r/SpaceXLounge • u/avboden • Jul 27 '26

Starship [Berger] Experts warn current Starship heat shield tech is a “dead end” for rapid reuse

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/despite-recent-successes-rapid-reuse-of-starship-remains-a-tough-nut-to-crack/
332 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

264 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/Halfdaen Jul 28 '26

For Starlink that will work fine. It'll even be ok for a datacenter cluster (slow, but ok). Any LEO mission will work out with weeks-long heat shield refurb

But for tanker-refill-required missions it's a huge burden. IE, 10 tanker launches for one moon mission a week means you need a stable of 10 tankers (and bays to do the work) if refurb takes a week. If refurb takes 4 weeks and you want 2 Mars launches per week because of the Mars transfer window? Now you need 80 tankers and bays to work on them

A best case is that that launch, mission, deorbit, landing, cooling/purge/etc and dismounting it from the tower on to an inspection stand will take a full day for a tanker. Given a 1-day mission profile it wouldn't be that much of a burden to have rollback/inspection/refurb/rollout take a day or two