Elon Musk's Much Easier Way to Refuel Starship on the Moon!
Elon Musk's Much Easier Way to Refuel Starship on the Moon!
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Elon Musk's Much Easier Way to Refuel Starship on the Moon!
15 Starship tanker flights. That's the number SpaceX told NASA they needed just to fuel a single lunar mission — 15 launches, 15 dockings, 30 landings, and a success rate lower than a coin flip. That's exactly why NASA publicly tore this plan apart.
But that's the Version 3 plan. The moment SpaceX switches to Version 4 as the orbital tanker, everything changes. The refueling campaign becomes simpler, more reliable, and more likely to succeed than ever before. The critics who were loudest about this? They may have nothing left to say.
So why does Version 4 make all the difference?
But first — if you find this research valuable, take just a few seconds to subscribe to the channel. Thank you. Let's dive in.
The Refueling Dilemma
Elon Musk's Much Easier Way to Refuel Starship on the Moon!
Back in 1969, Saturn 5 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center with a total mass of nearly 3,000 tons. More than 2,700 tons of that was propellant. Everything else — the spacecraft, crew, and scientific equipment — accounted for only about 300 tons. Roughly 90% of the rocket's liftoff mass was fuel.
And yet, Saturn 5 still didn't have enough fuel to fly directly to the Moon and return in a single trip. It had to discard stages one by one — the S-IC burned out and separated, then the S-II, and finally the S-IVB carried Apollo into Earth orbit before performing the translunar injection burn toward the Moon. Three stages. Three separations. And after all that, Saturn V could send only 41 tons onto a trajectory toward the Moon — just 1.4% of its original launch mass.
That's simply the reality of physics. Escaping Earth's gravity burns an enormous amount of fuel — and by the time Starship reaches Low Earth Orbit, the tanks are nearly empty.
Yet the mission demands around 1,200 tons of methalox just to get HLS to the Moon, land, launch back off the surface, and rendezvous with Orion. There's no way to carry that from the ground in a single flight.
Elon Musk's Much Easier Way to Refuel Starship on the Moon!
So SpaceX's solution is to launch dedicated Starship Tankers into orbit, dock them with an orbital storage facility called a Depot, and gradually build up the fuel reserve before transferring it all to HLS.
Which brings us back to the critical question: how many tanker flights does that actually take?
According to the latest report from NASA's Office of Inspector General, SpaceX told NASA it plans to launch a Starship tanker every 8 days from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center to build up the fuel reserve. NASA estimates at least 15 tanker flights are needed to fully fuel a single lunar lander.
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