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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

#411

Post by JaimeThompson »

panick21_ wrote: post #373
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

She is not really unsong at all. She is very, very recognized in the industry and everybody that is seriously interested in space travel knows here. She has been on my list of influential woman and given many talks and speeches all over the place. Of course she is not Musk famous, but nobody is. People who hate Musk sometimes try to claim all SpaceX is because of her. That is certainty wrong and she herself would not…

I agree. I was speaking in her role in keeping orgs like the NRO and DOD happy when Musk smokes a blunt on camera and other such things.

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

#412

Post by AtlasBarfed »

WalterBright wrote: post #256
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> they'll want bases up there They'll be highly expensive and highly vulnerable targets. You can't armor a space station.

That's why you capture an asteroid... link at the end of the post. A million tons of rock is GREAT armor.

Traditional naval theory is that you can build a battery onshore 10x bigger than the one on a battleship. Things change when you are in space though. Missiles have to escape the gravity well. Lasers have to get through the atmosphere. Sure it's expensive to get up there, but if you have space superiority, you do have certain advantages.

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

#413

Post by dingaling »

qayxc wrote: post #339
WalterBright wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people wondered why Boeing was blowing all this money developing the 747. Who needed an airplane that big? It turned out to be the biggest moneymaker ever for Boeing - and the people who bought them.

And look what happened - the A380, an even bigger plane - was discontinued because it turned out smaller planes are more economical.

> because it turned out smaller planes are more economical

Per seat the A380 is still the cheapest way of moving a person by air. The 777X should beat it, but it's not in service yet.

The problems with the A380 were (1) it wasn't aerodynamically radical enough to maintain that advantage beyond one generation of airliners and (2) you need to fill it to compensate for (1)

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

#414

Post by AtlasBarfed »

screenbreakout wrote: post #358
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Umm, what is the CO2 cost ? Oh I forgot, the world is burning up, but it's buisness as usual... I do appreciate the discussion, though , it's justsad to see a lack of concern for real existential worries...

You're talking to a diehard Anthropogenic GW proponent, at least 20 years.

Space will be rounding error on suburbia in emissions. At this point it's necessary because population and resource consumption growth has exceeded Earth's footprint by quite a lot. We need people and resources moved to space in the long run.

The military sucks as a funding source morally, but it is as big as you can get as a practical/politically achievable one. Where else can you get a trillion dollars? We need asteroid mining, space habs, launch loops to get humanity to space.

GW has to be addressed through urbanization (centralize people in cities), electrification of transport, artificial meat, synthfuels for long haul transit, alt energy for power gen. I'm not saying we'll make it with those, but at least all of that is somewhat underway.

Consumer culture seems to be defraying birth rates. So while consumer monoculture is bad in many ways, if it perversely constricts population growth then it's good. Kind of like if the oligarchs effectively starve everyone of money needed to have big families... it is perversely good for the environment.

But you're talking to someone who's political alignment is "despotic environmentalist".

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

#415

Post by xeromal »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #389
panick21_ wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She is not really unsong at all. She is very, very recognized in the industry and everybody that is seriously interested in space travel knows here. She has been on my list of influential woman and given many talks and speeches all over the place. Of course she is not Musk famous, but nobody is. People who hate Musk sometimes try to claim all SpaceX is because of her. That is certainty wrong and she herself would not…

It's most strange to me, and I am not saying this applies to you, that one can have legit concerns about Musk and they are simply dismissed as "hate" by so many. Why some refuse to hold him responsible for his statements is just weird.

I assume it's because the conversation is pretty tired at this point. Post anything musk related on reddit and maybe HN and you'll get comments about Musk calling that diver a pedo, musk got his wealth from his dad's mines, musk having aspergers, or that musk can do nothing wrong.

We've all seen it a thousand times and I'd rather just read about what SpaceX/Tesla/Musk is doing currently than past shit.

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

#416

Post by AtlasBarfed »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #231
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You're not wrong, but a private 747 could probably pose a similar threat to your stated targets, but who knows if they actually put in a worthwhile air defense after 9/11.

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

#417

Post by HWR_14 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #341
HWR_14 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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.

Well, the entire middle class isn't flying to the Moon anytime soon. Not even a meaningful fraction thereof. The logistical constraints are enormous. But I guess 10 thousand people out of the 8 billion that currently inhabit the Earth would be willing to spend 30 thousand bucks to visit the Moon. Getting all of them there and back would actually mean quite a lot of effort.

Sure, 10,000 people may sign up for that. But that's not relevant.

First, in revenue, that's $300MM. A lot of money, but doesn't seem to be a lot of money for the costs of running that number of Starships, let alone the building of them or R&D.

Second, if we assume 1% of people want to go into space, the 10,000 people would be out of the richest million people on earth. That is not the middle class. In fact, those million people will have more wealth than the entire world's middle class.

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

#418

Post by cma »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #398
cma wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX is in big part successful through what looks like corrupt self-dealing and fraud. They bailed out SolarCity with NASA funded bonds and then instead of taking the L when SolarCity was to go bankrupt, Tesla bailed them out with a fake demo of non-functionable solar shingles followed by an acquisition.

SpaceX has delivered fundamental breakthroughs in commercial space launch. Any analysis of the company that omits this is extremely disingenuous and makes me suspect ignoble motivations behind the critique.

If Theranos had a breakthrough other parts could still have been fraud.

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

#419

Post by codewench »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #232
WalterBright wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Isn't that literally every major university ever?

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

#420

Post by ncmncm »

ncmncm wrote: post #332
newsclues wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought there was potential for medivac rockets. Land near combat and take off to America or Europe for surgery.

That, anyway, will not happen. Once one has landed somewhere not a spaceport, it will not be launched again without a huge production. More likely the valuable engines will be removed and shipped home, the rest left as so much scrap metal.

If dry weight is 85 tons, with ~11 tons of engines, that leaves 74 tons of scrap. At 15 cents a pound, that's worth $22k. Maybe more as souvenirs.

The flaps & actuators might be worth taking, but the top ones are inconveniently high up unless you tip it over. Probably the electronics is worth shipping home if it's easy enough to strip off.

I don't know why the thrust plate isn't titanium. A 30 ft diameter thrust plate would in any case be inconvenient to ship home, from most places.

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