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So, a modified Starship might become a Moonship.  If it is to be filled both at the orbital station and on the surface of the Moon, then its tanks can be downsized quite a bit, I anticipate.  And I think the engines could be downscaled as well.

So, less dry mass.  I suppose to get these to orbit, you might pancake 2 or 3 of these, where the propellants would have routing to feed the raptors on the bottom one.  Then when in LEO, you would unstack them, and change out the engines.
I am betting you don't need so many raptors, and also you might buy smaller engines from a different rocket vendor.

These are probably going to land on a landing pad, so you could use the tail engines to land.

Pause...............

I think this could be better than a mass driver system, at least at the beginning.

I think that a mass driver could be further in the future, if need for great masses of materials become apparent.

In reality with the ship system, you could simply make more ships to bring the mass flow up.

So, a Moonship might have tanks 1/2 to 1/3 the size of the current Lunar Starship.  So, it would not be as tippy.

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As I would like to try to get some more sleep, I will do this item to get it out of my head:

The collection is intended to be a stick rotor in the line of thinking of Dr. Johnsons creativity.

But the rotor could be stopped and one end pointed at the sun during fears of a solar storm.

This is a sort of thinking of safety in numbers.  You could have four Lunar Starship cabins each facing the sun, and each grabbing some primary radiation, or you could line a bunch of them up, and allow the crew/passengers to redistribute according to the radiation situation.

Granted, it would take resources to downspin the stick for a radiation storm and then to upspin it when the all clear occurs.  But I actually am hoping for matching counter rotating sticks so that you could mostly do that by motors and brakes.  Even then, I expect that their will be some gyroscopic effects in the change event as the two sticks will not be on the same center of rotation, so you would have to have some thruster activity to compensate for that.

During a nospin situation, I am hoping that plumbing rooms can have a very mild amount of spin gravity to deal with body functions that are not desirable as a group activity.

I anticipate that the whole set of structure will be propelled by something like Magdrive or Neumann Drive, and that an appropriate power supply will power everything.

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All good ideas!  Yes, people should understand that I am not Phobos and not Mars, rather, I am both, and as I feel that most small worlds we will work with in the solar system will be approximately as small as Phobos or not quite as large as Mars.  Venus is the one exception that and Earth, and the gas and ice giant planets.

So, I anticipate the inflation of a trade network Earth/Moon>Mars>Asteroid belt>Terrestrial Crossing Asteroids>Venus>Earth/Moon & everything else.

So, practice on Phobos and Mars and maybe Deimos is very much in our interests, I feel.  Please offer your notions for this.

Thank You,

Void,

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So, all this draws me towards the poles of the moons of Mars.  Phobos first, and then perhaps Deimos.

At first I contemplate a heavy device to work our way into the interior of a moonlet.  Then to process the materials, while you can get metals and Oxygen, at least you may wish to make ceramic blocks.  And I want to make structures from those blocks.  I read that 2 to 3 meters could offer pretty good radiation protection, so these may be big blocks.

My further desire is to coat these blocks with a thin metal that is magnetic, an Iron or Steel of some kind.
Then I hope to vacuum weld them together, perhaps using inductive heating on the metal to promote the bonding of the blocks.

If this were possible you may have a block structure with magnetic surfaces that robots and humans might "Walk" on.

We tend to be disturbed by the tiny gravity of Phobos.  I read 150 pounds is like 2 ounces on Phobos.  But how much would a normal dry mass of a Starship weigh on Phobos?

Well, I read things:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship
Quote:

Well, that is informative, but after all a bit confusing.  I just want to visualize it so I will pick tanks number to get that.
180,000 / 150 = 1,200.  And 1,200 * 2 = 2400 ounces.  So, maybe 150 pounds???

Anyway I think to bundle 7 or more Starships into a structure, so 1,050 pounds.

So, then 476.2719885 kg.

Of course we can put a bunch of rocks inside of some of the Starships to give more weight.  Or pack a compartment with fine regolith for the same reason.

Anyway it should be possible to have a digging machine that can carefully and slo-mo sloth like dig into Phobos.

And if we can begin building large blocks that can be bonded into structures by vacuum welding their metal surfaces together, we can start building "Castles in space".

