totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[Hotel26]

  On 3/20/2025 at 12:14 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

time for another one of these

Expand  

+10

(no Tour d'Eiffel, but a Tour de Force).

Edited March 20 by Hotel26

[Entropian]

  On 3/20/2025 at 12:14 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

Still salty about not getting to go to the top of the Eiffel tower.

Expand  

Rightfully so - you were wronged by your buddies .  The view from the top is 10^6 times nicer than from a third of the way up.

[Deddly]

  On 3/20/2025 at 12:14 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

Alright been a while, I guess it is time for another one of these.

Expand  

Thanks for that, Steve.

Basically, I have learned that if something seems stupid to me - anything at all - then I need to first learn more about it and the reasoning behind it before making judgement. Often, my initial reaction is wrong.

[Ultimate Steve]

  On 3/20/2025 at 11:37 AM, Deddly said:

  On 3/20/2025 at 12:14 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

 

Expand  

Thanks for that, Steve.

Basically, I have learned that if something seems stupid to me - anything at all - then I need to first learn more about it and the reasoning behind it before making judgement. Often, my initial reaction is wrong.

Expand  

100%. That aligns very well with one of the big lessons my time working on a cubesat taught me. If you hear something like "X company's rocket blew up because they forgot to turn the power on" you're going to think "Oh, they're stupid, how could they simply forget to turn the power?" But something as stupid sounding as that can easily be the result of a long chain of complex events that are perplexing.

Case in point, story 3 here is exactly that. Granted we were undergraduates and actually kind of stupid but we had a bizzare series of issues that took months to solve and ended up being, in effect, "It wasn't working because we didn't turn on the power."

(shameless plug, ignore the fact that it has been four months since I posted an update)

So now when I see something like "X company makes Y simple mistake" I do my best to give them the benefit of the doubt. Though sometimes it really is that stupid.

[Exoscientist]

  On 3/20/2025 at 6:33 AM, Entropian said:

Rightfully so - you were wronged by your buddies .  The view from the top is 10^6 times nicer than from a third of the way up.

Expand  

 At least you were able to finally make it to make it to the front of the line. Next time we go, we’ll have to make it at the least crowded times of the day, even if it’s, say, 3am.

   Bob Clark

Edited March 20 by Exoscientist
Typo.

[darthgently]

Not a landing only flame trench 

Edited March 20 by darthgently

[tater]

Current ship mass is far too high. Older estimates of mass (100t or under) were based on Musk saying that was in fact the goal, and simple estimates of ship mass using ring counts and mass for 6ft by 28.27m length sheets of different tickness in 304 steel. 6 ft because that's a std width, and what the rings are as a result).

https://www.twmetals.com/resources/calculators.html

Obviously all the stringers/baffles, etc ups the mass. An assumption for HLS is that it can do with both thinner steel, possibly fewer stringers, certainly no tiles. Course the pressure vessel, legs, solar panels and landing engines add mass.

If it uses 30 rings worth of steel, that's 49.8t of steel at 4mm thickness, 44.8t at 3.6mm thickness, and 37.4t at 3mm thickness. R3 are supposed to be ~1.5t/ea, so 9 to 13.5t of engines (6 vs 9). Gives us a lower limit of ~46.4t with no fitting out (crew area, solar, legs, etc), and an upper limit of ~63.3t also minus fitting out.

Obviously the stringer mass, etc could result it in using more than 30 rings worth of 304. Still, on current ship the addition mass being more than 3X higher seems extreme.

 

[Exoscientist]

  On 3/20/2025 at 12:14 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

Alright been a while, I guess it is time for another one of these.

The short version:

Firstly, where are you getting 90 million for a full stack from? But sure I'll take that at face value.

Secondly have you like. Even run the rocket equation for any of your argument? If so please list your masses and specific impulses because what you state is simply impossible with the numbers I am using.

Thirdly, there is a lot more you need to get to the Moon or Mars than what has been demonstrated. Simply having enough Delta-V

Fourth you seem to only be assuming construction costs and nothing else.

