Hacker News Reader

Not really. The passenger and cargo area are on top and the fuel tanks are at the bottom, which will be mostly empty after landing.

IIRC Starship has a cargo capacity of 100 metric tons, all of it topside. The Raptor engines at the bottom will counterbalance this somewhat but it will still be top-heavy.

View on HN

IIRC at least in some iterations starship has cargo pots at the bottom inside the "skirt" next to/between the vacuum optimized outer engines. That could help weight distribution & makes the pods easily acessible once you drop them to the surface post landing.

That’s my point. Those Raptors are heavy.

Not that heavy. A Raptor weighs 1500kg (1.5 metric tons) so 6 of them makes 9 metric tons while the weight at the top of Starship should be almost 100 tons.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com