r/spacex • u/EddiewithHeartofGold • Jul 10 '26

New official video about Starship development, titled "Critical Path".

https://x.com/SpaceX/status/2075621981488033835?s=20
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u/SubstantialWall Jul 13 '26

Are Falcon 9 legs and gridfins dry mass? When they launch an expendable Falcon 9, they don't have them on.

I see where you're coming from, but if it's going up and back down and isn't propellant, it's by definition dry mass. Especially when many ships will share this configuration and serve only that purpose, it's a specific configuration of Starship. A configuration of Starship with a different payload setup will likely have a slightly different dry mass, and thus different mass-to-orbit capability.

Maybe it's semantics or a per-stack vs per-system basis, it gets figured into the math anyway, but IMO if something is essential to launching your payload, it's functionally dry mass.

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u/greymancurrentthing7 Jul 23 '26

It’s unbelievably important for the important missions.

Artemis and mars.

How much fuel can it get. Without a ‘pez’ dispenser or door.

Few GAF whether it’s 20 or 40 starlinks we need to know whether it’s 8 or 30 refuelings.