David Willis claims that SpaceX is iterating on the design of the Lunar Human Landing system Starship with large solar panels.
The solar panels would fold out and deploy from within the Starship.
The moon has 1400 watts per square meter of solar power. Solar energy collection on the moon would be about 25% efficient. The SpaceX Starship is about 50 meters tall. The solar panels are half the height of Starship.
The large solar panels are 25 meters tall and 4 meters wide. This is about 35 kilowatts of solar per wing. The total of five such panels is about 175 kilowatts.
Do you guys wanna see something cool?
New HLS renders from SpaceX pic.twitter.com/dE0cQjCSsm
— David Willis (@ThePrimalDino) November 2, 2023
This rendering while visually interesting seems to be using heavier solar panels.
There is lighter thin film, flexible solar which would enable more power per kilogram transported to the moon.
Doug Plata and Chris Wolfe have an updated design for solar drapes for gathering power at the South Pole of the moon. They looked at how much power a single lunar Starship (100 tonnes) could establish at the best so-called Peak of Eternal Light (PEL) at the lunar south pole. They proposed a solar drape moon energy system built from 30 spans (33 telescoping supports) and weighs in at 48.8 tonnes and produces 7.38 MW. There is a 30 tonnes payload budget for the deployment hardware and cabling from the array to the settlement, plus 20 tonnes of payload margin. They are using additional margins elsewhere in the estimates, but these numbers overall are very achievable. The power-system performance is about 150 W/kg and an all-in mission performance of 92 W/kg with comfortable margins. The highest one could reasonably estimate here is 12 MW, which assumes 80 t is reserved for power hardware and 20t for everything else.
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.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
cool.
The ISS is working on 240 kW of power, and this is more than 30x that.
This would work until Nuclear can be brought there.
If their pricing per Starship around that of an airplane holds, they will have the cheapest space station modules.
Without having to design it, validate it or pony up all the collateral costs. Just buy it and schedule your launch.
It’s also looking more like a Starship SpaceStation variant would. The companies already working on commercial SpaceStations will likely realize they will get more by ordering a variant of Starship than a building a module it launches as cargo.
Like Artemis HLS it would be minus thermal tiles + crew pressurized & lifesupport + solar panels. It’s minus landing legs and plus docking adapter though. It could also be stretched for more volume and maybe have tanks prepped to be converted to hab space eventually. Plus an EVA airlock.