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Starship is still not understood

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Re: Starship is still not understood

#171

Post by GDC7 »

oxplot wrote: post #126
lquist wrote: post #90

What am I missing here? Why is spacex valuation 100bn if this is true? I would think it would be 1tn easily in this kind of capital abundant environment. Is the risk that high? Is the market size being overestimated?

I'm no financial guru, even enthusiast, but my impression is that your average investor is interested in very short term profit. If you listened to last Telsa's shareholder meeting, one of the top questions was whether Tesla was going to pay dividends! People expect a company that's ramping up faster than any other in the history, building largest factories left and right, to pay dividends to its share holders! I'm i…

> People expect a company that's ramping up faster than any other in the history

Tesla was founded in 2002, during the same timespan Facebook became ubiquitous in our lives, Google became the homepage of the world and Amazon became the go-to place to make purchases.

Microsoft did even better between 1975-1995. The world was much larger and disconnected back then and yet they managed to became so ubiquitous to reach the monopoly status, such a dominance that the US government had to step in like they did with Standard Oil.

I commute to work daily . 25 miles back and forth and I am lucky if I see one Tesla .

After 20 years the company most successful and ubiquitous product is its stock

Re: Starship is still not understood

#172

Post by mordymoop »

When I worked at a national laboratory, it was always evident that research priorities lagged funding priorities. No scientific program director would allocate significant resources into an area that wasn't either already funded or practically guaranteed to be funded. I don't how NASA and JPL operate organizationally, how their budgetary decisions are made, but I would guess that no movement toward re-orienting around Starship (or any new commercial technology) will happen until funding agencies dictate that it happen.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#173

Post by cecilpl2 »

dr_orpheus wrote: post #148
dangerbird2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that for Starship to hit that $10M price point, SpaceX will have to demonstrate several as of yet unproven capabilities: In-space refueling (required for any missions outside LEO), safe and reliable re-entry from orbit, and fast turnaround for Starship to be launch-ready after landing. The last thing NASA needs is a glorified Space Shuttle 2.0 that takes months to be rebuilt after each re-entry, and ha…

Even with SpaceX's accomplishments in dramatically reducing launch costs, the $10M price point is still insane. The Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy advertised prices are ~$50 million and $90 million per launch. The actual launches and mission management for any more custom launch tend to push those prices to almost double. So to assume that a much larger as yet unproven rocket with launch for $10M seems quite out of range…

Falcon9 still throws away the second stage every time.

The idea of Starship being $10M is that it's fully reusable, so your marginal cost is only fuel/maintenance/launch.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#175

Post by vanattab »

panick21_ wrote: post #53
h2odragon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beg pardon, no denigration of SpaceX accomplishments intended at all. They've put awesome efforts into getting these awesome results and Musk's celebrity shadows the work of some modern heroes who should be further celebrated. However, all of that wouldn't have been allowed to succeed, without Musk's unaccountable aura of burrocratic avoidance. In my opinion.

> without Musk's unaccountable aura of burrocratic avoidance. In my opinion. Can you tell me exactly what you mean and how it significantly increased their development speed and overall performance? And can you show that different standards were applied to other space companies. They did one test launch where the FAA inspector wasn't there. This causes a review of the company by FAA and eventually they were allowed t…

>They did one test launch where the FAA inspector wasn't there.

You are being deliberately misleading with this statement. You say that as if SpaceX accidentally launched while the inspector was in the bathroom. When in reality the FAA explicitly told SpaceX not to launch BEFORE the launch. And that doing so would be a violation of their launch license. The fact that the FAA reviewed the situation and then allowed to continue kind of proves the parents point.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#176

Post by hindsightbias »

spacemark wrote: post #51
ncallaway wrote: post #8

I’m kinda confused by the criticism of the industry and NASA not designing for Starship. The author argues that NASA doesn’t understand Tempe game changer that Starship is, but I don’t think that’s accurate. I think the risk to NASA of assuming the benefits of Starship before it’s proven are just too high. If NASA (or other industry players), assume Starship will deliver the benefits it promises, they to fundamentall…

As someone who has worked on NASA contracts pretty much my whole career, you're quite right. Starship is still extremely unproven. If you look at the history of rockets, mayyyybe 1 in 5 that make it to an orbital launch debut (which is like 1 in 50 paper rockets) in turn make it to commercial rollout. The author's claim that the potential benefits of Starship are not understood by NASA is cringeworthy naive. Everyone…

Maybe not everyone. JSC community strongly opposed much of the ISS rework (they were designing something that required 40 hours of spacewalks a week), opposed Shuttle C (which seemed completely illogical given the work base), and as far as projects like DC-XA... I was in Bldg. 30 watching its amazing flight and when it caught fire and fell over, the combined contractor and MCC staff cheered and broke out in applause.

