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Old 20th November 2024 | 10:03
  #860 (permalink)  
ORAC
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An interesting part of the SpaceX commentary you may have missed was the job advert - they want engineers in various trades and welders to contact them for interviews as they want to recruit thousands of more workers for their Starship mega-factory just being finished.

The reason is so they can up production to be able to roll-out a completed Starship every 8 hours.

Yes - that’s right every 8 hours.

Using the same model as Falcon 9 booster and upper stage, there will only be a need for a smaller number of boosters - they are expected to be back on the ground after 10 minutes and turned round in a few hours to launch again.

Starships, however, will have a multiple number of versions with many with long trips, some never to return.

Throw always will be tankers - which might, possibly, be reused in orbit.. Others will be lunar landers which may be left on the surface for bases or used as earth-moon shuttles. Later many will head to Mars never to return carrying machinery, supplies and personnel to land and provide the core parts of the buildings for a colony.

Those that do land to be reused will replace Falcon 9 for uses such as launching Starlink satellites - but much larger ones and in their hundreds per trip rather than 60-66, working towards the planned constellations of over 40,000.
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