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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

#361

Post by signatoremo »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #322
thrwawy283 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tend to think investors love to chase clouds. These ideas have existed for a long time, and making them a reality - of course - isn't easy. I tend to believe an investor is looking at how good a company can sell the idea to consumers, even if the tech isn't there yet. The company tricks the consumer - not the investor. People buy the half-finished tech, the company appreciates in value, and the investor very likel…

>There are stupid investors out there, but they won't be investors for long. Softbank seemingly hasn't ran out of money, despite making about the worst investments anyone can have done. The people who don't last long are you or I, people who can put 10k max. The large investors have more money than sense, and can afford to do so. > The company tricks the consumer - not the investor. If I give you the money to commit…

> Softbank seemingly hasn't ran out of money, despite making about the worst investments anyone can have done.

Classic armchair expert. It’s amusing that when they made a fortune with Alibaba many people here dismissed it as luck, and yet when they lost money they became the worst investors ever.

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

#362

Post by bumby »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #191
bumby wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a difference in methodology here. When those numbers of the shuttle are listed, they're including all the upfront R&D spread across the life-cycle of the program. I believe the Falcon costs disregard all those as a sunk cost and only list the actual "launch" costs

Falcon9 1.0 R&D costs were $300M.

Again, I don't think that's an apt comparison. The NAFCOM numbers used in that calculation don't include things like program support costs, contingency costs, contractor fees, etc. Those are usually baked into the NASA figures sighted though. Add on top of that, NASA will sometimes independently fund R&D related directly to issues experiences. SpaceX can be the direct beneficiaries of that research without having any of the costs on their books.

I'm confident SpaceX would still be substantially lower than NASA if they had, but we need to be consistent in the methodology or it just becomes the equivalent of cherry picking data to underscore an already valid point.

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

#363

Post by signatoremo »

qayxc wrote: post #338
WalterBright wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Webb couldn't have fit into a Starship fairing either. Let's all quit at the very first obstacle! Did you know that a lot of things don't fit into a 747, either? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Shuttle_Carrier_Aircra... The lunar lander also didn't fit into a Saturn V. Don't tell engineers what they can't do.

> Don't tell engineers what they can't do. I don't - just a small hint there: Webb fit just fine into an Ariane V fairing...

It does, at $20B cost. A simpler JWST that takes advantage of the large fairing of Starship will cost less and take less time to build

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

#364

Post by me_me_me »

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 will need a lot of CGI graphics of the starship flying through the space, cuz this project will never take off anywhere near what Musk is promising.

It sounds like I am overly negative but if you push the hype aside and let only facts speak for themselves:

Orbital refueling - no technical details, just cgi images

crew capacity - no details

ship layout - no details

stage 0 launch platform - no details

life support - ummm scaled up dargon??

raptor 2 - 'its stripped raptor 1 and much better' (still in tests, not proven tech)

refuealing and relaunching withing few hours - Falcon 9 takes 30days!

Optimistically Starship is not going to be ready for human crew anywhere near 5-10 years.

Also someone made a super cut of his 2022 update talk and its beat for beat the same thing he said in update from 2 years ago. Its not a good sign if you havent done anything in 2 years for a project that promises so much in few years time.

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

#365

Post by tjchear »

wnolens wrote: post #240
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.

How was the interview process?

Would be great to learn about the questions they ask.

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

#366

Post by moralestapia »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #360
moralestapia wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all "kerosene" is the same. Jets use Jet Fuel A which is ~$5/gallon while Merlin engines use RP-1 which is ~$100/gallon. Also, on the latter, you need a similarly sized tank of liquid oxygen that the jet gets for free from the atmosphere.

$5 and $100 kerosene emit the same amount of CO2 per liter. Starship's methane is cheaper than Jet A. Liquid Oxygen is an order of magnitude cheaper than Jet A or methane.

Sure, but we were talking about fuel cost.

>Starship's methane is cheaper than Jet A.

Is this true yet? I'm honestly unaware of it. I've heard they were planning on it to be quite cheap when they find a way to extract it from the atmosphere, but don't know how far they are through that.

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

#367

Post by ohgodplsno »

signatoremo wrote: post #361
ohgodplsno wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are stupid investors out there, but they won't be investors for long. Softbank seemingly hasn't ran out of money, despite making about the worst investments anyone can have done. The people who don't last long are you or I, people who can put 10k max. The large investors have more money than sense, and can afford to do so. > The company tricks the consumer - not the investor. If I give you the money to commit…

> Softbank seemingly hasn't ran out of money, despite making about the worst investments anyone can have done. Classic armchair expert. It’s amusing that when they made a fortune with Alibaba many people here dismissed it as luck, and yet when they lost money they became the worst investors ever.

That's not the point. Softbank has been bleeding money for years, pissing it off on some of the worst possible investments. You know what's happened to them ?

Fuck all, because they simply have so much money that they don't really give a damn.

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

#368

Post by jstream67 »

uxcolumbo wrote: post #342
sjtindell wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate framing it this way but your passionate hating has me doing it - do you build rockets? Or cars? What exactly do you do that gives you such certainty in bringing down these people who have already achieved so much? Their "dream big" mentality is sorely lacking in a society full of cynical, dead eyed and uncreative drones focused on nothing but financing their own survival or excesses. Applaud it, don't try to b…

The real problem with Musk is that he seems to be a narcissist and a good hypeman. His achievements are that he invested in the right companies and then he ousted the original visionaries / founders... and finally claiming he is the founder... see Tesla. Also a real leader usually gives credit where credit is due. Not once have I seen where Musk has credited his team. And don't get me started with how he's calling a…

he credits his team in every speech he gives, and thanks the team constantly on twitter.

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

#369

Post by me_me_me »

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?

AFAIK they only tester 3 of them, out off the whole cluster only 3 had been tested.

Soviets were desperate by then, no money, no time, and political pressure.

> How did Musk solve this problem?

Raptor 2 apparently has melting issues, you can only imagine what will happen when you have whole array of them firing.

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

#370

Post by snek_case »

maccam94 wrote: post #329
ncmncm wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes way more sense to launch the whole space station in one piece. ISS is how it is because they couldn't .

But why not build an even bigger space station by combining payloads from multiple launches?

Possibly, with bigger modules, you could build it in a way that each module is fully redundant, has its own power, thrusters, docking, etc. That way you'd have a fully operational station from the first module, and great redundancy if there was ever an accident.
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