91–100 of 155 posts
Start by assuming SpaceX will be successful with Starship and Starlink. That means they drop launch costs to $20/kg at scale, find themselves with NASA-level funding from Starlink subscriptions, and start building permanent installations on Mars and the Moon. Figure out something they're going to need for those. Musk has said they're relying on other companies to provide the infrastructure to actually live on Mars. B…
2. Send message to them via the Sun.
3. Aliens receive message, determine Earth's location and send invading fleet to conquer the planet.
4. Discover the fleet via Hubble telescope and warn humanity.
5. World focuses attention on humanity's survival and diverts funds to spaceship manufacturing and jump starts the next phase of technological innovations.
...
450. Profit.
Start by assuming SpaceX will be successful with Starship and Starlink. That means they drop launch costs to $20/kg at scale, find themselves with NASA-level funding from Starlink subscriptions, and start building permanent installations on Mars and the Moon. Figure out something they're going to need for those. Musk has said they're relying on other companies to provide the infrastructure to actually live on Mars. B…
"That means they drop launch costs to $20/kg at scale..." Yeah, probably not in your lifetime, buddy: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/background/facts/... "NASA’s goal is to reduce the cost of getting to space to hundreds of dollars per pound within 25 years and tens of dollars per pound within 40 years." Starting a business based on that _now_ seems to be a bit... premature :) "...start building permanent…
SpaceX's project is a fully reusable rocket, with rapid turnaround because it uses methane fuel in the world's first clean-burning full-flow engine. They expect to be able to launch three times per day. On top of that the rocket is built of cheap stainless steel instead of carbon fiber.
With that amount of reuse, each launch basically pays for fuel and ground support, each of which costs about a million dollars per launch. Given their payload of at least 100 tonnes, that's $20/kg. They've already done a single-engine hop test, and hope to reach orbit within six months.
Here's a great video on what makes the new SpaceX engine revolutionary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbH1ZDImaI8
I've worked in aerospace and have been reading HN for over a decade. Here's some adult advice, for both the OP and HN in general. Space is a waste of time unless you're a government or a bored billionaire. Objects are too far, and lift is now a commodity. (SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand, hence their polluting the sky with micro satellites now.) So if you really want a career in s…
History is full of example of industries where no-one could imagine the potential before it got really cheap. From mobile phones to cars. Once something gets cheap the opportunities explode. Which is SpaceX's plan.
At $20/kg a space hotel would be possible to build, even a moon hotel. I'd imagine at some point it becomes seriously viable as an alternative to a luxury holiday in the maldives. I for one am interested. Or - apparently much better repeaters can be built in 0g for fiber optic cables. Already there's talk of factories in space. Did you think of that one?
But it's almost silly to speculate because it's impossible to imagine the industries that will be created.
1. Find life outside the solar system. 2. Send message to them via the Sun. 3. Aliens receive message, determine Earth's location and send invading fleet to conquer the planet. 4. Discover the fleet via Hubble telescope and warn humanity. 5. World focuses attention on humanity's survival and diverts funds to spaceship manufacturing and jump starts the next phase of technological innovations. ... 450. Profit.
Sometimes you have to build the first thing to get to the second thing.
Before developing hardware, I'd see if there's a lucrative software based problem in this area that could be bootstrapped to generate revenue to fund the next project.
In a way SpaceX is doing their equivalent of this by building Starlink to generate ongoing monthly revenue that conceivably could be directed elsewhere.
I've worked in aerospace and have been reading HN for over a decade. Here's some adult advice, for both the OP and HN in general. Space is a waste of time unless you're a government or a bored billionaire. Objects are too far, and lift is now a commodity. (SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand, hence their polluting the sky with micro satellites now.) So if you really want a career in s…
> SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand... The launch business is tiny compared to what's possible when you can do large volume industrial research and manufacturing in microgravity. I take the approach that space right now is like the computer industry in the early 1970s. We're about to have our microprocessor moment with fully reusable rockets. This means ridiculously cheap access to…
Start by assuming SpaceX will be successful with Starship and Starlink. That means they drop launch costs to $20/kg at scale, find themselves with NASA-level funding from Starlink subscriptions, and start building permanent installations on Mars and the Moon. Figure out something they're going to need for those. Musk has said they're relying on other companies to provide the infrastructure to actually live on Mars. B…
Living on Mars is a pipe dream without figuring out how to re-create Earth's geomagnetic field and extend it around human buildings.
Mars is an inhospitable place, but technology allows us to live in inhospitable places.
In many ways, I expect Mars is like Antarctica. Once the initial romanticism of pioneering fades, it will have only very niche attractiveness for specific scientific causes. It used to be a popular idea that technological advancement would see us populating Antarctica and underground / undersea environments, yet despite that being possible with modern technology (e.g. nuclear powered greenhouses), we've not justified the endeavour.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (SpaceX will probably end up shutting down due to lack of lift demand, hence their polluting the sky with micro satellites now.) I guess morale is low at Arianespace these days ;)
Why would it? Ariane 5 is still doing reasonably good and Ariane 6 seems promising too. SpaceX needs a ton of launches to make reusable rockets financially feasible so.