Is SpaceX Planning to Make An Expendable Starship Variant?

An idea could be to repurpose those “expendable” missions. Could reuse the expendable cargo Starships and turn them into cheaper habitation modules that could dock to a station on LEO or be used to study the effects of the Van Allen belts on Organic matter up at Geostationary orbit. Ideas ideas.

Very cool. The best part of the StarShip design is its adaptability. Like a Lego vehicle, it can support many different missions. Each variant in existence and proposed appear to do that quite well, even though the final versions are not even configured or even beyond sketches on paper stage yet. It is a brilliant system. Not only is it exciting to watch development, but it's educational as well, as we all learn something about "Real world" designing for rapid prototyping. I.e., that "Failures" are not losses as long as you learn something. Not every rocket or design needs to succeed, as long as it provides knowledge to feedback into the next design cycle, then it's a "Success" for the overall program, and mission.

Wow - I didn't realise there were so many 🙂 As many as "around 8, to be exact" :_Starship2: Seriously, though, I look out for the narrated videos - actually worth watching rather than "something in the background" - really informative! Keep up the great work 😁

THank you for sharing this. It is amazing the versatility that this ship promises . Childre have an amazing future to look up to.

Love these narrated videos, thank you!

The ones with no flaps could also be mockups for Lunar star ship. Or even a testbed for interior design.

The insulation trapping moisture from the air, then freezing and expanding is likely to be cracking the tiles. I suspect they are reviewing their thermal protection method.

Starship 26 could be an early depot prototype. They have to demonstrate in-orbit propellant transfer soon.

Yup, I honestly think we're just beginning to scratch the surface on potential use ideas for starship once the base version is operational and vetted.

Great video, very interesting topic! You guys do good work!

just an idea: if Starship can dock with Dragon capsules or the Lunar Gateway, then crew can return in capsules, and the starships can stay on the moon or in lunar orbit as habitat/space station area, storage, fuel tanks, etc.

Phenomenal video. Always interesting to see what potential variants could be.

IMO SpaceX is using S26 as a tanker prototype. If she works, they have a tanker in orbit and that's a HUGE step forward.

"Around eight...to be exact." This sentence reminds me of students who use measuring instruments with 1% accuracy, do calculations with those measurements and then give the result to ten significant figures.

Is it possible that with the improved Raptor 2 performance, there's enough Delta V to perform engine breaking from LEO rather than relying on aero braking/heat shields? Would reduce weight and of course promote the classic "the best part is no part" paradigm.

Star Hopper should be in the first Space X museum in Texas of course.

It'll be so wild for the ones landing in the HLS, that's a biiiiiig ship for just 2 people

Broadly speaking, I count up to five prototype Starship versions (Starhopper, Early testing, low-altitude test, high altitude atmospheric test, orbital tests). As for operational Starships, I can see maybe four or five crewed versions (point-to-point, LEO, Lunar Lander, Mars Lander). There might even be two variants of the 'Lunar Lander' - one for trips between either a crewed Orion or the Lunar Gateway and the surface of the moon and back and the other one from Earth to the Lunar surface and back. The LEO version would serve as either a short-term space station or an expansion to a commercial station. As for the uncrewed versions, I can see at least four variants in addition to cargo versions of the crewed Starships. The additional variants would include but not be limited to Starlink dispensers, tanker, depot, Starships designed for to deploy generic satellites or probes.

I think the ones with the razor stubble are due to be scrapped. The pins are welded in and they will create a lot of aerodynamic drag if flown.

11:00 Don't forget the brief mention that Elon spoke of the potential of deploying of a non-reusable starship as a Hubble type telescope.