Comment by mikkupikku
4 days ago
How do they hope to make prop transfer work without a working heat shield to enable reuse of the tankers? Unless SpaceX pulls a hat trick, Starship is borderline useless.
4 days ago
How do they hope to make prop transfer work without a working heat shield to enable reuse of the tankers? Unless SpaceX pulls a hat trick, Starship is borderline useless.
There's no reason the tankers need to be reusable. They can probably lift more fuel without all the cruft needed for controlled re-entry.
They have a working heat shield (see last flight). It may not be quickly reusable, but that doesn’t matter at this stage. For the transfer test, just left over fuel in two Starships is enough. They aren’t full blown finished tankers yet. For HLS, if they are unable to get Starship reuse working in time, they can use expendable tankers.