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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

#121

Post by bumby »

kashkhan wrote: post #99
bumby wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a difference in methodology here. When those numbers of the shuttle are listed, they're including all the upfront R&D spread across the life-cycle of the program. I believe the Falcon costs disregard all those as a sunk cost and only list the actual "launch" costs

shuttle before columbia disaster was absorbing more than half ($8B) the NASA budget($16B) and doing 4-6 flights a year

I'm not going to argue that the shuttle wasn't a boondoggle. The same reasons it was are the same reasons it's not a great comparison. Very different mission scope/requirements, having to conform to multiple masters (DoD and NASA) regarding the design, etc. The shuttle was required to do things F9 is not.

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

#122

Post by evilduck »

_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…

I'm not all that familiar with orbital transfers and costs. Given the 20 year time frame and launch quantities needed, is a favorable transfer window always needed (I'm probably asking if it is always cheapest)? Seems like there's going to be stuff being sent up that would be totally fine slowly cruising to Mars in three years instead of one. Receiving a thousand shipments from space sounds approximately as hard as sending them and spacing them out over a longer period might be desired (and given that quantity, let's face it, we're going to crater a few of them into Mars and replacements will need to be sent).

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

#123

Post by HWR_14 »

rlt wrote: post #100
geocrasher wrote: post #14

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.

And they’re targeting building 2-4 of them per day . https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/14139104042465239...

Why? I mean, if the Starship is reusable, and they're producing enough engines to build 2-4 a month, that seems like overkill. How many Starships are even needed?

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

#124

Post by qayxc »

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…

While I don't agree that reuse will bring the price down further, I can 100% get behind the other points.

Even the argument that demand isn't there because launch costs are high doesn't hold - the bigger the sat, the more expensive it is and the trend goes towards smaller and cheaper sats.

Building commercial space stations (plural!) could be done using all-up launches and that would be like what - one launch every couple of years?

It's still early days, but it's not as if 100t to LEO is novel or anything - the Energia rocket could do that 35 years ago. The Soviets and later Roskosmos abandoned the vehicle, because they couldn't find a use for it either (after Buran was axed).

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

#125

Post by NickNameNick »

garaetjjte wrote: post #112
jiggawatts wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The design is now thoroughly outdated. It wouldn't be cost-effective to reproduce a Saturn V as-is. The equivalent rocket is the Starship, which clearly can be built. Technologies like 3D printing, new alloys, better fuels, modern computers, etc... have made dramatic differences to the design and construction of these rockets. Have a look at the circuitry used on the Saturn V: http://www.righto.com/2020/04/a-circuit-…

>The design is now thoroughly outdated. Not really, fundamentals doesn't change that much. Starship is not equivalent, it is entirely new, different category. >better fuels, modern computers, etc... have made dramatic differences to the design and construction of these rockets. Saturn V used RP1 and LH2 fuels, both are still widely used. Gas generator cycles are also used in modern engines. You can have smaller compu…

Gas generator cycle engines are definitely still in use, but a lot of next generation engines use a staged-combustion cycle.

The effiency improvements seem to be good enough to be worth the engineering challenges, especially for larger rockets.

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

#126

Post by jacquesm »

ngngngng wrote: post #106
_Microft wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's all about the proximity of the planets. Not about the size of the ship.

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

#127

Post by terafo »

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 believe that expendable upper stage alone costs 10 million. It can't cost them less than that.

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

#128

Post by bumby »

caoilte wrote: post #97
bumby wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a difference in methodology here. When those numbers of the shuttle are listed, they're including all the upfront R&D spread across the life-cycle of the program. I believe the Falcon costs disregard all those as a sunk cost and only list the actual "launch" costs

yep. $1.5billion in 2010 prices per flight including r&d. 1.2 without. which is still 1.5 billion per flight in 2021 prices. So Elon needs to get the price down to $15mil to hit his target. 5% is still pretty good tho. And it may go lower.

I think this might miss the point. Is the $70MM/launch tag including the R&D? Does it include the R&D that is essentially given to SpaceX through their SpaceAct agreement?

Imagine if Tesla gave me all their R&D and manufacturing know-how and offered to help me out whenever I hit a snag, wouldn't I look great by showing everyone how much cheaper I can build an EV? That's why I think it's a bit of a faulty comparison. Still great, but some of these comparison border on the edge of hype

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

#129

Post by redindian75 »

grecy wrote: post #88
ProAm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sheer fact she has put up with Elon this long is nothing short of amazing.

One of my favourite passages in the SpaceX book is from Gwen after working with Elon for a couple of weeks. She worked really hard on a proposal about how they would go about selling the Falcon rocket to potential customers. Elon took one look and said "That's great. I don't want you to write reports and proposals, I want you to do it.". My god, I would give anything for a boss like that.

which book is this? There are so many SpaceX/Musk books, would love to read a good/definitive one

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

#130

Post by mlindner »

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…

> But "dirt cheap" is probably an Elon-ism, closer to "full self driving by 2018."

"Dirt cheap" is from the article, not Elon.

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