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Starship is still not understood

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Re: Starship is still not understood

#221

Post by dflock »

sailingparrot wrote: post #31
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…

I think the author is arguing for NASA to take a cautiously optimist stance on Starship, instead of assuming it won't work at all until it does. For example, NASA could start allocating a small-ish budget (e.g. 50M$) to design a parallel mission to their Artemis-IV mission that is currently scheduled for 2026 (but will slip) and that should deliver the Gateway i-HAB module to Moon's orbit. While 50M$ (excluding launc…

I don't think it's a very big stretch to think that Blue Origin might well sue NASA if they did this.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#222

Post by micropresident »

snowwrestler wrote: post #195
brianwawok wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if computers taught me anything.. it's if you can do 1 thing really really well perfectly, it's not a ton of work to do it 10x or 100x in parallel. We don't have enough data to know reliability of say Falcon long term. Is it 99% successful? 99.9%? 99.999999%? Doing a ton of launches, you really want to work on the 9s, so 0-1 of your launches blow up, not 100+. But once you do, you just copy paste it baby and go to to…

There is a literally a book called “The Mythical Man Month” about the limits of parallelism in computer engineering. It’s arguably one of the fundamental texts of the discipline.

And that book has literally nothing to do with what is being discussed.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#223

Post by micropresident »

pjc50 wrote: post #56
vanattab wrote: post #41

>Starship is intended to be able to transport a million tonnes of cargo to the surface of Mars in just ten launch windows. So at 100tons per starship sent to Mars that's 10,000 trips or 1000 per launch window. But the current plans call for something like 16 starship launches just for refuelling the one starship for the lunar mission. Suppose we can do the Mars trip with the same number of flights that's 170,000 laun…

Would anyone like to estimate the CO2 emissions produced by that?

I am more concerned about the Ozone damage.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/147776209027688...

Re: Starship is still not understood

#224

Post by shalmanese »

ncallaway wrote: post #217
shalmanese wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the days of steam powered factories, a central power plant was used to drive belts that would power various machines. More power intensive machines were sited near the central power plant to maximize efficiency and parts were moved to where the machines were. Electrification allowed the replacement of belts with motors but machines were expensive so they were upgraded in place and electricity was thought of as jus…

I agree with all of this. I think Starship, if it pans out, will be exactly as disruptive as the author of the post thinks it will be. I'm very very much hoping that is the case. And if it delivers on its promises, it will be a revolutionary change in how we think about space exploration, space tourism, space manufacturing, and other things. But, I strongly suspect that many very smart people at NASA also understand…

GP isn't advocating that NASA throw away everything and bet the farm on Starship. They're saying that there needs to institutional acknowledgement that what's possibly coming is a qualitative, not quantitative shift and open up the intellectual space to explore what that means.

What happens when launch costs are $10,000/kg, $1000/kg, $100/kg? What things that we're doing still make sense, what doesn't? Who could be a player that isn't a player now. It's going to happen some day, even if it doesn't happen tomorrow, but it's looking like it's increasingly about to happen tomorrow from a NASA timeline perspective.

NASA is in the business of futuristic speculation, they develop plans for hypothetical future propulsion systems or life support systems or missions and draw out the vision for the future. But like any organization, making plans for what's politically palatable is always easier than politically unpalatable and Casey is merely pointing out that lower launch costs appear based on public actions to be very politically unpalatable and thus, an institutional blind spot.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#225

Post by panick21_ »

GDC7 wrote: post #213
panick21_ wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you comparing software companies to a manufacturing company? They were making new technology that people basically thought was impossible. By 2012 they had only sold 1000 vehicles. That how hard it was. Since Model S however they have grown about as fast as any manufacturing based company in history and they have very clear potential to continue to do so for a few years more at the very least. Tesla basically inv…

When you advertise yourself as a tech company you are bound to be compared against other tech companies. More generally companies from every sector are compared against each other to see which one provides the highest improvement in citizens' quality of life . Tesla produces lots of noise but the improvement in citizens' quality of life is basically none or negligible. Google, Facebook and Microsoft completely domina…

They are a car company that is slowly turning itself into a multi-faceted company. They are doing some tech like things, but they are also turning into a chemical company and an a equipment and manufacturing company. They are also an infrastructure provider. They want to turn into a robotics company.

> More generally companies from every sector are compared against each other to see which one provides the highest improvement in citizens' quality of life .

Cars are the single largest expense other then a house people make. Of course its gone have less overall impact then a free product that everybody is gone spend very little time on.

The Supercharger network alone and showing the way for EV infrastructure will have a huge impact on everybody.

> Tesla produces lots of noise but the improvement in citizens' quality of life is basically none or negligible.

People usually love their Tesla and that is reflected in the data that is gathered about that. Cars are the second most expensive people buy behind a house. They have huge impact on the people who buy them and clearly less on those that don't.

> Google, Facebook and Microsoft completely dominate Tesla in this fundamental, during the same timespan.

