SpaceX Could Accelerate Spacefaring – An Alternate Method | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX Could Accelerate Spacefaring – An Alternate Method

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Idea of hopping back sounds hard to implement - dangerous, requires abilities to launch or the construction which literally is "fuel up and go".

I didn't really get that. I don't think it matters where along the orbit the second stage lands. It needs enough delta-V to decelerate enough not to burn up regardless.

If the second stage lands on the landing pad, that's fine. If, however, Earth rotates so that the landing pad isn't under the orbital pad at the moment of landing, the hopping was the idea for how to get where needed. But hopping has its own drawbacks.

Yeah, earth moves a few hundred km while the second stage goes around earth. The cross range will be abysmal when landing so it can't land on the pad that easily with one orbit.

But it can land westward of the pad, then refuel and fly the few hundred kilometers to the pad.

A few hundred kilometers doesn't sound like a big deal to compensate for during the de-orbit burn. Also, couldn't it just orbit multiple times until an optimal alignment comes along?

If you're going 8 km/s in one direction (like you do when orbiting earth), changing direction even a bit is a big deal.

That's why the space shuttle had those humongous wings and fragile thermal protection and why its payload ratio was lousy. To be able to go around once and land to the same spot it needed cross range and very good aerodynamics. It doesn't make sense to bring those wings to orbit just for that.

I calculated and changing plane at the pole enough to cause a 200 km shift at the equator would be about 250 m/s delta vee. So not actually impossible.

The cross range would need to be around 1000 km for Kennedy Space Center... so a real problem.

If SpaceX's Starship becomes common enough, it will need a generic nickname.

I propose "can". Then, the Superheavy booster is its "kicker". Both lower-case.

I agree that this thing, a Falcon refitted with cans' Raptor engines, is a natural follow-on once the engine is flight-proven. But it will face very stiff competition from a whole new generation of rocket startups. It might not get common enough to need its own nickname.

I thought you were setting up yourself for a play on words, but I don't get it. Kicking the can? Fal-can?

Is "starship" not already generic enough?

starship is too whiz bang and not casual and cool enough.

i suspect once space travel is common and every day enough it will become mundane to talk about it and at that point an improper noun like ‘can’ will become commonplace. i figure this will happen 2 to 3 decades from now

No point in stalling.

It is anyway nothing at all like what we call a starship in any other context. It resembles a shuttle rather more than STS did.

It is unfortunate that we don't have a short name for "suppository", which it resembles more. I guess "bougie" could work.

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