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Starship is still not understood

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Re: Starship is still not understood

#231

Post by coldtea »

ncallaway wrote: post #136
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!

> Sounds like a very good principle. Does it? Such a world wouldn't have increased crop production, and would regularly suffer from otherwise preventable famines. I imagine far more people would be hungry in the world where we forego all R&D in an effort to solve hunger.

You're still allowed R&D to solve hunger...

Re: Starship is still not understood

#232

Post by dr_orpheus »

panick21_ wrote: post #206
dr_orpheus wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the point that the author misses is that while designing a spacecraft for a Starship launch does remove a lot of the constraints there is not the infrastructure to take advantage of that (yet). There have been some preliminary studies on spacecraft that could take advantage of a Starship launch capability, but we currently can't transport a spacecraft that large over the road. It would most likely hav…

> Those in the industry are pretty cautious about Elon's promises. Back in 2011, SpaceX advertised that the first Falcon heavy flight was going to be in 2013 [0], but the demo flight didn't occur until 2018, with the first launch of an actual payload in 2019. This is misleading. SpaceX pushed Falcon 9 so much that it actually reached the targeted Falcon Heavy payload years before that. Many early Falcon Heavy costume…

But what was supposed to be the first launch of the Falcon Heavy (USAF STP-2) was initially scheduled for March 2017. So maybe 2013 to 2019 isn't fair to compare, but 2017 to 2019 is still launching 2 years late.

This is not to say that what SpaceX is doing isn't incredible. But I get frustrated when articles like this take the promises of things like "Edit: Had the original contracted launch date for the STP-2 mission wrong

Re: Starship is still not understood

#233

Post by Dylan16807 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #135
JulianMorrison wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were trying something genuinely new - like falling out of orbit and making a propulsive upright landing of a wingless booster - then some skepticism would be justified. But what's new in Starship?

Propulsive landing of an orbital stage is pretty new. (You can make an argument for Soyuz's just-before-landing rockets, but it wouldn't be a fair one.)

> Propulsive landing of an orbital stage is pretty new.

It is, but those are largely separate features. Each half of that combo has been done, and combining them doesn't cause any massive engineering conflicts.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#234

Post by TeMPOraL »

p_j_w wrote: post #216
panick21_ wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author's claim that the potential benefits of Starship are not understood by NASA is cringeworthy naive. > Makes me wonder how old the author is. The author works for JPL. > 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. How many of these had 10+ prot…

>The author works for JPL. As a software person. JPL employs over 5000 people. The vast majority of them don't have knowledge of the sort of systems and business dynamics relevant to the matter of NASA using Starship.

> The vast majority of them don't have knowledge of the sort of systems and business dynamics relevant to ...

If experience from private sector is any indication, that's usually question of caring. It's not hard to gain such insight from the inside - but you need to walk around a bit, talk to people outside of your team, and most importantly, pay attention.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#235

Post by Dylan16807 »

qayxc wrote: post #182
gremloni wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what, your gut feel? 12 launches per hour does not seem insane at all.

> Based on what, your gut feel? Based on the fact that every orbital launch requires airspace restrictions, local road closures, blocked patches of sea and launch permissions. The regulatory framework alone is incapable of dealing with that (keep in mind that every orbital rocket is basically an ICBM), let alone the fact that you'd have to spread launches over multiple sites therefore rendering considerable patches o…

> Based on the fact that every orbital launch requires airspace restrictions, local road closures, blocked patches of sea and launch permissions.

So set up a [semi]-permanent airspace restriction somewhere inland, remote enough that there are no local roads to worry about, and don't block any patches of sea. And do the permission in bulk, obviously.

> major explosions (worst case) per launch campaign

Failure rate is something to consider in several ways but largely unrelated to the launches-per-hour metric.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#236

Post by jonathankoren »

dflock wrote: post #221
sailingparrot wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Everyone that loses a contract sues the government. Blue Origin already sued over losing a moon lander contract that didn't even meet the minimum requirements. Airbus sued the Air Force after losing the KC-X contract. I'm sure there are others, but those are just two that immediately popped into mind.

Trying to a void a lawsuit is how you get nonsense like the LCS where the Navy first opened the bids for a single class of ship, and then when it was time to announce the winner, split the contract between Marinette Marine and Austal.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#237

Post by TeMPOraL »

ncallaway wrote: post #147
prox wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be true perhaps if this wasn’t SpaceX. They already moved the goalpost with Falcon And I don’t think the author wrote what you said. His main point was that not one of NASA’s powerpoints even as much acknowledges that something like Starship might come round. The new constraints by Starship are a game changer.

> His main point was that not one of NASA’s powerpoints even as much acknowledges that something like Starship might come round That's just not true, though. NASA awarded the HLS program solely to SpaceX as a Starship lander. The Source Selection Statement of that program ( https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/option-... ) discusses the benefits and drawbacks of Starship in good detail. It seems wild…

Author mentions HLS contract, but their argument is that it's not taking any advantage of economies offered by Starship. It's like a 10th century trader took an offer to use modern long-haul trucks at a fraction of what they pay for horse and cart transport, but failed to update the business to take advantage of the improved range, speed, reliability and cargo capacity.

The argument is potent particularly because space mission architectures are designed primarily around constraints of the space launch systems, so choosing Starship as the launch vehicle seems to merit a large expansion in scope, if not total redesign of the program.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#238

Post by ncallaway »

coldtea wrote: post #231
ncallaway wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds like a very good principle. Does it? Such a world wouldn't have increased crop production, and would regularly suffer from otherwise preventable famines. I imagine far more people would be hungry in the world where we forego all R&D in an effort to solve hunger.

You're still allowed R&D to solve hunger...

But that's not really how fundamental research or technological advancement works.

A ton of our advances in improving crop productivity came out of research that wasn't directly related to solving hunger.

The modern internal combustion engine, for example, brought together many technologies and came out of advancement of many different kinds of research and manufacturing changes. If, in the 1500s you had focused all of your R&D efforts on improving food production and distribution, there's a good chance you never invent the ICE.

That's the thing about R&D, the discoveries in some areas often overlap with uses in other areas (sometimes in complex ways that we don't discover for a long time). So if you say: "we'll only do R&D in food production", you might actual end up stifling many technologies that would have massively helped you with food production down the line.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#239

Post by skedaddle »

SECProto wrote: post #191
altcognito wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't assume that launches for refueling operations happen during the launch window. The window is really as long as you want it to be for refueling. Yes, there are engineering challenges associated with having fuel in orbit over a longer period. I'll agree there is a shortage of plans and an excess of hope in what you're going to ship to Mars in the near term. But I can also see where others are saying -- something…

> Don't assume that launches for refueling operations happen during the launch window. The window is really as long as you want it to be for refueling. Indeed, the parent comment was making a bad assumption. If you look at it that way, refueling can happen anytime in the 2-years between windows. So say 10,000 launches over 730 days is 13 or 14 launches per day. Given multiple launch sites, seems feasible enough (in t…

Launching isn't the whole mission though, even if you can achieve that rate. For every launch you also need hours of time for rendezvous, docking, and fuel transfer. And even if somehow there is a solution to this schedule, you're talking about doing it 10,000 times safely and without a hitch.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#240

Post by jonathankoren »

itsoktocry wrote: post #228
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 organization…

I think Shotwell keeps Elon away from SpaceX, and that's secret to SpaceX's success compared to Elon's other ventures.
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