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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

#141

Post by midasuni »

marktangotango wrote: post #86
inglor_cz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It will take the space industry a few years to adapt to the new possibilities, yes. There are tons of possibilities; James Web 2 with 10x the diameter, a probe to catch up with Oumaumau, real asteroid prospecting. Oh and orbital hotels. Does anyone know of any concrete projects?

It’s cheap, but not cheap enough to be launching concrete!

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

#143

Post by mlindner »

sgjohnson wrote: post #75
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...

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/spacex-nasa-launch-cost-i... > So far, the average costs of launching cargo remain on par with the space shuttle at about $US30,000 per lb. (The space shuttle cost about $US1.5 billion per mission, including development, and could carry up to 50,000 lbs of cargo.) Also not to mention that the Wikipedia table is probably irrelevant, because for the Space Shuttle launch cost is just t…

The fact that business insider (a much discredited tabloid) puts it in an article doesn't make it true either. Falcon 9 is MUCH cheaper than launching on Space Shuttle ever was. Your article is from 5 years ago btw.

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

#144

Post by qayxc »

inasio wrote: post #108
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).

There is no way in hell a huge ICBM would get international overflight rights.

The logistics of such system would be hell, too - Concorde only had limited routes due to noise. A rocket of Starship's size is another thing entirely. You'd basically have to launch and land it offshore so the logistics getting to and from the launch site and into the vehicle would kill all benefits.

Not to mention the simple things like weather, closing airspace, and the lack of cross-range capabilities, which would make emergency landings or evading bad conditions on the landing site pretty difficult.

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

#145

Post by vasili111 »

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 hope to one day see Starship up close in person as it takes off to space.

You never know when you think/speak about tech progress. One day you can even fly on it.

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

#146

Post by WalterBright »

jmyeet wrote: post #139
WalterBright wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What wouldn't it be useful for? 1. bigger and much more capable interplanetary probes 2. a much cheaper Webb telescope 3. build a base on the moon 4. make a mission to Mars possible

> 1. bigger and much more capable interplanetary probes One of the things I'd dearly love to see in lifetime is a return to the ice giants (ie Uranus and Neptune). We've only visited once and it was in the 1980s with the limited tech of Voyager 1 and 2. Think of what we could learn with a Cassini-level mission and Cassini itself is now ~14 years old. But these missions take a long time to develop. We actually have a…

> And JWST took 20 years to develop.

Likely a great deal of that was trying to optimize it for weight. Also, it was a government program - not known for cost or time efficiency.

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

#147

Post by mattashii »

marktangotango wrote: post #86
inglor_cz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It will take the space industry a few years to adapt to the new possibilities, yes. There are tons of possibilities; James Web 2 with 10x the diameter, a probe to catch up with Oumaumau, real asteroid prospecting. Oh and orbital hotels. Does anyone know of any concrete projects?

There are 4 NASA projects proposed to launch successors to JWST sometime after 2035, doing more foundational (heh) research: Lynx, HabEx, LUVOIR (with variants A and B) and Origins. All still need to get past the initial research phase, and all but Lynx would greatly benefit from a launch vehicle that can cheaply and easily send 10s of tons into L2.

Oh, and don't forget the contract from NASA for landing humans on the moon.

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

#148

Post by mlindner »

redindian75 wrote: post #129
grecy wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-Spac...

The book is titled Liftoff. It's the best SpaceX book there is and is very accurate involving many interviews with early employees. Musk is in the book but he's not featured majorly. It's mostly about all the employees who worked on the early rockets.

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

#149

Post by mhh__ »

T-A wrote: post #110
mhh__ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I heard something about it recently I think, but yes I wouldn't bet more than a penny on it ever happening.

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

#150

Post by qayxc »

bmcniel wrote: post #95
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…

It seems like the thesis is if cost per kg fall enough then the implausible becomes plausible. F9 reduced costs to make starlink possible, what will starship make possible?

"The consequences for SpaceX if we can not get enough reliable Raptors made is that we then can’t fly Starship, which means we then can’t fly Starlink Satellite V2 (Falcon has neither the volume nor the mass to orbit needed for satellite V2). Satellite V1, by itself, is financially weak, while V2 is strong."

Seems to me as if Starlink without Starship isn't all that great.

Also, OneWeb - despite being smaller in scope - managed to do a similar thing without reusable rockets. Now that doesn't make F9 bad - it's still a great machine - it's just not the game changer many hoped it to be.

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