 

The long version:

I'll grant you all of these fantasy concessions here:

• Starship Lunar range communications exists now
• Starship Mars range communications exists now
• Starship Lunar landing legs exist now
• Starship Mars landing legs exist now
• Starship has zero boil off now
• Starship has a way of generating power now
• Starship can loiter in orbit until the next lanuch window
• Starship's narrow Texas launch corridor is in the right direction for a minimum fuel Moon/Mars transfer, or they can overfly land
• Cranes and cargo doors for offloading cargo onto the Lunar/Martian surface exist now
• Starship's Lunar landing engine ring exists now or they find a way to safely land using just Raptor

And I'll even give you a magic starship:

• Lunar dry mass is 80 tons (unrealistically low)
• The Lunar ship ends up in LEO with 250 tons of propellant (unrealistically high) (This is EXTREMELY generous)
• Martian dry mass is 100 tons (unrealistically low)
• The Martian ship ends up in LEO with 230 tons of propellant (unrealistically high)
• Starship's specific impulse is always 382s (even if they always used the vacuum engines and never the sea level engines or the Lunar engine ring, there is somewhat credible evidence that they are at best in the upper 370s right now)
• All of the propellant gets burnt and zero ends up as gas in the tanks or unburnable liquid in the propellant lines

Unless you pull a lander out of  your hat, you are not getting to the Moon on a single launch without refueling. 5310 m/s of Delta-V or so.

Not enough to land on the moon even with 0 payload. Even on the most aggressive no margins trajectory you are still around 300m/s short.  Maybe you could do some gravity magic with a low energy transfer or something. But if in magic fantasy land with all of the stops pulled you can barely do it, it is not going to happen.

Mars - This is a bit of a moot point as you can't really do Mars without already doing everything you need to do for Starship reusability (and more). But if for some reason you went to the trouble of doing that bizarre plan, Starship with these characteristics and assuming a 400m/s landing burn (IDK how realistic that is) can indeed get 20 tons to the Martian surface. In magic fantasy land. If Starship's dry mass increases to 120 tons (with a corresponding decrease in propellant to orbit) then it can't carry payload any more.

And you're probably going to say "But then just put a lander stage in there" Okay now you have to spend 5+ years developing a lander, the cost of which is going to make launch cost look like a rounding error, and no, you can't just stick an out of production Ariane 5 upper stage on a Cygnus and call it a day.

 

I will put it another way. I went to Paris once on a trip. I got to see the Eiffel tower and I bought tickets to go all the way to the top. I was mentally prepared to go all the way to the top no matter how many steps it was (I think there was an elevator for the last bit). We had the time to go all the way to the top. We got 1/3 of the way up and nobody wanted to go all the way to the top with me (strict buddy system as we were school age) because the view was alright and they were tired.

Now maybe I'm in the minority here. But I love climbing things and getting the top. Buildings, mountains, rocks, snow piles, etc. IMO the view is always so much better at the very top. You seem like the kind of person who is okay with getting 1/3 of the way up the Eiffel tower and calling it a day.

The next big mountain of spaceflight is a fully and rapidly reusable launch vehicle and if they can avoid it I don't think SpaceX wants to stop 1/3 of the way up.

Now, if the mountain proves to be too hard, sure, stop and stick with the view you have. We are not at that point yet. SpaceX has like ten years minimum before Falcon and Starlink get outcompeted. They can afford to go for the summit now.

 

Anyway I'm too strapped on free time to say anything about your other posts but you did link an article: 

 

I've seen this floating around a bit, haven't read it yet. I'll take a look at it tonight if I end up having the time. I've generally seen it clowned on but then again I do hang out in the pro SpaceX corner of the internet so I will try to be aware of that bias. Might make an in depth post about it later.

 

Still salty about not getting to go to the top of the Eiffel tower.

Expand  

 

 I’ve mentioned before Zubrin and others have argued the point using Starship itself as the lander to the Moon or Mars is a bad approach. It is far too heavy for that role. Standard engineering practice is to add additional, smaller stages, to get to high delta-v destinations such as the Moon or Mars. Apollo for instance, even higher delta-v being round-trip, used 6 propulsive stages.

