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Starship is still not understood

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Re: Starship is still not understood

#51

Post by spacemark »

ncallaway wrote: post #8

I’m kinda confused by the criticism of the industry and NASA not designing for Starship. The author argues that NASA doesn’t understand Tempe game changer that Starship is, but I don’t think that’s accurate. I think the risk to NASA of assuming the benefits of Starship before it’s proven are just too high. If NASA (or other industry players), assume Starship will deliver the benefits it promises, they to fundamentall…

As someone who has worked on NASA contracts pretty much my whole career, you're quite right. Starship is still extremely unproven. If you look at the history of rockets, mayyyybe 1 in 5 that make it to an orbital launch debut (which is like 1 in 50 paper rockets) in turn make it to commercial rollout.

The author's claim that the potential benefits of Starship are not understood by NASA is cringeworthy naive. Everyone at NASA is rooting for SpaceX but they have been burned many times by the promises of the next shiny rocket: DC-X, VentureStar, NASP, Ares, SLS, hell even the shuttle despite its "success" only fulfilled a small fraction of the desired results.

Makes me wonder how old the author is.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#52

Post by coldtea »

ncallaway wrote: post #11
theshadowknows wrote: post #6

I know that going into space is sexy and nerdy and cool and that it’s a difficult problem. What I don’t get is why so many people think about going to space and spend so much money on it when there are people in the US who drink water that catches on fire..and people elsewhere who don’t have access to water at all. Seems like we should work on the truly hard problems rather than the ones that are basically “just go u…

If we use the same logic, don’t we get a conclusion that we should spend nothing on basic research until we’ve solved world hunger, and every other problem? I agree that we should invest more into safe drinking water (though lead seems like much more of a problem than catching fire). But I don’t think it would be wise to dedicate 100% of our nation’s resources into the problem. Some amount of R&D seems like a worthwh…

>If we use the same logic, don’t we get a conclusion that we should spend nothing on basic research until we’ve solved world hunger, and every other problem?

Sounds like a very good principle.

Like, if you can't fix war at the level of horses, bayonets and canons, maybe not go for inventing aircrafts and tanks and machine guns just yet - you'll just get new wars leveraging those improved means, oh wait!

Re: Starship is still not understood

#53

Post by panick21_ »

h2odragon wrote: post #47
panick21_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They've got Musk's "laws don't apply" card shielding them, or something, to explain how they've managed to innovate this far and this fast. People will quite literally use any excuse to not give them Musk credit. Apparently the reason SpaceX can land rockets and build Starship is that they somehow don't follow the law. It couldn't possible by the the company is well managed, have great engineers and is lead by a gr…

Beg pardon, no denigration of SpaceX accomplishments intended at all. They've put awesome efforts into getting these awesome results and Musk's celebrity shadows the work of some modern heroes who should be further celebrated. However, all of that wouldn't have been allowed to succeed, without Musk's unaccountable aura of burrocratic avoidance. In my opinion.

> without Musk's unaccountable aura of burrocratic avoidance. In my opinion.

Can you tell me exactly what you mean and how it significantly increased their development speed and overall performance?

And can you show that different standards were applied to other space companies.

They did one test launch where the FAA inspector wasn't there. This causes a review of the company by FAA and eventually they were allowed to continue.

The only argument I could see is that somehow other companies would been punished more harshly?

But other then that I really don't see what you mean.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#54

Post by h2odragon »

blkhawk wrote: post #14
twic wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved this bit: > McMaster-Carr already stocks thousands of parts that will work in mines, on oil rigs, and any number of other horrendously corrosive, warranty voiding environments compared to which the vacuum of space is delightfully benign. Yeah, working underwater means it'll work in space no problem!

I don't think it means that you take the underwater parts and use them in space - it means that it was possible to make it work in adverse environments at cheaper than NASA prices.

I'm trying to conceive a vacuum capable hydraulic cylinder. As someone who has used backhoes to dig in water then helped refurb the cylinders afterwards. I'm not seeing any happy possibilities, myself.

I agree that it should be possible to make things work at cheaper prices than NASA, but that's still a long way from "easy" or "Commercial off the Shelf"

Re: Starship is still not understood

#55

Post by ceejayoz »

vanattab wrote: post #41

>Starship is intended to be able to transport a million tonnes of cargo to the surface of Mars in just ten launch windows. So at 100tons per starship sent to Mars that's 10,000 trips or 1000 per launch window. But the current plans call for something like 16 starship launches just for refuelling the one starship for the lunar mission. Suppose we can do the Mars trip with the same number of flights that's 170,000 laun…

By the time you're sending a thousand Starships in one go, the fuel's probably coming from an orbital refinery processing chunks of captured comets, not Earth launches.

