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Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 15, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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That's the thing though: re-entry, landing, and liftoff on Mars all have substantial costs, and a longer voyage multiplies the cost of hauling all the mission's mass in and out of gravity wells.

If you need 6 months of supplies each way, a monolithic design means carrying down and then re-orbiting 6 months of supplies plus the dry mass of the other 6, plus all the fuel for the interplanetary burn back to earth, plus all the extra tankage mass for the fuel for all that stuff.
Or you could just leave all that mass in orbit like Apollo did and have a dedicated starship launcher-lander.
The moon doesn't have the long flight time issue, but it's even worse in that you're landing and launching a useless heat shield, and without an atmosphere deorbiting mass from lunar orbit is surprisingly costly. I noticed the proposed SpaceX lander for Artemis doesn't have a heat shield for that reason.

On the other hand, imagine how useful starship would be as the orbital shuttle for a dedicated interplanetary stage... If the actual starships never needed to leave low orbit, with some kept on Mars.

Maybe rather than hype, he's dreaming even bigger than I thought.