An article discusses this argument of Zubrin of using a smaller mini-Starship as the lander as well as the critical Will Locket review article here:

Mini-Starship or bust? Experts clash over SpaceX’s future.
https://floridamedianow.com/2025/03/spacexs-future/

 I discussed the estimate of a $90 million unit production cost of the Superheavy/Starship here:

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/159887-spacex-discussion-thread/?do=findComment&comment=4428912

 

  Bob Clark

Edited March 20 by Exoscientist

[Ultimate Steve]

@tater re: Starship dry mass. This is not a particularly good estimation method as there are far too many variables but I did make an attempt a few months back to estimate it using the terminal velocity of a belly flopping starship. If I remember and have time I can share my results when I get home though there is so much uncertainty they are pretty much worthless. Maybe I might get some ideas about how to refine them from yall.

[tater]

  On 3/20/2025 at 6:09 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

@tater re: Starship dry mass. This is not a particularly good estimation method as there are far too many variables but I did make an attempt a few months back to estimate it using the terminal velocity of a belly flopping starship. If I remember and have time I can share my results when I get home though there is so much uncertainty they are pretty much worthless. Maybe I might get some ideas about how to refine them from yall.

Expand  

Yeah, I was trying to guess the known elements. Originally they were using 4mm steel, and I want to say some of the paperwork photographed at Starbase of steel deliver suggested they were at least trying 3.6mm for a while. This is clearly a lower limit for dry mass: estimated steel mass, plus engines. "Estimated" is doing a lot of work here as downcomers, baffles, stringers, etc can be nontrivial.

[Exoscientist]

  Another article critical of the multi-refueling approach SpaceX is taking to get to the Moon and Mars, that discusses Zubrin’s view as well as that of former high ranking NASA official Daniel Dumbacher:

SpaceX Needs A New Mini-Starship To Land Humans On The Moon And Mars.
By Kevin Holden Platt, Contributor. Kevin Holden Platt writes on space defense…
Mar 17, 2025 at 11:33pm EDT
…
“Our approach today has a very low probability to match the ‘before 2030’ milestone for landing humans on the Moon,” Daniel Dumbacher, who formerly served as Deputy Associate Administrator of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, in charge of the Artemis lunar landings, testified at the hearing.

While he didn’t mention the fiery breakup of SpaceX’s Starship during its January flight demo, Dumbacher, now a professor in aeronautical engineering at Purdue University, said that the ship’s need to be refueled with super-cooled liquid oxygen and methane in low Earth orbit via multiple dockings with still-to-be-developed tankers - a complicated operation that has never been tested - before each flight to the Moon involves an assemblage of complex technologies that might not be perfected within the next five years.

“We might have to build a lander - we might have to scale down the current lander,” Dumbacher told the House, “so that we get to that 2030 landing.”

To avert potentially spiraling problems with testing the colossal Starships during the countdown to this new Moon quest, he said, “I’d get myself a simplified lander - so that I can get to the Moon - that does not require multiple launches.”
…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinholdenplatt/2025/03/17/spacex-needs-a-new-mini-starship-to-land-humans-on-the-moon-and-mars/

  Bob Clark

[Ultimate Steve]

Here is my Starship terminal velocity spreadsheet, I recommend you mess around with it yourself:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1u6JzCNra7bFj1BVYvQm_XSVkjNFsqdjO9h5TVaydp9Q/edit?usp=sharing

I would not put any stock in the results as there are too many unknowns. However I'm confident in it enough to put an extreme upper bound on block 1 landing (not dry) mass at 350 tons with a more reasonable value at 250 tons.

The methodology is using the telemetry from flights 4, 5, and 6 during the terminal phase of descent, just before engine startup, and estimates of the in-stream area and drag coefficents of Starship's various components to calculate the mass at that point in flight.

I do not think that even with Starship's substantial mass growth, that the actual dry mass is above 200 tons as that was what Mk 1 was waaaay back in 2019. As you can see, this analysis does very little but state the obvious. Unless for some reason I'm correct and Starship really is that heavy at landing.

There are many sources of error:

Area errors:

• Starship's exposed areas were calculated through pixel counting. They are likely somewhat wrong due to perspective and human error. Thus the flap areas are wrong.
• My estimation of the exposed area of the Starship nose cone is likely off by somewhat.
• I did not account for the flap covers at all. I assumed the flaps were flat plates, 100% of the area of which moved if I remember correctly (I did this math a while ago).
• We do not really know what the average flap angle is during descent.

If the area increases, starship's mass increases and vice versa.

