totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[SOXBLOX]

19 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Let me tell you a story about two airplanes.

The first is the 747. When this airplane was designed, it was about twice as big as the biggest airliners before it. It required the construction of the biggest building in the world to make it. There was no established market because there had never been anything like it. It remained in production for over 50 years.

The second one is the A380. It was even bigger. It went out of production in less than 15 years.

Conditions were right for the 747 to create a new market for a giant airplane. Conditions were not right for the A380 to do the same thing.

If Starship is a technical success, will it also be an economic success? Will it be serving a previously unserved market? Or will it just be a really expensive way to serve a market that smaller rockets could already serve? The only way to know for sure is to roll the dice and find out.

Absolutely! My thoughts are, of course, that it will flop. Great point there!

 

49 minutes ago, tater said:

It can't possibly cost as much to develop as SLS, SpaceX doesn't have that sort of money to spend, not within an order of magnitude.

Really large, reusable LVs have been a concept since the 1960s. It's the only way to reduce cost to space, which is the only way it ever can be anything other than the niche purview of state actors.

 

There's a job for Starship right there. A friend of mine is a tether guy (he did rockets too, worked on Constellation for NASA back in the day), working on arbitrarily long nanotubes, actually.

Tethers make a ton of sense, and it helps to have a LV capable of large mass to orbit, cheap to build them. The two can work hand in hand to become a system.

If launch costs are on par with a FedEx shipping charge per kg, tehers make sense, sounds like a good startup in the Starship world since launching over 1000 tons would be possible over a few launches.

 

There will NEVER be an economic argument for human space colonization. If someone wants to build one, then it becomes a market entirely because it's a place with people who need stuff. They have no special powers, though, so their ability to make things that people on Earth want (and can afford to import) is no better than anyone else's.

If some people wany to try and live on mars... more power to them, won't be me.

 

Anything going to the Moon, for one. If various governments want a pet project like ISS, but more exciting, they want  a Moon base. Starship can provide the materials to build such a base, then the overly expensive Orion can help bring them there (makes more sense with the lousy flight rate if the base could be made big enough people could live for months at a time).

Regardless, for LEO (that's what I meant by terrestrial, around Earth, servicing Earth) all that matters is cost to orbit, excess capacity not used doesn't matter.

Tethers are still a ways off. By the time we have them, Starship will be in an antique shop.

By terrestrial, I mean suborbital hops, which is apparently what SpaceX think they can use this for.

And no, packing efficiency is very important. There are only so many flights you can put on one airframe. You have to factor in the cost of the current frame's future replacement. Launching a one ton payload on SS wastes a flight. Not a way to make a profit. If Elon is worried about NG, then he'll really watch his spending.

 

And no, I don't particularly care for SLS either.

Additionally, whether any SpaceX product is cost-effective is debatable. Elon is basically a subsidiary of the federal government. They should just merge SpaceX and NASA...

[RCgothic]

There's no way Starship isn't going to be an economic success if it's also a technical success. If it succeeds technically it will be an order of magnitude cheaper per flight than Falcon 9 the current undisputed economic king. 

The excess capacity is irrelevant. If SpaceX get paid X per flight and the customer doesn't use the full capacity, SpaceX isn't any worse off. In fact a lighter flight means larger margins which means more propellant to mitigate re-entry and reduce wear. Light flights mean life extensions.

[tater]

  

7 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

The second one is the A380. It was even bigger. It went out of production in less than 15 years.

Bigger is better for orbital rockets, cost effectiveness scales to reuse, not size. Airliner cost and operational cost scales to size, and pays off based on passengers carried per flight meeting some minimum. The amount paid for a launch is high enough they cover the vehicle every launch, it's a different paradigm. The comparison might be if every passenger paid enough such that as long as a couple people flew, the plane broke even money wise. Yeah, there's probably min payloads for SS, but even the min payload pays for the flight.

 

7 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

And no, packing efficiency is very important. There are only so many flights you can put on one airframe. You have to factor in the cost of the current frame's future replacement. Launching a one ton payload on SS wastes a flight. Not a way to make a profit. If Elon is worried about NG, then he'll really watch his spending.

Not true at all. There are no "wasted flights." If the cost to fly to LEO is 5 million bucks, it doesn't matter if they have a single smallsat or 150t of cargo. That metric is only true if the vehicle is thrown away—in which case you are right, every throw away rocket ever launched that carried less than it's full payload mass to orbit "wasted" a lot of payload that could have been delivered.

