Should they re-use Starship HLS
Re-using Starship HLS The case for: Starship Human Landing System (HLS) is going to be one of the most ambitious and complex spacecraft ever devised. Easily the largest thing ever sent to interplanetary space or the Moon by Man. The cost of Starship is hotly debated and I am not going to be able to answer it completely accurately here, but I can give a range. Starship HLS is going to be vastly more expensive than Starship and my numbers are going to be necessarily fuzzier. Starship itself uses 6 Raptor engines, widely reported to be about 1.5 million each (though the goal is to reach $250K), over 400 have already been made. That equals $9 million in engines. Starship is made from Stainless steel and 120 tons of 301 Stainless Steel come to about $1.30 per kg, we can guess that the hull and tanks cost about $200,000 in Steel, obviously the robots and labour add to the cost but I can only go by the material costs. Large Batteries, Electric and Hydraulic Actuators, wiring, Heat Shiel...