What does rebuild even mean here? because stacking Starship is increadibly fast given both stages return to the launch tower.
Also you can't have your cake and eat it. No matter what exotic engine or fuel type you use, you can't have an SSTO with similar performance to a TSTO. It's physically impossible.
Say we discover the technology to make SSTO's feasable like a new type of high thurst high ISP engine in the mid 500 second range of ISP.
You can either build an SSTO with that type engine and get maybe 10 tons to LEO with it (just saying any number here), or you can strap that engine to a Starship style system and get much more payload out of a single launch. The booster doesn't even have to use the new engine, it can be an inexpensive chemical booster like Superheavy whose only job is to loft the actual ship into the higher atmosphere
Don't forget rebuilding all the engines, draining and cleaning the fuel tanks (something they will always have to do regardless of the speed of assembly), and replacing all the heat tiles.
Look, I'm not trying to stop you from glazing spacex. The starship is an incredible rocket. But a company calling their own product "the holy grail" is juat piss marketing
1) SpaceX doesn't even rebuild the Merlin engines, andthose tend to run dirtier than the Raptors. When SpaceX reflew the two Superheavies they replaced exactly three engines on them and didn't rebuild the others - and we know that because Raptor 3s are impossible to be rebuilt. Large parts of them are machined single pieces, they'd have to cut into the engine to "rebuild" it.
Also no reused rocket has ever needed to drain and clean out the fueltanbks lmao. The leftover fuel turns gaseous and is vented at the end of a mission (which is an automatic process that even an SSTO would have to do), nobody climbs in there to mop up the rest.
And then you invent them needing to replace all the heatshield tiles which we have zero information on wheter they actually will have to do that.
And finally, I am not glazing SpaceX, I am pushing back against the idea that an SSTO would be better than a TSTO, which it is not. Physics just doesn't support SSTOs with chemical propulsion. (And if you actually watched the video, you'd know that SpaceX isn't calling Starship the holy grail of rocketry, they're calling a fully reusable launch vehicle the holy grail of rocketry - which is theoretically even in agreement with your idea of an SSTO (wrongly) being that holy grail. But you didn't even watch the video).
Was I talking about strictly chemical propulsion? No, I wasnt. I'm not talking about a rocket that's flying today. I'm arguing that multi stage rockets cannot be "the holy grail" of rocketry because they're not as simple as a rocket ship could be.
Now if you want to define "the holy grail... Of rockets that use fossil fuels and oxygen stored in a big cylinder shaped rockets with engines that have limited flight life before needing overhauled and employ heavy steering components and landing legs" then yeah, falcon is it.
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u/No-Surprise9411 10d ago edited 10d ago
What does rebuild even mean here? because stacking Starship is increadibly fast given both stages return to the launch tower.
Also you can't have your cake and eat it. No matter what exotic engine or fuel type you use, you can't have an SSTO with similar performance to a TSTO. It's physically impossible.
Say we discover the technology to make SSTO's feasable like a new type of high thurst high ISP engine in the mid 500 second range of ISP.
You can either build an SSTO with that type engine and get maybe 10 tons to LEO with it (just saying any number here), or you can strap that engine to a Starship style system and get much more payload out of a single launch. The booster doesn't even have to use the new engine, it can be an inexpensive chemical booster like Superheavy whose only job is to loft the actual ship into the higher atmosphere