How can starship land on the moon

Illustration of starship landing on moon
(Credit-spacex)

The major concern about Starship Moon landing is moon dust. How will Starship land on the Moon without kicking off dust ?Spacex is continuously working to find out ways to land on the Moon either just by shutting off the engines at some height and falling or using some powerful thrusters on top to land softly but both ways has some benefit and defect .We will take a deep dive into both ways and speculate which is better and if there are other ways to do that .

•What is dust problem

When huge spacecrafts land on the moon, there huge engines can kick moon dust and can even throw them to orbit creating a huge set of problems.

• How  will Spacex get to the Moon with Starship.

Its clear that after getting to low earth orbit ,Starship on its own can't go to Moon ,it needs refuelling in low earth orbit .Its still unclear how much refuelling mission are needed for that but to fill a tank that can hold 1200 tons of propellent and assuming that each tanker ship can deliver a maximum of 150 tons of propellent it will still need 8 refuelling missions. After refuelling Starship can easily get to moon orbit and start its landing procedures.

• Which is better option to land Starship on the Moon

Spacex is currently considering two ways of landing on the moon ,one by using thrusters on top to give it a soft touchdown without any problems of kicking off dust and one by shutting off the engines at few meters above the ground and falling from that height.

Benifits and flaws of using thrusters -In the latest rendering of Starship(special moon lander edition) landing on the moon some big hot gas thrusters can be seen on upper side giving the Starship a soft tochdown on the moon and  it does seem like a good idea . Using those thrusters starship can easily land and take off from the moon without kicking off the dust and after getting to some height it can ignite its engine to continue its journey but the biggest flaw is that it will add extra mass and complexity to the rocket minimizing the usable payload mass of the starship.Its also also unclear that if Spacex uses this method what propellent will they use to power these thrusters ,whether it will be hypergolic or methalox, We all have to wait and see.

Benifits and flaws of landing by falling from some height- The other way to land is by shutting off engines and falling from that height ,it might sound easy but its not. Making that big structure fall and hitting the surface might be deadly it can damage the ship and even if it lands it will have no way to go up without kicking off dust ,it has to ignite its engine very close to the surface to liftoff from the moon and that will give invitation to the dust problem.

•Are there other ways to land Starship on the moon .

There doesn't seem to be other better ways to land on the moon but if they can sacrifice the first few starships by using the falling method of landing and not returning them back they can send machines and equipments to build a landing pad .Building a landing pad can help save them the development cost of those thrusters and will also help to land future starship with max payload capacity.

When we are speculating here the different aspects of starship ,Spacex is working very hard day and night to make our dreams of going to moon and mars a reality .They will definitely choose the best way to land on moon and one day take us there.