Getting rocket fuel into orbital space depots

8/11/26:

Well, it certainly appears that something has changed up here. None of these ideas will ever matter at all since SpaceX's Starship will be able to take over 100 Tons to orbit soon. Fuel depots are in the mix for the Starship, and if that works out, other ideas can't compete.

The thing about JP Aerospace is that you may be able to use it on Mars. On Mars, the atmosphere is already as thin as Earth's at the altitude that JP wants to use the ascender for. The ascender will go to orbit. It is a matter of how much energy it needs and whether or not it will be enough to get to orbit. Mars gravity is roughly 40% of Earth's, so if orbital velocity is also 40%, that would make it about Mach 10? (I could ask AI for that number, and probably already have once. If so, I may update this later.)

Ascender can be used on the Martian surface for sure as a transportation system to any other place on the Martian surface even if it cannot get to orbit (yet).

Gas guns? John Hunter of Quicklaunch once mentioned that you don't even need to heat the hydrogen gas in order to get to lunar orbital velocity! Think of the possibilities.

12/16/12: The original post follows:

Speculation alert
MAB post 11


John Powell of JP Aerospace wants to get up to orbit with an airship.  John Hunter wants to use an air gun to get fuel up to orbit.  Now, this may be a crazy concept, but here goes.  Combine the two by sending 100 lb payloads to orbit from JP Aerospace's Dark Sky Station.

Hunter says he can do 10 shots per day.  That would be a 1000 lbs per day.  After a month, you have a respectable amount of fuel in orbit.

Another purpose for using the Dark Sky Station this way is to avoid the energy loss of going through the lower atmosphere at high velocity.  This enables a smaller gun to do a bigger job.

As I noted earlier, you can't put a gas gun on a plane.  You can't even put a gas gun on an Ascender.  But you can assemble one in a Dark Sky Station because the Station is frickin' huge.

Getting the gun there is only half the problem, though.  Maybe the easier half.  The other half is what to do about the recoil of the gas gun?  It will be too much for the Dark Sky Station to handle.

One thing that could be considered is to capture the energy of the recoil and use it to make work.  That work will act as the buffer that will soften the recoil of the gas gun.

How to do that? The old 64K dollar question.

You could use the energy to spin up one or more flywheels.  A flywheel with enough mass and capability to spin at great velocity.

Update:

As long as this is a speculative post, let's use the MAB concept in concert with this concept.  The MAB would take it to orbit.  The Hunter gas gun would give it a boost to 1/2 orbital velocity.  The total wet mass calculated assuming 20% payload fraction ( Parkins assumption) gives us a vehicle of under 1k lbs.

Wet mass for 100 lb payload launched from DSS/MAB assuming 20% mass fraction (MAB module)

What to do about that recoil?  Use the Airship to Orbit module launched from the Dark Sky Station for your launch pad.  Point it in the direction so that the recoil forces the Airship down.  The buoyancy of the Airship will force it to come back up.  You could also dampen the recoil a bit as described above.

The gas gun would have a smaller payload than what Hunter is talking about.  But the extra mass brings it back up to full size.  That's much too big again.  So, we pare down the size of the gas gun by making it less ambitious.  It will only go 1/2 orbital velocity.  A conventional rocket will take it to orbital velocity from there.

Still worried about the recoil.

Starship testing sub-components?

Jipped this NASASpaceflight update at this point, because it is interesting to me. A speculation pops up into my noggin. If SpaceX is testing a sub-component like this, could it mean that it could also become a stand-alone rocket in its own right? I'm thinking of an HLS variant here that could land astronauts on the moon. Just a thought. It's isn't worth an entire post, so it is going here, as opposed to the Space City Speculations blog.

Starship 12 failure analysis

8/2/26:

How did my "analysis" go? I didn't check the official report, so I won't comment there. Flight 13 did happen shortly afterward. There's still some engine problems, though. The re-light problem is for the real steely eyed rocket men. Not in my pay grade, which is zero anyhoo.

6/12/26:

Not claiming to be a steely-eyed rocket man here. However, I can always give my two-cents as to what happened that caused the failure of the booster to perform as intended on flight 12.

