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There are many milestones to go before in orbit refueling is possible, among them : 1. What efficiency are you expecting without ground-based fuel chilling? 2. Have you solved for lack of gravity? Your fuel is sloshing around weightless. 3. The necessary tempo of refueling flights hasn't been reached with test flights, and is far greater than the maximum tempo reached by Falcon 9, impressive though it is.

These are just the big ones I can think of off the top of my head. Digging into the way that fuel tanks are prevented from crumpling while they rapidly empty of liquid methane probably reveals that that becomes much more complicated in micro gravity in orbit with multiple refueling connections to tanker flights. There are dozens of gotchas like that, and I don't think "they must've already planned for that" is an assumption supported by historical performance.





Spacex would be stupid not to have done studies into all those things, as much as is possible on the ground.

Spacex are not stupid.


If by studies you mean renders, then yeah. Just like the lunar lander.

You appear to have inside knowledge of Spacex's research work.

Or you are making shit up.

Sagan leads us to the latter.




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