Drag coefficient errors (BIG DEAL, a lot of errors here):

• The drag coefficient of something you build out of shapes is not simply the area-weighted average of those shapes. They interfere and you can't just look up the drag coefficient of a Starship. I did the weighted average approach which is quite error prone.
• For all of my calculations I pulled the first number for "Shape drag coefficeint" off of google.
• The open bottom of the cylinder is expected to increase drag.
• The lack of an exposed face on the other side of the cylinder is expected to decrease drag.
• The drag coefficient for an angled plate is less than a flat one but there's no easily googleable way to figure that out. I used to know the math for that sort of stuff but that notebook is currently several states away and I don't want to re-learn flat plate compressible aerodynamics right now.
• I am likely overestimating the drag coefficient of the nose cone.

If the actual CD is higher, it will translate to an increase in Starship's dry mass.

Velocity errors (who knows):

• SpaceX telemetry reports one velocity scalar. Vertical velocity is not listed separately, and I expect that Starship will have some horizontal velocity - e.g. It may "glide" in with an extremely steep glide slope. If it does this, there's also lift to take into account, meaning the drag calculations are way off. Starship going crossrange (actual downwards velocity is lower than listed velocity) will significantly lower Starship dry mass. At the upper end, 2m/s of difference is like 7 tons lighter (IFT 4 102m/s -> 100m/s)
• SpaceX telemetry may not be perfectly accurate (the least of our worries)

Atmospheric conditions:

• I assumed 1.175kg/m3 atmospheric density at the landing site. This varies, and while Starship is below 1km or so (if I remember right), the atmospheric pressure may not be that high. A lower atmospheric pressure will linearly correspond to a decrease in Starship landing mass.

Flight by flight error sources and data:

• Flight 4 missed the target by 6 kilometers (I think this was from a CEO tweet or interview or something) and may have been booking it crossrange to attempt to get to its landing site. It also had a massive gaping hole in one of (at least that we know of) its flaps. Therefore I would not put too much stock into how its terminal velocity of 102.22m/s corresponded to a landing mass of 339 tons.
• Flight 5 had a terminal velocity of 92.2m/s and an estimated landing mass of 276 tons. Landing was onsite so crossrange velocity errors should be lower than flight 4.
• Flight 6 had a terminal velocity of 84.17m/s and an estimated landing mass of 230 tons. Landing was onsite so crossrange velocity errors should be lower than flight 4.

General errors:

• The calculation used was subsonic flow.

Distinguishing estimated landing mass from dry mass:

• Starship has an unknown propellant load at this point in the flight. The header tanks and feedlines contain the landing propellant but it is unknown exactly how much is used during the landing burn or how full they are (though I presume they are pretty full). Unsure if remaining propellant is vented or not.
• Depending on temperature, the mass of the remaining ullage gas in the tank could range from like 5 tons to like 40 tons depending on temperature and tank pressure.
• Starship displaces somewhere around 3.5ish tons of air at sea level and will "appear" that much lighter than it actually is from this analysis
• Is the nose cone pressurized? If so, with what and how much pressure?

 

Conclusions:

• This is an extremely bad way to estimate Starship's dry mass.

There are very many numbers which you can slightly tweak and they would still fall within the reasonable range that jump Starship's landing mass up or down by more than ten tons. I doubt we will get anywhere with this model but if you have any ideas let me know. Two things that would really help are if someone with CFD experience could try to figure out a vague estimate of Starship's actual drag characteristics, and when we get a ship  catch in some number of months, we might get a long range tracking shot showing the ship's approximate glide angle.

[Exoscientist]

  On 3/20/2025 at 10:34 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

Here is my Starship terminal velocity spreadsheet, I recommend you mess around with it yourself:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1u6JzCNra7bFj1BVYvQm_XSVkjNFsqdjO9h5TVaydp9Q/edit?usp=sharing

I would not put any stock in the results as there are too many unknowns. However I'm confident in it enough to put an extreme upper bound on block 1 landing (not dry) mass at 350 tons with a more reasonable value at 250 tons.

    

Expand  

Thanks for that. Just basic spaceflight engineering principles suggest Starship is too heavy for the role of a lander. 