In my opinion, the whole problem boils down to timing. The rocket engines in the second stage have to light up just at the right time. These same rocket engines have to be gimbaled so that the engines are pointed at exactly the right angle at the same time. These same rocket engines have to hit the top of the booster at exactly the right place. All of this is a complicated maneuver that depends upon exactly correct timing. If anything happens at the wrong time or wrong place, the whole process will fail. I think that is exactly what happened.

It's not an engine problem, in other words.

It is probably easily corrected, in other words. We should see flight 13 within a few weeks.

Jun 10, 2026:

This video is from Alpha Tech. (Update: WTF??? How did WAI get in embedded in there?? Was that a mistake?! Something odd here...) It is probably a bit too long, or I'm too impatient. Take your pick!

In my opinion (which nobody asked for), I think it is obvious even to a non-steely-eyed rocket man that it couldn't have been SpaceX's intent to have its Starship's plume hit the grid fin of the booster! Therefore, the booster was out of its expected position.

If the booster is out of position, then obviously something went wrong with the hot staging. Everything else follows from this important fact.

You don't need a twenty plus minute video to explain that.

I don't want to be too critical ( even though I am anyway ), it is mostly an informative video.

Mining that 20 trillion dollar rock in space ( mining an asteroid part XXVIII)

7/27/26:

Much is made of Elon Musk's wealth, or any other rich person. But what is wealth but the relative lack of some good thing? If everything becomes abundant, then what would be wealth? Then, it would be hard to be envious when there is nothing good that is in short supply. Envy is an odd thing. It may matter more to the envious that you don't have a thing, than for the envious one to have it himself. Envious people seem more worried about people having things than in people not having things.

8/16/15:

Previous

One of the ideas I had was along the line indicated by the title of this post.

When I left off with that series, I came up with an idea of using an Iron Man suit for life support.  This suit would reduce the weight requirements, as the shielding would only cover the human body, which is much smaller than an entire spacecraft.  You could get pretty good shielding for relatively little weight.

Now, another idea popped up.  Instead of using a space sail, use a VASIMIR concept.  This would require a large solar array, which could be built like the solar sail mentioned in the series.  This would be much, much smaller in scope, however, and therefore, much easier to build.  You could build one that would capture up to 90% of the heat energy being lost, and then recycle it again and again in order to give a multiplier effect.

Let's say you can recycle 90% of the energy lost through heat.

After one pass through, you've got 90% left.  The second would have 90% of the 90%.  The third would have 90% of the 81%, and so on and so on.

So, and equation could be derived from this relation:

x+ .9x + .81x + .729x +  0.6561x + 0.59049x + 0.531441x +  0.4782969x + 0.43046721x+0.387420489x+0.3486784401x+0.31381059609x+0.282429536481x+0.2541865828329x+0.2287679245496x+0.205891132094649x+0.1853020188851841x+0.16677181699666569x+0.150094635296999121x+0.1350851717672992089x+0.12157665459056928801x+0.109418989131512359209x, which equal to approx 9 times.

Thats about 10 times x minus 1.  If y is the percentage amount remaining after one pass through, then, we obtain the generalized equation 1/y, where y is less than 1.  Thus, 1/.9 equals 9.

You would layer some thermoelectric devices around it and pass the coolant through enough layers to obtain the amount that would be recycled.  If the coolant is a gas, it would have to pass through several layers, grabbing off a piece at each layer.  If it were a molten-salt, it would grab off a piece, then shunt the liquid to the next layer to be utilized with the layered thermoelectric devices until the cooling down is complete.  You could have many, many layers.  In space, this may present difficulties as there is no gravity.  You could spin the device, and that would shunt the materials through each layer.

Therefore, with a solar electric array that generated 1 megawatt of power, you could multiply that by 9 in order to get 9 megawatts of power.  This could get a vehicle to Mars in a relatively short time.

But you could also get to that asteroid you are trying to mine.  Maybe you could start with Deimos.

Update:

A possible better idea for a thruster?  It is a continuation of this discussion on to the next post.  I wanted to link these together.

Flight 13 of Starship

Looks really good. The Starship itself did not blow up when it made a soft landing in the Indian Ocean off Australia. However, the booster looks like it came in a bit too hot.

One more test flight of the booster should get the rest of the issues corrected. The Ship got a good relight, so the next flight should see a once around for the ship, meaning an orbital flight is likely on the schedule.

Too early to say too much about the next flight, but things are getting pretty interesting.

