I think Gwynne Shotwell is the rather unsung hero keeping SpaceX running correctly day by day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell
The sheer fact she has put up with Elon this long is nothing short of amazing.
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SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
71–80 of 431 posts
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
weren't shuttle flights $2B each? List price of Falcon launch is <$70MM.
Russian Roscosmos costs $35-48.5M per launch. [1] Shuttle launches were about $450M per launch, with 7 people and 50,000lbs of cargo. Came to about $10,000 per kg, vs SpaceX Falcon 9 at $27,000 [edit] and the Dragon around $9,000. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz-2
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Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#73I think Gwynne Shotwell is the rather unsung hero keeping SpaceX running correctly day by day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Shotwell
The sheer fact she has put up with Elon this long is nothing short of amazing.
Because she obviously likes working with him. https://www.wired.com/story/how-elon-musk-gwynne-shotwell-jo...
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#74If you're ever in the Houston area, I highly recommend going to see NASA Johnson Space Center. They have a full-size replica (?) Saturn V rocket on its side, you can see. You simply can't grasp how big these rockets are until you see it up close. It's like a tall building blasting off into space. They're humongous. I hope to one day see Starship up close in person as it takes off to space.
In Huntsville AL they have one stood up outside a museum right off the highway - it’s insane to see
They have two there. The other one is hanging on its side in the large building next to the vertical rocket.
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#75Remember folks Elon has a way of, er, overstating. He promised that SpaceX launches cost what, 1% of current launches? So far, they're more expensive than the Space Shuttle it replaced in NASA contracts. Their own numbers say that in the fullness of time they may be 10% cheaper. So far, not so. Space exploration is great, we should do it, and this rocket sounds cool. We should do it even if it is expensive. But "dirt…
>So far, they're more expensive than the Space Shuttle it replaced in NASA contracts do you have a source for this? Wikipedia data in the Launch vehicle estimated payload cost per kg table disagrees with you. By a factor of ~20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio...
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/spacex-nasa-launch-cost-i...
> So far, the average costs of launching cargo remain on par with the space shuttle at about $US30,000 per lb. (The space shuttle cost about $US1.5 billion per mission, including development, and could carry up to 50,000 lbs of cargo.)
Also not to mention that the Wikipedia table is probably irrelevant, because for the Space Shuttle launch cost is just the total cost of the entire program (including R&D and everything else) divided by how much it actually carried, while SpaceX figures are literally just Elon's marketing material. Look at the citations.
> The development of commercial launch systems has substantially reduced the cost of space launch. NASA’s space shuttle had a cost of about $1.5 billion to launch 27,500 kg to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), $54,500/kg. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 now advertises a cost of $62 million to launch 22,800 kg to LEO, $2,720/kg.
The fact that SpaceX advertises that figure doesn't make it true.
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#76Remember folks Elon has a way of, er, overstating. He promised that SpaceX launches cost what, 1% of current launches? So far, they're more expensive than the Space Shuttle it replaced in NASA contracts. Their own numbers say that in the fullness of time they may be 10% cheaper. So far, not so. Space exploration is great, we should do it, and this rocket sounds cool. We should do it even if it is expensive. But "dirt…
I personally really don't like Elon's completely ridiculous claims of cutting the price of something by an order of magnitude or two. Even if he could (he can't), what business sense would it make? Why would you cut the prices of launches to 1% of the current ones, if you could also cut them by just 10% and supposedly have an absolutely insane margin, because you'd still get all the business.
full reusability is the holy grail. It could have been achieved at the time of X-33 with a little bit of clever engineering.
There is usually 1-2 order of magnitude cost difference between vehicle price and the gas in the tank.
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think they have even attempted to build a large engine. But SpaceX is setup like an assembly line rather than some bespoke engine maker. A larger engine would require larger tooling, 3d printers, etc. Also with 30+ engines its less of an investment if one goes bad, just swap it out. They always have the option of designing another larger engine later.
> Also with 30+ engines its less of an investment if one goes bad, just swap it out. also less bad to lose ~3.3% of your total thrust than 100% of it.
Depends on failure modes: many small engines rolling dice about losing thrust is nice, many small engines rolling dice about blowing up is not.
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#78If you're ever in the Houston area, I highly recommend going to see NASA Johnson Space Center. They have a full-size replica (?) Saturn V rocket on its side, you can see. You simply can't grasp how big these rockets are until you see it up close. It's like a tall building blasting off into space. They're humongous. I hope to one day see Starship up close in person as it takes off to space.
13 stories tall! Size of a football field on its side :)
Wow, that's at least a dozen bananas long!
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#79If you're ever in the Houston area, I highly recommend going to see NASA Johnson Space Center. They have a full-size replica (?) Saturn V rocket on its side, you can see. You simply can't grasp how big these rockets are until you see it up close. It's like a tall building blasting off into space. They're humongous. I hope to one day see Starship up close in person as it takes off to space.
I loved visiting the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida. There is a REAL Saturn-V on display!
Not to mention the VAB..
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Assembly_Building
Pretty much everything about the place makes you feel real small ;)
Re: SpaceX’s monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
>So far, they're more expensive than the Space Shuttle it replaced in NASA contracts do you have a source for this? Wikipedia data in the Launch vehicle estimated payload cost per kg table disagrees with you. By a factor of ~20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio...
The space shuttle is a human-rated launch vehicle capable of taking 7 people into orbit at a total cost of $445M per launch, or about $65M per seat. When subcontracted to Russia, the charge was about $85M per person. Crew Dragon costs about $55M per person - which is one place my 10% number comes from. Cargo flights are different, and you should also look at total program costs from the deal with NASA. The NASA contr…
The first citation is irrelevant as it is from 2008.