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Starship’s second flight test

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Re: Starship’s second flight test

#191

Post by modeless »

ric2b wrote: post #134
modeless wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the biggest impact for normal people is that Starlink is going to get a whole lot better. Truly worldwide satellite broadband for unmodified cell phones. Faster speeds, lower latency (lower than fiber for intercontinental traffic), smaller/cheaper antennas, better reliability especially with limited view of the sky, and more support for areas of higher population density. More esoteric: Commercial space stations.…

None of that sounds like a big impact on the lives of most people, who are already living in areas well covered by cellphone networks and will never afford to travel to space.

I'm willing to bet that "most" people live in or travel to areas of bad cell coverage often enough that they will definitely appreciate an increase in coverage to literally 100% of the Earth's surface. Starlink capacity and reliability increases will enable a lot more people to ditch bad ISPs, not just people in extremely rural areas, and that can have a big impact on people's lives. Also I would say that international air travel had a big impact on civilization even long before "most" people globally could afford to fly internationally (if they even can today, I haven't found a good estimate for the percentage of people who will fly internationally during their lifetime but it could easily be less than a majority).

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#192

Post by modeless »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #156
modeless wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the biggest impact for normal people is that Starlink is going to get a whole lot better. Truly worldwide satellite broadband for unmodified cell phones. Faster speeds, lower latency (lower than fiber for intercontinental traffic), smaller/cheaper antennas, better reliability especially with limited view of the sky, and more support for areas of higher population density. More esoteric: Commercial space stations.…

I'm usually seeing 50ms rtt from Hamburg, Germany to Denver, CO, a few more to my 'cabin in the woods' near there, and vice versa. Via fiber. It depends on the technology and peerings the involved ISPs use, and how overbooked they are, or not. I'm not seeing how starlink will change that in a big way. Except where there is no fiber at all, or no choice of good ISPs. And as backup. That's convenient, of course.

> Except where there is no fiber at all, or no choice of good ISPs

So, like, a majority of the world?

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#193

Post by nvm0n2 »

rbanffy wrote: post #142
maxlin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has to be the most ignorant comment here. Elon has been heading SpaceX as a Chief Engineer for a LONG time now, with undeniable success. How on earth would what he asks X/Twitter to do affect this, even if you considered that bad or the worst thing ever?

You do know that’s just the name of his role, not the job description, right? He was also quite adamant about not needing a fire suppression system on the pad while everyone else was saying to just dig a water trench and be over with it. Now he got his inverted shower head. It should work, but it delayed the second launch by almost a year.

Read the Isaacson biography. Musk is clearly deeply involved in the details of all his projects, to a degree that would seem unthinkable for almost any other CEO.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#194

Post by modeless »

pavon wrote: post #169
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX Starship is projected to bring the price of space travel down drastically, to the point where non-1%-ers should be able to afford it.

I don't think it will. NASA has contracted SpaceX Dragon flights at about $70M per seat, and the OIG estimates the cost to SpaceX at $55M per seat. If we are extremely optimistic about Starship and say it will cost the same amount to launch as Falcon 9 / Dragon, and has 100 passengers instead of 4, that brings the price down to $2-3M per seat. SpaceX could probably do suborbital hops on just the StarShip second stage…

> If we are extremely optimistic about Starship and say it will cost the same amount to launch as Falcon 9 / Dragon

That's pessimistic. Starship is targeting a significantly reduced cost per launch than Dragon + Falcon 9. Made possible by drastically reduced refurbishment, dramatically increased launch cadence, and full reusability (Falcon 9 second stage and Dragon trunk are both expended), among many other things. And it could carry a lot more than 100 passengers.

It's certainly possible that it won't meet its goals, but I wouldn't call that stance "optimistic".

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#195

Post by QuantumGood »

modeless wrote: post #42
Animats wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Flying to orbit and back multiple times in a day like an airliner." Probably not. It takes 85 days, on average, to turn a Falcon 9 around.

