Don’t stage off Starship
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Don’t stage off Starship
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Re: Don’t stage off Starship
#2If you are still unsure about the scale of SpaceX' plans for Mars, here is a very concise summary by Robert Zubrin (president of the Mars Society):
It's not Apollo. It's D-Day.
It is from an interview with Zubrin who, among other things, discussed mini-Starship with Elon Musk at the Boca Chica job day recently. It can be found here [0], with an automated transcription at [1]. Discussed in /r/spacex at [2].
[0] https://www.thespaceshow.com/show/11-feb-2020/broadcast-3459...
[1] https://hastebin.com/raw/ozimiqenop
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/f34fqm/zubrin_share...
Re: Don’t stage off Starship
#3This is by far the most interesting aviation/rocketry development I've ever seen. After watching the two Falcon 9 lower stages come back simultaneously from the first Falcon Heavy launch, I realized how different things were going to be.
Starship, even if Musk is off by quite a large factor on the cost to launch, is still going to be extremely cheap to fly compared to everything else out there.
Other people copycatting the ideas off of Starship will drastically improve the space industry costs, regardless if the Mars venture is successful or not (and I want it to be). This will literally put us in a different era. It wouldn't surprise me if Starship spins off other industries for vehicles not focused on Mars, but elsewhere in the solar system, or based on much longer space voyages.
The next hurdle for deep space, aside from shielding, will be power. Lower solar flux in deep space and the interest to save weight will likely see the use of more nuclear power.
Regardless, I'm much more hopeful about the space industry that I was in early February, 2003...
Re: Don’t stage off Starship
#4The 5 million per starship must be the cargo ship only. The engines alone are going to be half that cost.
Re: Don’t stage off Starship
#5Im no less a science fiction fan than the next person but the whole “colonize Mars” thing is stupid and wasteful and arrogant and really pounds the message that billionaires are deeply deeply out of touch with the rest of society.
Not only will colonizing Mars never work, there’s no reason at all to want to. What a dead, barren place.
And in the meantime back down to earth people are really starting to care about inequality. Meanwhile billionaires pour resources into childish flights of fancy when the world is literally burning.
Ugh. I really think billionaires have a place in our society but these sorts of projects make me understand why others question whether some people should have such huge control of resources.
No one is even visiting Mars, let alone colonizing it.
Re: Don’t stage off Starship
#6> while storage tanks can be built from local materials
Just use the starships themselves. Actually,to further reduce cost, I would design starship to be useable as a Mars habitat: even fuel tanks could conceivably be converted into living quarters,I guess. Further the efficiency by recycling other parts of the starship as building materials.
Also, most of the reasoning in this article revolves around power plant mass. I wonder how a nuclear power plant would affect the outcome.
Re: Don’t stage off Starship
#7When talking about big rockets, it is hard not to talk about Sea Dragon. It was a rocket where the entire design is based on the "bigger is better" philosophy.
The design was simple. No need for lightweight, high-tech materials, because it is big. No need for highly efficient high pressure engines, just make one that is bigger. That thing would have dwarved the Saturn V. The name "Sea Dragon" comes from the fact it would have been launched from the sea, it would have been too big for a ground-based launchpad. It would have been built in a shipyard like a submarine that can stand upright.
Re: Don’t stage off Starship
#8Im no less a science fiction fan than the next person but the whole “colonize Mars” thing is stupid and wasteful and arrogant and really pounds the message that billionaires are deeply deeply out of touch with the rest of society. Not only will colonizing Mars never work, there’s no reason at all to want to. What a dead, barren place. And in the meantime back down to earth people are really starting to care about ine…
Buddy, we're gonna dysonsphere every sun in the galaxy. Mars isn't arrogant, it's just that we have to learn to crawl before we start running.
Re: Don’t stage off Starship
#9Im no less a science fiction fan than the next person but the whole “colonize Mars” thing is stupid and wasteful and arrogant and really pounds the message that billionaires are deeply deeply out of touch with the rest of society. Not only will colonizing Mars never work, there’s no reason at all to want to. What a dead, barren place. And in the meantime back down to earth people are really starting to care about ine…
I think the idea of colonizing Mars only makes sense in the head of a teenager who read to much bad sf. Our whole idea of spaceships crossing empty space and founding colonies on other planets is just a projection on the past successes of the age of discoveries, when actual ships crossed the oceans and reached new continents. But those continents were perfectly habitable, with tons of resources, plants and animals that forever changed the way we live. While Mars is utterly barren, inhospitable and dead.
On the other hand, I admire Musk for being a great engineer and businessman with the dreams of a teenager; even if the idea of thriving colonies on Mars is a cheap fantasy, I understand that you need to set yourself exciting goals to drive your ambition.
Re: Don’t stage off Starship
#10Im no less a science fiction fan than the next person but the whole “colonize Mars” thing is stupid and wasteful and arrogant and really pounds the message that billionaires are deeply deeply out of touch with the rest of society. Not only will colonizing Mars never work, there’s no reason at all to want to. What a dead, barren place. And in the meantime back down to earth people are really starting to care about ine…
Of all the wealthy 'out of touch' people to complain about, you choose the one guy with a risky but rewarding vision that will benefit all of our species if achieved, instead of everyone else sailing on their super yachts and buying elections and molesting children?