11–20 of 53 posts
They are 100% at the mercy of SpaceX accepting their payloads. If SpaceX decides to create an in-house competitor, they are purely and simply screwed. And SpaceX will create an in-house competitor if Impulse Space is profitable. So they are also betting on either anti-monopoly legislation being set-up (SpaceX is a monopoly because no other launcher can match their pricing), or that a SpaceX competitor emerges (which…
For another view on how this will change things, consider the delta-V map of the Solar System [1]. As an example you need 45km/s to reach Saturn, roughly 20% of that is just spent getting to Low Earth Orbit. Now consider the long-term trend in the payload cost (by weight) of getting to LEO [2]. This is why people such as myself are so bullish on spaceX (despite quite reasonable qualms about Elon Musk as a person). Th…
Actually, it's 19km/s less than that. You want your destination to be Low Saturn Orbit, not Saturn. You've included the 19km/s that it takes to launch from Saturn to low Saturn orbit. It's even less again if you can aerobrake at Saturn.
They are 100% at the mercy of SpaceX accepting their payloads. If SpaceX decides to create an in-house competitor, they are purely and simply screwed. And SpaceX will create an in-house competitor if Impulse Space is profitable. So they are also betting on either anti-monopoly legislation being set-up (SpaceX is a monopoly because no other launcher can match their pricing), or that a SpaceX competitor emerges (which…
They are 100% at the mercy of SpaceX accepting their payloads. If SpaceX decides to create an in-house competitor, they are purely and simply screwed. And SpaceX will create an in-house competitor if Impulse Space is profitable. So they are also betting on either anti-monopoly legislation being set-up (SpaceX is a monopoly because no other launcher can match their pricing), or that a SpaceX competitor emerges (which…
If e.g. Boeing wants in on the action, they need to start moving. The main problem with that has more to do with Boeing's inertia than with SpaceX trying to stop them from doing anything. SpaceX has actually been pretty vocal and open about their plans. And by Boeing/NASA standards they are not even spending that much on this. The only thing stopping Boeing from competing here is Boeing being Boeing. Other companies are less encumbered by their own ineptness and will no doubt start figuring things out for themselves.
So long as humanity is limited to throwing high velocity gas oot the back of rockets to get around the solar system, we’ll be limited by access to volatile material. Spacex is betting on CH4 and oxygen, nuclear rocket designs (NERVA) used hydrogen, although they could use pretty much anything. Earth is in a peculiar position such that the delta V of getting to orbit will also get you to anywhere else in the solar sys…
Tangent:
One of my favorite answers to the Fermi paradox (not mutually exclusive with others) is that much of the life in the universe is stuck at the bottom of huge gravity wells ("super Earths") that make space flight immensely difficult and expensive, making the development of a space industry far less likely.
It's a variant of the rare Earth hypothesis. Not only might Earth be rare for its stability and long-lived biosphere but also for the fact that it's large enough to hold onto a thick atmosphere and water but not so large that you can't get off it with relatively benign (compared to higher energy alternatives) chemical propellants. Increases in the mass of Earth would make space launch exponentially not linearly harder.
Getting anything non-trivial off a super-Earth would probably require nuclear or hybrid (e.g. LANTR) rockets, which are problematic for ground launch in a biosphere. They'd also be a lot more costly.
They are 100% at the mercy of SpaceX accepting their payloads. If SpaceX decides to create an in-house competitor, they are purely and simply screwed. And SpaceX will create an in-house competitor if Impulse Space is profitable. So they are also betting on either anti-monopoly legislation being set-up (SpaceX is a monopoly because no other launcher can match their pricing), or that a SpaceX competitor emerges (which…
Or they're just hoping to be acquired by SpaceX, like Swarm Technologies?
While space is always cool and "sexy", I've been wondering if there's some analog model that could work for ocean tech, particularly tech that allows us to better protect and explore the ocean.
On a personal and technical level, I view the ocean as far more important to human understanding and survival than space.
So long as humanity is limited to throwing high velocity gas oot the back of rockets to get around the solar system, we’ll be limited by access to volatile material. Spacex is betting on CH4 and oxygen, nuclear rocket designs (NERVA) used hydrogen, although they could use pretty much anything. Earth is in a peculiar position such that the delta V of getting to orbit will also get you to anywhere else in the solar sys…
> fairly quickly. The delta-v maps show the minimum needed to get from one place to the other. In order to get from one place to another more quickly, you’ll need larger delta-v’s at the ends of the trip. Even though the rest of the solar system is within reach, we don’t want to send humans to Pluto and back on 20-year missions.
So long as humanity is limited to throwing high velocity gas oot the back of rockets to get around the solar system, we’ll be limited by access to volatile material. Spacex is betting on CH4 and oxygen, nuclear rocket designs (NERVA) used hydrogen, although they could use pretty much anything. Earth is in a peculiar position such that the delta V of getting to orbit will also get you to anywhere else in the solar sys…
The real issue is what’s the point? The economics of asteroid mining gets much worse if you consider bringing vast quantities of say gold back to earth would tank the value of gold.