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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

#161

Post by giantrobot »

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).

A Starship can't land at any random commercial airport, a 787 can. The 787 can also divert to any other airport due to aircraft issue, weather, or whatever. Starship doesn't have anywhere close to the same cross-range capability.

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

#162

Post by taf2 »

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.

Come work with me ;)

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

#163

Post by vimy »

qayxc wrote: post #144
inasio wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The Pentagon wants to use Starship for military transport. Getting troops anywhere on earth within an hour would be a huge advantage.

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

#164

Post by rm445 »

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.

Just to nitpick, there were two Falcon Heavy missions in 2019 - Arabsat and a DoD one. That's after the successful demo launch, which was in 2018.

There are also some number scheduled for this year - I doubt we will actually see five Falcon Heavy launches, but there will be a few.

Falcon Heavy was a victim of Falcon 9's success, but it probably can't do the same thing in turn to Starship, it's just too expensive.

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

#165

Post by cecilpl2 »

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…

> IMHO a manned mission to Mars makes almost zero sense.

Whether it "makes sense" or not, there are a lot of people that want it to happen, and it also happens to be the express purpose of SpaceX and Starship. That's it's raison d'etre.

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

#166

Post by wahern »

jmyeet wrote: post #158
mlindner wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 cann…

> but that's just going to take a long time, particularly if F9 is, say, sub-$15m per launch.

1) SpaceX isn't a public company; among other benefits, there's substantially less pressure to maximize profits.

2) Starship launch costs don't need to compete with F9, they only need to compete with the other competition.

Also, it's worth repeating that the goal of this entire endeavor is reaching Mars. The above state of affairs isn't a coincidence, but a very deliberate part of Musk's plan. (Also, luck.)

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

#167

Post by randallsquared »

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?

No, it's because the transfer orbit with the largest payload for the thrust is only available in a specific configuration of Mars and Earth, which only happen every 26 months or so.

Note the spacing for launches for Mars missions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars

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

#168

Post by Mountain_Skies »

danavar wrote: post #15
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.

In Huntsville AL they have one stood up outside a museum right off the highway - it’s insane to see

Though not as large, there's also a standing Saturn 1B at the Alabama Welcome Center in Elkmont on Interstate 65.

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

#169

Post by imglorp »

kragen wrote: post #26

https://archive.is/1IIml BTW, if you like the Energia rocket and heavy metal, you might like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVWfqOSdzs4 . This quote (from the article) is astounding: > [SpaceX] has pulled off 111 Falcon 9 launches in a row without failure

The last failure in flight was 2015. Since then there were 120 successful launches and no failures. There was one payload lost in 2016 during a static fire test.

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

#170

Post by SECProto »

jmyeet wrote: post #158
mlindner wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 cann…

> Sure but that's just going to take a long time, particularly if F9 is, say, sub-$15m per launch.

This rests on the assumption that a starship launch costs SpaceX more than that. The whole starship program is a gamble that they can make cheap, fully and rapidly reusable rockets. If the marginal cost for a starship launch is more than for a partially-reusable falcon 9, then the project has failed (or is still in development)

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