201–210 of 1001 posts
For everything he does that has annoyed me (like Gloating at people being bombed in the middle east) — his business acumen has completely unlocked for people what they we thought was impossible.
It's difficult to overstate how important the milestone of catching the booster is. Now we have a reusable rocket an order of magnitude larger than anything we've had before, and the cost of kg to orbit just nosedived.
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The main difference is that this is built by a private corporation who can't afford to throw money away, while the Space Shuttle was build by the government, and moreover it had to fulfill a number of conflicting requirements, and commercial profit was not one of them. But on a more technical level. I think the vertical landing is the main difference. Vertical landing was obviously known and done by NASA, this is how…
Spacex might be a private company, but this project is funded by NASA, meaning the American taxpayer. Approved by a person whose last act was this approval before leaving NASA and joining Spacex (effectively putting money in their own pocket). It is also yet to be seen how Starship will ever be profitable (outside of spending government money), who is going to pay for those launches and for what purpose. Other than S…
It also allows for launching individual space station modules that have almost the same volume as the entire ISS in one launch.
Their plans for refuelling on orbit with tanker versions of the starship open up the entire solar system to unmanned missions with much shorter timelines and much higher payload size and weight.
The fact the entire system is re-usable will make it both cheaper and faster to use than any other launch system.
All of this combined mean that it won't just be countries and space programs bidding for space on launches, it puts space within reach of many corporations and some private individuals. This isn't conjecture, it's already happening with the Falcon 9. Starship will make it even more accessible.
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Is that 150t of payload or total? What’s the cost in fuel alone (let’s ignore maintenance and operations costs for now)? I’m trying to get a feel for the relative scale compared to today’s commercial flight.
Methane is about 900-1500$ / ton. About 1000 tons is used for the launch in addition to 3600 tons of lox. That should be a bit cheaper than methane per ton. Ballpark, the propellant might cost around 2M$. A modern airliner on a long flight might burn around 80 tons of kerosene. It's slightly cheaper than methane. Call it 75-80K$.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The main difference is that this is built by a private corporation who can't afford to throw money away, while the Space Shuttle was build by the government, and moreover it had to fulfill a number of conflicting requirements, and commercial profit was not one of them. But on a more technical level. I think the vertical landing is the main difference. Vertical landing was obviously known and done by NASA, this is how…
Spacex might be a private company, but this project is funded by NASA, meaning the American taxpayer. Approved by a person whose last act was this approval before leaving NASA and joining Spacex (effectively putting money in their own pocket). It is also yet to be seen how Starship will ever be profitable (outside of spending government money), who is going to pay for those launches and for what purpose. Other than S…
About 10% funded by NASA. Starship is a >$10B program; SpaceX is getting $3B for Artemis of which >2/3 is for operational tasks and moon-specific stuff that SpaceX aren't relevant for SpaceX's goals of LEO and Mars.
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So, reusable is supposed to reduce the cost. But the space shuttle was reusable and it has been shutdown because it was too expensive. What is the differences between the two?
the space shuttle was "reusable". It had to be taken apart and meticulously cleaned and tested and basically had to be rebuilt after each flight, in a process called turnaround. SpaceX's rockets are much closer to what you'd consider reusable.
The other big difference, an elephant in the room grade difference I think, is that SpaceX reliability was developed with memories of a reusable vehicle failing mostly due to turnaround costs and risks on everyone's minds. That clearly wasn't the case when the space shuttle was designed, they were the first and enjoyed the privilege of making all the beginner mistakes.
That was crazy, 50% of me thought as it was coming in, especially as it pitched towards the tower, "they've overcompensated and are going to bring the whole tower down" but they absolutely nailed it.
Yeah but they did pass some flame down much of the tower. Pretty quick though, probably just cleaned it with fire.
Video of the catch > Mechazilla has caught the Super Heavy booster! https://x.com/spacex/status/1845442658397049011
I wonder what will happen when they get to 99% reliability? They clean up and rebuild the Mechazilla every once a hundred catches, on that occasion that one fails?
Anyone knows how the landing is guided? Is it just really precise GPS/altimeter or does it use computer vision?