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The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

wsj.com

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Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#61

Post by pacificmint »

mrtksn wrote: post #54
kuu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From layperson's perspective, SpaceX so far has done nothing new that hasn't been done 50 years ago. https://bucket2.glanacion.com/anexos/fotos/85/2912485.gif In the last 50 years we did not have anything like this. Rocket re-utilization, now only for first stage but also second stage in the future is a game changer in the economics of launching a rocket.

Yes it’s cool and being cheaper is a nice thing but what does it enable that wasn’t possible before?

Building a satellite constellation with 42,000 satellites comes to mind.

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#62

Post by mrtksn »

pacificmint wrote: post #61
mrtksn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it’s cool and being cheaper is a nice thing but what does it enable that wasn’t possible before?

Building a satellite constellation with 42,000 satellites comes to mind.

Is this possible due to the rocket re-use? Do you have the numbers? I want to understand the economics of this.

I know the talking points but I’m septic because nobody seems to know the specifics.

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#63

Post by wmeredith »

mrtksn wrote: post #48
d_silin wrote: post #11

I have the privilege of being the space startup founder. If you have any specific questions - I am happy to answer them. P.S. Going offline now, but send questions anyway - I'll to reply them later.

Is there something drastically new besides the change in the economics? From layperson's perspective, SpaceX so far has done nothing new that hasn't been done 50 years ago. Yes, robotic rockets landing on robotic ships is cool but that's not core space tech that changes everything IMHO. It's nice that there's a new way to go to ISS but Soyuz was doing it since ever and very reliably. There was a buzz about how the ne…

If you don’t think robotic tech changes anything about the core of space flight, I just don’t know what to tell you.

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#64

Post by koalala »

mrtksn wrote: post #59
HPsquared wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost is the usually the main factor determining whether something is possible.

What is this thing that wasn’t possible before but possible now thanks to the discount? I know the talking points but what about the specifics?

Specifically a manned flight to mars, which before depended on the cyclic political will and state of the cold war to be funded. There are also other uses for starship like 30 minute suborbital flights between new york and london. Maybe it's easier to see if you look at the limits: given an infinite amount of money and labour, we wouldve seen a manned mars landing in the 1980's perhaps. If on the other hand funding was finite and reaching mars cost 100% of world gdp, it would never happen.

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#65

Post by mrtksn »

wmeredith wrote: post #63
mrtksn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there something drastically new besides the change in the economics? From layperson's perspective, SpaceX so far has done nothing new that hasn't been done 50 years ago. Yes, robotic rockets landing on robotic ships is cool but that's not core space tech that changes everything IMHO. It's nice that there's a new way to go to ISS but Soyuz was doing it since ever and very reliably. There was a buzz about how the ne…

If you don’t think robotic tech changes anything about the core of space flight, I just don’t know what to tell you.

Okay, what it changes? I know the talking points(yes, it is cheaper but not in order of magnitude) but where's the substance here? If it's the cool videos, that could have been done in CGI too. What is the new things, the thing that is a leap forward? Sure, it is nice to end the reliance on Russia but that's a political advancement. If it's the wild stock market, you can do it with cryptocurrencies too(maybe rockets are more environmentally friendly?).

If it is Mars, this is some CGI so far and kids in Eastern Europe can do it too.

Re-do everything with the electronics and software of the 2020's is interesting of course but my understanding is that the reason the space age ended is because we need multiple orders of magnitude more energy to reach far distances in reasonable times and what we have in the distance that we can realistically reach isn't particularly important. The new space companies don't bring the orders of magnitude cost savings or energy into the play, they bring re-do of what was done in the Space age and I fail to see how this is changing the fundamentals.

Please somebody stop repeating the talking point and explain this thing that everybody understand but nobody talks about.

"Everybody knows what robotics will do to the space"

Well, tell me please what robotics(which is not actually new in space) will do to revive the Space Age? I am not one of the everybody who knows, please explain.

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#66

Post by Ralfp »

mrtksn wrote: post #59
HPsquared wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost is the usually the main factor determining whether something is possible.

What is this thing that wasn’t possible before but possible now thanks to the discount? I know the talking points but what about the specifics?

SpaceX launch cost is roughtly half of competitions for same payload: 40mil USD vs 90mil (Ariane Space).

40mil is far more affordable than 90mil, and they are promising lower prices in future.

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#67

Post by [deleted] »

chii wrote: post #33
garmaine wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your intuition is wrong. Valuable resources are abundant in asteroids for one simple reason: gold and other industrially useful metals heavier than iron sink in magma. When the earth formed, they sank to the core. Indeed what gold and other rare(-ish) metals we mine today are largely the remains of asteroid impacts which deposited metals into the crust of this planet after formation, then got mixed around by plate te…

if gold becomes common, it's value drops, as it has no inherent uses (other than as decoration, and minor electrical/industrial uses, for which there is plenty here on earth already). Ditto with platinum - 'cept may be more valuable than gold for use as catalysts in industry. I would imagine that asteroids would hold value with rare-earths instead of currency metals.

[deleted]

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#68

Post by walrus01 »

y04nn wrote: post #41
sxp wrote: post #20

This article is mostly fluff. It doesn't get into any interesting technical details. The core bits are: > Mr. Kokorich, 44, is one such entrepreneur. In 2017 he founded Momentus, a California-based company that seeks to revolutionize transport in space by developing in-space transfer vehicles that use water as a propellant. These would “complement low-cost gigantic rockets, like Starship from SpaceX and New Glenn fro…

From https://momentus.space/development/ it looks like they are using a microwave generator with water to generate a plasma thruster. The technical name seem to be microwave electro-thermal thruster (MET). There is more info on the thurster in the abstract here: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1420619

How does the specific impulse compare to the current state of the art hall effect / ion thrusters that use xenon as a fuel?

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#69

Post by jcims »

mrtksn wrote: post #59
HPsquared wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost is the usually the main factor determining whether something is possible.

What is this thing that wasn’t possible before but possible now thanks to the discount? I know the talking points but what about the specifics?

Starlink becomes economically viable.

Re: The New ‘Gold Rush in Space’

#70

Post by wongarsu »

mrtksn wrote: post #62
pacificmint wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building a satellite constellation with 42,000 satellites comes to mind.

Is this possible due to the rocket re-use? Do you have the numbers? I want to understand the economics of this. I know the talking points but I’m septic because nobody seems to know the specifics.

Since the satellites are mass produced each one is comparatively cheap. That means losing them is an option and SpaceX can launch them using parts that no other customer would want (first stage boosters that have been flown 4 or more times already). Their main costs are the second stage ($20 million), payload adapter and fairings (which are simpler than the normal $10 million version), fuel ($300k) and ground support etc ($1M?). That puts you in the range of $30 million. A regular launch would cost twice that, and any competitor easily twice of that again. So it's a 4x launch cost reduction, and a lot of the remaining cost can be written off as R&D as it's exploring the failure points of reused boosters, eventually allowing them to put regular customers on more heavily used boosters with confidence.
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