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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

#101

Post by inevaexisted »

jmyeet wrote: post #81

The real problem for Starship (IMHO) is Falcon 9. Falcon 9 is now the most reliable launch vehicle ever created. With reuse the may well be $10m per launch or even less by now and likely to continue to drop. F9 can deliver ~22t to LEO and smaller payloads to geosynchronous orbit. The payloads F9 can't deliver are quite small. What people forget is that payloads are deeply coupled to their launch vehicles. The launch…

They solved this problem with F9 too, with their ride share program.

Starship will make it even cheaper to deliver small payloads too (you'll likely have to wait for enough payload to get lined up to make sense financially), however with the need to continuously deploy starlink satelites, they'll probably fill loads as required with them to fill starship up.

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

#102

Post by jballer »

metadat wrote: post #79
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 loved visiting the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida. There is a REAL Saturn-V on display! Not to mention the VAB.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Assembly_Building Pretty much everything about the place makes you feel real small ;)

Make sure to talk to the docents - many (all?) of them are engineers who worked on the hardware! Last time I was there I spoke with someone who had worked on an IMU mounted in the interstage.

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

#103

Post by edgyquant »

tjchear wrote: post #12
CamperBob2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

The phrase, “we couldn’t build one if we wanted to,” is misleading. We could build the exact vehicle but we could build one that looks similar and does the same thing.

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

#104

Post by sdenton4 »

Victerius wrote: post #93
jmyeet wrote: post #81

The real problem for Starship (IMHO) is Falcon 9. Falcon 9 is now the most reliable launch vehicle ever created. With reuse the may well be $10m per launch or even less by now and likely to continue to drop. F9 can deliver ~22t to LEO and smaller payloads to geosynchronous orbit. The payloads F9 can't deliver are quite small. What people forget is that payloads are deeply coupled to their launch vehicles. The launch…

> $10 per launch You mean $10,000,000.00, not $10.00, right? $10.00 launches would be amazing.

I was about to say it would be terrible because so much fuel would be burning with these cheap launches that we'd probably destroy the atmosphere in a few years...

But for just $10, we can't really be using fuel in the first place.

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

#105

Post by nickff »

tootie wrote: post #54
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.

There's an upright Saturn class ship in Queens at the NY Hall of Science

>" There's an upright Saturn class ship in Queens at the NY Hall of Science"

They have nothing near the size of a Saturn V. NY HoS has:

Gemini-Titan II

Mercury-Atlas D Rocket

Mercury-Atlas D “Friendship 7” Replica Capsule

Mercury Capsule

Saturn V F-1 Engine

For perspective, the Saturn V is about 20 times the size of Titan II (by mass), and could almost deliver the whole Titan II into low Earth orbit (LEO).

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

#106

Post by ngngngng »

_Microft wrote: post #45
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…

Are there really that few launch windows? I assume it's because this ship is larger than the others we've been launching all this time?

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

#107

Post by amayne »

arcticbull wrote: post #68
CompelTechnic wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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...

The space shuttle is a human-rated launch vehicle capable of taking 7 people into orbit at a total cost of $445M per launch, or about $65M per seat. When subcontracted to Russia, the charge was about $85M per person. Crew Dragon costs about $55M per person - which is one place my 10% number comes from. Cargo flights are different, and you should also look at total program costs from the deal with NASA. The NASA contr…

The $445M number doesn't count the total cost of the program, which put each Shuttle launch at ~ $1.5 billion.

Average cost of a SpaceX resupply is $152 million. That's the total amount the US government pays per mission.

You couldn't send the shuttle up with 10% of the cargo capacity and only pay 10% of the cost. The Shuttle was $1.5 billion whether it was 16,000 kg to the ISS or 2,000 kg.

Nor could you just use it to send two people to the ISS and only pay $170 million for two seats (Really $400 million - the actual cost for two seats.)

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

#108

Post by inasio »

jmyeet wrote: post #81

The real problem for Starship (IMHO) is Falcon 9. Falcon 9 is now the most reliable launch vehicle ever created. With reuse the may well be $10m per launch or even less by now and likely to continue to drop. F9 can deliver ~22t to LEO and smaller payloads to geosynchronous orbit. The payloads F9 can't deliver are quite small. What people forget is that payloads are deeply coupled to their launch vehicles. The launch…

I suspect it could disrupt at least some form of earth transportation. The fuel costs are not that different than a transatlantic 787 flight, and it's likely simpler and with fewer moving parts. In similar style to Tesla's vertical approach, they could own the full stack (rocket, fuel production, launch/landing facilities).

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

#109

Post by [deleted] »

jmyeet wrote: post #81

The real problem for Starship (IMHO) is Falcon 9. Falcon 9 is now the most reliable launch vehicle ever created. With reuse the may well be $10m per launch or even less by now and likely to continue to drop. F9 can deliver ~22t to LEO and smaller payloads to geosynchronous orbit. The payloads F9 can't deliver are quite small. What people forget is that payloads are deeply coupled to their launch vehicles. The launch…

[deleted]

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

#110

Post by T-A »

mhh__ wrote: post #9
walrus01 wrote: post #3

For size comparison, interesting that they put a SLS block 1 in there, which has never flown or been to orbit, but didn't include the Soviet N1 which at least has flown a few times (in catastrophic, exploding fashion) but also has never been to orbit. They did include an Energia, which is a defunct program and has zero chances of ever getting manufactured again, same as the N1.

Energia could (could...) Fly again according to some recent chatter. https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a22515248/rus...

That article is from 2018. And no, that proposal never went anywhere.
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