Idiotic comparison, no matter how long you talk about it.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#226

Post by panick21_ »

oxplot wrote: post #204
panick21_ wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but my impression is that your average investor is interested in very short term profit You can actually figure out how much of a stock is traded and if your assumption is true then there would have to be far more trading. > one of the top questions was whether Tesla was going to pay dividends! How do you know what answer the people who voted for the question wanted to hear?

> How do you know what answer the people who voted for the question wanted to hear? Interesting point. My intuition tells me that most people who are looking to get paid are the ones asking the question.

I can tell you that the person who got a question in literally every year since like 10 years is a long term investor. See Tesla Daily Podcast.

Long term investors are very well organized and upvote certain questions.

However that question was not from him.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#227

Post by ncallaway »

panick21_ wrote: post #200
ncallaway wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

The point is that you have to start to think differently. Not just have the same circle of programs, selecting a launcher and on. You need to fundamentally rethink how you approach space. And there is little evidence of that happening, specially from a leadership standpoint.

Sure. And my point is that, for an organization like NASA (which is basically our government's "approach to space") "fundamentally rethinking how you approach space" is basically saying: "fundamentally transform everything about how the organization operates".

Which, if Starship delivers on its promises (and I'm quite optimistic and hopeful that it will!), then NASA will have to fundamentally transform everything about how the organization operates.

But that's a huge transition to make on the back of a program that hasn't proven its key value proposition yet. I'm happy for NASA to wait the extra 2-3 years for Starship to prove that it can deliver on its promises, before NASA commits to a reorganization and restructuring at such a fundamental level.

If NASA commits to such a restructuring now, and in 2 years we learn that Starship's economic dream fails to materialize and the program ends up as an improvement (but an ordinary one) over Falcon 9. NASA how has to unwind all of that organization restructuring and program development. It seems...wise to me for NASA to wait a handful of years to see Starship prove itself before committing to such a transition.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#228

Post by itsoktocry »

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…

>I think the risk to NASA of assuming the benefits of Starship before it’s proven are just too high.

This seems to be a theme of many of Elon Musk's ideas: assume they will work and talk about what a difference it will make. Just look at the media coverage surrounding the Tesla Robot.

So, this stuff is cool and I'm glad it's happening, but there's a ton of capability to prove before any sort of external organizational budget should be allocated to the Starship project. It's still a rough prototype.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#229

Post by coldtea »

panick21_ wrote: post #89
coldtea wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we use the same logic, don’t we get a conclusion that we should spend nothing on basic research until we’ve solved world hunger, and every other problem? Sounds like a very good principle. Like, if you can't fix war at the level of horses, bayonets and canons, maybe not go for inventing aircrafts and tanks and machine guns just yet - you'll just get new wars leveraging those improved means, oh wait!

Great so nobody ever researches anything and we still all live in the stone age. But at least we are pure in our hearts that we didn't mis-allocate resources when people were starving. That this mindset exists blows my mind. > Like, if you can't fix war at the level of horses, bayonets and canons, maybe not go for inventing aircrafts and tanks and machine guns just yet Aside from the practical, problem of "Great way…

>Great so nobody ever researches anything and we still all live in the stone age.

Sounds far more climate friendly. Also moving out of stone age only once we've stopped with hunger and war? Sign me in!

>The underlying philosophy is equally flawed. Its like picking out of the technology bucket only things you don't like.

God forbid we're picky with the tecnologies we adopt!

Re: Starship is still not understood

#230

Post by GDC7 »

panick21_ wrote: post #225
GDC7 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you advertise yourself as a tech company you are bound to be compared against other tech companies. More generally companies from every sector are compared against each other to see which one provides the highest improvement in citizens' quality of life . Tesla produces lots of noise but the improvement in citizens' quality of life is basically none or negligible. Google, Facebook and Microsoft completely domina…

They are a car company that is slowly turning itself into a multi-faceted company. They are doing some tech like things, but they are also turning into a chemical company and an a equipment and manufacturing company. They are also an infrastructure provider. They want to turn into a robotics company. > More generally companies from every sector are compared against each other to see which one provides the highest imp…

> They are a car company that is slowly turning itself into a multi-faceted company. They are doing some tech like things, but they are also turning into a chemical company and an a equipment and manufacturing company. They are also an infrastructure provider. They want to turn into a robotics company.

And I want to turn into an adonis bedding a different Hollywood actress every night

Doesn't really matter what the CEO of a company tells you about his projections about the future of the company

It will always be an up& to the right chart.

Especially here people should know better and take those promises and straight up throw them into the bin because they are just that.

As the old saying goes: "It takes one to see one".

With Microsoft, Google and Facebook you didn't have to be on the lookout for anything suspicious because they provided very conservatives estimates, begging financial analysts to be conservative for their own estimates too.

That's one huge difference between those companies and Tesla, an other huge difference is the fact that you can tangibly see those companies products in your daily life, whereas Tesla is only famous for future projections of techno-utopian dreams and the stock price which is constantly inflated by the cult leader CEO. The same cult leader CEO who managed to get in this privileged position by overselling equity to bigger fools for his whole life.

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