Starship is still not understood • Hacker News Board

Re: Starship is still not understood

#241

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

ncallaway wrote: post #227

panick21_ wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abo…

> But that's a huge transition to make on the back of a program that hasn't proven its key value proposition yet.

The article agrees! Author's point, as I read it, is that if NASA does not plan for the transition now, then by the time Starship "has proven its key value proposition", both NASA and its usual contractors will be out of the game, as a new breed of private companies takes over most of space activity. The author doesn't expect NASA to bet on Starship, but rather to at least make some internal noises and initial movements towards that transition - but he failed to find any indication of that for the past 2 years.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#242

Post by jonathankoren » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #124

marktangotango wrote: post #13

Spacex is building the transcontinental railroads of the solar system. There is mind boggling upside for them. I'm kinda disappointed Blue Origin seems to have fallen in a rut. I'm sure Musk will be happy to provide transportation for Bezos space colony construction projects! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Tycoon Edit My point isn't to disparage Bezos, but to highlight the fact that anyone with grand aspirati…

Transcontinental railroads provided routes between already populated areas, with viable trade between them. Solar system beyond Earth is more like a desert, possibly rich with resources, but nearly no resource is precious enough to be worth carrying by a starship. The incentives for space expansion past LEO and GEO will not be economical.

I often think of this observation by Bruce Sterling:

> I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people setting the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach.

https://boingboing.net/2004/01/08/sterling-ill-believe.html

Re: Starship is still not understood

#243

Post by jacobr1 » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #20

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'm not sure that NASA designs much. JPL designs and builds most of the probes launched by NASA. JPL is an anomaly in the Federal Government where it gets good results. It would be interesting to look into how JPL does so well relative to other agencies and contractors such as Boeing (which is a national embarrassment).

JPL employees are actually private employees of CalTech not federal employees.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#244

Post by rakejake » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

GDC7 wrote: post #64

Space is becoming a religion for atheists, with SpaceX serving the role of the church and Elon Musk in charge of it as the techno-utopian Pope. No wonder really smart people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and George Soros are staying out of it. The amount of mass that we have to bring up there to live and thrive and be happy is so enormous that Nobel astrophysicist Kip Thorne and Christopher Nolan had to essentially…

+1. Greg Egan's novels Permutation City and Diaspora actually explore this very well.

I am not opposed to space exploration and generally support SpaceX but reading about doing 100,000 launches makes me slightly wary, especially with our track record on climate and Musk's general penchant for breaking laws. Unless we develop anti-gravity or something which would make space travel energy-equivalent to flight travel, I don't know how you would ever scale this without wrecking the environment. Reading between the lines, you get a sense that the average citizen should be "willing to take the hit for the greater good". Yeah, right. Musk has an immense amount of goodwill today and for good reason but I don't imagine this will play well with any crowd.

Even assuming that Musks's Marsshot comes through and a Mars colony is established in 50 years (which would be optimistic going by the current pace of development), what are the odds that I (or the average SWE on HN, let alone average human) would ever end up on Mars? I imagine a 70-80 year old is probably not very high on the (tentative)waitlist? It is looking more and more likely that Earth's climate and politics would necessarily have to take a backseat if we were to go all in on Mars. I see the wisdom in Kim Stanley Robinson's opinion that fixing Earth climate/politics should take priority.

