Comment by AtlasBarfed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AtlasBarfed | Hacker News Reader

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NIMBYism has no answer for the department of defense.

SpaceX and the super heavy payloads are a massive massive massive strategic advantage for the defense department. Imagine:

You want a functionally operational combined arms battalion deployed within two hours to the middle of Siberia? And then regularly supplied? Forget about having expensive foreign bases. You can deploy boots on the ground forces within hours.

Starship is a cheap platform for 100-150 tons of ... whatever ... deployed ... whereever ... whenever. To say nothing of orbital battle platforms or other stuff, simply the rapid deployment alone makes SpaceX absolutely critical to US "defense".

I can imagine the US DoD taking renewed interest in those midwestern remote ICBM sites as ready launch sites for rapid deployment forces. That's right, launch from Kansas, land whereever in hours. Australia? Africa? Antarctica? Sure.

Imagine fighting a conventional war and local general thinks they have a US affiliated fighting force pinned down. Suddenly, a combined arms battalion appears right behind his lines. The mobility Starship would provide the US military at very palatable costs is a battlefield revolution.

I don't buy it, for several reasons. In no particular order:

1) 100-150 tons is the estimated payload to LEO, not back down to the ground. For Starship to land (on Earth) it will need to be mostly if not entirely empty.

2) Even if Starship could get that much payload down to the ground, how do you unload vehicles from an upright Starship? A built in crane maybe, but it sounds like a recipe for disaster.

3) Once you land a Starship somewhere remote, how do you get it back? It can't fly back (from Earth). It's too big to realistically airlift unless maybe you have a very large runway nearby for something like a supped up Super Guppy / Airbus Beluga. Do you plan on just leaving this cutting edge hardware in Siberia?

4) Missile defense systems could easily shoot down a Starship landing near enemy territory.

5) Why is this needed? Wars tend to have weeks of warning, at least for those who need to plan them. This is plenty of time for military planners to get their assets prepared to be deployed from nearby military bases or navy ships, both of which America has in spades around the world. American military logistics are already so excellent, there doesn't seem to be much margin for improvement.

Nah, that's never going to happen. Rockets are inherently dangerous. Loading tons of people onto one is gambling with a 1 in 20 chance (possibly higher) that all of them die. Even if nothing goes wrong with the rocket per se, how do you land it somewhere where you don't already have infrastructure, or worse still, in a hot zone? On the best days landing a rocket is a delicate and error-prone procedure, can you imagine if there's someone actively trying to stop you?

>Suddenly, a combined arms battalion appears right behind his lines.

That "suddenly" is pretty funny. Can you imagine trying to sneak up on someone from aboard the loudest vehicle in the world as you're trying to gently guide it to the ground to avoid exploding? If the enemy has SAMs or artillery, your rocket and everyone in it is toast. Even if you successfully land, you better hope you've used all your fuel before the enemy has a chance to start shooting small arms. Even if a mostly empty rocket can't explode, it can still easily be engulfed in flames.

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