Starship is still not understood • Hacker News Board

Re: Starship is still not understood

#81

Post by panick21_ » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

GDC7 wrote: post #64

Space is becoming a religion for atheists, with SpaceX serving the role of the church and Elon Musk in charge of it as the techno-utopian Pope. No wonder really smart people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and George Soros are staying out of it. The amount of mass that we have to bring up there to live and thrive and be happy is so enormous that Nobel astrophysicist Kip Thorne and Christopher Nolan had to essentially…

I got news for you buddy. Neuralink is being researched and lasers that communicate in space that are already on Starlink sats.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#82

Post by onepointsixC » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

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...

While I have much dislike for SLS, there is just no way in hell SpaceX will charge $10M for a launch. SpaceX have their own goals which they need funds for and they're not going to under cut their Falcon 9 that intensely like that. That's not to say that Starship won't be the best price per ton of payload to orbit. But let's stay reasonable here.

As for NASA remaining with SLS, for now at least, is due to a mix of congressional support, and the remaining unproven nature of starship. SLS allows members of congress say that they're supporting jobs. While SpaceX is pushing the limits of space engineering, Boeing and many other contractors have pushing the limits of political engineering. Hence the result that the same company that took us to the moon can't get into orbit, but is still maintaining contracts in spite of screwing up everything.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#83

Post by panick21_ » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #23

> That is, Starship is a powerful logistical system that puts launch below the API. Lol this sounds like pure BS

Actually a helpful way to think about the problem.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#84

Post by vanattab » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #58

pjc50 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A 737-800 has a max take off weight of 175,000lbs

Super Heavy Dry Mass: 350,000-440,000lbs Super Heavy Fuel Weight: 7,500,000lbs Starship Dry Mass: ~200,000lbs Starship Fuel Weight: 2,600,000lbs

Starship+Booster total: 10,695,000lbs

175,000lbs vs 10,965,000lbs!

There is no such thing as a similarly sized aircraft!

Re: Starship is still not understood

#85

Post by qayxc » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

gene-h wrote: post #72

A big part of the cost of space missions is not making things as light as possible, but developing the scientific instruments. More upmass doesn't always make designing sensitive scientific instruments easier. If said scientific instruments need to go on a rover, mass still matters. More mass can limit rover mobility and at some point the rover requires more power than can be provided with RTGs or solar cells.

Exactly. Way too many people seem to ignore the cost of developing and certifying scientific instruments.

There's nothing gained from sending 50t of metal to the outer solar system. Scientific instruments are usually purpose-built and while lifting mass restriction can bring down cost, you'd still have to account for redundancy and precision because no one's going to fly out to Jupiter to properly unfold that darn antenna.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#86

Post by bryanlarsen » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

panick21_ wrote: post #74

JulianMorrison wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> to make it out of solid, Congressional grade pork. Which would be SLS. Since nobody benefits by cancelling it, There are always other people who think 'maybe those Alabama $ could go to Texas instead'.

SLS pork is spread to all 50 states. Texas gets a good chunk of it. A small fraction of $2B is more than all of $10M.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#87

Post by prox » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

spacemark wrote: post #51

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…

This would be true perhaps if this wasn’t SpaceX. They already moved the goalpost with Falcon

And I don’t think the author wrote what you said. His main point was that not one of NASA’s powerpoints even as much acknowledges that something like Starship might come round. The new constraints by Starship are a game changer.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#88

Post by yk » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

The entire space reporting has the problem that simultaneously there is an established genre of fanboy fawning about space x, which is kinda unconnected to space x actually starting to disrupt space.

Right now, it looks like one could save a few billions if Artemis is not green lit a decade ago. However, private launches were still rare at that time, so in absence of a, likely expensive, time machine that's just not an option.

So looking at the planned timelines, Artemis I will circle the moon next year, and a crewed landing is planned for 2024, while star ship does not have a planned launch to orbit yet.

Also on a personal note, I am utterly astonished that there will be people on the moon before the subway station down the street is operational.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#89

Post by panick21_ » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #52

ncallaway wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Great so nobody ever researches anything and we still all live in the stone age.

But at least we are pure in our hearts that we didn't mis-allocate resources when people were starving.

That this mindset exists blows my mind.

> 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

Aside from the practical, problem of "Great way to get killed by people with guns that you don't have".

The underlying philosophy is equally flawed. Its like picking out of the technology bucket only things you don't like.

The same things that made those things possible also made a huge number of other things possible that would otherwise not have existed at all.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#90

Post by lquist » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

What am I missing here? Why is spacex valuation 100bn if this is true? I would think it would be 1tn easily in this kind of capital abundant environment. Is the risk that high? Is the market size being overestimated?