Bernd 07/13/2021 (Tue) 09:37:35 No.44387 del
>>44359
>It's no the same engine, the Engine they are using on Starship is the Raptor engine, an Engine developed solely for that.

Hmm, yes, I was wrong, I thought Raptor is direct enhancement of Merlin, but looks like it is very different.

Technically Raptor has pretty good parameters, at least on paper.

>Starship isn't a good design for Space tourism either(particularly not if it explodes). It's far too large and uses far too much fuel and has far too many engines for that to be economically feasible(imagine the maintenance those engines are going to need and the fuel cost).

Concept of vehicle carrying 100 persons is pretty good for tourism - there are no alternatives. Another good reason is slow comfort landing (on paper too) - it isn't fun to land in reentry ballistic vehicle like Soyuz. Both these factors, large crew capacity => large cabin and direct landing on engines make Starship worse than classic rocket-to-orbit with classic reentry. But it isn't that bad for tourist orbital purposes I think.

Of course for normal launches (with satellites or classic spacecraft) it is redundant. It is sad that alternative approaches like air launch died, they must be pretty effective for satellites and small things.

>economically feasible

People will pay, there are no alternatives in sight. Maybe China will do something though.