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Starship Has A Huge Fuelling Dilemma
Musk is all out of LOX.
You Americans have a habit of loving things that drink down fossil fuels faster than we Brits neck a cup of tea, and Starship is no exception to the rule. Thanks to its size, proposed gigantic payload capacity, and the need for its rockets to land both stages, Starship is one of the most fuel-hungry rockets ever devised, requiring thousands of tons of propellant per launch. For the occasional test launch, this fuel-guzzling nature isn’t a problem. But Starship needs to be entirely refuelled in LEO (Low Earth Orbit) by other Starships before it can make it to Mars or the Moon. So, for the Starship program to be used as intended, it needs to be launched roughly every other day (read more here). That is a much bigger challenge. So, where is SpaceX getting all this fuel from? And how can they ensure it flows to their launchpads fast enough? More importantly, is this even possible? Or will Starship suffer from a critical fuel bottleneck?
Let’s start at the beginning: how much fuel does Starship need?
Well, according to SpaceX, Starship takes 1,600 tons of propellant, and the Super Heavy Booster takes 3,650 tons, meaning it requires 5,250 tons of propellant to get a fully stacked Starship ready for launch. This propellant is made of two parts: the LOX (liquid oxygen) oxidiser and the methane fuel, in roughly a…
