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A comment on Starship is still not understood. Parent comment

Re:Starship is still not understood by garmaine on Friday October 29, 2021 @10:56PM (#29045625)
> That's why I'm really skeptical of the architecture of landing atmospheric stages to the surface. They are just unnecessarily heavy. You have maybe quadrupled your total launch amount from the surface (haven't done an analysis).

Lunar starship is not an atmospheric stage.

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Re:Starship is still not understood by Gravityloss on Saturday October 30, 2021 @05:22PM (#29052387)
In the fine article, in Casey Handmer's plan, Starship is landed to the surface and returns directly to LEO or even to Earth surface.

So yes the heat shield goes all the way down to the lunar surface and back.

https://caseyhandmer.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/artemisspac...

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Re:Starship is still not understood by garmaine on Saturday October 30, 2021 @05:32PM (#29052438)
The Starship actually being built by SpaceX under the HLS contract for NASA has no heat shield or atmospheric engines. It is meant to be expendable, or for reuse only in space without servicing.
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Re:Starship is still not understood by Gravityloss on Saturday October 30, 2021 @06:10PM (#29052684)
Yes, which the fine article was criticizing.
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