Outer Space Thread

[Leroy]

It is this type of negativity that will keep James Tiberius from screwing a hot green chick on some faraway planet.

[ghostrunner]

Starship isn't designed for travel outside of Earth Orbit. The Mars and Moon stuff is just marketing. I know this has been touted since BFR. I know NASA gave it the contract for the moon lander. But take a step back and look at what it does. The payload it carries is too large to leave orbit without being refueled 10+ times to have enough deltaV. If it was really designed for Mars or the Moon they would shrink the payload and possibly give it a third stage. You don't design a vehicle that needs that many refuelings to get to its destination or it makes it price inefficient versus a dedicated vehicle. And SpaceX is all about efficiency and lowering cost...

So what gives? Why say its for Mars and the moon? Because prospective Mars and moon missions are where you stimulate the public and get government contracts. There are no development contracts for what it really is, a rapid Earth to Earth, site to site transporter. Their goal is to make it price and time competitive with VIP business class for international flights. Need to fly from London to Sidney?

I think the bolded is totally correct. It's marketing above all else. Probably sucks in some engineers too.

I have my doubts that normal people are every going to trust it, but yeah that use case makes much more practical/cost sense.

I'd be more forgiving for Starship since it is cool, but this is the exact problem we had with the shuttle where the economics of the shuttle stopped making sense as it got larger. A smaller orbiter would have been cost efficient versus Soryuz, but the shuttle we got with the large payload bay made Soryuz cheaper. Starship is once again following that model. The moonlander version is 10x too big for 2023. Maybe if the international flights thing really takes off they can lower the cost of launches enough to where suddenly its economically viable again, but that's if everything goes correctly, and costs are manageable but that's a big if and its not how Starship is being covered.

It's bothersome that I can't find one mainstream article that bothers to tackle this. Almost every space writer is unapologetically "Go, big rocket, go". The hardcore space exploration enthusiast community is so small and insular that it makes sense. I get it. But it also feels like a mass delusion.

[Arthur Dent]

The international flight thing does not seem at all plausible to me. You are going to pay way more to save a couple hours and have a ~1% chance of being incinerated? And what are chances these things are going to have a reliable frequent launch schedule from where you are to your destination? Zero.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

From a kid who was completely enthralled by the Gemini and Apollo space missions, my response to this is...

Don't we have more important things to spend our time and money on?

[ghostrunner]

Wow. I think this is the pad, so this probably delays the next launch.

[Arthur Dent]

I'd be more forgiving for Starship since it is cool, but this is the exact problem we had with the shuttle where the economics of the shuttle stopped making sense as it got larger. A smaller orbiter would have been cost efficient versus Soryuz, but the shuttle we got with the large payload bay made Soryuz cheaper. Starship is once again following that model. The moonlander version is 10x too big for 2023. Maybe if the international flights thing really takes off they can lower the cost of launches enough to where suddenly its economically viable again, but that's if everything goes correctly, and costs are manageable but that's a big if and its not how Starship is being covered.

The big problem with the shuttle was that it was not actually all that reusable. The external tank was lost and the rest required extensive refurbishing. The “reusability” added a ton of extra cost to the system that didn’t result in practical reuse. Also, they scope creeped the thing to get military dollars, so it no longer fit the original concept.

This new development of highly reusable boosters via boost back and vertical landing is a truly new development that really seems to have panned out, and that may change the calculus. The main caveats, as I seem them, are:
-Can you really recover and quickly reuse a much bigger booster?
-Can you really recover and quickly reuse an upper stage that must undergo reentry? This has not been demonstrated, and they seem to be reusing problematic shuttle concepts like thermal tiles.

I don’t understand the excessive size and many refuelings needed for a moon mission either. I guess the vague theory is that this is a general purpose ultra heavy lift system that is so reusable that it’s fine, but that seems dubious.

[Arthur Dent]

Wow. I think this is the pad, so this probably delays the next launch.

[ghostrunner]

This car appears to be pretty close to the launch site, but also a closer view of the debris. Not quite as much as what went ocean-side.

[AdmiralKird]

This new development of highly reusable boosters via boost back and vertical landing is a truly new development that really seems to have panned out, and that may change the calculus. The main caveats, as I seem them, are:
-Can you really recover and quickly reuse a much bigger booster?
-Can you really recover and quickly reuse an upper stage that must undergo reentry? This has not been demonstrated, and they seem to be reusing problematic shuttle concepts like thermal tiles.

I don’t understand the excessive size and many refuelings needed for a moon mission either. I guess the vague theory is that this is a general purpose ultra heavy lift system that is so reusable that it’s fine, but that seems dubious.

The usage of an N1 (USSR) style engine array with these raptors is another awkward part of the vehicle. It has so many single points of catastrophic failure and partial failures. So many things that need to be checked, rechecked, and inspected. The factory reliability on these has to be off the charts to turn these around quickly. They can't be dropping more than one or two engines a launch. SpaceX put up this chart back when BFR was announced:



They're never getting the booster with 33 engines under $200,000 in maintenance costs per flight and 1,000 launches.

The international flight thing does not seem at all plausible to me. You are going to pay way more to save a couple hours and have a ~1% chance of being incinerated? And what are chances these things are going to have a reliable frequent launch schedule from where you are to your destination? Zero.

There are some scant articles from back in the day. It's reported as sort of as a feature of Starship, but not the focus. The reason I believe its most real focus is because:

1. Musk in general spends an inordinate amount of time talking about regulations. If this were ever going to be a thing, they would have to completely re-write the book on space launches.

2. Musk says he plans to build 1,000 Starships... to carry people to Mars. You don't need 1,000 ships to go to Mars. We haven't even sent anyone, once. Where is the money going to come from for 1,000 starships? 1,000 sounds plausible if you consider they're operating as an airline.

3. It's where the most money is at - if it can be achieved. There are other places where Starship can make money. It could haul the largest scientific and communication payloads into orbit. It could put up a much larger visible spectrum telescope. It could haul massive space station sections into orbit. Space tourism will still be a thing - but that's building a thing that barely exists as an industry.

4. Most of Musk's ventures are about changing the way we travel. Tesla is to change how we drive by upending fossil fuel cars. The Boring Company is about creating networks of highways under cities and improving intracity travel. Hyperloop is to redefine intraconinental and intercity travel. You can say SpaceX changes the way we travel because we don't travel to the mars or moon, but there's a gap in there for intercontinental travel.

5. There's no real discussion of using Starship for heavy cargo. Starship is always about people. Falcon Heavy is for heavy cargo. But Starship would be even better at heavy cargo if it just carried a big payload in a faring. With heavy cargo you could assemble a real living spaceship/mobilespacestation for the journey to mars, and a dedicated lander.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

I’m confused with all the skepticism.

Is the outrage due to this vehicle not being able to make it to mars? Or false advertising? Or because it’s an attempt to revolutionize travel but not go to mars?

Or simply because of musk?

One seems more plausible than the other