原作者Casey Handmer
This blog is a direct follow up of Starship Is Still Not Understood, and is part of the series on popular misconceptions in space journalism.
这个博客是《星际飞船仍未被理解》的直接跟进，是关于太空新闻中流行的误解系列的一部分。
I think it is relatively straightforward to think of cool things to do with SpaceX Starships, so recent posts have focused on trying to understand the more mixed consequences for incumbent industrial organizations that are not ideally positioned to exploit the coming advances. It is, however, a fun exercise to enumerate all the ways in which Starship and related technologies can help execute bold, ambitious missions of scientific discovery.
我认为，利用SpaceX的星际飞船想出一些很酷的事情是相对简单的，所以最近的帖子集中在试图理解现有工业组织的复杂后果，这些组织并没有理想的定位来利用未来的进步。然而，列举Starship和相关技术可以帮助执行大胆、雄心勃勃的科学发现任务的所有方式是一项有趣的练习。
While I no longer work for Caltech/JPL/NASA, as always this blog represents only my own opinions and should not be construed as official policy or even particularly heavy criticism. This is not a zero sum game, as there is a lot of upside here. Better technology can help everyone.
虽然我不再为加州理工学院/喷气推进实验室/美国宇航局工作，但一如往常，这个博客只代表我自己的观点，不应被视为官方政策，甚至是特别严厉的批评。这不是一个零和游戏，因为这里有很多好处。更好的技术可以帮助每个人。
Let’s ask a bunch of scientists and engineers and get a laundry list of possible missions to try with Starship. Many of these may not fully utilize the ultimate logistic capacity of the system, but that’s okay. We’re going to focus on how Starship can help specific examples, rather than continuing to harangue future mission designers that they should think in terms of X Starships per year, rather than X Starships per mission.
让我们询问一群科学家和工程师，并获得一份关于星际飞船可能尝试的任务清单。其中许多可能没有充分利用系统的最终物流能力，但这没关系。我们将专注于星际飞船如何帮助具体的例子，而不是继续喋喋不休地谈论未来的任务设计师，他们应该考虑每年X艘星际飞船，而不是每个任务X艘。
This blog is also particularly timely as the Astrophysics Decadal Survey was released earlier this month, embodying a series of brutally tough zero sum choices driven by cost disease and a rather meager budget. The decadal process is not perfect but it’s a lot better than the alternative. It represents an ongoing, deliberative process in which the relevant academic community (there is also a planetary science and earth science decadal) develops and presents a consensus around which to collect funding and advocacy strategies. There are missions, such as the Mars helicopter or Europa lander, which are not in the decadal, but they are very very rare.
这个博客也特别及时，因为本月早些时候发布的天体物理学十年调查，体现了一系列残酷而艰难的零和选择，由成本疾病和相当微薄的预算。十年制进程并不完美，但比另一种方式要好得多。它代表着一个持续的、审议的过程，在这个过程中，有关学术界(也有一个行星科学和地球科学十年)制定并提出了一个关于收集资金和宣传战略的共识。有些任务，比如火星直升机或欧罗巴着陆器，都不在十年之内，但它们非常非常罕见。
While I am not qualified to disagree with the specifics of any of their recommendations, all of which represent a treasure trove of potential new knowledge for humanity, the growing time frame involved cannot be ignored. Unable to cram major missions into even ten years, the most recent decadal instead spread the scope into the next next decade. When budgeting and process are considered, the new missions won’t start development for almost two more years, while the Luvoir/Habex hybrid telescope, a 6 m class space telescope mission to study a couple of dozen nearby Earth-like planets, will not launch before 2042 at the absolute earliest. It is wild to me that a process begun before my children were born may not bear fruit until they are completing their PhDs, if they choose to validate my career mistakes by repeating them. If the program is delayed at all, which is quite likely, postdoc astrophysicists reading the decadal this week may have already retired by the time it flies. We are quite literally running up against the limitations of human life expectancy.
虽然我没有资格对他们的任何建议的细节进行分解，所有这些建议都代表着人类潜在的新知识的宝库，但所涉及的日益增长的时间框架不容忽视。由于无法在十年内创建重大任务，最近的十年将范围扩展到下一个十年。让我感到疯狂的是，我的孩子们出生前的一个过程直到他们完成博士学位才会结出硕果，如果他们选择通过重复他们的博士来验证我的职业生涯的话。如果该计划完全推迟(这很有可能)，本周重新设置十年制的博士后天体物理学家可能在它飞行时已经被移除了，我们确实遇到了人类预期寿命的限制。
To summarize the logistical benefits of Starship, we are now within a few months of the first orbital test flight of a prototype fully reusable launch system. The timing and probability of ultimate success is uncertain but it is safe to say that SpaceX has assembled a competent team and adequate resources, and is acting like they intend to succeed.
