Elon Musk Proves the Apollo 11 Mission was a Fraud
(www.youtube.com)
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I have to disagree. Starship is designed to be a fully and rapidly reusable spacecraft and launch system to take humanity to Mars. Also it will eventually be 100 times cheaper (tonnage to orbit) than even the closest competitors. The fact that it doesn't use the "most effective propellants" or that it has "too few stages" are just trade-offs to achieve that goal. Methylox is much easier to store and work with than hydrolox although a little less efficient, and it's much more efficient than keralox. Methylox is also atmospheric-carbon-neutral (keralox is not). Two stages is plain simpler than 3, and long considered the best method for fully reusable launch system concepts. Remember that you have to include reentry hardware and a retrieval mechanism for every stage of a reusable system - 2 is easier than 3 or more. Booster and ship both land themselves back on their launch mounts. If you include a third stage, you have to recover your middle stage somewhere halfway around the world, and then somehow get it back to your launch site (which costs you time and money).
And you don't understand rockets. Reusability, in this case, comes at the cost of a huge number of tanking missions to get to the Moon. If you are up for that, groovy, but his inefficient system application is no argument against the proven Apollo approach.
Lox-hydrogen is greatly superior to lox-methane in regard to specific impulse, and that shows up in the rocket equation in terms of mass reduction to do the mission. It is also much easier to attain a final velocity goal with 3 stages than with 2. I approve of methane as a lower-stage and medium-stage fuel, but for severe mission requirements, it is not as good as hydrogen (as much as I dislike hydrogen from a routine operations standpoint). Whether it is "green" or not is entirely immaterial, since that concern is fraudulent anyway.
I will point out that this whole discussion arose from consideration of a Moon mission. The mission requirements for commercial traffic to low Earth orbit are far different and less demanding, so you cannot argue that what is good for the former is good for the latter. It is like saying a Greyhound bus is better than a Jaguar sports car if the mission requires high speed. Of course 2 stages is good for LEO. Going to the Moon is different. In that case, 2 stages is not so good and requires a lot of propellant.
This is not an exchange of internet opinions. I professionally was involved in launch vehicle design and know what I am talking about. You cannot understand why the missions are different and how that makes a difference in the vehicle requirements. And why the SpaceX approach cannot be as efficient as the Apollo approach.
You didn't read a single thing I wrote, did you ?
I'm guessing the whole "re-usability" concept is flying clear over the top of your head - you're still talking about expendable vehicles.
I am fully aware of Musk and SpaceX. I have been following him out of professional interest for 20 years. I am quite aware of his pathbreaking approach to reusability. I've been there myself with different system concepts.
The extremely ignorant video discussion was an attempt to "prove" the Apollo system could not have been done in a single shot, because Musk would need anywhere from 6 to 20 tanking flights to accomplish it his way. That's because his transportation system to low Earth orbit was not optimized to go to the Moon. If you are happy with all those tanking flights and encumbrances, be happy. But the Apollo system was rigorously designed to the Moon mission requirements and had no weight to spare for reusability features, in order to meet the requirements---to go there in one shot, which it did. Do you get the message this time?
A recreational vehicle is a great way to travel around, but would you enter it in the Indianapolis 500? That is the difference in requirements.
Two messages ago you didn't even grasp the concept of reusable rockets and now you're saying "you've been there yourself" ? I feel like I'm talking to a tree stump. Goodbye and goodday.
If fully and rapidly reusable, standardised booster and orbital craft, single company vertically integrated design and manufacturing, and orders of magnitude cheaper is "inefficient" then, what r u smokin bruh can I have a hit of that shit ?
Then get used to having a whole lot of tanking flights. Would you enter a Greyhound bus in the Indianapolis 500? It is really great for commercial transport and probably has good engines. The velocity requirement to go to the Moon is far greater than to reach low Earth Orbit, and the difficulty in meeting the requirement gets greater very quickly as the requirement gets larger. Increased specific impulse (exhaust velocity) and more staging are the only ways you can bring it down to one flight.
Why don't you do the numbers, if you think Musk has a better idea? Find the delta-v required. Find the specific impulse of his rocket engines. Find the mass ratio of his rocket. Solve the Tsiolkovsky equation. You will find you can't, by a large margin. Or, get ready for 6, 8, or 20 tanking flights to make it all happen, whatever the number works out to be. In the end, he will burn up a LOT of propellant getting propellant into space, and propellant use is the measure of efficiency when it comes to rockets. I admit, propellant is cheap. But can you afford all the time for the tanking? And take the risk that a tanking flight might go awry?
Look, I'm not saying Musk can't get to the Moon in that approach. I am just saying that just because his system is not optimally designed for the mission and needs to take an unknown number of tanking flights, is not any kind of proof that the Apollo mission was impossible. Apollo was designed from the beginning to be optimal for the mission without any thought of reusability, so it could be done in one flight. And it did, thanks to the genius of Von Braun and his team.
You simply aren't thinking big enough. Going to the moon and staying for a day or two - been there done that. Six times according to the historical record and its been what almost 60 years ago ? In order to build a moon base and eventually colonize Mars, you need BIG ships with massive heavy lift capability. And it has to be reusable or we're not gonna make it.