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Starship Update [video]

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Re: Starship Update [video]

#231

Post by dividedbyzero »

onion2k wrote: post #222

The numbers on mass to orbit are fascinating. To date humans have sent 15,517 tons of stuff into space. SpaceX wants to be able to send 15,500 per year with a single Starship, and Elon wants a fleet of 10. That's amazing. That really is "we can have a moonbase now" levels of ambition.

It'll be very interesting to see how and if that's going to work out. There will have to be a lot of actual demand for that launch capacity, and it'll have to build up fairly quickly, else SpaceX may not be around anymore when those payloads are ready. I guess lots of companies could do with some zero-g R&D, but actually building a platform to do this, how long will that take? Asteroid mining seems to be a long way from becoming practical, there aren't that many short-term military launches. What's going to keep them afloat for the first decade-or-so of this? Will they get their costs down far enough to make space tourism viable?

I mean, despite all the violent optimism from the Elon Musk fan base, I'm pretty stoked to see how this will pan out. Historical game changer and within a decade everyone will wear Made-on-Mars space foam sneakers to their annual vacation to orbit? Incremental and boring like, neat, Netflix has its own fleet of broadcasting satellites and Adidas is saving 3% annually due to some R&D they do in orbit? Or will it fizzle out entirely, great tech but arrived too early?

Re: Starship Update [video]

#232

Post by elihu »

Isinlor wrote: post #230
verytrivial wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Can you explain what you are comparing? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrust-specific_fuel_consump... My understanding is that rockets are good at getting a small mass to move really quickly. They will never win moving a lot of mass within the atmosphere. The fuel costs are radically different. A 747 can lift and land ~80% of Starship's design cargo but uses something like 7 time…

Elon thinking is that on long distance flight you increase moved cargo per vehicle per unit of time. He was saying that flying to the other end of the world will be 20x faster vs. airplane. So if you move 20x more cargo per unit of time, then cost of cargo per vehicle + static infrastructure are proportionally lower. But we need to take into account that number of cycles of a rocket engine may not be as good as jet e…

...also, shipping high-value time-sensitive things across the planet in a few hours or less may be a viable business model.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#233

Post by cloutchaser »

proggy wrote: post #157
inasio wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Concerns about cost per flight aside, how would one go about locating spaceports near enough to urban centers for this concept to be viable? If a fully fueled airliner crashes in an urban area, it’s devastating. Now consider a fully fueled rocket — would the crash be an order of of magnitude worse? Perhaps I still have the “rockets are inherently dangerous, mitigate bad outcomes by isolating them” mentality. Maybe de…

Why not start with replacing loads of trans continental freight cargo? There's no risk of human casualties, you can land away from cities and transport it in. And I'm sure there's plenty of business to be had.

It's also a great way to fund the development of starship.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#234

Post by timeon »

nickpp wrote: post #226
the_other wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the utopia in The Expanse? Humans move offworld; two communities with stable infrastructure spend a century abusing a scattered sub-class; then they all get into a war because a sociopath egotist finds alien technology powerful enough to wipe them all out or mutate them into components of itself. And then there's the meteorites... Sounds idyllic.

The utopia is that humanity is not stuck on a single planet anymore, with all eggs in one basket - so to speak. The rest I find just realistic though. I do not expect humans in space to behave much differently from humans on earth.

If I sum your two paragraphs new title can be: Swarm Of Locusts.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#235

Post by Isinlor »

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…

It really is the question - why do you live? What is the purpose of anyone life?

There does not seem to be any purpose to anything in the universe. But we can choose what we want to do.

So the answer: Because we want to, because it is exciting, because it inspires, because we can.

Because this is what life is about.

The movie Avatar made in box office $2.9B. This is exactly the same amount of money as SpaceX asked for an actual moon landing of $2.9B.

Have you asked people who watched Avatar what is the purpose of watching Avatar?

Instead of making a fiction about going to a moon, we can actually go to the moon.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#236

Post by nickpp »

timeon wrote: post #234
nickpp wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The utopia is that humanity is not stuck on a single planet anymore, with all eggs in one basket - so to speak. The rest I find just realistic though. I do not expect humans in space to behave much differently from humans on earth.

If I sum your two paragraphs new title can be: Swarm Of Locusts.

Yes, we are a result of evolution and it is our evolutionary imperative to find and fill any biological niche available. You can try denying our nature but it is a futile endeavor.

However, these "locusts" can discover and create. We can do art, science, understand the Reality and the Universe. I find this absolutely beautiful and breathtaking, especially for a "swarm of locusts".

Re: Starship Update [video]

#237

Post by donpott »

wnkrshm wrote: post #216
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…

How do the politics of a Mars colony work? Say Elon controls the sole means of supplying the colony from Earth - do the colonists effectively become hostages? What if they mutiny? Will the supplies stop coming? Is this murder? Many questions.

Based on this comment alone, I can tell you would enjoy "The moon is a harsh mistress" by Robert Heinlein. Recommended if you haven't read it already!

Re: Starship Update [video]

#238

Post by nickpp »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #11
irrational wrote: post #6

This is the first time I’ve ever heard him speak. Is he always this awkward? Based off of the 5 minutes I watched, he clearly hasn’t gotten to where he is through charisma and public speaking skills. I’m just wondering if this is typical for him. Also, a million tons to Mars? If each starship lifts 100 tons, that is 10,000 launches. I think he said launch windows only come around every 2 years. He is either planning…

Yeah, he's always like this. See his Neuralink presentations. He got to where he is through a combination of hard work and luck (a large part of which was the birth lottery), like everyone. Imagine if Woz was intensely interested in building Apple, and had Jobs' judgement. As far as I know, he's planning on a time frame of 200 years to build a sustainable city. He's also intending on building thousands of Starships,…

> birth lottery

Elon Musk was born in South Africa so compared to anyone born in the USA or EU he has lost the birth lottery, I guess.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#239

Post by Isinlor »

kortex wrote: post #76
garbagetime wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're presenting a false dichotomy. Our options aren't only (a) live only on Earth, and (b) live on Earth and Mars and potentially other planets. There is, for example, (c) live in man-made structures orbiting the sun at a distance of 1AU, which is debatedly much more sensible than trying to live on Mars.

That's true, but there is no fuel source out in space. Outside of Earth orbit, eg Lagrange points, you need fuel deliveries. On Mars they can make methane with the Sabatier process. So you have: - LEO/MEO - vulnerable to asteroid impact ejecta - GEO/moon/L-points - avoid ejecta, but need regular refueling. If Earth is toast, there goes resupply - Mars - close enough to the sun for solar, able to conceivably bootstrap…

Actually there is fuel in space - water and sunlight.

You can split water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity from sunlight.

In long term, most likely both Hydrolox and Methalox will be in use.

Re: Starship Update [video]

#240

Post by timeon »

DrBazza wrote: post #210
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…

> 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? In the late 1500s, why set sail across an ocean for weeks that no-one has ever successfully crossed (that we know of). Someone would want to do it, and then want to do it regularly, and regularly means commercializing it, which means reduced cost an…

> is richer after the "discovery" of America and Australia, for example.

And then there was ethnic cleansing of native population.

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