总结一下星际飞船的后勤优势，我们现在离完全可重复使用的发射系统原型的首次轨道试飞只有几个月的时间了。最终成功的时间和概率尚不确定，但可以肯定的是，SpaceX已经组建了一支称职的团队和足够的资源，并表现出他们打算成功的样子。
While traditional rockets are typically expendable and can launch up to 5 T probes to deep space for a few hundred million dollars, Starship promises the ability to deliver ~100 T of cargo to any planetary surface in the solar system for as little as $50m including refilling tanker flights. Caveats abound, but the key features of the system are a reusable booster and orbital stage, a tanker refueling system to “reset” the upper stage in LEO or even higher orbits, and a heat shield/landing system able to burn off kinetic energy on worlds big enough to retain an atmosphere, or land propulsively on the smaller moons. Most importantly, Starship is designed to support rapid turnaround, so in principle science launches have access to a cheap, abundant launch system. With a design capacity of one million tonnes annually to LEO, there is ample capacity to support the dreams of a generation of scientists who would like to oversee a step change in our capacity to answer big questions. There is absolutely no benefit to developing missions for 2042 hamstrung by the launch constraints of 2002.
虽然传统火箭通常是消耗性的，可以向深空发射多达5吨的探测器，耗资数亿美元，但星际飞船承诺能够将约100吨的货物运送到太阳系的任何行星表面，只需5000万美元，包括加油加油机飞行。需要注意的是，该系统的关键特征是一个可重复使用的助推器和轨道级，一个油罐车加油系统，用于“重置”LEO或更高轨道的上层，以及一个隔热/着陆系统，能够在足够大的世界上燃烧动能，以保留大气层，或推进着陆在较小的卫星上。最重要的是，星际飞船的设计是为了支持快速周转，因此原则上科学发射可以获得廉价、充足的发射系统。LEO的设计能力为每年100万吨，有足够的能力支持一代科学家的梦想，他们希望监督我们回答重大问题的能力的一步改变。由于2002年的发射限制，为2042年制定任务是完全没有好处的。
One important caveat about cost. There is a difference between cost and price and it is highly likely that SpaceX will retain its hard-fought launch margins unless a competitor forces prices down, or a particular mission has strong alignment with SpaceX strategic objectives, such as building a Moon or Mars base. On the other hand, if a zero discount Starship launch is a significant line item in a new space telescope, this blog’s advocacy will have succeeded beyond its wildest dreams. How do we go about saturating it launch availability? How can we innovate around instrument development to bring their costs in line with coming reductions in launch cost?
关于成本，有一个重要的警告。成本和价格之间存在差异，SpaceX极有可能保持其艰难的发射利润率，除非竞争对手迫使其降低价格，或者特定任务与SpaceX的战略目标(如建立月球或火星基地)有很强的一致性。另一方面，如果零折扣星际飞船发射是新太空望远镜的一个重要项目，那么这个博客的倡导将取得超乎想象的成功。我们如何着手让它的发射可用性饱和呢？我们如何围绕仪器开发进行创新，使其成本与即将到来的发射成本降低保持一致？
For the following list of mission concepts I will provide a summary of the current state of the art and then describe possible future improvements enabled by Starship.
对于下面的任务概念列表，我将提供当前技术水平的总结，然后描述星际飞船未来可能实现的改进。
Space Telescopes
As of this writing, the James Webb Space Telescope is achingly close to launch. Begun in 1996 for a planned launch date of 2007 and cost of $500m, actual construction was completed in 2016 before five years of testing for a total cost approaching $9b. Part of the reason for the absurd complexity and expense, beyond routine contractor profiteering and questionable program management, is that the 6.5 m diameter segmented gold-coated beryllium mirror must be folded up to fit into the relatively capacious payload fairing of the Ariane 5 rocket. It is telling that the Ariane 5’s entire launch career began in 2003 and JWST will be its 112th launch! As the JWST program rolled on eating everything in sight, subsequent mission new starts were delayed and delayed again, and subsequent mission plans have assimilated this trauma not by aggressively finding ways to recover our historical ability to deliver cool new stuff quickly and cheaply, but by fiddling with spreadsheet parameters to once again lower expectations for future project delivery competence.
太空望远镜
在写这篇文章的时候，詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜已经非常接近发射了。始建于1996年，计划发射日期为2007年，耗资5亿美元，实际建设于2016年完成，随后进行了5年的测试，总成本接近90亿美元。除了常规承包商的暴利和有问题的项目管理之外，荒谬的复杂性和费用的部分原因是，直径6.5米的分段镀金铍镜必须折叠起来，才能适应阿丽亚娜5号火箭相对宽敞的有效载荷整流罩。很能说明问题的是，阿丽亚娜5的整个发射生涯始于2003年，JWST将是它的第112次发射！当JWST计划继续吞噬眼前的一切时，随后的任务新开始一次又一次地被推迟，后续的任务计划吸收了这种创伤，不是通过积极地寻找方法来恢复我们过去快速而廉价地交付酷新东西的能力，而是通过摆弄电子表格参数来再次降低对未来项目交付能力的期望。
Starship can’t magically generate engineers and processes that can deliver a cheaper space telescope, but it can provide a launch system that a) greatly reduces mass and volume constraints and b) reduces the potential cost for operating a serial space telescope construction and launch program, whereby design improvements and learnings can be rolled in continuously.