 SpaceX hires very good engineers. They know this. Unfortunately the actual engineers get overruled by Elon:

      Bob Clark

[Lukaszenko]

  On 3/21/2025 at 7:41 AM, Exoscientist said:

Thanks for that. Just basic spaceflight engineering principles suggest Starship is too heavy for the role of a lander. 

 SpaceX hires very good engineers. They know this. Unfortunately the actual engineers get overruled by Elon:

      Bob Clark

Expand  

They (SpaceX/ Elon Musk) were wrong. About this, and many other things. They learned, quickly fixed it, and moved on to a better position than they were before.  I suggest we do as well.

And, let's also not forget that he was NOT wrong about many other stupid and/or impossible things. We are all sure as hell glad he tried them first before dismissing them as such.

 

[.50calBMG]

Industry standard 10 years ago was 1-2 engines per stage, then throw the whole thing away, and only launch once every few months. Now, industry standard is to copy Falcon 9.

You can't innovate by following standards. What will "industry standard" look like in another 10 years? We've all said this before, standards don't matter, and the guys leading the world in rocketry probably have a good idea what they're doing.

[Nuke]

you know other than ksp, i havent really given a damn about rockets. there was just nothing new. novel ideas came up but they never caught on. new vehicles yes, but all doing the same thing using the same technology. the shuttle was more of a sidegrade than an upgrade (perhaps retrograde if you excuse the pun). then falcon comes along and changes all that. now i dont only follow what spacex is doing but their competitors as well. and soon all the remaining single use rockets will need to be moved to museums and put on display in parks. if this is the new industry standard, good. its more entertaining than the entertainment industry has become.

Edited March 21 by Nuke

[Hotel26]

  On 3/21/2025 at 1:01 PM, Nuke said:

there was just nothing new

Expand  

Amen to that.

People underestimate how revolutionary the idea of accumulating rocket fuel in orbital depots is.  But SpaceX get it.  ["LEO is halfway to everywhere else."  It breaks every mission into two easier ones,' one already solved.]

I think advanced robotics will be #2 most significant in the near-medium future.

I'm excited about the present/near future.  Lecturing about the past has its place in community colleges.

Edited March 21 by Hotel26

[darthgently]

  On 3/21/2025 at 1:44 PM, Hotel26 said:

Amen to that.

People underestimate how revolutionary the idea of accumulating rocket fuel in orbital depots is.  But SpaceX get it.  ["LEO is halfway to everywhere else."  It breaks every mission into two easier ones,' one already solved.]

I think advanced robotics will be #2 most significant in the near-medium future.

I'm excited about the present/near future.  Lecturing about the past has its place in community colleges.

Expand  

Much more so if we can source hydrogen and oxygen from the moon for the LEO depot.  Bring carbon only up from Earth and we can even make methane at the depot.  All space solar powered

[tater]

  On 3/21/2025 at 1:44 PM, Hotel26 said:

People underestimate how revolutionary the idea of accumulating rocket fuel in orbital depots is.  But SpaceX get it.  ["LEO is halfway to everywhere else."  It breaks every mission into two easier ones,' one already solved.]

Expand  

To be fair, ULA and others knew this a long time ago—Shelby put the kibosh on even discussing it, so NASA had to show no interest. Since they were/are not able to just "build it and they will come" that was the end of that. It takes private companies that can do things "because they feel like it" to move the ball.

It's not political (for the forum here) to note that all government money is definitionally political. Regular corporate contractors might supply the government with equipment (NASA, USSF, etc), but they are still beholden to their shareholders. Secure a contract, execute it, get paid. They are not paid to innovate sans contract (short of powerpoints to sell contracts, or literally paid studies to suggest a new thing—like the hundreds of millions given to BO/Dinetics/SpaceX to come up with HLS concepts. If the current gov is against "fuel depots" in space, then that's off the table politically, so only companies willing to work the issue sans contract can move the ball down the field.

[AckSed]

Hell, it's an unfortunate fact of history that space travel in the Apollo era was both politically-motivated, and unpopular then when the very real problems on Earth flared up e.g. Apollo 13 not headline news until the accident.

Construction of more Saturn V rockets was cancelled before Apollo 11. The Apollo Applications Program is all these engineers chasing dreams that they hoped would inspire someone in Congress, and keep the money and hardware flowing into the future they dreamed of.