I like a cylinder structure to start with, without end plates.  You could run tensile straps around the outside of it to give it more strength.  They could be free floating in space, but it would make more sense to put them "One End Up" on each rotational pole of Phobos.  The intention is to dig into Phobos as well as you could and to keep making such blocks and adding them to the structures.  In addition to make metals and Oxygen for various reasons.  There is some hope for chemically bonded volatile materials to recover as well such as Carbon and Hydrogen.

If these structures are restrained with tensile surround bands, and they have natural compressive strength, and they are vacuum weld bonded into cylinders we might hope to put synthetic gravity machines into them.

And also a vaulted roof might be put on the top ends exposed to the North and South solar poles.  This then would provide a buffered environment, not as harsh as untreated space environments.

And after the initial block houses are made you may add others in parallel or another on around and on top of the original(s).

A great additional hope would be to tunnel though Phobos and so the connect the two bock houses and to have very large caverns inside of Phobos.

That is enough for now.

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I really do like the NOVA from Stoke Space.

Here are some articles apparently: https://www.bing.com/search?q=utube%2C+ … db&pc=DCTS

OK, SORRY THE LINKS DON'T SEEM TO WORK NOW.  BUT I WILL LEAVE MY COMMENTS.

It is a little thing, 4 meters and 5 tons to LEO, I think.

But it is unique except that Blue Origin might do something like it.  While it will be interesting for Earth, I see that it could be a scout ship for missions to the Moon and Mars.

The distributed nozzles may not stir the regolith too much on the Moon, and the heat shield may work well for Mars.

I have doubts that it could carry humans except for an emergency evacuation perhaps.  But if it carried robots we could get lots of data points for the Moon and Mars.

Frankly I see it to be staged from an orbital Starship, where Hydrogen could be extracted from Methane, but then the Carbon might be used for something as well.

I am not against landing Starships as they could land brutal loads of supplies and machinery to either world, but this device as a scout ship might help determine if a site is worthy of such a delivery.

If it works well, maybe it could be sized up to a human rated device.

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(th) my intention is to project a simplified Starship to orbit and repurpose it to whatever it might work for.  This could be structures or to use the Metal as propellants.

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Here is a new idea for the formation of Phobos and Deimos, that I have not completely read yet.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo … 3972&ei=36

Commentary Pending............

Well, that explanation of the source of Phobos and Deimos is interesting.  I suppose the source materials might have already been or rubble pile, or not.

If it was a shattered asteroid with source rock from an object like Ceres, then it will be very likely that hydrated minerals may be present.  And if it were, then it could potentially contain various materials such as Core, Mantle, and Crust from such an original object.

But I would settle for just stony materials.  It turns out that such contains some water anyway.

So, a process for Phobos could involve digging out the small stuff from around the big chunks, and perhaps anchoring to the big chunks.  Ideally making caves large enough for synthetic gravity machines.

Although the total gravity of the moon and the gravity of each major subpart (Chunk), is very small, I suspect that there may be empty spaces near the center of Phobos, as if there are major chunks, the small stuff may be more attracted to a major chunk than the collective center of the whole moon.  But I am ready to be wrong about that.

So, in "Hollowing" out Phobos in part, the materials removed will at least yield Oxygen and Metal/Silicates.

An interesting thing to discover is if you more or less removed all of the Oxygen, would the remaining materials be electrically conductive?  If so, then this could possibly be use in a Magdrive or Neumann Drive.

But, if it is like the our Moon of Earth, then perhaps .5% of the materials will be magnetic Iron, and could be separated prior to that treatment process.

Here is something from post #38:

So, returning to the materials of Phobos, apparently you might heat dust with a microwave, and some Iron and Oxygen may sublimate out in the proper vacuum.  The Iron could be condensed out at a much lower temperature.  Oxygen might be extractable, but I am thinking that Carbon and Hydrogen might bond with the Oxygen to make substances that can also be condensed at colder temperatures.

I seem to recall that the process could be found in a video, in this group: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRMkYy … feDtrQgcTA
It might be this one
"Lunar Metallurgy".

At this point, I suppose you might make a sort of brick out of the remaining materials.

