| # | Leg | Engine | Δv | Docked Orion | Mission Starship mass before | Minimum prop before | Prop used | Minimum prop after |
|---|
Forward-order table intended for spreadsheet checks. Payload delivered to the lunar surface is dropped after the descent leg.
| Leg | Propulsion | Isp | Effective Δv | Starship mass before burn | Propellant before burn | Propellant used | Propellant after burn | Starship mass after burn | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| sec | m/s | t | t | t | t | t |
Mission payload vs refueling flights
| Flights | Fuel available | Max surface payload | Required fuel | Margin inside tier |
|---|
Logistics snapshot
Notes
- Model limitations. This is a first-order rocket-equation planner: tanker LEO insertion now includes an explicit gravity/steering-loss term, but the lunar mission legs still omit gravity losses, plane changes, boiloff, cooldown, settling, residuals, thermal limits, and operational reserves unless the user adds them through Δv or margin inputs. Gateway is treated as LLO-equivalent; Orion is passive docked mass when attached.
- Mass accounting. The lunar-only Mission Starship default dry mass is now treated as the no-heat-shield/no-flaps baseline. Mission 1 is the Earth-surface-return case and carries heat shield, flaps, landing legs (+25 t dry mass) plus +20 t terminal landing fuel, for +45 t total. Mission 1a carries neither. Mission 3 carries the +25 t aerobrake/Earth-entry hardware but not the +20 t landing fuel; other fuel savings are calculated by the selected burn sequence.
- Stubby tankage. The Stubby model assumes the vehicle keeps Starship's 9 m diameter and is shortened by deleting tank barrel length. Using a 52.1 m public Starship height reference and roughly 28.5 m equivalent tank length, a 66.7% height vehicle keeps only about 39% of the full tankage, so a 1600 t baseline becomes about 625 t. Dry mass is still a planner assumption.
- Payload cap versus physics. The uncapped rocket-equation payload check shows what the selected fuel and trajectory could lift if structural, volume, interface, and operations limits were ignored. The actual mission solver still caps delivered cargo at the Mission Starship payload cap.
- Refueling tanker accounting. Tanker flights are modeled as zero-cargo launches. The planner separately computes reusable residual propellant in LEO and expendable residual propellant in LEO using the selected ground-relative staging velocity plus eastward launch-site rotation, staging altitude, dry mass, propellant load, Raptor Isp, and explicit gravity/steering loss. Reusable mode then subtracts the landing reserve; expendable mode uses the lower dry mass and has no landing reserve subtraction. Ullage allowances are not included unless the user adds margin.