I am in support of AGI research and biotech. Training even GPT-scale models is not really comparable to rocket launching. If it is possible to clone yourself to a digital form, or even train an NN model to think like yourself, there may be a way for the average denizen to get to Mars and extend one's life while keeping energy consumption low.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#245

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #211

ceejayoz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 747-8's MTOW is about a million pounds. Ten-ish 747s for a Starship, as a roughly worst case estimate. Only so much carbon you can stuff into a ton of fuel. A single-digit percentage global increase in aviation emissions. (I'm also very skeptical of that level of Starship launches. By the time you're getting anywhere near that, you're likely to have captured some comets and are processing fuel for interplanetary mi…

> By the time you're getting anywhere near that, you're likely to have captured some comets and are processing fuel for interplanetary missions in an orbital refinery. I think you’re underestimating both the mass of a comet and that the geopolitical implications of a private company being one industrial accident away from replicating something several orders of magnitude closer to Chicxulub than to Tsar Bomba would p…

> I think you’re underestimating both the mass of a comet and that the geopolitical implications of a private company being one industrial accident away from replicating something several orders of magnitude closer to Chicxulub than to Tsar Bomba would prevent them being allowed to even try it.

Meh, you could regulate it fairly effectively. Changing the path of a comet is something that's gonna have to be done years out. Deviating from the planned course would be obvious long before it'd hit anything.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#246

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #109

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…

I just can't see it happening. How many launches have there been in total since the first launch of anything in space? I can't see it being much more than 10K, and it's definitely in that order of magnitude. There's just not enough raw materials and fuel for that amount of launches, and environmental objections will catch up with them long before that.

There's not enough aluminum and steel?

There's not enough oxygen? Hydrogen? We can make renewable methane just fine.

Even if we used oil a quick calculation says that 1000 tons * 10000 launches would barely break a tenth of a percent of our current semiannual oil use. I think that's an affordable impact for a truly massive mars campaign.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#247

Post by giantrobot » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

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…

The author trots out the "$10,000 a pound" launch cost which is really indicative of the overall quality of the article.

For non-Space Wonks, the "$10,000/lb" to orbit number was the rough cost of launching some payload on the Space Shuttle to orbit. Costs for the Space Shuttle were basically NASA's entire manned spaceflight budget divided by the number of Shuttle launches performed in a year. It's not just a naive number it's wholly misleading.

No/few commercial space launch approach $10k/lb. It's a meaningless number for any discussion of launch costs since the Space Shuttle is retired and was not a commercial launch vehicle anyways. Even the most expensive ULA rockets aren't even close to that price.

If you're going to talk about space launch capabilities and bring up stupid numbers it impacts your credibility.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#248

Post by marktangotango » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

jonathankoren wrote: post #242

nine_k wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transcontinental railroads provided routes between already populated areas, with viable trade between them. Solar system beyond Earth is more like a desert, possibly rich with resources, but nearly no resource is precious enough to be worth carrying by a starship. The incentives for space expansion past LEO and GEO will not be economical.

I often think of this observation by Bruce Sterling: > I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people setting the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly,…

Gobi desert doesn't have 1/3 earth gravity.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#249

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

dr_orpheus wrote: post #232

panick21_ wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 miss…

Conversely, I get kind of frustrated when people take "Elon time" as an argument that SpaceX can't deliver on what it promised. It does deliver. Just a year or three late. Given the amount of transformation they're causing, compared to previous 30 years of developments in space industry, these kinds of delays are irrelevant. It's like considering a million dollar software project a failure just because a couple sprints run a week late.

Re: Starship is still not understood

#250

Post by cecilpl2 » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

dr_orpheus wrote: post #202

cecilpl2 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Okay, according to Elon [0] the cost (to SpaceX) of a refurbished Falcon 9 is $15 million, $10 million of which is the upper stage as you say is not re-usable. So $5M for everything else for a rocket that gets 18k lbs to Low-earth-orbit. If we scale that up to the Starship (220k lbs to LEO) then lets estimate a re-use/refurb cost of $61M. So if a Falcon 9 costs $50M to launch, then 70% of that cost is SpaceX profit/r…

It's a mistake to assume the marginal cost scales linearly with payload. Fuel will (ish), but many other costs are fixed per launch.

I'd argue your estimate is not aggressive. SpaceX continues to claim an eventual marginal cost in the high 7 to low 8 figures per launch. I'm inclined to believe that deep analysis over a back-of-the-comment Fermi estimate.