星际飞船不能神奇地培养出能够提供更便宜太空望远镜的工程师和工艺，但它可以提供一种发射系统，它可以a)极大地减少质量和体积限制，b)降低运行系列太空望远镜建造和发射计划的潜在成本，从而使设计改进和学习可以持续进行。
The first class of things Starship can do really well is launch lots of stuff. This can enable the development of a standard telescope bus, similar to those used by surveillance satellites, to which custom instruments can be added. Other possibilities that require no custom launch vehicle engineering include orbital neutrino detectors, particle accelerators, or gravitational wave observatories.
星际飞船能做的第一件事就是发射很多东西。这可以使标准望远镜总线的开发成为可能，类似于监视卫星使用的总线，可以添加定制仪器。其他不需要定制运载火箭工程的可能性包括轨道中微子探测器、粒子加速器或引力波观测站。
Another possibility is to support monolithic telescope design that doesn’t require a 400 step sequence to unfold. For a relatively trivial fraction of the overall telescope budget, non-recurring engineering costs could weld together an expendable Starship variant (no TPS, no flaps, no landing legs) with a 15 meter diameter payload fairing. Almost overnight, endless gnashing of teeth about the relative mirror diameters of Luvoir or Habex, or the relative difficulty of performing coronography with a segmented, non circular mirror, go away.
另一种可能性是支持不需要400步序列即可展开的单片望远镜设计。在望远镜总预算中相对微不足道的一部分，非经常性的工程成本可以用直径15米的有效载荷整流罩来焊接一个消耗型星际飞船(没有TPS，没有襟翼，没有着陆腿)。几乎一夜之间，没完没了地咬牙切齿地抱怨卢伏娃或哈贝克斯的相对镜片直径，或者用分段的非圆形镜片进行冠脉造影术的相对困难，就不复存在了。
Starship MegaChomper would also be useful for one-off deliveries of other large space hardware to remote locations, including space station parts, light sails, or anything else that accrues substantial cost/schedule overhead to endure folding or modularization. Imagine the size of the starshade that could be fit into that thing!
星际飞船MegaChomper还适用于向偏远地区一次性交付其他大型空间硬件，包括空间站部件、光帆或任何其他承受折叠或模块化而增加大量成本/进度开销的东西。想象一下可以放进那玩意儿的星影有多大！
Starship with 15 m fairing.
Probably the coolest telescope concept enabled by Starship, though, is the giant segmented telescope to end all giant segmented telescopes. An unmodified Starship can deliver perhaps a dozen 8 m monolithic hexagonal free-flying segments per launch to a target location such as L2, where they self assemble, calibrate, and then focus incoming light. Over a few dozen Starship flights, a truly enormous spherical mirror section >600 m in diameter and with a focal length of 20 km or so can be assembled behind a free-flying sun shade, pointed in a direction of general interest. In principle this mirror could be made almost arbitrarily large with quadratic marginal cost. Dozens of specialty instruments can then be launched to operate at target-specific foci, operating in an off-axis modality by default. Depending on choices about geometry, a single mirror could address O(10 degrees) of the sky at any one time. In the most extreme case a series of mirrors, possibly in a dodecahedral configuration, could enable simultaneous examination of the entire sky limited only by the number of secondary instruments.
15米整流罩的星际飞船
然而，星际飞船带来的最酷的望远镜概念可能是巨型分段式望远镜，它将终结所有巨型分段式望远镜。一艘未经改装的星际飞船每次发射大约可以发射12个8米长的整体式六边形自由飞行段到目标位置，如L2，它们在那里自组装、校准，然后聚焦传入的光。经过几十次的星际飞船飞行，一个直径600米、焦距约20公里的巨大球面镜面可以组装在一个自由飞行的遮阳板后面，指向一个普遍感兴趣的方向。原则上，这面镜子可以用二次边际成本制作成几乎任意大小。然后，可以启动数十个特殊仪器，在目标特定焦点下操作，默认情况下以离轴模式操作。根据对几何体的选择，一面镜子在任何时候都可以定位天空的O度(10度)。在最极端的情况下，一系列的镜子，可能是十二面体的配置，可以同时检查整个天空，只受二级仪器数量的限制。
Multiple independent free flying secondary optics and instruments (gray boxes) can observe numerous exoplanets or other astrophysical targets simultaneously with off-axis targeting.
多个独立自由飞行的次级光学和仪器(灰盒)可以在离轴瞄准的情况下同时观测众多系外行星或其他天体物理目标。
Light sails
There are two less impractical approaches for terraforming Mars, both focused on increasing net heat retention in the atmosphere. The first is generation of powerful per-fluoro carbon greenhouse gases in giant factories on the surface. The second is mass producing light sails on Earth, launching them into LEO, then flying them to Mars where they can lurk near Mars-Sun L2 and reflect light back at the planet, reducing heat loss during the Martian night. In principle these can be any size but last time I did a trade study it supported mass production of sails ~30 m in diameter each weighing 1 kg with a cell phone based guidance computer and LCD panels for steering and trim. Each Starship could launch 100,000 of these, with a combined area of almost 100 km^2. Flying as an enormous autonomous flotilla they would reach Mars in less than a year and adopt a station magnifying the sun on the far side of the planet. Mere dozens of such Starship launches would be needed to substantially increase net insolation on Mars and begin raising the temperature, without the emplacement of any surface infrastructure.
