Doomenate
Doomenate t1_j9qtlhs wrote
Reply to comment by nic_haflinger in DARPA is Reigniting the Nuclear Engine by Afrin_Drip
Starship and NTR are different use cases.
You don't launch them from earth, you'd use them in space.
Doomenate t1_j9qspcn wrote
Reply to comment by HerrJemine in If the cost comes down why don’t we shoot water into space to reduce rising sea levels? by anonymous494921
It's funny your mention SLS. The payload is 231,485 lbs, but the liquid fuel is hydrogen and oxygen which combined after combusting would become 2,177,000 lbs of water. So we'd be splitting 2 million pounds of water into hydrogen and oxygen just to combine it again to move 200k pounds of water into LEO.
Might as well skip the launch and keep the fuel separated!
Doomenate t1_j9sqwff wrote
Reply to comment by nic_haflinger in DARPA is Reigniting the Nuclear Engine by Afrin_Drip
Starship would still land on Mars, but whether it's refueled X times or docked with NTR from another trip seems interchangeable to me