this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2026
635 points (96.9% liked)
Technology
87649 readers
3208 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I thought SpaceX was at least on the right track with Starship, but then I read this article talking about how even one trip to the Moon could take up to 20 launches:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/12/nasa-says-up-to-20-spacex-starship-refueling-launches-per-moon-mission.html
So if we assume they manage to build a fully rapidly reusable rocket and launch infrastructure (the latter of which is incredibly questionable), the only marginal cost increase is just labor to conduct the launches and consumables.
And the physics says more like 17 launches, but at the end of the day, that’s just how much it costs to send 200 tons to the moon, AND bring the rocket back. They’re not jettisoning stages or leaving the rocket behind in the moon like Apollo.
The numbers are mind boggling, and short of nuclear rockets and space elevators, there is literally no way to do this short of many, many, many tiny launches, and it’s way less risky to have those tiny launches refill a tanker in LEO than to send 20 launches to the moon independently. Plus there would be no way to send large pre assembled components like nuclear reactors and construction/manufacturing equipment. Everything would have to be manufactured and assembled on the moon.
neat. so let’s not do it until we can do it without funding a nazi, a capitalist, or a war criminal?