轻帆
有两种不太实际的火星地形形成方法，这两种方法都侧重于增加大气中的净热量保持。第一个是在地表的巨型工厂中产生强大的全氟碳温室气体。第二种是在地球上大量生产光帆，将它们发射到狮子座，然后将它们飞到火星上，在那里它们可以潜伏在火星-太阳L2附近，并将光线反射回地球，减少火星夜间的热量损失。原则上，这些帆可以是任何大小的，但上次我做了一次贸易研究，它支持批量生产直径约30米、重1公斤的帆，并配备基于手机的导航计算机和用于操纵和调整的LCD面板。每艘星际飞船可以发射10万艘这样的飞船，总面积近100千米2。作为一个巨大的自主舰队飞行，它们将在不到一年的时间里到达火星，并在地球的另一边采用一个放大太阳的空间站。只需要几十次这样的星际飞船发射，就可以大幅增加火星上的净日照，并开始提高温度，而不需要部署任何表面基础设施。
Interstellar objects
As of November 2021 there are two known interstellar objects discovered transiting our solar system. It is within our capabilities to build a generic exploration probe, the challenge is launching it quickly and fast enough to catch up with the next candidate so we can get a decent close up look. To be perfectly frank, there are concepts in study right now that don’t even need a Starship, just a steady cadence of probes launched to highly energetic Earth orbits where they can wait for activation, and upon retirement after a few years, be directed to some candidate near Earth asteroid instead. Starship simply enables mass production and launch of these probes, along with improved propellant margins and reduced mass constraints. Why not launch 50 every six months, chase down ‘Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, and get eyes on every major asteroid inside the orbit of Mars? It would not be cheap but I know dozens of astronomers who would donate half their meager salaries in perpetuity so they didn’t have to endure That Guy dragging Jill Tarter and insisting that it was an alien artifact, ever again.
星际天体
截至2021年11月，已发现两个已知的星际天体过境太阳系。我们有能力建造一个通用的探测探测器，挑战是发射它的速度足够快，足以赶上下一个候选者，这样我们就可以得到一个像样的近距离观察。非常坦率地说，现在有一些概念正在研究中，甚至不需要星际飞船，只需要一系列稳定的探测器发射到高能量的地球轨道上，在那里它们可以等待激活，几年后退休后，就会被定向到靠近地球的某个候选小行星上。“星际飞船”只是实现了这些探测器的批量生产和发射，同时提高了推进剂的利润率，减少了质量限制。为什么不每六个月发射50颗，追赶欧穆阿穆瓦和2i/鲍里索夫，观察火星轨道内的每一颗主要小行星呢？这并不便宜，但我认识几十个天文学家，他们愿意把微薄工资的一半永久捐献出来，这样他们就再也不用忍受那个家伙拖着吉尔·塔特，坚称它是外星人的文物了，再也不用了。
Bombard All The Planets
While we’re talking about mass production of generic probes to chase down fast-moving interstellar visitors, it’s a great time to revisit the old concept of “Bombard All The Planets”. Since the end of the Mariner program, robotic planetary exploration has generally consisted of expensive, laboriously constructed once-in-a-lifetime one-offs to Jupiter, Saturn, or Pluto. All planets have launch windows but most of them have a launch window at least once per Earth year.
轰炸所有的行星
当我们谈论大规模生产通用探测器以追逐快速移动的星际游客的时候，现在是重温“轰炸所有行星”的旧概念的好时机了。自从水手计划结束以来，机器人行星探索通常包括昂贵的、费力建造的、一生只有一次的木星、土星或冥王星探测。所有行星都有发射窗口，但大多数行星每年至少有一次发射窗口。
Below is a plot I made in a fit of enthusiasm a few years ago showing all the launch windows to all the planets between 2000 and 2037, focused on the Falcon Heavy. As you can see, barely any launch windows (the colored blobs) have missions in them – what a waste!
下面是我几年前在一阵狂热中绘制的一张图，显示了2000年至2037年间所有行星的所有发射窗口，重点是猎鹰重型飞船(Falcon Heavy)。正如你所看到的，几乎没有一个发射窗口(彩色斑点)在其中有任务--真是浪费！
Pork chop plot showing all launch windows until 2037.猪排图显示2037年前的所有发射窗口
A fully fueled Starship in LEO requires about 10 launches at a cost of perhaps $50m-$100m. Unlike Falcon Heavy, whose capacity for direct launch to Pluto is pretty meager, a Starship could deliver a flyby mission weighing 100 T to any of the outer planets or moons in less than 10 years. With refueling at higher energy Earth orbits and some creative use of flybys and/or aerobraking, a Starship could deliver >10 T to the surface of any of the outer planet moons with less than a decade of flight time. Starship could deliver 100 T payloads to the surface of Venus or Mars, and even Mercury could get substantial landers and rovers. In short, Starship offers an affordable conveyor belt for essentially anything mission designers can dream up and build. For substantially less than current annual SLS development cost, a planetary science-focused Starship launch program could send a fully loaded Starship to every planet at least once per year, except for Mars whose launch windows are less frequent, but which benefits from Starship baseline design and will probably enjoy its own dedicated program.
