If you don't plunge too deep, RCS will be sufficient to hold attitude, and the stainless surface is heat tolerant enough without additional protection. And for getting to LEO, you can do some limited aerobraking without control surfaces. If it needs repair, you could so so on orbit using EVAs or robotics.
For places with enough deltaV needed, it might make sense to do that with a very lightweight tanker that does not have reentry capability itself.įor refueling in LEO you would definitely use tankers with reentry capability, but since you need multiple launches to supply enough fuel for a tanker to the "far away" destination and accumulate it in LEO anyway, you might as well transfer it to a leaner vehicle for the actual trip. Regardless of whether there is a depot there for long term storage or if the tanker itself is the (temporary) depot, you need to get the fuel up there, and the tanker back to where it can pick up more fuel. They might also make sense for propellant tankers to far away places.Īssume you want to supply propellant to do refueling far away - in the asteroid belt, or at a Lagrange point, or in a near rectilinear halo orbit around a moon. This configuration makes sense for vehicles that will be used on routes to and from places with no atmosphere - such as the moon. There will definitely be Starships that have no heatshield and no re-entry hardware (at least if SpaceX wins the Artemis contract, they even have a mockup already) "Expendable" in this thread really is the wrong word, as it implies the vehicle will be thrown away after one use.
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