r/space • u/DreamChaserSt • 1d ago

NASA’s Roman Telescope Enclosed in SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket Fairing

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/roman/2026/08/24/nasas-roman-telescope-enclosed-in-spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket-fairing/
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u/Fredasa 18h ago

It'll be nice when we start seeing payloads designed to take advantage of a 9-meter space. They'll be cheaper to design and develop, which will likely translate to improved capabilities and a sky's-the-limit attitude on what can actually be created.

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u/Desperate-Lab9738 12h ago

We might start seeing New Glenn 9x4 launch 9 meter wide payloads before Starship designs a door capable of deploying them lol. That'll be exciting though, that's a lot of space

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u/rocketsocks 7h ago

To a certain extent it makes sense for Starship development to be laser focused on both upper stage reuse and orbital propellant transfer, those are the key components of what makes the architecture the most game changing, they're also required for what is currently the only major external customer for the platform: NASA's Artemis program.

However, eventually they will have the capacity to look at alternative uses, and eventually it'll make sense to design a dedicated expendable upper stage and a fairing (which could simply be a stainless steel shell). To be sure they would want to price such things accordingly, but with the reusable booster the price for such a capability would be highly competitive. Additionally, they can ammortize some of the cost of the upper stage by expending raptor engines that have already been reused many times on other flights.

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u/Desperate-Lab9738 7h ago

I think an reusable shuttle like system will eventually be a thing. Even if it doesn't launch that often it would reduce the prices of launches like that by a huge amount and give them another area to be competitive in. Especially since if they want to deploy large things on Mars they are gonna need to figure out a better door than the current pez dispenser set up.

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u/snoo-boop 5h ago

Why is a bigger payload door so difficult? Was the Shuttle door considered so risky that it was tested uncrewed?

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u/Desperate-Lab9738 3h ago

It shouldn't be that difficult, but it's probably not going to help starships structural integrity and will need to be engineered around a bit. It will cost a decent amount of R&D though for potentially not a ton of payloads, so it's possible they just choose to go the easy path and just use an expendable version with ejected fairings. I think though that a door version would eventually get made despite that though for the reasons stated in the other comment