You would have some Iron that you could use in a Magdrive, and some Oxygen that you could use in an Oxygen Mass Driver.

As I recall the video I mentioned also indicates how to perform Metalysis, to get even more separations out of the material if you desire, but that comes with a greater cost of effort and energy.

If materials are removed from the interior of Phobos, then structures could be built within it.  It already has a lot of "VOID" space as it is.  But if you create structural materials you could build outside of Phobos as well.

Perhaps then the surface area exterior to Phobos will be expanded, perhaps much larger than Phobos.

So, very likely we will want to do Metalysis or something like that to get things like Aluminum from the materials of Phobos.

However, that is going to cost energy and other efforts, and so, I have thought of an Iron coated brick.

More or less a brick in a thin iron can that is snug fitting.  In air the Iron would rust in a hurry, but in a vacuum it may not, and if you were to put the bricks together and they were a tight fit, they may vacuum weld together.

And I would like to recommend magnetizing the Iron as well, so that if you are in a magnetic field the bricks that might become disconnected by an impact may tend to stick around.

I don't know how easy it would be to coat a brick with a thin Iron shell.  But I am guessing it is possible.  Perhaps some tricks need to be discovered though for it to work.

So, anyway I suppose things like radiation shields could be made of these things.  It might be a good place to dump your leftovers after extracting what you want from regolith. 

A large radiation shell might be constructed in this way to allow spinning or static habitats to be sheltered within.

You would not want to try to pressurize it though as the Iron will rust in the presence of Oxygen or water.

Perhaps you could do similar with Aluminum, which would form a protective Oxygen layer, but then you could not magnetize that.  But if you put some small Iron magnets inside the brick maybe that would work.

Ending Pending

So, it seems I need to be careful about words, so as to not provoke communication problems.

I have been darting around between possible sources of mass and energy in space.  Starship is one way to get mass into space that can derive energy.

I think we are getting close to "In Space Manufacturing".  That could be done in many places but of course lower space orbits may do, especially if methods to keep the space lanes clear of excessive junk can be done.

A thing about Satellites is they are getting smaller and smaller per productive output.  And this logic makes sense if you are going to manufacture them on the surface of the Earth.  But what if later, Satellites can in part be manufactured in orbit, in part from bulk materials available?  Then certain sensitive parts might still be made on Earth, but might be put into a chassis made from bulk materials.

Bulk materials might come from old space junk, but more likely lifted to Earth orbit from the surface of Earth, but perhaps later coming in part from other worlds, such as the Moon, asteroids, or Phobos and Deimos.

If Magdrive and Neumann Drive work per the hopes, then it may be possible to keep recycling space junk created as satellites go dead.  Some of it anyway.  If the big junk can be made to have further value, then there will not be much of a contribution to the Kesler Syndrome from those.  And it may be that some methods such as an impact method could clean up some of the more dangerous smaller junk.

I like the Full Stacked Starship Super Heavy & Starship, but have been working on the "Anti-Starship" which has the philosophy of wanting to bring bulk materials to orbit while reducing reuse of hardware to the surface.

I don't know if SpaceX will ever bother with it, but I think that they will have the assets to experiment with it should they want to.

The Anti-Starship has a SSTO wish embedded in it, but that by itself is considered to be impractical at this time.
So, I suggest that the Anti-Starship will need assistive assets to help it achieve a useful orbit.

The logic of SSTO suggests that you could try to reduce dry mass for the Starship itself by going to a lower gage of metal, but then the purpose of the Anti-Starship is to get bulk materials of significant value to a useful orbit.

Obviously this can be done by using a Super Heavy to get the Starship to orbit.  But I anticipate congestion at the major launch sites with Mechazilla Launch Towers.  So, I  want a launch method that can avoid using a Mechazilla.

And I think I want a launch site that can be remote from human populations.  Sea Launches may allow that.

Pause......

Because of gravity and atmosphere, the SSTO wish has to be augmented.  I now suggest that side boosters might work nicely at sea.  Building a platform at sea with a full stack Mehazilla, may be rather demanding.  But a Starship with assistive side boosters may require less of an effort.  This would be to make Starship a bit like Falcon 9 Heavy.

