![]() ![]() For this, I'd see a 500 ton-to-LEO vehicle for hotels. Given that there are >40m millionaires out there of which >200k have more than 30m USD, that's a huge base for luxury holidays in space. Either way, it optimises production and reduces USD/kg - if there's a market on the horizon. On the other hand, and I think that's a really good point, just flying any stage sub orbital to the best located launch sites might be helpful, too. Just delivery of basic materials, people and engines still needs some harbour, train or road connection. That reduces size constraints due to cargo requirements. If there are any business cases that need lots of freight somewhere beyond Earth's surface, I'd assume, building a launch site that includes the production facility of the rocket would be reasonable. Within 20-30 years our solar system may be full of large spacecraft going to and from Mars, Ceres, or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and of course our moon. Of course, then SpaceX will have to have something bigger than Starship, especially if they get a Mars colony started. I think after New Glenn, Blue Origin may want to one up SpaceX with the New Armstrong. It was designed for barges carrying 12m diameter Nova Rocket boosters. I'm not a rocket scientist, but right now the barge and canal at Cape Kennedy can handle the SLS, Saturn V, and the 9m Superheavy. Someone would have to calculate the width, height, and amount of fuel per number of Raptors. It all depends on how wide you can get (that's why I said 12m) with a certain number of engines and still have enough fuel to launch and return to launch site to land. I think the length or height would be limited to what Superheavy is going to be now. With the current capability of Raptors, a 14m would probably do 200 tons. Now SpaceX is trying to get the same 150 ton LEO payload on the 9m version. ![]() The original 14m BFR was only supposed to have a 150 ton payload. If SpaceX had not gotten sidetracked with trying to use composites, and went straight to stainless steel like they are, they may already be working on a SS 14m Superheavy. ![]() This would go back to the 2018 14m BFR configuration. The larger diameter would mean more metholox for the additional ring or two of engines. If using Raptor engines, I would think the height would be about the same as Superheavy. No need for crewrating, or propellant transfer interfaces, or long duration flight capability. Being a pure cargo vehicle also helps the dev/manufacturing cost a bit. But bulk cargo (consumer goods, high-value densely packed components, whatever) will strongly benefit from a vehicle like this, as scaling up generally reduces cost/kg and with a large human/industrial presence in space there will be vast demand for cargo going in both directions. I don't expect satellite or station launches to be a big market going forward as orbital manufacturing picks up, and certainly not in the 500+ ton class. In-space transport should switch to dedicated vehicles for the same reason, with Starship itself just as a taxi to and from orbit. Propellant tankers shouldn't be used in the long term because ISRU propellant (even being shipped back to LEO) can so drastically reduce costs to deep space, even compared to a fully reusable tanker launched from Earth. A380 can only carry about 800 and production is being shut down because of lack of utilization), so I'd expect that to continue being used indefinitely just with tech upgrades. For passenger launch, 9m is probably pretty close to optimal already (for a flight of a few hours or less it can carry 1000 passengers. Plus, shipping isn't much of an issue anyway since, if Starship is anywhere near its targeted flight cost, it'll be easier to simply fly from one pad to another (and if this isn't economically feasible for whatever reason, this discussion doesn't matter because there will thus be no market to sustain a several-hundred-ton rocket) As far as economics, bulk cargo seems like the only thing for this. Starship is *already* planned to be built near the ocean (at 3 separate sites!), and already planned to primarily use ocean launch platforms. Anyway, the concerns raised so far don't seem relevant. Elon said the next likely step is actually 18 meters, this should be 4x the payload. Assuming no height increase or further propellant densification or ISP increases or material improvements or other scaling advantages or whatever (all of which are likely) going from 9 to 12m diameter should nearly double payload capacity. ![]()
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