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Starship / Super Heavy

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Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#251

Post by Denvercoder9 »

itsoktocry wrote: post #232
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Their Texas facility is hundreds of miles inland, not exactly a location you'd want to launch enormous, experimental rockets that tend to explode from. Also, Blue Origin is just an expensive hobby compared to SpaceX. They're older, but have never flown anything to orbit, compared to the 100+ missions SpaceX has performed.

> Also, Blue Origin is just an expensive hobby compared to SpaceX. Who cares? They are building interesting stuff too. We are in an amazing time for Space tech. Why do Musk fans talk of "supporting the mission" out of one side of their mouth, and denigrate the competition every chance they get out of the other? It happens with Tesla and EVs too. Toxic communities.

Nothing wrong with Blue Origin per se, redundancy is great (and pretty essential to become a spacefaring civilization -- as demonstrated by the back-to-back Antares and Falcon failures a couple of years ago).

However, saying SpaceX, the established company, should relocate to be next to Blue Origin, the new start-up that hasn't shown much yet, for unspecified reasons just doesn't make any logical sense.

Also, I think part of the reason space enthusiasts don't like Blue Origin is that it has had a terrible return-on-investment so far. There's a limited amount of money that will put into space, and it's great that Jeff Bezos wants to spend a billion a year on it. It would just be great if there was more to show in return for that money. For example, Elon Musk claims SpaceX has spend about a billion on reusability for the Falcon 9. Just imagine such a leap forward every year.

Another reason Blue Origin gets a bad rep is that they don't exactly try to play fair. As mentioned by a sibling comment, they tried to patent something (landing on a ship) that's at best just common sense. When NASA wanted to lease LC-39A to commercial providers, Blue Origin tried to block NASA from leasing it exclusively to SpaceX on the basis that it'd be unfair to them, even though they hadn't flown anything that could use the pad yet (and still haven't). They landed their New Shepherd after a suborbital flight to 100.5 km just weeks before SpaceX landed their first Falcon 9 booster -- claiming to be the first to land a rocket propusively. That would be fine, except Bezos then tweeted "Welcome to the club" to Musk, ignoring the fact that orbital rockets are much, much harder (as evidenced by the fact that they still haven't launched, let alone landed one, 5 years later).

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#253

Post by numpad0 »

Someone wrote: post #236
numpad0 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So not in flight. Not relevant. People gets hurt by airbags all the time trying to service them. That doesn’t tell if it’s worth having them in actual situations they’re designed for, nor whether the situations are worth preparing for.

It is relevant. If (giving an extreme example to make the point), statistically two humans were killed servicing airbags for every life saved by airbags, cars wouldn’t have airbags (with possible exceptions for cars of the super rich and super important such as the POTUS) Also, an escape system adds weight to a rocket. That weight could be used for other stuff that makes the rest of the system more reliable (slightly…

> All of standalone LES activation ever in the history of human spaceflight had been successful in saving all occupants' lives.

> Space Shuttle failed twice on the other hand, each time killing all aboard, and in neither cases of it its integral abort systems/abort modes did help at all.

> So in theory the lack of capsule-only LES do not necessarily mean safer rocket, in the history and in the statistics it does.

Is this supposed to be a recursion joke? Sorry if I'm not getting it.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#254

Post by bryanlarsen »

londons_explore wrote: post #4

Why the desalination plant? Is there not piped water? Is it just another eco friendly sounding thing to put in the plan? Is it to hedge against newspaper headlines saying how much water spacex is wasting? Desalination has to be more expensive than piped water (both financially and environmentally).

Desalination uses a lot of energy, so if energy is cheap, then so is desalination.

Both solar and wind power have gotten incredibly cheap (~ $15/MW), and more importantly will continue to get much cheaper over the next decade. Boca Chica has lots of wind & sun.

Desalination can also handle the variability of wind & solar quite well: just use water from a big water tank when both wind & solar aren't available. Expensive batteries not required. And to a first approximation it's always windy in Boca Chica, so not much storage is required anyways.

OTOH, piping water from Brownsville to Boca Chica is probably a 9 figure project.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#255

Post by loceng »

tailspin2019 wrote: post #228
loceng wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure The Boring Company machines will fit in these rockets..

Ha. That's an interesting thought!

It's best shelter possible to have + it can allow fast travel between long-distances (faster than the 1,223 kmph Elon's referenced before with Hyperloop here on Earth due to gravity being lower on Mars).

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#256

Post by DennisP »

throwaway316943 wrote: post #241
rlt wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...eventually. They didn’t launch humans on the Falcon 9 for the first 10 years either. Lots of time to iron out the kinks (though it will likely be much less than 10 years this time)

The Mars mission has a somewhat tighter timeline.

Aspirationally, yes, but it's not like they run out of money if they don't get to Mars that fast.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#257

Post by [deleted] »

systemvoltage wrote: post #91
doomlaser wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It oriented almost perfectly. I'm truly amazed at what SpaceX has accomplished so far. Just need to stick that landing a few dozen more times. It's quite a reorientation.

Curious why does it need to wait so long to reorient? I thought it was going to crash and in last few hundred feet, it flipped! Can it orient straight - way up in the air like Falcon boosters?

[deleted]

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#258

Post by dingaling »

bodhiandphysics wrote: post #111
mempko wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the current government bureaucracy paying for starship development?

Almost not at all... something like 50 million so far for a program whose costs are probably in the low billions. Mostly spacex is paying for it with its capital raises

SpaceX has received contracts worth over $10 billion from the DoD and NASA. Its estimated that they have over 60% of Government launch contracts.

That of course is biased towards the contracted projects, but still provides cashflow and leverage for capital.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#259

Post by codeulike »

electriclove wrote: post #12
jonplackett wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In another article about Tesla VW CEO described them as having ‘essentially unlimited resources’. I guess spaceX probably falls under a similar category. Unlimited resources + not wasting ANYTHING is a killer combo.

I think many others also have 'essentially unlimited resources' but it is the execution and quick iteration that is unique to both Tesla and SpaceX.

Willingness to take ambitious business risks is what sets Tesla and SpaceX apart. Innovation is gambling, it is risky.

Re: Starship / Super Heavy

#260

Post by abecedarius »

hourislate wrote: post #116
mabbo wrote: post #9

> The fully integrated Starship/Super Heavy launch vehicle will be approximately 400 feet tall and 30 feet in diameter. For reference, the Saturn V rocket from the Apollo program was 363 feet tall. It was 33 ft wide at the first stage, while Starship is 30 ft wide all the way to the top. It's just massive. And it's fully reusable. What a game changer.

I've walked along the length of the rocket at NASA in Houston. It's massive and to think it took all that power to get that tiny capsule to the moon with a few men. Pretty amazing... The Starship is designed to carry 100 people. SpaceX will be able to send more people to the moon in one mission than all the moon landings ever sent. Wow...

There's another Saturn V you can walk the length of in Huntsville, AL. It made quite an impression on me -- on first sight from below it's like that opening scene in Star Wars IV when the Star Destroyer hoves into view.
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