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SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

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Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#11
Honestly, Elon's presentations are some of the most impressive, inspiring I've ever seen. And the way he just stumbles out words and sentences that are completely revolutionary... casually dropping these absurd, incredible statements. I find it incredible.

If anyone else was saying this, was showing these graphics, you'd think it was just wish fulfillment; a fantasy. And I'm sure their timeline is a bit aggressive. But I fully believe the SpaceX team can do this.

This has made me feel inspired for the future almost more than anything else has in recent memory.

(For context, and to the doubters, I've been following SpaceX for a long time, through their many failures, and they've already revolutionized the space industry. They have a drive and a vision and they're just going for it. This isn't about profits for them, it's about pushing humanity forwards -- and if that sounds grand, it's because it is.)

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#12
post #9

Wow, can they really make BFR reliable enough to replace long distance airline routes? And how would propellant cost compare with jet fuel? Anywhere on Earth in an hour does sound extremely appealing; better than Concorde, with bonus zero gravity (going to need a lot of barf bags though).

I was a little disappointed he didn't give any timeline at all on that not even a aspirational one. I also assume it's gonna be really expensive due to frequent heat shield replacement. I wouldn't be surprised if it never became economically viable. Too few passengers and too high cost.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#14
post #9

Wow, can they really make BFR reliable enough to replace long distance airline routes? And how would propellant cost compare with jet fuel? Anywhere on Earth in an hour does sound extremely appealing; better than Concorde, with bonus zero gravity (going to need a lot of barf bags though).

I was a little disappointed he didn't give any timeline at all on that not even a aspirational one. I also assume it's gonna be really expensive due to frequent heat shield replacement. I wouldn't be surprised if it never became economically viable. Too few passengers and too high cost.

I imagine they can fit 400 passengers though. No need for those cabins or even a need to give passengers drinks.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#16

Musk's public speaking skills (the stutters) give me hope as a non native English speaker.

I think he was pretty tired, definitely more than I've seen in most other videos. I hope he sleeps pretty soundly tonight (this afternoon in Aus).

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#18
Back of the envelope calculation for the price of an Earth-to-Earth ticket:

Musk's stated goal is $500k/ticket to Mars.

It's a shorter trip, so perhaps ~5x as many passengers in the same volume (i.e. 500 total; cf. a380 which seats 850).

It takes five (?) orbital refuel trips for the martian journey, but we'd need none of those. Depending on how much less than a full tank the passenger vehicle needs (payload could be smaller; the ship would also not reach fully orbital velocity), the fuel cost would be between 1/5 and 1/10 the Mars fuel cost.

So that would bring the cost down to between $10 and $20k/ticket, within reach of business travelers.

If maximum the number of flight cycles per vehicle is greater for Earth-to-Earth trips than for Mars, then that could further reduce the ticket cost. It's unclear to me which direction that number would go-- Earth's atmosphere is much thicker on re-entry, though the velocities will be much lower than an interplanetary re-entry. Since aerodynamic drag goes as the cube of velocity but only linearly with density, I'm guessing the speed would matter far more. That would imply much better lifetime on Earth.

So if the E2E fuselage gets (conservatively) only 2x as many flight cycles as a Mars trip, that could bring down the per-seat cost to $5k-- now getting close to the cost of an ordinary international ticket. Of course this is all assuming that Musk's baseline of $500k to Mars is reasonable.

Would be curious to hear from some rocket engineers about these guesses at the numbers/efficiency.

Not accounted for is amortized development cost for E2E-only vehicles, as well as all the infrastructure and ground support at the destinations.

Edit: If you wanted to be less conservative, you could pack in 1000 people instead of 500 (0.5x ticket price multiplier), or use a different source for the Mars ticket price (0.4x), which would bring it to $1k.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a little disappointed he didn't give any timeline at all on that not even a aspirational one. I also assume it's gonna be really expensive due to frequent heat shield replacement. I wouldn't be surprised if it never became economically viable. Too few passengers and too high cost.

I imagine they can fit 400 passengers though. No need for those cabins or even a need to give passengers drinks.

For 30 minute trips you barely even need toilets.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#20
post #9

Wow, can they really make BFR reliable enough to replace long distance airline routes? And how would propellant cost compare with jet fuel? Anywhere on Earth in an hour does sound extremely appealing; better than Concorde, with bonus zero gravity (going to need a lot of barf bags though).

I was a little disappointed he didn't give any timeline at all on that not even a aspirational one. I also assume it's gonna be really expensive due to frequent heat shield replacement. I wouldn't be surprised if it never became economically viable. Too few passengers and too high cost.

He said the heat shield ablates for Mars trips but not Earth trips (not sure why). If so then propellant should be the only important consumable.

Of course this level of reusability and reliability has never been achieved before, but the whole thing depends on it.

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