Perhaps it's changed, but not sure how relevant many of them would be in a Starship world.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#177

Post by ncallaway »

panick21_ wrote: post #115
ARandumGuy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Past success does not guarantee future success. And when you're dealing with space travel, which is inherently expensive and extremely dangerous, then you can't afford to buy into any hype.

If it was just 'hype' why did NASA select them for HLS? They had all the data and they officially declared it was very doable and that SpaceX had a path to get there. So its ok to plan for it but pretend it only exists for that one thing they contracted if for, and ignore if for everything else.

> So its ok to plan for it but pretend it only exists for that one thing they contracted if for, and ignore if for everything else.

No one here is saying "NASA should ignore Starship for everything else".

I'm saying that NASA isn't "failing to understand" Starship when they don't push all their chips to the middle of the table on Starship. You can't use the fact that NASA was willing to make a $2.9B bet on Starship as evidence that they should have been willing to go all-in on Starship.

It'd be like saying if you wager me $1,000 on an outcome, then you should also be willing to bet your house on it. That's not how risk works!

Would I personally like to see NASA continue to evaluate and select Starship for future programs? Yes!

Would I personally like to see NASA start kick off early concept-phase work for payloads that would be enabled by Starship? Yes!

Do I think that NASA decided not to completely re-orient everything that they do around Starship right now means they don't understand Starship? No! Of course not! It means there's too much risk right now around doing that.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#178

Post by panick21_ »

yk wrote: post #88

The entire space reporting has the problem that simultaneously there is an established genre of fanboy fawning about space x, which is kinda unconnected to space x actually starting to disrupt space. Right now, it looks like one could save a few billions if Artemis is not green lit a decade ago. However, private launches were still rare at that time, so in absence of a, likely expensive, time machine that's just not…

Please for the love of god, its SpaceX and Starship.

> The entire space reporting has the problem that simultaneously there is an established genre of fanboy fawning about space x, which is kinda unconnected to space x actually starting to disrupt space.

Yeah totally unconnected. All these people, journalist and engineers are idiots.

> Right now, it looks like one could save a few billions if Artemis is not green lit a decade ago

Äh:

> The Artemis Program began in December 2017 as the reorganization and continuation of successive efforts to revitalize the U.S. space program since 2009.

And just btw, just because a program starts, doesn't mean its 'greenlitt'. This is not AT ALL. How NASA is funded.

In fact NASA has to fight for budget every year. So literally every year they need budget allocation to continue development of the different element they need.

> So looking at the planned timelines, Artemis I will circle the moon next year, and a crewed landing is planned for 2024, while star ship does not have a planned launch to orbit yet.

Starship is LITERALLY required to land on the moon. NASA has only 1 way to land humans on the moon and its LITERALLY Starship.

And the first orbital test launch is planned for this year.

> Also on a personal note, I am utterly astonished that there will be people on the moon before the subway station down the street is operational.

The 2024 timeline is not really realistic, 2026 maybe.

Subway are a political problem, not a technological one.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#179

Post by cecilpl2 »

GDC7 wrote: post #171
oxplot wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no financial guru, even enthusiast, but my impression is that your average investor is interested in very short term profit. If you listened to last Telsa's shareholder meeting, one of the top questions was whether Tesla was going to pay dividends! People expect a company that's ramping up faster than any other in the history, building largest factories left and right, to pay dividends to its share holders! I'm i…

> People expect a company that's ramping up faster than any other in the history Tesla was founded in 2002, during the same timespan Facebook became ubiquitous in our lives, Google became the homepage of the world and Amazon became the go-to place to make purchases. Microsoft did even better between 1975-1995. The world was much larger and disconnected back then and yet they managed to became so ubiquitous to reach t…

> I commute 25 miles back and forth to work and I am lucky if I see one Tesla .

Where on earth do you live? I can barely walk down the street without tripping over one. It's not a stretch to say I'd see several dozen on a short morning run.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#180

Post by vanattab »

gene-h wrote: post #72

A big part of the cost of space missions is not making things as light as possible, but developing the scientific instruments. More upmass doesn't always make designing sensitive scientific instruments easier. If said scientific instruments need to go on a rover, mass still matters. More mass can limit rover mobility and at some point the rover requires more power than can be provided with RTGs or solar cells.

This. The JWST cost/will cost about 10 billion dollars. The launch costs are negligible.
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