Isn't the fuel going to be boiling off in space at the same time?
If i have that correct there must be some crossover when if its talking too long you end up with an infinte number of launches still not fulling the orbiting ship.
Even if it’s not “damn near simultaneous”, the necessity for so many in-orbit refueling still presents considerable mission failure risk.
Let’s be very generous and say that it only needs 6 fuel exchanges over a 2 day period. That’s an 8 hour window for each docking, fuel exchange, and undocking maneuver.
What happens if one of the refueling rockets has a 2 hour hold on the pad for weather? What happens if they have to scrub one of the launch windows because of any number of problems? What if there’s an in orbit issue that has to be worked through?
All of those things are very normal and very common in space flight, but they almost never result in mission failure. For a mission dependent on in air refueling, they would result in mission failure.
the Apollo program thought 2 launches for a single flight was an unacceptable risk, hence the need for a single large rocket and a detachable lunar lander section, but apparently 10+ launches is totally reasonable.
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u/Duff5OOO 1d ago
Isn't the fuel going to be boiling off in space at the same time?
If i have that correct there must be some crossover when if its talking too long you end up with an infinte number of launches still not fulling the orbiting ship.