As an experiment before they fully phase out Falcon 9 perhaps, they could do such an experiment.  I would test the potential, and then also begin to give SpaceX a larger footprint at sea than they now have.  Granted, this would require bonding two deferent fuel systems, but part of the architecture already exists.  They already do a 3 core Falcon Heavy which should have taught them something, and they already know how to land 2 of the cores at least on barges or land.

I suppose they could try solids, but the history of solids is not as good of that of Falcon 9/Heavy, as per reuse.

I would think that they would hope to use only 2 Falcon cores, as that will more resemble Falcon Heavy, but I suppose they could put 4 or 6 on there if they wanted to try that.

Perhaps if the method works then they might make a Methalox replacement for the Falcon cores.

So, for this "Anti-Starship" you would have no intention of landing the Starship.  But if necessary, you might ditch it at sea.  That would be a loss.  So the "Anti-Starship" itself would be in the place of the Falcon Heavy center core and upper stage.

I this method could bring bulk materials to orbit then where possible you might want to substitute other materials for Stainless Steel.  Although you would want a lot of Stainless Steel in the device.  Perhaps one tank, maybe Oxygen would be of Stainless Steel, and the nose might be of a lighter mix, such as the Falcon rockets use.  Perhaps other things.

I would not expect the ship to have flaps-motors, or heat shield, but copper and other minority substances might be valuable in orbit.

So side boosters might make the "Anti-Starship" reach orbit on crutches.

But I would like to think of a space tug, using metal propellants to intercept it in a low orbit and bring it higher.  This could involve a tether, if space junk is not too severe of a problem.  50 to 100 km tether could make a big difference, I think.  But I would say at first just use something like Magdrive, if it grows up to be what we want it to be.

But I would still like to consider a pendulum skyhook for this purpose.  Instead of a rotavator or a static skyhook, this might have main propulsion on the top end and some sort of propulsion on the bottom end with enough power to make the skyhook swing forward and backwards.  It is possible that this method could match speeds to hook a "Anti-Starship".  (I currently speculate).

Pause......

The last item of assistance I want to re-suggest is a catapult.  I did try to make a sort of pneumatic/hydraulic/gravity catapult.  Quite a monstrosity.  But maybe someday a practical device could be made as a sea platform.

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With bulk materials delivery to orbit, then I hope that manufacturing in orbit can facilitate further development of space skills for reaching into the solar system.  Also to facilitate direct benefits to the people living on the surface of the Earth.

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Dr. Johnson, I appreciate the measurement.  I worked in metrology, and I like having best numbers even if they don't tell me the story I want to hear: https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 94#p227894  (See post #454)

But I should have been careful with my language.  You have said that the glass is almost certainly not full enough.  I am taking the notion of a glass partly filled and perhaps not ever to be filled, and then my question is what other assistance other than the Super Heavy would allow it to go to orbit?

So, at that point I am not talking about SSTO, rather Assisted-Sort-Of-SSTO.  Ass.-SSTO, if you like.
-Possibilities are Tug/Skyhook to finish it to orbit.
-Catapult, which I have attempted in a sort of joking way to invent.  Probably not enough.
-But we also could strap two Falcon 9 1st Stages to it in the manner of Falcon Heavy.
(Solids might also work, but I understand they shake a lot which would be bad, and they are hard to reuse)

I know that they had a terrible time making Falcon Heavy work, so yes, it is very questionable.  But the thing about it is you would not be landing the Starship so you would not need a platform to land it with such as Mechazilla, and the two or more Falcon 9's could land on barges in the sea.  Troublesome but not impossible.

So, for me that makes something possible, but good chances not economically viable.  But who knows.  If SpaceX were to build a Metha-Lox version of Falcon 9 with Raptors, then maybe.  Not saying that they want to, but as I see it, the spaceports for Full Stack Starship launch will be likely to be congested.

(th), I also allowed for a shell Starship to be assisted to orbit by Super Heavy.  In such a case it might be able to carry as much as 200 Tons, maybe more of propellants to orbit.  I prefer the notion of Metals that could be either for structure or for propellants for a Magdrive, or Neumann Drive systems.

So, I feel that your inclusion of the idea to this topic is valid.

