how will it be dirt cheap?
By being fully (and rapidly) reusable.
SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
51–60 of 431 posts
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#52Starship 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.
It will take the space industry a few years to adapt to the new possibilities, yes.
But already in the beginning, Starship should be able to deliver several hundred Starlink satellites to their orbits, so it could accelerate deployment of the network quite a lot.
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#53Remember 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
#54If 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.
There's an upright Saturn class ship in Queens at the NY Hall of Science
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#55I think Gwynne Shotwell is the rather unsung hero keeping SpaceX running correctly day by day.
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#56> Mr Musk’s development philosophy is that “if things are not failing, you aren’t innovating enough.” My boss used to keep saying "move fast and break things!" Then a new guy seriously messed up and almost lost us a valuable client. The boss demanded an explanation. I said the new guy moved fast and broke things. He actually wrote that in the explanation to the client. I haven't heard that phrase from him since.
Falcon 9's safety record would indicate that it is possible to have development cycles that push boundaries and maintain a high reliability production system. With regard to Musk's statements about the relationship between innovation and failure, below is a quote from the linked video about optimization in the development process, a quote that provides a more nuanced view than the pithy quote.
Then, try very hard to delete a part or process. This is actually very important. If you’re not occasionally adding things back in, you’re not deleting enough. The bias tends to be very strongly towards “Let’s add this part or process step in case we need it.” But you can basically make “in case” arguments for so many things. And for a rocket that’s trying to achieve, trying to be the first fully reusable rocket…you have to run at tight margins because if you don’t run tight margins you get nothing to orbit.
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#57Starship 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.
Not for low earth orbit sure, but for space travel and colonizing other planets or moons.
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#58If 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.
13 stories tall! Size of a football field on its side :)
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#59> Mr Musk’s development philosophy is that “if things are not failing, you aren’t innovating enough.” My boss used to keep saying "move fast and break things!" Then a new guy seriously messed up and almost lost us a valuable client. The boss demanded an explanation. I said the new guy moved fast and broke things. He actually wrote that in the explanation to the client. I haven't heard that phrase from him since.
"move fast and break things", but make sure you know the consequence of breaking it and have that pre-approved by your bosses, labeled with a large font "disclaimer" sign written in red ...
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#60> Mr Musk’s development philosophy is that “if things are not failing, you aren’t innovating enough.” My boss used to keep saying "move fast and break things!" Then a new guy seriously messed up and almost lost us a valuable client. The boss demanded an explanation. I said the new guy moved fast and broke things. He actually wrote that in the explanation to the client. I haven't heard that phrase from him since.
The key corollary for "move fast and break things" is "but don't do it in production". SpaceX doesn't rapidly innovate things in production. Starship is not yet in production.