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SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

economist.com

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Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#41

Post by sigstoat »

karmicthreat wrote: post #32
tablespoon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing that's impressive to me, in addition to the sheer size of these machines, is the engines. The Raptor 2 is groundbreaking. And there's 30+ of them between both stages. It's just incredible, and there's nothing like it that's been done. I may be wrong, but isn't the reason there are so many engines on their rockets is because SpaceX isn't good at building big rocket engines?

I don't think they have even attempted to build a large engine. But SpaceX is setup like an assembly line rather than some bespoke engine maker. A larger engine would require larger tooling, 3d printers, etc. Also with 30+ engines its less of an investment if one goes bad, just swap it out. They always have the option of designing another larger engine later.

> Also with 30+ engines its less of an investment if one goes bad, just swap it out.

also less bad to lose ~3.3% of your total thrust than 100% of it.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#43

Post by kashkhan »

arcticbull wrote: post #39

Remember folks Elon has a way of, er, overstating. He promised that SpaceX launches cost what, 1% of current launches? So far, they're more expensive than the Space Shuttle it replaced in NASA contracts. Their own numbers say that in the fullness of time they may be 10% cheaper. So far, not so. Space exploration is great, we should do it, and this rocket sounds cool. We should do it even if it is expensive. But "dirt…

weren't shuttle flights $2B each?

List price of Falcon launch is <$70MM.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#44

Post by adastra22 »

pacetherace wrote: post #27
tjchear wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For lack of a political will or the technical know how?

1. Lost records 2. Many companies that help build those rockets have ceased to exists 3. Technology and tooling have changed substantially 4. Standards to deem a rocket flight worthy for human space flight have changed

> Lost records

This is actually a myth FYI. No records were ever lost, and you can go see all the original blueprints and relevant memos and technical reports in the archives at Marshall or DC if you want. It's all there.

Where the myth comes from, and the kernel of truth underlying it is that the Saturn V was a hand-crafted machine made by experts. NASA and their contractors did their damndest to record every aspect of its production, but undoubtably there is some things that slipped through the cracks and were never written down. Those were lost not because records were lost, but because the individual workers went on to other jobs, and have since retired.

EDIT: Also the tooling has been dismantled and recycled. The blueprints for the tooling exist and it all could be recreated, how sure are we that the specified tolerances matched the actual article? Uncertainty over this would probably invalidate all the testing that had been done.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#45

Post by _Microft »

kklisura wrote: post #42

Starship can deliver 100 t payload to LEO. Does space industry really need that payload requirements? When you look at Falcon Heavy, it can deliver 68 t to LEO, but there was only one launch back in 2019.

Their goal is to create a ship that‘s up to the task of setting up colonies on Mars. Their estimate is that at least 1 million metric tons of cargo to the surface of Mars are required for that.

Favorable launch windows to Mars are occurring every two years. With a cargo mass capacity of 100t per ship, over a span of 20 years (=10 launch windows) that would still require 1000 launches per launch window in average. Let that sink in…

Since a trip to Mars takes too long, a ship can only go once per launch window. So they would need as many ships as there are launches to Mars in a launch window.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#46

Post by CompelTechnic »

arcticbull wrote: post #39

Remember folks Elon has a way of, er, overstating. He promised that SpaceX launches cost what, 1% of current launches? So far, they're more expensive than the Space Shuttle it replaced in NASA contracts. Their own numbers say that in the fullness of time they may be 10% cheaper. So far, not so. Space exploration is great, we should do it, and this rocket sounds cool. We should do it even if it is expensive. But "dirt…

>So far, they're more expensive than the Space Shuttle it replaced in NASA contracts

do you have a source for this? Wikipedia data in the Launch vehicle estimated payload cost per kg table disagrees with you. By a factor of ~20.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio...

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#47

Post by sgjohnson »

arcticbull wrote: post #39

Remember folks Elon has a way of, er, overstating. He promised that SpaceX launches cost what, 1% of current launches? So far, they're more expensive than the Space Shuttle it replaced in NASA contracts. Their own numbers say that in the fullness of time they may be 10% cheaper. So far, not so. Space exploration is great, we should do it, and this rocket sounds cool. We should do it even if it is expensive. But "dirt…

I personally really don't like Elon's completely ridiculous claims of cutting the price of something by an order of magnitude or two.

Even if he could (he can't), what business sense would it make? Why would you cut the prices of launches to 1% of the current ones, if you could also cut them by just 10% and supposedly have an absolutely insane margin, because you'd still get all the business.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#48

Post by mlyle »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #10
kilroy123 wrote: post #6

If you're ever in the Houston area, I highly recommend going to see NASA Johnson Space Center. They have a full-size replica (?) Saturn V rocket on its side, you can see. You simply can't grasp how big these rockets are until you see it up close. It's like a tall building blasting off into space. They're humongous. I hope to one day see Starship up close in person as it takes off to space.

I found it depressing. Ships aren't built to stay in the harbor, and rockets aren't built to lie on their side rusting. They say we couldn't build another Saturn V if we tried. Apparently that old saw is true enough, at least for the original contractors.

> They say we couldn't build another Saturn V if we tried. Apparently that old saw is true enough, at least for the original contractors.

We can't build an authentic Great Pyramid, 1950s supercar, or 1970's minicomputer, either. At least, not for anything resembling cost-effectiveness compared to the current way to do things.

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#49

Post by arcticbull »

kashkhan wrote: post #43
arcticbull wrote: post #39

Remember folks Elon has a way of, er, overstating. He promised that SpaceX launches cost what, 1% of current launches? So far, they're more expensive than the Space Shuttle it replaced in NASA contracts. Their own numbers say that in the fullness of time they may be 10% cheaper. So far, not so. Space exploration is great, we should do it, and this rocket sounds cool. We should do it even if it is expensive. But "dirt…

weren't shuttle flights $2B each? List price of Falcon launch is <$70MM.

Russian Roscosmos costs $35-48.5M per launch. [1]

Shuttle launches were about $450M per launch, with 7 people and 50,000lbs of cargo. Came to about $10,000 per kg, vs SpaceX Falcon 9 at $27,000 [edit] and the Dragon around $9,000.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz-2

Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

#50

Post by mlindner »

ben_bai wrote: post #20
strangesongs wrote: post #2

"Precisely when, though, remains unclear" The subheading says so much

It's already booked, but timeframe still unclear. We'll see when the first cargo missions succeed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris_program

That's a separate topic. The test flights still need to happen first.
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