>>11800995>Can they use CH4 without it depositing carbon in the plumbing? If so it wouldn't actually be very difficult (hypothetically) to convert Starship to use atomic engines. Simply exclude the center bulkhead, add a layer of neutron reflective shielding to the thrust plate and swap the engines.This would only be really good on a different sort of ship; because Starship is designed to be a second stage of a launch vehicle and to land propulsively. The problem with NTRs is that they have a worse TWR than chemical engines, and Starship is really fucking heavy already. They’re much more powerful than ion engines, so they’re perfectly workable for doing manned interplanetary burns, but much less capable of, say, entering orbit from Earth’s surface or landing propulsively. A way to work around this is to drag along a lander that uses less efficient chemical engines to do the grunt work of landing on the ground.
Starship with 380 ISP raptors and 150 ton payload
6314 delta/v
Enough to get to Mars and land
Starship with 600 isp NTR and 150 ton payload
9970 delta/v
Enough to get your ass to Mercury.
But, this would most likely be used to simply get more payload to Mars, so let’s check that out.
Starship with 600 isp NTR and a 500 ton payload
6336 delta/v enough to carry a fuckton of stuff to Mars, but the problem is that this Starship couldn’t land. It wouldn’t have enough thrust to do so