在狮子座，一艘充满燃料的星际飞船需要大约10次发射，成本可能在5000万至1亿美元之间。与猎鹰重型(Falcon Heavy)不同的是，猎鹰重型直接发射冥王星的能力相当有限，而星际飞船可以在不到10年的时间里向任何外行星或卫星发射一次重达100吨的飞越任务。通过在更高能量的地球轨道上加油，并创造性地利用飞行和/或空中拦截，星际飞船可以在不到10年的飞行时间内将10T；10T；运送到任何外行星卫星的表面。星际飞船可以向金星或火星表面运送100吨的有效载荷，甚至水星也可以获得大量的着陆器和漫游车。简而言之，星际飞船提供了一条负担得起的传送带，基本上可以满足任务设计者的梦想和建造。以比当前年度SLS开发成本低得多的成本，一个专注于行星科学的星际飞船发射计划可以每年至少向每个星球发送一次满载的星际飞船，除了火星，火星的发射窗口不那么频繁，但它受益于星际飞船的基线设计，可能会享受自己的专门计划。
Why shouldn’t we have a dedicated orbiter, lander, rover, helicopter, and submarine on every discrete body in the solar system over, say, 100 km in diameter? Let’s build a fleet of clockwork automatons for Venus and an armada of submarines for Europa, Enceladus, and Titan. Let’s darken the Martian skies with helicopters. Let’s drive rovers across the frozen nitrogen plains of Pluto.
为什么我们不应该在太阳系中每个直径超过100公里的离散天体上配备专用的轨道器、着陆器、月球车、直升机和潜艇呢？让我们为金星建造一支发条机器人舰队，为欧罗巴、土卫二和泰坦建造一支潜艇舰队。让我们用直升机把火星的天空变暗吧。让我们驾驶火星车穿越冥王星冰冻的氮气平原。
这是太阳系中所有的固体表面。我们必须移动它。This is all the solid surface in the solar system. We must ROVE it.
Of course this couldn’t be done if every probe cost $1b to build. But I hold in my hand a cell phone that can wirelessly download the entire content of a large library in less than a second almost anywhere on Earth, that exceeds the computational power of the best super computer in the year 2000, that cost me less than $1000 to buy and which was not even the most highly rated smart phone in its year. It is within our capacity as a species to exploit the relaxed design constraints enabled by Starship and build a few thousand tonnes of generic space probe each year for a more reasonable price. Failure is acceptable, because new probes, instruments, and launches are continually rolling off the assembly line at a predictable and rapid pace. PIs need no longer fear that any failure will spell doom until their children are retired.
当然，如果每个探测器的建造成本为10亿美元，这是做不到的。但我手里拿着一部手机，它可以在不到一秒的时间内无线下载一个大型图书馆的全部内容，几乎可以在地球上的任何地方下载，它的计算能力超过了2000年最好的超级计算机，当时我花了不到1000美元购买，它甚至不是当年评级最高的智能手机。作为一个物种，我们有能力利用星际飞船带来的宽松的设计约束，每年以更合理的价格建造几千吨的通用太空探测器。失败是可以接受的，因为新的探测器、仪器和发射不断地以可预测的、快速的速度从装配线上滚下。PI不再需要担心任何失败都会带来厄运，直到他们的孩子退休。
We have not visited Venus, Uranus, or Neptune since before 1990. Our solar system is a precious gift containing 8 whole planets and hundreds of moons. We have had the capacity to explore it for decades and yet it remains largely ignored. Maybe we should have evolved in a solar system with only one planet and no moons?
自1990年以前，我们就没有去过金星、天王星或海王星。我们的太阳系是一份珍贵的礼物，包含8个完整的行星和数百个卫星。几十年来，我们一直有能力探索它，但它在很大程度上仍然被忽视。也许我们应该在一个只有一颗行星而没有卫星的太阳系中进化？
Tourism
Robotic exploration and giant telescopes are great, but the future of space also has humans in it. Let’s talk about how Starship changes the game for human exploration. I cannot be accused of having never touched this subject before. In particular, exploiting Starship now seems to be the only way to save the Artemis program, and the NASA OIG seems to agree. But what about after Artemis? Where can humans live in space?
旅游
机器人探索和巨型望远镜是伟大的，但太空的未来也有人类参与。让我们来谈谈星际飞船如何改变人类探索的游戏。我不能被指责以前从未触及过这个话题。特别是，开发星际飞船现在似乎是拯救阿耳特弥斯计划的唯一途径，美国国家航空航天局OIG似乎也同意这一点。但在阿耳特弥斯之后呢？人类在太空中可以住在哪里？
Starship itself can serve as a human habitat in LEO, GEO, L5, Lunar orbit, the Lunar surface, deep space, Mars, or an asteroid. Additionally, Starship could be used to launch custom-designed modules to build stations at any of these places. Starship alone has about 1000 m^3 of internal volume, which is nearly double that of the ISS. Repurposing empty fuel and oxygen tanks more than doubles that volume. Starship’s welded stainless steel construction reduces the cost and complexity of modifications, particularly ones that do not affect structural performance. Starship could launch a space station for so little money that it’s possible they could be cheap enough to be supported by non government industrial, commercial, and tourist users.
