Hacker News Reader

Comment by imtringued | Hacker News Reader

I suggest you read up on the rocket equation again. There is a massive difference between payload mass fraction and payload. The latter scales linearly with respect to the total mass.

View on HN

That's the problem. Building a heavier rocket is much harder than building a lighter one (see explosion above). So why not send a few lighter ones instead of a heavy one? This is what the launch market has concluded for a long time.

This is a long but great video from Destin that goes over this in detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN...

Destin’s arguments make sense if we want to redo Apollo. They break down if we’re trying to make repeated missions into deep space more economical.

> Building a heavier rocket is much harder ...

Disagree. The overall Starship system's problems are obviously in Starship, not in the Super Heavy booster. The latter is far heavier. But it only has to do 2 things well - sub-orbital launch, and sub-orbital precision return. And the launch tower's chopsticks give it a lot of help with the latter.

Vs. the Starship has to do far more things - all of them mission-critical - while being ruthlessly optimized for weight.

>So why not send a few lighter ones instead of a heavy one? This is what the launch market has concluded for a long time.

   I want to do Apollo again.[0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4J9uvhJQM0

Let’s assume starship works out and they come up with a nifty wide-opening payload door solution, one of the advantages will be payload volume as well as mass - the JWST’s main mirror would have fit inside without being folded (although the heat shield would not have).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com