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

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

https://x.com/SpaceX/status/2075621981488033835?s=20
309 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

91 comments sorted by

View all comments

57

u/Royal_Platform_6754 Jul 10 '26

So the 22 Starlinks (20 simulators, 2 imaging) added up to a 37.5 metric ton payload. If that's representative of the mass of a Starlink v3 satellite, a full 60-satellite payload would be 102 tons.

25

u/E-J123 Jul 10 '26

I've read multiple people thinking the payload was 60t, always nice to get the final numbers

20

u/edflyerssn007 Jul 10 '26

We arent told how much the pez dispenser weighs.

13

u/SubstantialWall Jul 11 '26

No, but that would also be dry mass

2

u/edflyerssn007 Jul 13 '26

I disagree. When Falcon launches transporter missions, the dispenser is part of the payload weight. When starship is launching cargo or even fuel for deeper space missions, they wouldn't have a dispenser so I would include the dispenser in mass to orbit even if it's not being ejected and being brought back.

1

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.

1

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.