星际飞船本身可以作为人类在LEO、GEO、L5、月球轨道、月球表面、深空、火星或小行星上的栖息地。此外，星际飞船可以用来发射定制设计的模块，以便在这些地方建造空间站。仅“星际飞船”一项的内部体积就约为1000立方米，几乎是国际空间站的两倍。重新调整空燃料箱和氧气罐的用途使其体积增加了一倍多。Starship的焊接不锈钢结构降低了改装的成本和复杂性，特别是那些不影响结构性能的改装。星际飞船只需很少的钱就可以发射一个空间站，以至于它们可能足够便宜，可以得到非政府的工业、商业和旅游用户的支持。
At the extreme, a Starship upper stage could be modified to form a wedge-shaped segment with a removable nose cone, then docked together to form a giant rotating wheel with artificial gravity.在极端情况下，星际飞船的上级可以被改造成一个带有可拆卸鼻锥的楔形部分，然后对接在一起，形成一个具有人造重力的巨大旋转轮子。
32段环形站由可对接的改进型星际飞船筒体组成。
Asteroids
Speaking of asteroids, why not use Starship to improve our study of asteroids? OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2 are cool, but what if we could travel with 100 T of instruments, or a bunch of people, to a nearby asteroid for a while, then return to Earth. Forget ARM. Send Starship Chomper out to a nearby asteroid, take a big bite, then fly it right back to the cape.
小行星
说到小行星，为什么不利用星际飞船来改进我们对小行星的研究呢？Osiris-Rex和Hayabusa2很酷，但如果我们可以带着100吨的仪器或一群人去附近的小行星旅行一段时间，然后返回地球，会怎么样呢？忘了手臂吧。把星际飞船Chomper送到附近的小行星上，咬一大口，然后把它直接飞回海角。
Asteroid mining probably won’t pay, at least for Earth markets, but Starship can make conducting study and assay affordable by speculative explorers. No need for further hypotheticals about platinum asteroids. Send a Starship to the 10 most likely candidates, fly 100 T of each back to Earth, see what’s there.
小行星开采可能不会有回报，至少对地球市场是这样，但星际飞船可以让投机性的探险家负担得起进行研究和化验的费用。没有必要对铂金小行星做进一步的假设。派一艘星际飞船给10个最有可能的候选者，每个人飞回地球100吨，看看那里有什么。
While we’re sending Starships to every nearby asteroid in sight, we can also begin preventative study of all potential Earth impacting NEOs while we still have time. Precise tracking, surface study, even emplacement of contingency systems for redirection. All affordable, if we can work out how to make more than one of any given spacecraft.
当我们向视线范围内的每一颗附近的小行星发送星际飞船的同时，我们还可以在我们还有时间的时候开始对所有潜在的地球影响近地天体进行预防性研究。精确跟踪，表面研究，甚至部署应急系统进行重定向。如果我们能弄清楚如何制造多个给定的航天器，所有这些都是负担得起的。
Finally, I’ve always wanted to know if there are actually any vulcanoids, or small asteroids occupying a gravitationally stable region between Mercury and the sun. Let’s send a Starship down inside Mercury’s orbit with a big camera and find out.
最后，我一直想知道在水星和太阳之间是否真的有火山小行星，或者是占据引力稳定区域的小行星。让我们用一台大相机把一艘星际飞船送到水星的轨道上，然后找出答案。
Large scale planetary bases
Building Starship-based space stations is one thing, but Starship can also help construction of real bases on the Moon or Mars. No more decades of hand wringing over closing design trades on a $10b Moon “base” the size of a school bus. Starship is designed to enable “drag and drop” logistics. They can deliver so much stuff just unloading them at the destination could prove a major bottleneck.
大型行星基地
建立基于星际飞船的空间站是一回事，但星际飞船也可以帮助在月球或火星上建立真正的基地。再也不用为关闭价值100亿美元的校车大小的月球“基地”设计交易而苦恼了几十年。“星际飞船”旨在实现“拖放”物流。他们可以运送如此多的东西，仅仅是在目的地卸货就可能被证明是一个主要的瓶颈。
There are a few dozen scientific research stations in Antarctica, mostly populated by scientists and mountaineers who actually, believe it or not, voluntarily want to be there. Surrounded by a thousand miles of frozen ice, jagged mountains, and millions upon millions of psychotically famished penguins with very sharp beaks. The largest of these stations is McMurdo Station, which houses up to 1500 people during the summer and is typically supplied by ship. Imagine a base of 1500 people on the rim of Shackleton Crater on the Moon. With a per-person mass overhead of 10 T, such a base would require only 150 Starship landings over perhaps five years to construct. Indeed, much of the base could simply be Starships with Whipple shields instead of TPS, pre-fabricated with the essential elements to support human operations. Let’s not overthink this. The Starship is a self-landing pressurized structure with >2000 cubic meters of internal volume.
