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You are wrong. There is a spacecraft planned, its what goes on top of thebfr "Super Heavy"... Called "Starship":
In this CGI picture the launch vehicle "Super Heavy" is returning back to earth while the spacecraft "Starship" goes to an earth orbit to refuel with a similar shaped (but fuel only) vessel; to then carry on with its mission carrying people and cargo.
Here is the official site of their plans: https://www.spacex.com/mars
And here are more details of the spacecraft: http://spaceflight101.com/spx/its-spaceship/
You are wrong. There is a spacecraft planned, its what goes on top of the
In this CGI picture the launch vehicle "Super Heavy" is returning back to earth while the spacecraft "Starship" goes to an earth orbit to refuel with a similar shaped (but fuel only) vessel; to then carry on with its mission carrying people and cargo.
Here is the official site of their plans: https://www.spacex.com/mars
And here are more details of the spacecraft: http://spaceflight101.com/spx/its-spaceship/
Some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations tell me this will burn up on re entry 100% reliably.
I tried to post this but seem to have messed up a prior post.
Anyway the idea was to use stainless steel with water cooling the skin for the heat of re entry. But using numbers for the Space Shuttle, that would take the better part of 2000 kilotons of water.
Double that for a return from Mars or the Moon.
Maybe I'm not thinking about this clearly, but, when they use liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as fuel, the result coming out of the rocket engine is water... in vapor form, of course. My question is, why wouldn't a returning rocket be able to ride on a thin layer of water vapor?
If the rocket descended nose first until it almost reached the ground, why not spray a thin stream of water out of the tip of the nose? This water would be turned into "steam" immediately because of the friction. Then it would envelope the whole rocket as it slid by, taking up the extra heat, and sliding it past the falling rocket.
When the rocket neared the ground, thrusters would invert it so that it could land on its main engines... or whatever other way it was supposed to land.
Anyway, isn't that a saltshaker in the picture, above?
