Re:Concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets wi...
by rbanffy on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @07:09AM
(#26553578)
> Heck, you don't need orbital assembly for that. SpaceX could put in orbit a single- or two-engine starship with no landing legs and no heat shielding for transfers.
That's SpaceX's lunar lander plan - a Starship that'd never need to come back to Earth except for refueling.
Re:Concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets wi...
by AstralStorm on Tuesday March 23, 2021 @06:55AM
(#26553472)
Keeping stuff in space has a maintenance cost - both station keeping which can be relatively cheap, and maintenance for any space trash collisions.
Most importantly, there is no commercial space station to move people and current starship test articles are not fitted for passenger transport nor low earth orbit rendezvous.
It's a long road from even a properly working Starship towards this goal.
Heck, you don't need orbital assembly for that. SpaceX could put in orbit a single- or two-engine starship with no landing legs and no heat shielding for transfers. Eventually they could decommission one such truck to make an orbital station.
> Anyway, $100-200/kg (or less!) and huge volume/high cadence is so radically disruptive that it's kind of hard to predict how space will look a few decades down the line. It's going to be a wild thing to watch, with lots of opportunity.
There might be so many satellites in orbit as to permanently disrupt astronomy on Earth, necessitating a fleet of replacements for the James Webb telescope.