南极洲有几十个科学考察站，大部分是科学家和登山者，信不信由你，他们实际上是自愿想去那里的。周围是一千英里的冰冻，参差不齐的山脉，以及数以百万计的精神饥饿的企鹅，它们的喙非常锋利。其中最大的车站是麦克默多车站(McMurdo Station)，夏季可容纳1500人，通常由轮船供应。想象一下，月球上沙克尔顿陨石坑边缘有1500人的基地。由于人均质量开销为10T，这样的基地可能只需要在五年内进行150次星际飞船着陆。事实上，该基地的大部分可能只是带有惠普尔盾牌的星际飞船，而不是TPS，预制了支持人类行动的基本要素。我们不要想太多了。星际飞船是一种自着陆增压结构，内部容积为2000立方米。
Other In-Space Infrastructure
Starship can also be used to launch systems previously impossible due to launch cadence, mass, and volume constraints. I’m somewhat dubious about some of these applications but orbital tugs, fuel depots, space based solar power, and nuclear thermal rockets are all orders of magnitude less difficult in a world with Starship than one without.
其他空间基础设施
星际飞船也可以用来发射以前由于发射节奏、质量和体积的限制而不可能发射的系统。我对其中的一些应用有些怀疑，但轨道拖轮、燃料库、天基太阳能和核热火箭在有星际飞船的世界里都比没有星际飞船的世界要容易得多。
Starlink（星链）
Starlink isn’t strictly Starship logistical capacity, though it is enabled by it. Starlink is SpaceX’s orbital high speed internet megaconstellation. Every day I wake up and struggle to believe that this thing is actually real, and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. We live in the future.
星际链接并不是严格意义上的星际飞船后勤能力，尽管它是由它启用的。StarLink是SpaceX的轨道高速互联网巨型星座。每天醒来，我都很难相信这件事是真的，我亲眼所见。我们生活在未来。
This section is concerned with potential applications for the Starlink constellation that have not been possible in the past with single satellite missions.
这一部分涉及星链星座的潜在应用，这些应用在过去的单卫星任务中是不可能的。
Starlink will ultimately be a network of tens of thousands of satellites connecting to hundreds of millions of user terminals located all over the Earth. Its radio encoding scheme adapts the signal rate to measured atmospheric opacity along the signal line of sight across 10 different frequency bands in real time. Collectively, the system measures trillions of baselines of Earth’s entire atmosphere every day. This data, fed into standard tomography algorithms such as those used by medical CT imagers, can resolve essentially all weather structure in the atmosphere. No more careful scrutiny of remote weather station pressure gauge measurements. No more reliance on single mission oxygen emission line broadening. Instead, complete real time resolution of the present state of the entire atmosphere, a gift for weather prediction and climate study.
StarLink最终将是一个由数万颗卫星组成的网络，连接着遍布地球各地的数亿个用户终端。它的无线电编码方案实时调整信号速率，以适应沿信号视线跨越10个不同频段测量的大气不透明度。总体而言，该系统每天测量数万亿条地球整个大气层的基线。这些数据被输入标准的断层成像算法，例如医用CT成像仪使用的算法，基本上可以解析大气中的所有天气结构。不再仔细检查偏远气象站的压力计测量结果。不再依赖于单任务氧气发射线的加宽。取而代之的是，对整个大气的现状进行完整的实时解析，这是天气预报和气候研究的礼物。
Starlink satellites are equipped with perhaps the most versatile software defined radios ever put into mass production. Each antenna allows the formation of multiple beams at multiple frequencies in both send and receive. With sufficiently accurate position, navigation and timing (PNT) data from GPS satellites, Starlink satellites could perform fully 3D synthetic aperture radar (SAR) of the Earth’s surface, with enough bandwidth to downlink this treasure trove of data. Precise ocean height measurements. Precise land height measurements. Surface reflectivity. Crop health and hydration. Seismology and accumulation of strain across faults. City surveying. Traffic measurements in real time. Aircraft tracking for air traffic control. Wildlife study. Ocean surface wind measurements. Search and rescue. Capella has produced extraordinary radar images with a single satellite. Now imagine the resolving power with birds from horizon to horizon.
StarLink卫星可能配备了有史以来投入批量生产的最多功能的软件定义无线电。每个天线允许在发送和接收中在多个频率上形成多个波束。有了来自GPS卫星的足够精确的位置、导航和定时(PNT)数据，Starlink卫星就可以执行地球表面的全3D合成孔径雷达(SAR)，并有足够的带宽来下行这一数据宝库。精确的海平面测量。精确的陆地高度测量。曲面反射率。作物健康和水分。地震学和跨断层应变的积累。城市测量学。实时流量测量。用于空中交通管制的飞机跟踪。野生动物研究。海洋表面风的测量。搜救。卡佩拉已经用一颗卫星产生了非凡的雷达图像。现在想象一下鸟儿从地平线到地平线的分辨率。
Starlink SAR is great for Earth observation, but the same principle can be applied looking outwards. Starlink is a network of thousands of software defined radios with highly precise PNT information and high speed data connections. It is practically begging to be integrated into a world-sized radio telescope. With 13000 km of baseline (trivially extendable with a handful of GTO Starlink launches) and the ability to point in any desired direction simultaneously, Starlink could capture practically holographic levels of detail about the local radio environment. Literally orders of magnitude better resolution than ground-based antennas like the Very Large Array. Cheaper than repairing Arecibo and independent of Earth’s rotation. Potentially capable of resolving exoplanets.
