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Starship Update [video]

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Re: Starship Update [video]

#181

Post by dotnet00 »

giantrobot wrote: post #91
irrational wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basic idea is to not have all your eggs in one basket. We are one asteroid strike away from losing all human life on earth. Having 2 habited planets spreads the risk. Obviously having those planets in different solar systems would be even better, but we don’t have the technology for that, yet.

> We are one asteroid strike away from losing all human life on earth. We're one asteroid strike from losing all human life in the solar system even if you had a bunch of people living on Mars. It would take a very long time to get even a single Mars colony self sufficient. Without resources of Earth supporting the colony it would die out the first time the air conditioner broke. Putting people on Mars isn't putting…

You have to start building the basket at some point. If you never start working on the colony you'll always have an excuse ("it'll take a long time!", "it'll be too expensive!", "the technology doesn't exist" and so on).

The technology to be self-sustaining won't exist without demand for it, and starting to setup a colony creates a lot of demand.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#182

Post by vanattab »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #110
sfblah wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The launch costs of James Webb were an insignificant part of the spending on the telescope.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#183

Post by ksec »

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…

>This engine makes everything else possible.

I have seen lot of tweets ( from highly intelligent people and engineers ) suggesting Starship is not possible. Raptor 2 is not possible.

But now it seems it really is coming.

It is easy to fault him for robotaxi and FSD, which a lot of people do. But sometimes he really does the impossible.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#184

Post by vanattab »

inasio wrote: post #108
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...

Oh really? Musk said that? Then it's be true...

Re: Starship Update [video]

#185

Post by dotnet00 »

rtpg wrote: post #13
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 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…

Most people don't want to live in Antarctica etc because what's the point? There's the research, for which people do live there. For everyone else, it's at worst a few days away from comfort, with very little to be gained or lost.

A good comparison would be for settling the Americas. Although they obviously weren't as inhospitable as Mars, it was still a months long trip that was often one way to a destination with none of the comforts of their previous homes. Yet people came and worked to build. There was plenty of land and plenty of resources in the old world, yet we chose to go through the challenges of settling the new world. Should they also have waited to solve all their problems at home and utilize all their resources and land before looking outwards?

It's the same with Mars, plenty of people get bright-eyed at the idea of going to Mars and helping build a colony because it's a challenging task that would give meaning to many of us. No matter how often you say that Earth is more hospitable, the fact stands that if we do succeed at setting up a self-sustaining colony on Mars, we'll be more secure than just on Earth. Those are way higher stakes than living in Antarctica/the Sahara etc.

Hell, SpaceX essentially gets its pick of top engineering talent because of inspiring people towards the goal of Mars. Is that not already evidence that people are interested in going? It isn't like they're making significantly more money taking on the large workloads expected at the company. There are plenty more cushy jobs available at ULA, Blue Origin etc and plenty of technical challenges at all the space startups. Yet SpaceX gets its pick to the point that their technological lead over everyone else is only increasing.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#186

Post by mlindner »

ksec wrote: post #183
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…

>This engine makes everything else possible. I have seen lot of tweets ( from highly intelligent people and engineers ) suggesting Starship is not possible. Raptor 2 is not possible. But now it seems it really is coming. It is easy to fault him for robotaxi and FSD, which a lot of people do. But sometimes he really does the impossible.

All the tweets from people who should know better tells me that even smart people are highly influenced by propaganda and bad takes from the media.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#187

Post by bjelkeman-again »

vanattab wrote: post #182
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The launch costs of James Webb were an insignificant part of the spending on the telescope.

Indeed, but with a bigger launch vehicle, much of the complexity of JW would have been simplified and the cost of building it gone down.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#188

Post by hparadiz »

mlindner wrote: post #146
JaimeThompson wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starship can't lift 462 tons to orbit in one launch and that isn't taking into account the volume needed. It would take more than 1 to get an ISS equivalent on orbit.

The pressurized volume of Starship is larger than the pressurized volume of the ISS. I think that was what was intended to be conveyed.

Exactly what I was thinking in my head when I wrote that. Although I really should have written it out properly. To be fair mass is probably way more important.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#189

Post by boxed »

vanattab wrote: post #182
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The launch costs of James Webb were an insignificant part of the spending on the telescope.

Well yes. But that's partly because the launch weight was restrained, and the launch cost high. It's a bit unituitive!

The limits on launch weight means enormous costs to remove every single grma they can. This makes the launch cost go down in percent. If thy could just make it 50% heavier they could cut development costs by a lot. They could also build one much faster and allow it to fail constructively where you learn a bunch and then build number 2, 3, 4 with the things you learned. So now you have 3 telescopes instead of one.

Launch cost changes everything.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#190

Post by boxed »

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?

Can turn out this will save all of humanity. This could make a sunshade feasible: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009457652...

If you don't recognize him, one of the authors of this paper is Swedens only astronaut :)

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