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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

#231

Post by ClumsyPilot »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #209
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do suspect we need to find commercial enterprises to justify the Starship economics and I'm just not sure what that looks like yet. At $1 MM per launch with 100 t per launch puts Starship roughly at $10 per kg. Asteroid mining: Will be a huge industry. Especially with growing environmental concerns all around Earth. Waste can basically be disposed of very cheaply into the atmosphere or sun. Starlink, Kupier, etc…

The military wants a C-130 payload anywhere in the world in 1 hour. Military up the wazoo in contracts. Militarization of space is inevitable, they'll want bases up there. If the payload costs are true for starship, they'll put big ones up there. Starship will represent a total paradigm change in space superiority on economics alone. I'm surprised China and Russia aren't loudly complaining about this. It would enable…

"Just wait for the private Starships. Hey they should be cheaper than megayachts."

Any space rocket can turn the whitehouse, the Kremlin or 10 Downing street into a crater withing 30 minutes, with minimal chances of air defence to stoping it. If we start handing out starships to random shady conpanies registered in tax heavens, 9/11 will look like a peacefull day in comparison

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

#232

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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.

When did private business pay for scientific instruments, like particle colliders and gravity enterferometers?

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

#233

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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).

Oh my gid, do you understand that these rockets carry Millions of liters of fuel? Thats the energy of a small nuclear bomb.

Unlike planes, they carry oxidiser and fuel, so they do not burn, they detonate. Minimal safe exclusion zone is measured in square miles!

Simpler? The fuel is chilled 2/3 of the way to absolute zero, and the engines are at several thousand degrees. Tiny manufacturing error and everyone dies.

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

#234

Post by nycdotnet »

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…

Falcon Heavy was specified relatively early in the Falcon 9’s development cycle. They were originally going to do more Falcon Heavy missions but in the meantime, blocks 3 and 4 of Falcon 9 came out and the Merlin kept getting better and better, and with block 5 the Merlin D has almost double the thrust of the Merlins on the early Falcon 9s which is kind of nuts. So many of the missions conceived for Falcon Heavy were ultimately flown on a different rocket- a more capable single stick Falcon 9.

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

#235

Post by ClumsyPilot »

discordance wrote: post #199
giantrobot wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, the infrastructure for rocket travel doesn’t exist... yet. That can change. We are moving from being able to crawl to walk with this new capability. What happens when we can run?

Airports do not have minimal safety distance measured in miles.

Catastrophic failure of a plane causes a fire, catastrophic failure of a rocket causes a detonation the size of a small nuke.

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

#237

Post by asdfgasrgaer »

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?

No post body was provided.

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

#238

Post by boznz »

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…

Asteroid mining. I really cant believe its not on Elon's mind, talk about disruptive!

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

#239

Post by thebigman433 »

trhway wrote: post #187
thebigman433 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

>The amount of people that can afford to pay that is minimal average American wedding is close to $30K, so i think there is a large market at the top. Plus corporations with their outings/offsite/etc. for S/E/VPs flying business class to nice places, influencers/promotions/raffles, midlife crisis and retired doctors, lawyers, execs as well as tens (if not a hundred) of thousands of young FAANG employees making $500K+…

The logistics do not just revolve around safety (although that is a major factor), its also stuff like noise and environmental pollution. Residents werent happy with the Concorde noise, people are going to be furious with the noise of a Starship taking off. All of the launches are going to have to be done offshore essentially to avoid this, so now youre also looking at spending probably a couple hours waiting on ferries to come and go, and at that point, who even wants to deal with everything related to that kind of point to point transfer? Thats not even mentioning stuff like being uncomfortable while riding.

All of this plus even if it wasnt too loud, you need countries to let you fly your rocket over their airspace constantly.

We can mention the launches to put millions of tons on Mars, but personally Ill believe that when I see it. That is going to have a massive cost, and I dont see that happening particularly soon at all, even if Starship gets to be completely operational.

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

#240

Post by wnolens »

uejfiweun wrote: post #176

What's the best thing I can do to help out with this as a software engineer? Is SpaceX in need of any critical software components? I think this is honestly the coolest thing to happen in my entire lifetime so far, and I would love to be a part of it, but I'm not sure I'd be useful since I'm not a mechanical engineer.

They hire. I interviewed for a role once, they were looking for C++ expertise.
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