RocketLab Electron carries 225kg to orbit for 6 million $. That's a good deal for a specific orbit (vs a rideshare). The Firefly Alpha is supposed to be ~1t to LEO, dunno the cost. The closest commercial vehicles I can find for 1 ton are Vega and Minotaur-C. The former is 37M$ for 2 tons, the latter  is 40-50M$ for ~1.5t.

So if SS flying 1 ton to specific LEO (not a rideshare) is less than 37M$, it's cheaper than any possible alternative. No other metric matters. From the start the design goal of BFR has been that the launch cost would be below Falcon 9, and indeed more like Falcon 1. If it's more like F9, then 1-2 ton payloads would not be cost effective alone, but pretty much anything larger would be.

 

7 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

Elon is basically a subsidiary of the federal government. They should just merge SpaceX and NASA...

[Snip] SS has basically no Fed funding (think the AF threw 70M at Raptor a long, long time ago, but they spend that kind of money without thinking, it's not even noise). They continue to raise money, too.

[IncongruousGoat]

23 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

Additionally, whether any SpaceX product is cost-effective is debatable. Elon is basically a subsidiary of the federal government. They should just merge SpaceX and NASA...

We can't say for certain what SpaceX's finances look like, since they're a private company. However, the majority of their launches are for commercial customers, not the U.S. federal government, and the launch services they do provide to the government are done on fixed-price contracts. For an industry where price-plus contracts and outright subsidies are the norm, SpaceX is an outlier in how little they rely on government funding to get anything done.

[tater]

Yeah, if they're trying for gov subsidy, they're doing it wrong, they got paid half as much as Boeing got for Commercial Crew, and they are even going to actually fly without trying to milk extra cash out of NASA. Remember that about a year ago NASA gave Boeing an EXTRA 287 million because they were ahead of SpaceX, and might actually have to fulfill their contractual obligation to fly 2X in one year (the entire point of 2 providers was that if 1 had a problem the other could do both fights).

[SOXBLOX]

[Snip] it is futile. The fact is, SpaceX is building a bridge to nowhere, and are wasting a lot of time, talent, and government support doing it. It doesn't matter how cheap your tollway is, no one's going to use it just because it's so nice. People don't pay for what they don't want. As one of you said earlier, the tech has been there for the last 60 years. No one has built this yet because no one wants it. There have been plenty of people far smarter than Musk or his engineering team, but they realized that there is not an incentive to fly this thing. Elon's real goal, of course, is to send people to Mars with this. All commercial uses are, to him, secondary (those that actually exist).

[snip]

[cubinator]

3 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

no one wants it

At least one person wants it. And at least one person thinks we should survive the death of Earth in 800,000,000 years.

[tater]

2 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

[snip] it is futile. The fact is, SpaceX is building a bridge to nowhere, and are wasting a lot of time, talent, and government support doing it.

[snip]

There is zero government funding for Starship. You made a claim, demonstrate it. Links to contracts, please.

Commercial crew ain't it, because they are getting half what Boeing got for the same thing, and their per seat cost is lower on top of that, fixed price. Both far lower price than SLS, so no matter how you slice it, they are extracting gov money poorly compared to legacy players. If ULA actually bothered to compete on price, SpaceX would further drop prices (no reason to leave money on the table when the other provider charges the same they always have).

 

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It doesn't matter how cheap your tollway is, no one's going to use it just because it's so nice. People don't pay for what they don't want. As one of you said earlier, the tech has been there for the last 60 years. No one has built this yet because no one wants it.

The gov was the only game in town in the 1960s. Get the AF or NASA to fund it, or it wasn't a thing. Opening commercial space in the 60s might have resulted in a very different timeline.

 

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There have been plenty of people far smarter than Musk or his engineering team, but they realized that there is not an incentive to fly this thing. Elon's real goal, of course, is to send people to Mars with this. All commercial uses are, to him, secondary (those that actually exist).

Who cares, he's spending his money, and the money of his investors, no one else's. Ditto Bezos. It's perfect, the innovation we need, at ZERO COST to the taxpayer. I'm fine with killing SLS/Orion tomorrow—and replacing it with nothing, as we've just spent 6 trillion we don't have.

[SOXBLOX]

2 hours ago, cubinator said:

At least one person wants it. And at least one person thinks we should survive the death of Earth in 800,000,000 years.

   Ahem...

2 hours ago, tater said:

There is zero government funding for Starship. You made a claim, demonstrate it. Links to contracts, please.

Commercial crew ain't it, because they are getting half what Boeing got for the same thing, and their per seat cost is lower on top of that, fixed price. Both far lower price than SLS, so no matter how you slice it, they are extracting gov money poorly compared to legacy players. If ULA actually bothered to compete on price, SpaceX would further drop prices (no reason to leave money on the table when the other provider charges the same they always have).

