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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

#261

Post by WalterBright »

perilunar wrote: post #254
WalterBright wrote: post #142

Just think - we went from first flight to landing on the moon well within one lifetime.

Yes. My grandfather went from horse-and-buggy and oil lamps to jet airliners and moon landings in his lifetime.

I sometimes wonder what my great-aunt was thinking when she flew across the Atlantic in a jetliner. She remembered when the first automobile came to her village.

I first flew across the Atlantic as a baby in a propeller airplane. The last time I crossed, it was in a 757, the airplane I worked on 40 years previously.

The big advances in my lifetime were pretty much all in computers. Ironically, that was the one thing not predicted by any of the endless scifi books I read.

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

#262

Post by tigershark »

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…

The target cost for starship is $2M per launch for a much bigger payload. If they achieve that (but even if they arrive to several multiple of that) Falcon 9 is dead. It’s as simple as that.

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

#263

Post by runnerup »

cma wrote: post #216
JaimeThompson wrote: post #55

I think Gwynne Shotwell is the rather unsung hero keeping SpaceX running correctly day by day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell

This from her seemed dangerously like fraud: https://www.ted.com/talks/gwynne_shotwell_spacex_s_plan_to_f... Passenger service by 2028 on starship for between an economy and business class ticket. A couple years later they confirmed they were still going for the same timeline.

I'm not a fan of Elon Musk. I can absolutely see regular passenger service on Starship by 2028. Obviously that's a very aspirational price-point but I don't see how even a strict ruling on fraud would uphold that charge.

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

#264

Post by elkos »

russellbeattie wrote: post #91

I recently read "Liftoff" about the early days of SpaceX [1]. Definitely recommended if you want to get a good overview of the company and industry. To me, it provided a lot of missing context and background that is really nice to have when reading articles like this one above. Though the book ends in 2008 - after SpaceX finally put a rocket into orbit on their fourth, and what would have been final, attempt - many o…

Did the temporal horizon on their plans shifted? If so by how much?

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

#265

Post by tigershark »

snek_case wrote: post #243
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

Nobody seems to think about space stations. You could launch much bigger modules with Starship, and many more of them, so you could create a much larger space station for a cheaper price.

You can actually repurpose a starship as a space station. ISS is 915 m^2, starship should be around 1100 m^2. Now imagine using several repurposed starship as space station modules..

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

#266

Post by elkos »

mlindner wrote: post #16
strangesongs wrote: post #2

"Precisely when, though, remains unclear" The subheading says so much

Because there's a lot of uncertainty at the moment that depends on the result of the FAA environmental review. If there's a "yes", then launch is likely this year. If there's a "no", then launch is likely not this year.

Aren't environmental review services a thing in the USA? It's pretty commonly expected to seek such services and edhere to their recommendations prior to filling a launch request in many jurisdictions around the world since prior to launch you have to coordinate with several state authorities, and do some paperwork.

I'm pretty sure any organization that's able to figure out such launch vehicle will be able to do their own due diligence.

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

#268

Post by tigershark »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #172
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…

> 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…

You can’t really get better than starship with the current chemical rocket technology. The reason is simple: the Tiranny of the Rocket equation. Starship exists just because of Raptor (2). An incredible engine, the first full flow engine to ever fly and that should be capable of about 230t of force.

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

#269

Post by elkos »

mlindner wrote: post #143
sgjohnson wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does the federal government pay the same rates we commercial third-parties from abroad get to go to launch?

To my understanding several times the federal government has special requests that can and will drive the launch cost upwards for many (if not all) launch providers.

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

#270

Post by HWR_14 »

XorNot wrote: post #222
marktangotango wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Depending on the final cost, and the cost of amenities, SpaceX could probably profitably just launch people on orbital holidays. By some numbers I think you're looking at sort of "trip to Disneyland" pricing in terms of expense. There is currently probably an almost infinite market of sending middle class people into space to experience true microgravity and LEO, and if that's viable then you're already setting up a…

$30,000/person for a vacation is definitely out of budget for the middle class. $30,000 for a family of four is also out of budget. Hell, I'm not even sure Disney is a less than a once-in-a-lifetime (if that) for middle class families.
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