Elon Musk gave the Everyday Astronaut a new tour of the SpaceX Starbase.
Elon showed the Megabay. This will have ten to twelve workstations. The High bay has two stations. This will let SpaceX work on twelve to fourteen rockets at the same time. Two in the high bay and up to twelve in the Megabay.
One of the big improvements is to use excess gas from the Starship main engines for maneuvering thrusters instead of separate cold gas thrusters.
They have improved the grid fins to get more drag, pressure and improves the landing with lower speed and more precision.
They have made a door on Starship for deploying Starlink Gen 2 satellites.
The heat shields have gaps but those gaps reduce when they are in the heat of re-entry. The goal is to reduce peak heating while enabling reuse.
They are optimizing cost per ton to orbit. They are not considering the ISP or other metrics.
The current cost per useful ton of material to the surface of Mars is $1 billion and the current goal is $100,000 per useful ton to the surface of Mars.
The grid fins and many other parts are not optimal but will work. They will work on optimization over time.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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