> If Starship meets its reusability goals Launching multiple times per day was never a design goal of Falcon 9 but it is explicitly a design goal of the Starship program. They're going to need fast turnaround for all the orbital refueling missions they've already sold for HLS. The entire industry said they'd never land, then they'd never be able to reuse, then they'd never reuse 10+ times. They're up to 18 reuses. No…

They don't need to reuse the same one each time; A can go out, B can come back, etc.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#196

Post by pasabagi »

maxlin wrote: post #123
3seashells wrote: post #96

Can't wait to have Isis in space.. We kicked the problem of growing up as a species down the road for so long, now it's time for a nuke for everyone (who is not in a gravity well). Let's get this over with by bribing us out of today's problems into even bigger tomorrow's problems with the tools of yesterday to handle internal crisis. Sure downvote reality, that will make it go away. The sort of points I want to see,…

Are you on drugs? What the hell are you even trying to say? Something something if Elon instead worked in a charity we'd be better off just with no EV's, SpaceX, OpenAI etc... ? I'm downvoting you because you're wasting everyone's time and being demotivational about a great thing. The only true progress is technological.

It's basically a line out of the Expanse series: if you make getting into orbit trivial, and if doing things in space becomes trivial, it becomes conceivable to redirect asteroids so they hit the planet, which would be bad for the people living there.

I don't know if it's a realistic problem, my guess is it probably is, but not significantly worse than what we already have with nuclear proliferation.

The basic problem is pretty real, though: we're at a stage of technical development where it's really easy to render the planet uninhabitable, while we're at an uninspiring level of cultural development that makes it really hard to produce sensible policy.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#197

Post by somenameforme »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #78
happytiger wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s bonkers. It’s absolutely bonkers. I feel like I’m witnessing the creation of the wheel. Non-space nerds don’t quite understand why it’s so exciting. But I can’t imagine how much this is going to change the world, and civilization. It’s kind of the equivalent of going from local freighters to the Seawise Giant in one iteration.

Any hints on how this is going to change civilisation, for non-space nerds?

How much do you think it would cost to send a bottle of water to space? Even on a Falcon Heavy you're looking at spending around $700 [1] to send one 16oz bottle of water. That's a far better than past times, where it'd cost around $25,000 to send it up on the Space Shuttle. But with Starship? You're looking at that price drop to as low as $5!

Because of this, trying to meaningfully predict the future is not possible. You're looking at a incomparably large revolutionary leap being made overnight. Up until now costs have made any significant scale space project a complete non-starter. If Starship succeeds, then costs will instantly become almost entirely irrelevant. Space colonization, industry, tourism, mining, and so all become completely viable - instantly. Really, everything becomes viable. Space just becomes another domain for casual exploration, exploitation, and expansion.

I think this is why everybody is waiting before adapting. So many industries are simply impossible to even toy with, without Starship. And while it seems ever more imminent, there is of course still the possibility that it somehow ultimately proves unviable, or perhaps it only sends that bottle of water down to $300, which would still be a great leap forward, but probably not far enough ahead to really open the door to space, just yet.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio...

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#198

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

perilunar wrote: post #63
BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Falcon 9 needs a brand new second stage and fairing assembly each time it flies.

The fairings are reused.

Sometimes, and via what it surely a much more complicated process (after fishing them out of the sea) compared to a fairing that's built into the landed vehicle (a la Starship or Shuttle).

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#199

Post by happytiger »

somenameforme wrote: post #197
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any hints on how this is going to change civilisation, for non-space nerds?

How much do you think it would cost to send a bottle of water to space? Even on a Falcon Heavy you're looking at spending around $700 [1] to send one 16oz bottle of water. That's a far better than past times, where it'd cost around $25,000 to send it up on the Space Shuttle. But with Starship? You're looking at that price drop to as low as $5! Because of this, trying to meaningfully predict the future is not possible…

Beautifully, elegantly put. Thank you.

Re: Starship’s second flight test

#200

Post by happytiger »

avmich wrote: post #181
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any hints on how this is going to change civilisation, for non-space nerds?

My feeling is we're going to have a change similar to what aviation had in 1930-s. Before that we had everything on the ground and sea, and both land and sea transportation were quite developed. The 1930-s, roughly, had a visible birth of the industry of air transportation - more people flew because they needed to get there, not for the thrill of the novelty, and more people worked in the industry - making airplanes,…

Exactly. It holds the promise to shrink the earth as well, just like commercial air travel. It’s not just space that opens but space tourism and ridiculously fast terrestrial travel as well.

Drop the cost like this and entirely new industries are possible and brand new never considered doors open.

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