Author Topic: The Scale of Starship/Superheavy Operation  (Read 28796 times)

Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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Re: The Scale of Starship/Superheavy Operation
« Reply #100 on: 04/03/2020 05:07 pm »
...
What the hell do you do with 400 000 liters of water in LEO?
Water gives you about 89% Oxygen to 11% Hydrogen by mass

Well, lets say half of starships fuel by mass is LOX. That is 600kg of LOX.
We have a working business at just a single LOX refill of starship a year. This in turn makes Starship more economically viable for the Moon and beyond, and halves its refill launch requirements.


Starship propellant is close to 80% LOX.  Say 950 thousand kg.

However you need to factor in also making the propellant to get it to LEO:

You can use lunar LOX and LH2 as propellant for tankers. A tanker based on the new Centaur V, would need 51 tonnes of lunar propellant to deliver about 13 t to LEO and return. (Assuming it used aero-breaking to enter LEO.  Purely propulsive, it would be lucky to deliver 0.5 t.)  To EM-L2 it could deliver about 16 t per round trip. So it would make sense to tank the tanker in L2 or LLO if propellant was needed in LEO. But propellant is possibly more valuable in L2 than LEO.

And if you can find carbon on the moon (possibly CO2 or CO in the same polar cold traps), you can also make CH4 using the Hydrogen.
Just fill a cargo SS with coal (100mt) sent to the Moon surface will produce total of 600 to 700mt of LNG and LOX. So for one coal carrier it supplies enough carbon to enable production of propelant on lunar surface for >7 Starship returns fully loaded with cargo or passengers.

This may lead to local SS usage such as travel back and forth from Lunar surface to L2.
« Last Edit: 04/03/2020 05:10 pm by oldAtlas_Eguy »

Offline oiorionsbelt

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Re: The Scale of Starship/Superheavy Operation
« Reply #101 on: 04/03/2020 06:27 pm »

Just fill a cargo SS with coal (100mt) sent to the Moon surface will produce total of 600 to 700mt of LNG and LOX. So for one coal carrier it supplies enough carbon to enable production of propelant on lunar surface for >7 Starship returns fully loaded with cargo or passengers.


At the very least this would enhance the steam punk vibe.

Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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Re: The Scale of Starship/Superheavy Operation
« Reply #102 on: 04/05/2020 04:19 pm »
Additionally carbon on the Moon is a valuable resource for farming and creating synthetic polymer lubricants and plastics.

Eventually the capture and move of carbonatious crondite small asteroids to L2 produce a large methalox source to expand the duration of the Mars departure window. An almost 4km/s increase in capability for the SS BEO delta V can open up a lot of options. This would increase the BEO flights of SS tremendously.  By also parking such asteroids around Mars you completely change the optimal system designs for transport.

Added Note: Starship's own success as a BEO transport workhorse will quickly make it obsolete for such role vs use of massive in-space only craft. But it's use and those designs derived directly from it will be in operation as surface to low orbit for many many decades.
« Last Edit: 04/05/2020 04:42 pm by oldAtlas_Eguy »

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: The Scale of Starship/Superheavy Operation
« Reply #103 on: 04/05/2020 06:06 pm »


By also parking such asteroids around Mars you completely change the optimal system designs for transport.



Why not use the two large asteriods aready in orbit around Mars, ie Deimos and Phobos. There papers that suggest they have large quantities of water reserves inside them.


Offline OTV Booster

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Re: The Scale of Starship/Superheavy Operation
« Reply #104 on: 04/10/2020 05:28 pm »
Been working up through this. Nice thread. Some thoughts.

Water from the moon.

The lunar South Pole has both eternal dark and light. A rail gun (more infrastructure) launch suggests itself. This cuts down on props for delivery. Would waters dipole respond to the magnets, dropping vehicle mass? Important issue for aerobraking and deadhead return.

Delivery to L1 would be relatively low dV. Combine with earth delivered carbon, if not available or economical from Luna, and there’s a BEO refinery and filling station ready to go.

A solar thermal steam rail looks doable. Could even design it so most of the water is recovered. Talk about Steam Punk!

Mars access to asteroids vs earth access.

It was said that mars has access advantage over earth only for asteroids already near it. ISTM this is true only in a limited sense.

For asteroids just outside Mars’s orbit, this will be a sliding window as mars orbits slightly faster. The further outside mars orbit the asteroid lives, the wider the window. Go far enough out and the easier gravity well of Mars and mars orbit starts to shine.