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I ran into a video comparing the use of amorphous solar cells and heat engines on the Moon.  I was very surprised that the analysis indicated that the solar cells being from 3% to 11% efficient are still a much better deal than heat engines, at least on the Moon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oFi6S-4mp8
Quote:

OK, I am getting to the point where I think that for Mars it might be best to consider having orbital power stations, and to beam power down to the planet.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRMkYy … feDtrQgcTA

Ending Pending

So, it is unclear if a SSTO Starship really can be possible.  Future discovery is needed.

A question could be why would you want it?  It cannot carry any significant payload to space.  But this is not true, if you are going to render the carcasses into useful things in orbit.  Then the entire mass of the Starship can have value.

So, then every part of a SSTO Starship should have the "First Function" of helping the whole Starship to gain an orbit of some kind, even a very low one.

We could compare this potential result to a result of a mass driver.  Lets say Spin-Launch.

One thing is apparent, Spin-Launch is very constrained as to what it can send.  It is very complex, and could be severly damaged in a mishap, putting it out of service.

Similarly, a SSTO Starship could explode on a launch pad.  But the explosion would be less than that of a full stack of Starship and Super Heavy of similar propellant load.

One thing has occurred to me about Starship SSTO, without legs or heat shield.  You could mass manufacture them on a seaside, and then float them out to a sea launch platform.  You might want covers for the Raptors, those covers could be reused.  So, the risk of explosion is very reduced then and you are not congesting a spaceport which might be launching a full stack of Starship.

So, you could ballast the Starship with some means and keep its tail above water, with engine covers.  Then when at a platform, it would by some means be made to emerge from the water and be set right for launch.

The brief immersion in sea water might not cause it too much harm.  I am presuming that this ship would have 9 engines, and the electric means to steer the ship, so that has to have reasonable protection as well.  And this presumes that the ship can overcome gravity on launch to proceed to orbit.  I do not know at this time if that is possible.

But the Falcon series of rockets shows that SpaceX knows how to minimize the risk of explosion, and that a sea launch would also reduce damages that might occur from an explosion.

A sea launch suggests that out west coast could harbor a build process.  The ships could be floated to the equator if desired, and launched from platforms in the sea.  And of course similar for the East Coast.  I guess having the equator option gives just a little more chance that such ships could reach a very low orbit.

I really don't know if that is all that could happen.  But reaching a very low orbit, then there is a hope of a orbital vehicle to fetch it to a higher orbit.  I am presuming that this tug would be thrusted with Magdrive.  It may be that it would be sent power from orbital devices further up, but I don't know that that is possible.

Supposing that a SSTO Starship could have an endcap covering its entire engine skirt, then it might be possible that a platform might float under it, and then with ballast changes lift it out of the water.  So, no crane, just some hooks, and a lifting as the platform rises in the water.  The end cap would be removed, to be cycled back to land.

The ship would be filled by some sort of barge, and then the ship would launch.

Rinse and Repeat.

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So, the idea of a sea-launch platform with ballast tanks suggests that the ballast tanks are a form of stored energy.

You would have to release the air in order to do yet another launch, so perhaps a pneumatic catapult system could be incorporated to use that energy to give the launching ship just a small amount of additional boost.  As SSTO will be very marginal in possibility, this could be very important.

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Well, if SpaceX makes a worthy product, then neither person in the D.O.G.E. will have to put their hands on it.  I think it would be unwise if they did.  However, they might go after bureaucracy that interferes with development of new space hardware.

I think the Orion has value anyway.  It is made to bring people safely through the atmosphere at Lunar return speeds.
My own view is that a method of some kind SLS or not could get it to LEO, and then a Starship already in LEO, could escort it to the Moon.  A Lunar Starship could then do what it was supposed to do.  Or, in my dreams a NOVA from Stoke Space properly revised could land people or robots or both.

The Starship that went into Lunar orbit with the Orion could then escort it back towards Earth.  They would separate and the Orion will hopefully bring the people safely to the surface of the Earth.  The Starship might try to do multiple skips off of the Earth's atmosphere to get itself into a refilling orbit.

But I don't think that SpaceX and Co. will put their fingers on a kill motion for SLS.  It seems likely that SLS will just continue to get more expensive.  Sooner or later, someone will look at it with hard eyes.

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