Some notes on @elonmusk’s talk at
#IAC2023 about Starship, a thread:
Thrust on booster is trending towards 50% more thrust than it currently is. This would be thanks to further improvements from Raptor.
The upper stage is continuing to grow and will take on more and more of the delta V load. This means the booster doesn’t have to do as much work and they think the booster will end up doing as little as 100 seconds of burning! Not much time compared to their current rockets
Elon predicting 3 to 4 years to land a Starship on Mars. In my opinion, Mars (and the moon for that matter) depends on SpaceX proving out orbital refueling. This will be the long pole due to the need for rapidly reusable / re-flyable tankers.
Elon is still thinking about ocean based launch platforms saying “3 or 4 times a day would even be too much for the cape”. They intend to launch Starship 1,000+ times a year. A hard number to fathom currently, but seeing the trend of Falcon 9, you can begin to imagine this
Now talking about the @PolarisProgram and the space suit. No new information, but fun to be reminded of how exciting SpaceX's first EVA (extra vehicular activity / spacewalk) will be!
Going back to launch pads, he did sneak in a "greenfield" launchpad at the Cape in Florida. This tracks with what we know about SpaceX trying to expand their presence at the cape. I think this is all hinging on SpaceX "figuring out" the full stack flights from Starbase
Nic moc nového jsem neslyšel, samá pozitiva a optimistické termíny, jako vždy