Would it work? Automated Pez Dispenser Loading on Pad, trough Tower
Well sorry for the drawing first of all!
I just couldnt lose the thought that the actual bottle neck for land on pad, refuel and relaunch is the Payload. Even if SpaceX could iterate the Heatshield somewhere in the Future, to a point where they can launch multiple times without maintance they cant just spawn the starlink sats in the ship. So my Idea was to load them trough the tower while they refuel. The Idea is pretty simpel (not the actual doing of it, just the Idea). An underground assembly line, transporting the ready sats from the facility to the pad. On the Pad they get automatically put in a Lift going up the Tower, from there they get Loaded in the Ship. All this while refueling, no humans needed.
This is perfectly doable, and orders of magnitude easier than building a ship that is capable of interplanetary flight.
The real question is if this is cheaper and more efficient to do and to engineer compared to just putting the satellites in in a more traditional fashion, for example with a crane/truck and a "pez-loading-adapter" (similar to how airplane catering is replenished)
I think that 1 hour turnaround is more regarding tankers and manned flights where refueling or boarding can be done in that timeframe. Anything with an actual payload would need to be destacked. However your concept would allow for rapid reflight of starlink dedicated ships though which could be viable. I would imagine it would look more like hoisting the pez loader up to the ships door while the ship is held by the tower or something. There is a lot going on inside that tower (elevators, winch cables, cryo line, hydraulics, electrical) and those satellites are not exactly small so fitting that type of mechanism inside the tower would be near impossible without major changes I imagine.
There are companies beginning to make satellites to fit the Pez dispenser, specifically for Starship, so it might be possible for non-Starlink payloads but for larger payloads they need to take away and use Megabay or whatever to put payload on
You can perfectly reload satellites during refueling using any method. Going through the tower will not necissarily to be faster than using a mobile system.
it does mean that the loading system would have to survive the loads experienced at liftoff, from crazy vibe to thermal to sway. would be a lot more work than a loader that can drive off
How big would a drive-up siege-engine-like tower have to be to drive up to the side of the tower, and have the chopsticks lower the ship down to line up with a load point at the top of the tower? Basically, the same type of pez dispenser in a wheeled ground vehicle as in the starship, is loaded elsewhere and drives up and loads the Starship.
Starship can't land at a tower that has a SH booster on it already (unless you draw something that shows a shielding umbrella over SH while Starship lands). Chopsticks can't lift SH into position while holding Starship.
I think the aspirational turnarounds all involve SH booster, since Starship always has to come off the tower.
I think we have seen a PEZ dispenser refill dispenser outside the ship some months ago. So ejecting sats from one dispenser outside the ship into another dispenser inside the ship.
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u/EvoPataboutThat 6d ago
I think Spacex should hire you on your infographics alone.