throttle settings plus off.

That... Doesn't sound right. Starship can endure very high temperatures even without a heat shield, doesn't have anything flimsy that could be torn off, and almost empty has a high surface area to mass ratio. Aerobraking should be quite effective for it, intuitively. I'd quite like to see that calculation and its assumptions.

Alas no static fire tonight: