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Starship Update [video]

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Re: Starship Update [video]

#101

Post by Retric »

belter wrote: post #60
ipspam wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment illustrates the absurdity of said lawsuit. No one has been run over yet.

By pure luck. And any driver facing several years in jail for an accident caused while using the Beta FSD, will engage a proper legal team. Any legal team worth its salt, will immediately subpoena Tesla for documents. They will present a legal case, that will include past YouTube videos and Tesla company presentations. They will state that their client was misled by the company statements, Twitter and YouTube endorse…

Tesla autopilot has already been driving during multiple accidents that killed people. Tesla the company isn’t at significant risk from these accidents or related lawsuits as the driver and thus their insurance is still considered legally responsible.

Further, car accidents in general have relatively low payouts even when someone is blatantly at fault. Even being held responsible for say 10 fatalities per year would be a rounding error on their balance sheet, which is consistent with other industries that have killed vastly more people via things like pollution.

It’s reasonable to suggest human lives should have more value, but when you look at an airplane crash that kills hundreds it’s mostly an issue for an airlines reputation.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#102

Post by fastball »

sfblah wrote: post #84
rtpg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need to fly 3 months to some inhospitable planet that is in worse condition than Earth would be (even after nuclear wars and global warming) to make progress? I suppose there's an idea we could apply everything done on Mars to Earth, but like... seriously, what we just took all the prep for mars and just put it in the middle of the Empty Quarter, the Saraha, Antarctica? People barely want to live in the arc…

I completely agree with this line of reasoning, which is why I called the fixation with Mars Quixotic elsewhere in the thread. I was discussing this with some friends. Why not just pick some other totally inhospitable environment and try to live there instead? I mentioned inside a volcano lower in the thread. It seems to me you'd get all the same side-benefits of technological development.

Because if an asteroid destroys earth, your volcano base ain't gonna save life as we know it.

Because any such project is going to require herculean effort on the part of many humans, and many humans are interested in colonizing Mars but not so many are interested in colonizing volcanoes.

Your question is basically: why do people care about this thing I don't care about and instead care about this thing that neither I nor they care about.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#103

Post by belter »

Retric wrote: post #101
belter wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By pure luck. And any driver facing several years in jail for an accident caused while using the Beta FSD, will engage a proper legal team. Any legal team worth its salt, will immediately subpoena Tesla for documents. They will present a legal case, that will include past YouTube videos and Tesla company presentations. They will state that their client was misled by the company statements, Twitter and YouTube endorse…

Tesla autopilot has already been driving during multiple accidents that killed people. Tesla the company isn’t at significant risk from these accidents or related lawsuits as the driver and thus their insurance is still considered legally responsible. Further, car accidents in general have relatively low payouts even when someone is blatantly at fault. Even being held responsible for say 10 fatalities per year would…

A legal theory that might be challenged soon. We will see what comes out of this case:

"Two people killed in fiery Tesla crash with no one driving" https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/18/22390612/two-people-kille...

Re: Starship Update [video]

#104

Post by DantesKite »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #5

"It's gonna be cramped, dangerous, difficult, very hard work. You might die." -- Elon's sales pitch for Mars, in his own words. I wonder if any billionaire (or their children) will be doing the early work. It's an interesting game of "Who values their life the least?" knowing that their sacrifice will make for a better future. Of course, it's not a foregone conclusion that there will be a disaster. But over the cours…

Why do you hope billionaires risk their children?

Re: Starship Update [video]

#106

Post by fastball »

rtpg wrote: post #19
sillysaurusx wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s helpful to remember it’s not a zero sum game. We can do all of that too. The tech for Mars would make it that much easier. No one wants to live in those places because currently they have a choice. But if our planet becomes irradiated, or hit by a meteor, or suffers a sun burst — all very realistic concerns — then those choices become more limited. And it’s good to have options.

The ISS is literally the most expensive physical structure we have ever built, and it's like 5 floating schoolbuses. Now I'm for walking and chewing bubblegum. But if you believe in opportunity costs and care about navigating that, it feels like the same problem. Our planet becoming irradiated is actually not a huge problem! It would still be easier to live on Earth than on Mars! An irradiated radioactive hellscape o…

Humans are not automatons who you can just point at a different problem than the one they are interested in and expect them to make progress in a similar way.

A Mars colony is an exciting problem for smart people to work on that can inspire them. You can't put a dollar value on that.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#107

Post by zlsa »

terafo wrote: post #79
hparadiz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ISS was built largely with hundreds of space shuttle and Soyuz launches over two decades hence why it's so expensive. Starship will be able to put an entire ISS worth of stuff into orbit in a single launch for 1/50th of the cost. It's not a zero sum game. The space industry employs a lot of people. Some of the stuff they put into orbit are satellites that literally save lives.

Definitely not in a single launch, since ISS weighs around 500 tons. And I think designs for space stations in starship era would be different(more heavy, but orders of magnitude cheaper to produce), so something like ISS in a starship era might weigh 1.5-2x more(VERY rough estimate), but nonetheless be much cheaper.

Starship itself has ~1000 cubic meters of payload volume, and ISS has ~900 cubic meters of pressurized volume. It's not too much of a stretch to expect >500 cubic meters of pressurized volume in a crew-capable Starship, in which case two Starships would provide a broadly similar amount of pressurized volume in orbit.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#108

Post by inasio »

panick21_ wrote: post #33

The Raptor 2 engine is just an absurd. The original specs were already kind of insane. But Raptor 2 is an monster. They really pushed already significantly into a second generation design before first flight. Raptor 2 is not just a slight upgrade, its a huge upgrade. If it can actually launch multiple times a day without any refurbishment, it will simply totally break space travel as we have known it. This engine mak…

My theory is that they aim to disrupt Earth travel (airlines). Elon pointed out that the reliability of Starship would exceed that of commercial airplanes, and the fuel costs are not that different than, say, a 747. Fewer moving parts than an airplane, less human costs, order of magnitude faster...

Re: Starship Update [video]

#109

Post by toomuchtodo »

sfblah wrote: post #85
toomuchtodo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lifting enormous amounts of mass to orbit and Mars. Arguing the merits of these activities is beyond the scope of this thread.

Sorry, I didn't realize we weren't allowed to discuss the point of the presentation.

I’m unsure there’s much to discuss in that specific regard? If you believe in cheap heavy lift and humans colonizing Mars, you agree this project has merit (and the costs and human effort involved reasonable). If you don’t, you see this project as superfluous and wasteful. Is that interpretation inaccurate? It’s somewhat, but not entirely, binary.

From the presentation, development costs will be 5-10% of the Saturn V program (2020 dollars adjusted). Thats a bargain for the capabilities delivered.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#110

Post by bjelkeman-again »

sfblah wrote: post #40
panick21_ wrote: post #33

The Raptor 2 engine is just an absurd. The original specs were already kind of insane. But Raptor 2 is an monster. They really pushed already significantly into a second generation design before first flight. Raptor 2 is not just a slight upgrade, its a huge upgrade. If it can actually launch multiple times a day without any refurbishment, it will simply totally break space travel as we have known it. This engine mak…

And then what? What's the use case?

Mass to orbit gives you lots of options: Starlink completed, more telescopes like James Webb but cheaper, a moon base, radio telescope on the far side of the moon, orbital rotational space stations (for G forces), missions to asteroids, Mars, outer planets, are just a few things. Point to point transport on Earth, halfway around the world in less than an hour.
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