Update a few hours later:

Thanks to this video, it can be seen what likely went wrong, but not necessarily why. A narrator said that 13 engines would fire up at the last part of the descent of the booster. That didn't happen. Instead, several engines did not fire up, with at least 4 that didn't relight at all. One relit, but went out immediately. That leaves about 8 that did relight and stay that way. This may explain why it came down too hard and too fast. One more thing:More engines went out right at the end.

Next day:Doesn't it seem to be in the same area of the booster which didn't light up on July 16th launch abort? 4 engines didn't light up on that day, and it looks like a couple of the same engines failed to light up on the final approach after launching on the 24th.

Angry Astronaut is still angry

Angry mentions this article, I believe. Don't recall seeing a link in the description, but the article reads a lot like what Angry is saying in his video. Angry fails to mention that it MIGHT be a software issue, which the SpaceDaily article mentions in its last few paragraphs. If it is software, then it will be ready for flight in weeks, not months. If it is hardware, it could be months.

The flip maneuver was rather aggressive. If the flight data shows that a less aggressive move may be successful, would that be good enough to satisfy a mishap investigation? There was another video ( not linked here ) that speculated that the flip maneuver was off a bit. The grid fin caught the wake of the upper stage, when it wasn't supposed to do that.

This may be a relatively easy fix.

As for the New Glenn mishap, yet another video said that the damage wasn't as bad as initially thought, and the pad could be repaired by the end of this year. Not good, but not as bad either.

It's okay to be critical, but Angry doesn't give out much new information here. I thought that some new info emerged, but this doesn't give much new information, and leaves out some other information that could be mitigating in terms of his critical commentary.

Don't like IPO now for SpaceX

It's probably premature to hold an IPO for SpaceX.

If he had a mature Starship launch system, then yes. Otherwise, no.

You don't have to have a profitable company to go public, so even though SpaceX may be bleeding cash to fund Starship development wouldn't be a barrier normally; the hostility towards Elon Musk may cause trouble down the line.

Lot harder to monkey-wrench his Starship if he keeps it private for now. I say wait until it's proven itself more.

Marcus House's weekly video

Discussion of the big explosion of the New Glenn rocket in Florida. More Starship news, and other space news.

As for the explosion, it would seem odd that Blue Origin would fuel up the upper stage for a static fire of the first stage. What purpose does it do to have fuel in the upper stage when it cannot be tested?

How does Blue Origin static fire test their upper stage anyway? SpaceX has a dedicated facility at Massey's that does that test. Does Blue Origin have something like that?

CSI Starbase Deep Dive

Here's another one of these deep dives. More than what you can possibly want to know about what only a nerd cares about.

This is like hitting a moving target

5/23/26

Back at home now. Updating as quickly as I can. Just now completed the upload of the launch itself, and posted it on Rumble. It is embedded on the Space City Speculations blog. (link on the side bar)
5/22/26

Bullseye! Not that it did me much good. Details over on the Version 3 blog. May be posting videos there, and some here. The Version 3 blog limits my videos to 50 MB. That's only a few seconds. I kept the videos short for that purpose, but which ones will be usable there is yet to be determined. All the others MAY be posted to Rumble and embedded here. That is, all those that may be worth posting. That may be ZERO. I think there ought to be at least a few.

5/18/26:

Another slip. Even more bad news coming soon. Weather is going to take a dump.



5/17/26:

And I am not an ace marksman. Not even close.

More locations being contemplated for Starship launches

The one is Lousiana is in a swamp. I had a delivery out there in that area once, and I thought I was going to get eaten alive by mosquitoes.

If he's going to launch people from point-to-point on the Earth, he'd better do something to upgrade the facility, know what I mean Vern?

Nearest towns to this location in Louisiana could be Lake Charles and Lafayette. Of course, the Big Easy isn't terribly far, but not close either.

Anti-matter, does it matter?

4/8/26:

Why make it if you can mine it instead?



12/21/24:

17:45:

It should be obvious that I am really enthusiastic about this concept. Indeed, it may be THE way to go for the Space program. If NASA wants a new direction, this could be it. But there's a danger here.

