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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
On Thursday night, SpaceX founder Elon Musk shared photos of Raptor rocket engines that recently left the company's factory in Hawthorne, Calif., headed out to be tested at its facility near McGregor, Texas. "Preparing to fire the Starship Raptor engine," he said by way of a caption on Twitter.
The photos were interesting, but Musk had additional comments about the engine that revealed much about how the company is proceeding with overall design of the vehicle it will power. SpaceX's approach seems focused on keeping costs down and moving as quickly as possible towards a launch of the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket in the early 2020s.
For example, Musk said, "Initially making one 200 metric ton thrust engine common across ship & booster to reach the Moon as fast as possible. Next versions will split to vacuum-optimized (380+ sec Isp) & sea-level thrust optimized (~250 ton)."
This comment is notable for a couple of reasons. First of all, the company appears to have decided to streamline the Raptor engine to a single design that will power both the rocket at liftoff, and the spaceship in the upper atmosphere and outer space. It will take less time to develop, test, and qualify a single engine. It will also cost less money.
Additionally, Musk notes that the goal is "to reach the Moon as fast as possible." The company still appears to be focused on lunar orbital flights, such as the #dearMoon project for Japanese businessman Yusaku Maezawa, as the first missions for Starship.
There is an added benefit to this approach: for the next two decades, NASA appears likely to be highly interested in developing infrastructure near and on the Moon. By flying Starship on early test flights to the same destination, SpaceX has a far greater chance to win government contracts for the delivery of cargo, and potentially astronauts, to the Moon. Heretofore, neither NASA nor the US military has shown much if any interest in SpaceX's ambitious rocket and spacecraft.
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(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 03 2019, @05:28AM (1 child)
What does "plenty of water ice" mean? Sure, there is ice there. How much? I've read nothing to suggest that it's abundant. Will it support a million people indefinitely? Will it support a few thousand, for some limited time? Who has been able to quantify this water?
Seriously, I suspect that if we ever have a significant moon population, they'll be importing a lot of water from the asteroids.
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Sunday February 03 2019, @05:52AM
Moon Wetter Than Previously Thought [soylentnews.org]
NASA Finds Ice on the Surface of the Moon [soylentnews.org]
ESA Plans to Send Mining Equipment to the Moon [soylentnews.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_water [wikipedia.org]
How Much Water Is on the Moon? [airspacemag.com]
Putting your base near the poles can also allow you to place solar panels where they will be in nearly permanent sunlight year-round.
There could also be large quantities of water deep underground.
We don't really need to think about supporting millions of people on the Moon right now. We can start by supporting tens or hundreds [soylentnews.org] of researchers, many of them being geologists, and those people will probably be finding more water/ice deposits during their stay.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]