Though the English-speaking world, and by extension myself, don't know about popularity of the space program on the Soviet side because few people-on-the-street talked on the record, and I imagine those that did are in Russian. (Citations I can read are welcome!)

 

[magnemoe]

  On 3/20/2025 at 3:39 PM, Exoscientist said:

 

 I’ve mentioned before Zubrin and others have argued the point using Starship itself as the lander to the Moon or Mars is a bad approach. It is far too heavy for that role. Standard engineering practice is to add additional, smaller stages, to get to high delta-v destinations such as the Moon or Mars. Apollo for instance, even higher delta-v being round-trip, used 6 propulsive stages.

An article discusses this argument of Zubrin of using a smaller mini-Starship as the lander as well as the critical Will Locket review article here:

Mini-Starship or bust? Experts clash over SpaceX’s future.
https://floridamedianow.com/2025/03/spacexs-future/

 I discussed the estimate of a $90 million unit production cost of the Superheavy/Starship here:

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/159887-spacex-discussion-thread/?do=findComment&comment=4428912

 

  Bob Clark

Expand  

Here I agree, SS is nice for landing heavy stuff on the moon, but overbuild for simple landings but can we get an better lander faster?
As in its very overbuild for an exploration mission, even with the drill rig and the two cars, second is for recovery   

[tater]

  On 3/21/2025 at 11:42 PM, magnemoe said:

Here I agree, SS is nice for landing heavy stuff on the moon, but overbuild for simple landings but can we get an better lander faster?

Expand  

"Overbuilt" is irrelevant.

It's the cheapest contract, full stop. Price per kg or per m³ of crew volume is even lower.

Nothing else matters (assuming all landers contracted are capable of completing their contracts).

[Nuke]

  On 3/21/2025 at 1:50 PM, darthgently said:

Much more so if we can source hydrogen and oxygen from the moon for the LEO depot.  Bring carbon only up from Earth and we can even make methane at the depot.  All space solar powered

Expand  

i kind of want automated streams of solar/nuclear electric tugs hauling cargo to (and potentially from) mars. slowboat though it may be its nice to have a string of ants between the hills.  these are ships not capable of going up and down the well of course. you still have starships at earth/moon/mars all equipped to deal with their respective landing and liftoff requirements. transfers can be ship to ship or ship to station to ship. 

passenger ships need to be faster. chem engines all the way. i suppose starships could do that, but optimized for life in vacuum. no need for sea level engines, those would be removed in orbit, on the moon, or simply not included (getting them to orbit might be tricky, strap on boosters or a 3rd stage required). probibly fewer engines like 3-6 to get the weight down. you dont need performance for transfers.

big thing is you have like 5 or more different agencies/companies handling different parts of the trip. at least one local space agency at each destination plus cargo and passenger handlers. this allows each to best optimize for their operating regime without trying to do everything with a single overbuilt craft. plus you have station operators, fuel manufacture and transport and of course competitors for all of the above. that's how you build a space economy.

[darthgently]

  On 3/22/2025 at 8:43 AM, Nuke said:

i kind of want automated streams of solar/nuclear electric tugs hauling cargo to (and potentially from) mars. slowboat though it may be its nice to have a string of ants between the hills.  these are ships not capable of going up and down the well of course. you still have starships at earth/moon/mars all equipped to deal with their respective landing and liftoff requirements. transfers can be ship to ship or ship to station to ship. 

passenger ships need to be faster. chem engines all the way. i suppose starships could do that, but optimized for life in vacuum. no need for sea level engines, those would be removed in orbit, on the moon, or simply not included (getting them to orbit might be tricky, strap on boosters or a 3rd stage required). probibly fewer engines like 3-6 to get the weight down. you dont need performance for transfers.

big thing is you have like 5 or more different agencies/companies handling different parts of the trip. at least one local space agency at each destination plus cargo and passenger handlers. this allows each to best optimize for their operating regime without trying to do everything with a single overbuilt craft. plus you have station operators, fuel manufacture and transport and of course competitors for all of the above. that's how you build a space economy.

Expand  

What if so many cyclers were in the same orbit they could be connected together into a huge ellipsoid looping train?

[tater]

Wonder when flight 9 will be? They still have time to possibly get it about a month from 8, then then need to ramp the cadence.