Or they've been replaced with some big Aldrin cyclers built using Starships.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#56

Post by pjc50 »

vanattab wrote: post #41

>Starship is intended to be able to transport a million tonnes of cargo to the surface of Mars in just ten launch windows. So at 100tons per starship sent to Mars that's 10,000 trips or 1000 per launch window. But the current plans call for something like 16 starship launches just for refuelling the one starship for the lunar mission. Suppose we can do the Mars trip with the same number of flights that's 170,000 laun…

Would anyone like to estimate the CO2 emissions produced by that?

Re: Starship is still not understood

#57

Post by coldtea »

panick21_ wrote: post #50
coldtea wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are we better off, specifically with spending slightly more money on proving people with water, than having weather forecasts that can help thousands of farmer provide better yields and grow more food? And, with the crumbling infrastructure, declining middle class, poverty stricken working class, and so on, how's that worked out for us?

So the middle class is poor because a tiny part of the budget is invested in space? I don't understand what argument you are trying to make.

>So the middle class is poor because a tiny part of the budget is invested in space?

No, it's poor because the same logic that invests that "tiny part of the budget" in space (and prints billions of money to fund the likes of Musk, Bezos, and so on), also runs the other investments and public policy decisions.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#58

Post by ceejayoz »

pjc50 wrote: post #56
vanattab wrote: post #41

>Starship is intended to be able to transport a million tonnes of cargo to the surface of Mars in just ten launch windows. So at 100tons per starship sent to Mars that's 10,000 trips or 1000 per launch window. But the current plans call for something like 16 starship launches just for refuelling the one starship for the lunar mission. Suppose we can do the Mars trip with the same number of flights that's 170,000 laun…

Would anyone like to estimate the CO2 emissions produced by that?

A Starship's gonna generate about the same emissions as a similarly sized passenger aircraft generates from a full fuel load.

We fly ~40M flights a year. It'd be a drop in the bucket.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#59

Post by JulianMorrison »

ncallaway wrote: post #8

I’m kinda confused by the criticism of the industry and NASA not designing for Starship. The author argues that NASA doesn’t understand Tempe game changer that Starship is, but I don’t think that’s accurate. I think the risk to NASA of assuming the benefits of Starship before it’s proven are just too high. If NASA (or other industry players), assume Starship will deliver the benefits it promises, they to fundamentall…

They're happy enough to put all their eggs in the even more untried SLS basket.

I've read that the fundamental problem for NASA is that they are a political football. They have at most 8 years of one administration before the next comes in, and Congress can change hands several times even in that span. As such, the only way to create a program that won't be announced to great fanfare one year and cancelled the next, is to make it out of solid, Congressional grade pork. Which would be SLS. Since nobody benefits by cancelling it, it won't be cancelled. Even if it becomes an obsolete and ridiculous white elephant.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#60

Post by dangerbird2 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #28
ncallaway wrote: post #8

I’m kinda confused by the criticism of the industry and NASA not designing for Starship. The author argues that NASA doesn’t understand Tempe game changer that Starship is, but I don’t think that’s accurate. I think the risk to NASA of assuming the benefits of Starship before it’s proven are just too high. If NASA (or other industry players), assume Starship will deliver the benefits it promises, they to fundamentall…

NASA just announced that they want to spend $1B per launch for SLS once a year until 2050. For a capability less than what SpaceX might provide for $10M. That's not sensible risk management, that's head in the sand denialism. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/nasa-wants-to-buy-sl...

The problem is that for Starship to hit that $10M price point, SpaceX will have to demonstrate several as of yet unproven capabilities: In-space refueling (required for any missions outside LEO), safe and reliable re-entry from orbit, and fast turnaround for Starship to be launch-ready after landing. The last thing NASA needs is a glorified Space Shuttle 2.0 that takes months to be rebuilt after each re-entry, and has the constant risk of the crew burning up on re-entry. Fortunately, it's looking increasingly less likely that this will be the case, but NASA is right to not put all of its eggs in the Starship basket.

For what its worth, if Starship does succeed in being a cheap and re-usable super-heavy launcher, NASA can always just stop making SLS (presumably after giving the senators for Alabama sufficiently large bribes) and switch to Starship for super-heavy launches.

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