OT: Starship

While it takes 9 months using the energy efficient Hohmann transfer orbit, the journey can performed in a shorter time, but requires much more energy to first accelerate rapidly from Earth's orbit and also decelerate more heavily when approaching Mars' orbit.

With such large payload, the fuel consumption would be huge, especially if all the fuel needs to be launched from Earth.

Even if the fuel can be manufactured on the Moon, the payload and fuel is initially in "wrong" orbits. Apparently the manned module would have to be launched on Apollo 13 style slingshot orbit, the fuel from the Moon would have to accelerated, so that a high speed randezvous can be performed, while the crew module is behind the moon on the top of the slingshot orbit.

Indeed.

I wonder what his business model is for Mars. Cemetery plots are cheaper here.

Everything he does loses money.

The Tsiolkovsky rocket equation is just brutal. AFAIK the fast-trip-to-Mars on chemical rockets problem is similar to the single-stage-to-orbit on chemical rockets problem. So much of your vehicle mass has to be fuel, and the faster you want to go the more fuel you need, but you need even more fuel to get that fuel up there, which reduces your payload even more, requiring more fuel, etc.

the intersection of orbital mechanics and ship-engineering is prolly very complex and the math not fully explored. but I don't think folks have been researching plasma engines to cut the trip time down for ~40 years because finding a design and trajectory that made the three-legged stool optimal with chemical rockets was easy.

If they found something everyone else missed it seems Nobel-worthy, surely.

I think the Mars-rhetoric is to keep the public invested and interested while they work on what's at best a near-space tourist vehicle. There's probably some money in near-space tourism; sell circumlunar out-and-back trips at 20 million a seat and sub-orbital hops for 2.

It seems about what space is good for at the moment from a money-making perspective, but luxury space tours for billionaires isn't a project most people are going to get really excited over (or want to invest public or private funds in)

Manned spaceflight, I should say

A vacuum isn't very interesting.

I dunno, Douglas Adams had a pretty interesting universe...and 'they' say truth is stranger than fiction!

2. John ;-#)#

He makes a pile of money raiding the US treasury. I suspect this game is no different.

The view is said to be spectacular though.

You didn't hear? powered by burning lithium batteries... :-)

Yah...NOTHING to talk about. But when we put glass around some of it and metal electrodes inside, Shakespeare did: Tu-Be or not Tu-Be