Posted on 03/04/2025 12:52:21 PM PST by Jonty30
While Elon Musk focuses on Mars, the Pentagon sees his new Starship program as the key to literal global domination. And if “amateurs talk about strategy, but experts think about logistics”, SpaceX has created exactly what’s needed.
How is Starship Different? Starship is unlike any rocket before. It’s 100% reusable. It lifts 100 tons, and that number will grow to 200 tons at least (the Saturn V Moon rocket, most powerful in history until now, could lift 130 tons). Starship can also refuel in orbit, so it can send that whole enormous cargo (which might well be several hundred people) anywhere in the Solar System and return whole. The Saturn V could only get a fraction of its payload to the Moon, returning only a tiny capsule.
The difference is staggering even before you consider this. Unlike airplanes, NASA, Boeing, China, Russia, Europe, everyone throws away every rocket they launch. What would it cost if you treated airplanes the same way? If you built a new one every time you flew, on average (based on list price for a new 737), that would increase the cost of each and every plane ticket by roughly $493,650.79. Each way.
Basically, you could have 100,000 tons of military hardware and equipment delivered at once anywhere on the planet, if you just use enough rockets.
Thanks for posting, if the claims in the article are true, it’s science fiction in real life.
21st century Star Wars to bring down the CCP in a race they can’t win.
Thanks for posting.
The detail is amazing.
I doubt that in the future starships will be transporting tanks but drones. Imagine a starship touching down then a port opening where hundreds of armed AI drones flying out like wasps from a nest. Metal wasps from hell.
Reads like something from Heinlein.
The SpaceX SuperHeavy Booster is already operational as a heavy lift rocket. It can return to the launch site and be caught by the giant chopsticks, While it is not yet as reusable as the Falcon 9,or Falcon Heavy, it has proven it can launch A LOT of stuff into orbit and return.
Before the Hussein/Biden Regime stole the 2020 election, during President Trump’s first term, SpaceX was testing almost once a month. Hussein and company greatly reduced that pace of testing and improvement.
And imagine this. The Hussein Cabal sued SpaceX because they were not hiring noncitizens. SpaceX has A LOT of military contracts, and can only hire citizens.
Yes.
Hussein and cabal were doing China’s bidding. There is little question to me that China saw the military application of what SpaceX might lead to.
Under Trump, SpaceX will have four years of unfettered freedom to develop their rockets. Imagine the gainzzz.
And I thought drones were menacing.
Would have been nice to respond to the Benghazi attacks in 60 minutes.
That’s great. How long will it take the other powers to catch up?
Agreed. I see what SpaceX doing as a continuation of the Space Shuttle. We all thought it was amazing that more than just an Apollo style capsule could be reused, then it became the shuttle and rocket boosters being reused. Now even SpaceX’s heavy booster can be reused.
This was Musks plan - but for space. If he can get Starship to run at the Falcon 9 pace, he can put 400 tons a week in orbit.
For most purposes we can imagine at the moment, he has solved the Earths gravity well problem. Wanna colonize asteroids, a la “The Expanse?” Build Gerard O’Neill cylinders? Massive Solar power stations?
Watching that thing take off gives me a genuine Space Woody!
RAW POWER!
It isn’t just what it can lift and how it can be reused, it is the absolutely stunning tempo at which they intend to turnaround a newly landed booster and send it back up.
I am astonished by what they are doing. Something I am proud of as an American!
Can it land and take off from on an unimproved lz? The major fuel consumption occurs during take-off. Does it carry enough fuel for 2 takeoffs?
It would need enough fuel, under those conditions to make two launches. That might mean he can’t take 100 tons, I don’t know. But it says that it needs 45 tonnes of fuel for each launch.
It says here 418 tonnes for each launch.
https://www.spaceheavens.com/how-much-fuel-does-a-spacex-rocket-use/
hundreds? think THOUSANDS! scares me a little but IF THE LIBERAL ACTIVISTS SUFFER ANNIHILATION PERMANANTLY, I’m ok with that.
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