Comment by adastra22
2 days ago
All those reentry tiles, reentry & burn back fuel, and header tanks add up to a lot of launch weight that wouldn't be needed in an expendable mission profile.
2 days ago
All those reentry tiles, reentry & burn back fuel, and header tanks add up to a lot of launch weight that wouldn't be needed in an expendable mission profile.
Sure, but that's not what this is about. The quoted capacity of Starship is supposed to be for a fully rapidly reusable Starship
So the question remains: is the current Starship design capable of carrying a commercial payload to at least LEO, and then come back safely down as they demonstrated?
I don't see how that is relevant? Surely you'd be comparing against other launch vehicles, which are all expendable.