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Space Exploration

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    $\begingroup$ Your first sentence is about a week out of date. At his most recent talk, Elon revealed plans to stretch Superheavy slightly, and Starship significantly. arstechnica.com/space/2024/04/… $\endgroup$
    – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight
    Commented Apr 17 at 19:26
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    $\begingroup$ Your car example doesn't work out too well. Assuming a 30% loss of fuel economy from being heavily loaded, my car could go from New York to Los Angeles and back on about 1100 pounds of gasoline, amounting to a 45% increase over its empty weight. $\endgroup$
    – Mark
    Commented Apr 17 at 22:29
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    $\begingroup$ @Mark now redesign your car to incorporate about a cubic meter of fuel tank to hold that gasoline without compromising its other functions. The example might be a little exaggerated, but only a little. $\endgroup$
    – Christopher James Huff
    Commented Apr 18 at 12:35
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    $\begingroup$ @MSalters not without using a significant fraction of its cargo capacity and severely impacting safety, you can't. And that truck's nearly twice the mass of the car Mark referenced. $\endgroup$
    – Christopher James Huff
    Commented Apr 18 at 16:03
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    $\begingroup$ @MSalters ...this car specifics debate isn't really the point of my example, but no. Assume the F150 gets 18 mpg base, and you load it with 460 gallons of fuel. Assuming a reduction of efficiency of 1% per 100lbs extra load, this would result in a final value of about 13mpg and those 460 gallons of fuel would mass north of 2700 lbs. This is above the max carrying capacity of an F150, so no, you can't just slap a large fuel tank onto a F150 specifically $\endgroup$
    – Dragongeek
    Commented Apr 18 at 16:18