It will be difficult to process ore out in the belt. Two options come to mind. One is mobile processing facilities that go to the asteroid and the other is a long slow push to bring the asteroid to mars orbit for processing. It would take a long time to fill the pipe, but once filled, life is good. Many trade offs in a technology environment we can only guess at. The one thing we do know is moving mass will cost less than today because of SS, it’s spawn and the expanded space infrastructure it allows.

A benefit of belt or mars orbital processing is greatly reduced mass of enriched product for delivery to mars surface. ISTM the resources mars would be interested in harvesting would be of more value to mars for its own use than as an export to earth.

Retrieving asteroidal resources is not defined by strictly economic considerations. Depending again on factors we can only guess at, and despite strong indications of a wide array of minerals on mars, the asteroids might offer offer a faster path to breaking Martian dependence on earth resources. Even if it’s more expensive than earth resources it might be politically desirable. It’s actually very difficult to figure out what expense really means in this context as a monetary metric becomes difficult to apply. The Mars economy could end up being based on the Joule standard. How does one go about figuring the exchange rate between earth currency and Martian Joules?

A point to keep in mind is that for earth, space operations are one small piece of the global economy, and a recent one at that. For Mars, space operations will be a core competency and virtually built into the cultural DNA.   

Phil
We are on the cusp of revolutionary access to space. One hallmark of a revolution is that there is a disjuncture through which projections do not work. The thread must be picked up anew and the tapestry of history woven with a fresh pattern.

Offline LMT

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Re: The Scale of Starship/Superheavy Operation
« Reply #105 on: 04/11/2020 08:48 am »
Just fill a cargo SS with coal (100mt) sent to the Moon surface...

Chandrayaan-2 might determine whether sufficient carbon is present in lunar ice for scalable methane production; e.g., for Starship Earth-return or lunar point-to-point.

A report could break this year:  something to watch for.

Offline LMT

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Re: The Scale of Starship/Superheavy Operation
« Reply #106 on: 04/11/2020 09:06 am »
Red Gold

...the resources mars would be interested in harvesting would be of more value to mars for its own use than as an export to earth.

Extract a 10 cm gold cube daily at Mars Base Alpha, and total annual revenue from gold and PGM products could be ~ $8 billion.

1  2

Reinvest to duplicate the mine each synod, and how long 'til Starship revenue scales past $100 billion?

...people struggle to see exponential growth.
« Last Edit: 04/11/2020 09:23 am by LMT »

Online Slarty1080

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Re: The Scale of Starship/Superheavy Operation
« Reply #107 on: 04/12/2020 12:14 pm »
Seems this only has a very tenuous link to the scale of Starship/Superheavy operation. And refining gold on Mars is not going to happen any time soon.
My optimistic hope is that it will become cool to really think about things... rather than just doing reactive bullsh*t based on no knowledge (Brian Cox)

Offline LMT

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Re: The Scale of Starship/Superheavy Operation
« Reply #108 on: 04/12/2020 02:40 pm »
Seems this only has a very tenuous link to the scale of Starship/Superheavy operation.

Why tenuous?  Revenue potential drives scale.  (Time from $8 B to $100 B?)

And refining gold on Mars is not going to happen any time soon.

How long to adapt, say, salt water reactors for Mars?

Online Coastal Ron

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Re: The Scale of Starship/Superheavy Operation
« Reply #109 on: 04/12/2020 03:00 pm »
Seems this only has a very tenuous link to the scale of Starship/Superheavy operation.

Why tenuous?  Revenue potential drives scale.  (Time from $8 B to $100 B?)

And refining gold on Mars is not going to happen any time soon.

How long to adapt, say, salt water reactors for Mars?

Plenty of other threads that discuss what will be done on Mars. This is not one of them.

This thread is focused on how to build Starships, at scale, in order to get there.
If we don't continuously lower the cost to access space, how are we ever going to afford to expand humanity out into space?

Offline LMT

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Re: The Scale of Starship/Superheavy Operation
« Reply #110 on: 04/12/2020 03:40 pm »
Seems this only has a very tenuous link to the scale of Starship/Superheavy operation.

Why tenuous?  Revenue potential drives scale.  (Time from $8 B to $100 B?)

And refining gold on Mars is not going to happen any time soon.

How long to adapt, say, salt water reactors for Mars?

Plenty of other threads that discuss what will be done on Mars. This is not one of them.

This thread is focused on how to build Starships, at scale, in order to get there.

See the thread:  folks are chatting about colonization, space casinos, asteroid mining, lunar water and other ideas to finance Starship scaling.  It's good to explore such ideas, keeping revenue potential in mind.
« Last Edit: 04/12/2020 04:48 pm by LMT »

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