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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

#151

Post by valine »

WalterBright wrote: post #135
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.

As I recall, the Soviet moon rocket failed because it had a cluster of engines that they could never get to work together. The Saturn V had a cluster of only 5, and barely were able to get that to work. How did Musk solve this problem?

Falcon 9 has 9 engines, it’s not like Spacex is unfamiliar with putting multiple engines on a rocket. That being said we have yet to see more than 3 raptors in flight at a time, so the upcoming orbital test flight will be interesting to watch.

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

#152

Post by hirundo »

The article doesn't mention using Starship for point-to-point transport on Earth. It would seem to make sense for fast long distance commercial travel, and for high value -- like military -- cargo delivery. I'd guess that such terrestrial applications could swamp the more cosmic ones in scale, just because this is where the money and demand is.

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

#153

Post by ineedasername »

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

Who are "they", and how can that opinion hold true when we are in fact building something comparable to it?

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

#154

Post by thebigman433 »

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 a reason Musk and co have stopped pitching the point to point transfer on Earth. Aside from technical challenges, this is a massive regulatory and logistics problem

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

#155

Post by thebigman433 »

WalterBright wrote: post #135
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.

As I recall, the Soviet moon rocket failed because it had a cluster of engines that they could never get to work together. The Saturn V had a cluster of only 5, and barely were able to get that to work. How did Musk solve this problem?

I think for now, nobody can say they have. The proof will be in the launch attempts for sure.

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

#156

Post by thebigman433 »

trhway wrote: post #90
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…

>Cheaper and larger payload capacities will ultimately change the industry ... is there sufficient demand there for this ambitious launch vehicle? What else will it be used for? extended weekend around Moon in cattle class for say $100K/person. Suborbital flight LA to Shanghai in 1 hour for $5-10K. Though it seems that the first years the SpaceX Mars program will gobble almost all the capacity (according to that rece…

> extended weekend around Moon in cattle class for say $100K/person.

But how long does this actually last? The amount of people that can afford to pay that is minimal, I dont see space tourism driving any serious markets for an extremely long time (if ever).

And there is a reason point to point transfer isnt being mentioned anymore. The logistics and regulatory hurdles are going to be massive, and I seriously doubt we see that outside of maybe military tests for cargo transport.

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

#157

Post by trothamel »

jballer wrote: post #102
metadat wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That matches my experience. I spent a wonderful time talking to a docent who diagnosed some of the failures on the Skylab booster. (Which came very close to not making it.)

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

#158

Post by jmyeet »

mlindner wrote: post #113
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…

> What people forget is that payloads are deeply coupled to their launch vehicles. The launch vehicle will dictate the maximum weight and dimensions of the payload. You can't just take a payload designed for one vehicle and put it on another. This is generally (but not always) false. SpaceX has been negotiating a lot of their commercial contracts in a vehicle agnostic fashion. Namely that SpaceX can pick which vehicl…

> This is generally (but not always) false. SpaceX has been negotiating a lot of their commercial contracts in a vehicle agnostic fashion.

Here's another way of putting that: SpaceX has designed it so F9 and Starship payloads will be interchangeable. That's not quite the same thing. You can't just take an F9 payload and bolt it on top of an Ariane rocket.

> Starship is being designed with the intent that it will cannibalize all Falcon 9 launches eventually.

Sure but that's just going to take a long time, particularly if F9 is, say, sub-$15m per launch. There's a lot that still has to be done for Starship (eg the landing system, the crew component).

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

#159

Post by grishka »

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).

They already have plans for this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0

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

#160

Post by jmyeet »

WalterBright wrote: post #146
jmyeet wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Are you imaginging a JWST or similar telescope that isn't a government program?
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