... yeah, like the moon is not that far away in terms of miles (my Honda has made it halfway there) but it is astonishingly far away in term of energy -- especially if you want to return to Earth.
It was fashionable for sci-fi fans in the 1980s to think that the Apollo mission sold out the possibility of a much bigger presence on the moon for something like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel but Von Braun's Lunar Orbit Rendezvous plan was so much more feasible than all the alternatives.
The depressing thing about Starship as a lunar vehicle is that it does all of those launches to land and return at most a few metric tons unless it can be refueled with lunar origin fuel.
Why so many? Is it just because Starship is so much bigger than the original Lunar Lander, or is there something I'm missing.
I read that Starship can hold up to 100 people, which is well outside of what's required for the first landing missions. But if NASA is really intent on a full moon base, I could see it making sense to develop that capacity from the outset.
Still... even if we had a moon base, wouldn't we also want a small craft for emergencies -- like having a car and a bus? So developing that first (or in parallel with the future "moon bus") would have made sense.
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It was fashionable for sci-fi fans in the 1980s to think that the Apollo mission sold out the possibility of a much bigger presence on the moon for something like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel but Von Braun's Lunar Orbit Rendezvous plan was so much more feasible than all the alternatives.
The depressing thing about Starship as a lunar vehicle is that it does all of those launches to land and return at most a few metric tons unless it can be refueled with lunar origin fuel.
It might happen that Superheavy and Starship simply aren't big enough to do that job. As we know, rockets efficiency increases the bigger they get.
"You're gonna need a bigger boat"
I read that Starship can hold up to 100 people, which is well outside of what's required for the first landing missions. But if NASA is really intent on a full moon base, I could see it making sense to develop that capacity from the outset.
Still... even if we had a moon base, wouldn't we also want a small craft for emergencies -- like having a car and a bus? So developing that first (or in parallel with the future "moon bus") would have made sense.