StarLink SAR在对地观测方面很棒，但向外看也可以应用同样的原理。StarLink是一个由数千个软件定义的无线电组成的网络，具有高精度的PNT信息和高速数据连接。它实际上是在乞求被集成到一个世界大小的射电望远镜中。有了13000公里的基线(通过几次GTO Starlink发射几乎可以扩展)，以及同时指向任何所需方向的能力，Starlink可以捕捉到关于当地无线电环境的几乎全息级别的细节。从字面上讲，它的分辨率比超大型阵列等地面天线高出几个数量级。比修复阿雷西博便宜，而且不受地球自转的影响。有可能分辨出系外行星。
There’s no reason to do only passive radio astronomy. Starlink can exploit its exceptional resolving power and onboard amplifiers to perform active planetary radar, for examination of close-flying asteroids and transmission of radio signals to distant missions in support of the Deep Space Network. As of November 2021, all Starlink satellites are flying with lasercoms so in principle the DSN application could also support laser, as well as radio, communication with distant probes. No need to build even larger dishes than the 70 m monsters. The potential to greatly increase our data rates from distant probes.
没有理由只做被动射电天文学。StarLink可以利用其非凡的分辨率和机载放大器来执行有源行星雷达，用于检查近距离飞行的小行星，并将无线电信号传输到遥远的任务，以支持深空网络。截至2021年11月，所有的Starlink卫星都使用激光通信，因此原则上DSN应用程序也可以支持与远程探测器的激光和无线电通信。没有必要建造比7000万只怪物更大的盘子。极大地提高我们来自远距离探测器的数据速率的潜力。
And while Starlink can derive PNT from the GPS constellation, it need not depend on it forever. High capacity radio encoding schemes such as QAM4092 and the 5G standard contain zero-epoch synchronization data, meaning that any radio capable of receiving Starlink handshake signals is able to obtain approximate pseudorange information. What Starlink’s onboard clocks may lack in atomic clock-enabled nanosecond stability, they make up in sheer quantity of connections and publicly available information about their orbital ephemerides. Already a group from OSU has demonstrated <10 m accuracy, while a group based at UT Austin is developing a related method for robust PNT estimation using Starlink hardware. It seems likely to me that Starlink could support global navigation with few to no software changes and no hardware changes, improving the resilience of satellite navigation especially in a case where the relatively small GPS constellation is disabled. I won’t go into vast detail, but GNSS signals are not only used for pizza delivery, but also support a vast array of Earth science objectives, including the monitoring of tectonic drift.
虽然Starlink可以从GPS星座获得PNT，但它不需要永远依赖它。诸如QAM4092和5G标准的高容量无线电编码方案包含零历元同步数据，这意味着任何能够接收星链握手信号的无线电都能够获得近似伪距信息。Starlink的星载时钟在原子钟启用的纳秒稳定性方面可能缺乏什么，它们弥补了大量的连接和关于其轨道星历的公开信息。俄亥俄州立大学的一个小组已经证明了<；10米的精确度，而德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的一个小组正在开发一种使用Starlink硬件进行稳健PNT估计的相关方法。在我看来，Starlink似乎可以支持全球导航，几乎不需要软件更改，也不需要硬件更改，从而提高卫星导航的弹性，特别是在相对较小的GPS星座被禁用的情况下。我不想说太多细节，但GNSS信号不仅用于送披萨，还支持一系列地球科学目标，包括监测构造漂移。
Starlink has received its fair share of criticism, drawn perhaps by its overwhelming scale and potential impacts to ground-based astronomy. But Starlink can also be the single greatest scientific instrument ever built, a hyperspectral radio eye the size of the Earth, capable of decoding information about the Earth and the universe that is right up against the limits of physics.
StarLink受到了相当一部分的批评，可能是因为它压倒性的规模和对地面天文学的潜在影响。但Starlink也可能是有史以来建造的最伟大的科学仪器，一个地球大小的高光谱射电眼，能够解码有关地球和宇宙的信息，这些信息恰好符合物理学的极限。
Will We Do All This And More?
I don’t know. Maybe eventually. Starship removes the mass and volume constraints traditionally blamed for the expense of space exploration. Does that mean that come 2022, the decadals will all be revised to reflect this new reality? I doubt it, at least not right away. The expense of space exploration is multifactorial but Starship at least hands us the key to find another way, to write inventive contracts that incentivize continuous improvement and innovation and a reduction of instrument costs commensurate to the improvement in access that Starship brings. I, for one, would be thrilled to see a global recalibration of the scope of our ambition in recognition of the fact that, as a species, we are still capable of doing awesome things quickly, cheaply, and well.
我们会做这一切甚至更多吗？
我不知道。也许最终会。星际飞船取消了传统上被指责为太空探索费用的质量和体积限制。这是否意味着，到2022年，十进制都将被修改，以反映这一新的现实？我对此表示怀疑，至少不是马上。太空探索的费用是多方面的，但星际飞船至少给了我们找到另一种方法的关键，写下创造性的合同，激励不断改进和创新，并降低仪器成本，与星际飞船带来的接入改善相称。作为一个人，我将很高兴看到全球重新调整我们的雄心范围，承认这样一个事实，即作为一个物种，我们仍然有能力快速、廉价和良好地完成令人惊叹的事情。
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