I’ve been thinking about space . . . and Starship . . .
Starship is a great vehicle for getting to space but not very practical for many things after that. It tries to combine the engineering needed to reach space with the technical requirements of longer missions like satellite deployments or space stations or trips to the moon or mars
What if the Starship was split up . . .
What if the SpaceX Starship was modular - made up of fully detachable payload pods docked together just like the hot staging ring is to the booster and Starship
The result is a Modular Starship made up of 3 parts:
- a Rocket section
- a Payload Pod
- a Crew Nose section
Why a modular Starship with Payload Pods
Simple - Starship can deploy a lot of cargo but has many limitations:
- Ships need to be highly customized for different purposes affecting production speed and re-use
- The payload bay is a fixed size, often only partly filled if payload is heavy or too small if payload is very light
- On arrival at the moon, Mars or as part of a space station, most of the Starship is wasted (the rocket and nose section) without extensive and difficult in-space modifications
A modular Starship solves these problems since the payload pods are the only parts left in space and each can be constructed for the needed mission profile
Many modules are generic and can be used for a variety of missions.
Watch the video below for an example of the Modular Starship being used on a Moon flyby mission.
Next . . .
In the next post of the series we will look at the different types of Payload Pods and how they can be used together to create many different mission profiles.
Interesting idea, however I think that it would add a lot of structural weight and failure points. The welds between ring sections are strong and light weight.
Achieving the same structural strength with detachable mechanisms is not easy and would come with a weight and complexity penalty.
Part of the idea came when I saw how easy SpaceX made and added the hot staging ring. For the modular ship, you are basically doing the same thing but just above the tanks. Hopefully some engineer will take a look at it one day. What you lose in mass to LEO you make up with in flexibility.