The danger is that the public may think that this is "too far out there". The danger is from a lack of understanding, in my opinion. To me, the reason this works is that it can give a return on the investment of the taxpayer's money. Other measures are too much in the nature of half-measures, and may well result in the abandonment of great enterprises like this one could be. Half-measures only result in another boondoggle that has to be supported by the taxpayer. But THIS could result in a new source of revenue for the government that puts the space program on a self-funding basis and then some.

The advantage to the use of anti-matter is that it overcomes a lot of the tyranny of the rocket equation. It ends the necessity of super large rockets and the needs for large amounts of fuel. A mere nanogram of the stuff can send you on your way to Mars. A couple of nanograms can put you into orbit. Yet another nanogram can send you into a landing entry. Three nano-grams is hardly anything compared to what could be gathered up on Saturn. Therefore a means of traversing that distance, and many other places, could be opened up.

In short, it could open up the solar system to development. The returns could be mind-boggling. All that is required is the will to do it. Does that will exist? We'll see. The future will depend upon it. No if and nor buts about it. It's go big or go home time.

10 AM:

The best plan for using this was suggested. That plan would be to pick up enough anti-matter for a visit to Saturn, and use Saturn to do more mining. That's because the refill rate for the anti-matter on Earth is too slow. Saturn has the richest deposits. No worries about getting to Saturn if you have this stuff, and no worries getting back. The difference is that you'll have more than enough for all kinds of missions if you do it that way. Otherwise, you'll be too limited. The length of the mission could be shortened because of the power of the anti-matter makes high delta-v missions feasible, hence you should want that, and Saturn is where you can get it.

12/20/24:

Before my computer decided to take a dump, I was checking out something about the Van Allen belts. The idea was to collect propellant from these belts, if feasible. It seems that there was a write up about that, and I was checking it out, then boom.

It seems that there's a possibility of retrieving anti-matter in the Van Allen belts. How interesting. Anyway, anti-matter propulsion is far more powerful than even nuclear power. It may be feasible to travel to the nearest star with this stuff. Just another possibility that might be opening up, ya'll.

Yes, it does matter.  Maybe a lot.

This would enable missions to Mars in 45 days. This study wasn't done by amateurs, ya'll.

Artemis II will launch soon

Barring the unforeseen. There is a bit of worry about this mission. The heat shield may not be up to snuff. The decision-making here may be flawed. I guess we'll see, eh?

No more Lunar Gateway

Not many tears will be shed over the "loss". It was a solution seeking a problem for it to solve. In other words, a boondoggle.

The new launch mount at Starbase. Part one of three???

At any time that I get the idea that it is taking a long time to get this system together, I just need to watch these deep-dives.

This isn't an easy job they're taking on.

Know what I mean, Vern?

Marcus House's Starship, et al -- Update 1/25/26

  Author: Marcus House

Description: "SpaceX is kicking off a massive new construction phase at Starbase, with clear signs of major site expansion now underway. "

This one will go into the database.

BTW, I rode out the ice storm, and none the worse for it.

Now for digging out of all this friggin' ice.

Hypersonic engines

Author: Sandboxx

Interesting. Could this be used in space? Higher specific impulse means more efficient engines for space travel, too.

1/23/26:

The next video is also a hyper-sonic vehicle design. It is from Hermeus, which was written up previously here.

This approach is not a new design like the above, but based upon existing technology, which is being adapted for extra high performance at hyper-sonic velocities.  This approach isn't likely adaptable to space vehicles, however.

Author: Navy Doc

Mini-Starship

 

  Bob Zubrin proposes a Mini-Starship, which could prove to be a better solution than what Elon Musk in now pursuing.

  It's very similar to what a lot of people are saying:

  Starship is too doggone big!   It's too doggone heavy!

  The tyranny of the rocket equation punishes this excessive mass, which will cause SpaceX to have to launch many times in order to go anywhere from low Earth orbit (LEO).

Starship Update, 1/13/26

 

Author: NASASpaceflight

Description: "Is SpaceX is closing in on Starship Flight 12 and the debut of Version 3?"

Comment:

  Too much talk, and not enough action. Sure, they are building things, but where's the launches?  It's been awhile already since Flight 11, and it will take some more time to launch 12.  Maybe in March???   Man, I thought they'd be ready back in December.

What Makes Starship's Water Deluge System So Unique??

 

CSI Starbase

Description: "Deep Dive Investigation will teach you the step by step process for building your own Starship Flame Trench"