 

The gov was the only game in town in the 1960s. Get the AF or NASA to fund it, or it wasn't a thing. Opening commercial space in the 60s might have resulted in a very different timeline.

 

Who cares, he's spending his money, and the money of his investors, no one else's. Ditto Bezos. It's perfect, the innovation we need, at ZERO COST to the taxpayer. I'm fine with killing SLS/Orion tomorrow—and replacing it with nothing, as we've just spent 6 trillion we don't have.

We need it? That was the point I just made, which you failed to notice. We do NOT need Starship. We do not need to colonize Mars. We do not need to send 100 people to the moon. We won't need more space telescopes, space stations, or science-gathering things which can't launch on Vulcan or Falcon.

 

Of course there's no government funding for Starship. Few people would even consider throwing money at this.

But SpaceX did receive money from the gov, money which picked up the development costs for Falcon and theirtrash cans with toilet plumbing engines. That is what has enabled them to get to this point.

I see it is pointless to try to change your minds; shall we call it quits and leave each other in peace?

See y'all around, and thank you for the discussion!

[zolotiyeruki]

2 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

it is futile. The fact is, SpaceX is building a bridge to nowhere, and are wasting a lot of time, talent, and government support doing it. It doesn't matter how cheap your tollway is, no one's going to use it just because it's so nice. People don't pay for what they don't want. As one of you said earlier, the tech has been there for the last 60 years. No one has built this yet because no one wants it. There have been plenty of people far smarter than Musk or his engineering team, but they realized that there is not an incentive to fly this thing. Elon's real goal, of course, is to send people to Mars with this. All commercial uses are, to him, secondary (those that actually exist).

And yet, for 60 years, those people who are smarter than Musk and his engineers failed to try, let alone succeed, at booster recovery (STS's SRBs don't count).  And here SpaceX is, with the lowest launch cost on the market, gobbling up marketshare from the legacy launch providers, who are now even more dependent on fat government contracts to keep them afloat.

Several people have pointed this out, but it sounds like you keep missing it:  full reuse changes everything, and it *does* matter how cheap the tollway is.  You're right that there's nothing *currently* that would require SS's capabilities, but that's not because there's no possible use for them.  It's because for the last 60 years, we've been constrained by the very high price of expendable launches provided by government-funded companies who have little incentive for efficiency or innovation.  Because of this, lots of ideas have been dismissed as simply too costly. 

So are there customers lining up right now to use the expanded capabilitie of SS?  No.  But I can imagine a few far-closer-future uses.  Larger spy satellites.  Competing satellite communications networks.  Satellite TV companies who will be able to launch a dozen satellites for a fraction of the cost they currently pay to launch just one.  Rods From The Gods.  LOP-G in a single launch.  Heck, SS could be used to service satellites the way STS did.  Heck, with the low cost of launch, SS could recover satellites, bring them back to earth for servicing, and then stick them back in orbit again for less than it cost to put them there in the first place.  How about expanding the ISS?

But set that all aside for a moment.  Let's assume that nobody comes up with a payload to match SS's capabilities.  The fact is, it doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter, because SS will be able to service the existing market, and be competitive at it, assuming the stated expected costs ($5m cost to SpaceX, 2-3x that to the customer?) are within an order of magnitude of actual costs.  SS doesn't need to be used for 100T payloads in order to be an economic success.

I think you're on the right track by comparing it to a tollway, but I think you're drawing the wrong conclusions.  Look at what the Interstate System has done for the US.

[tater]

1 hour ago, SOXBLOX said:

   Ahem...

We need it? That was the point I just made, which you failed to notice. We do NOT need Starship. We do not need to colonize Mars. We do not need to send 100 people to the moon. We won't need more space telescopes, space stations, or science-gathering things which can't launch on Vulcan or Falcon.

Who said anything about anyone "needing" Starship? Not me. If it is cheaper top fly than expendables, then it obviates expendables, and with far greater max payload (still cheaper for little payloads).

It is being built because Musk wants to build it, full stop.

Technically, aside from maybe weather sats and comsats, we "need" nothing in space at all (ever).

 

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Of course there's no government funding for Starship. Few people would even consider throwing money at this.

I quoted you claiming it was subsidized. So it's not "government support doing it" (your words)?

 

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But SpaceX did receive money from the gov, money which picked up the development costs for Falcon and theirtrash cans with toilet plumbing engines. That is what has enabled them to get to this point.

They got funded for Falcon9, and it was arguably some of the best money NASA has spent ever, certainly in decades. For the price of a single Delta IVH launch, they got a new LV, plus cargo Dragon.

 

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I see it is pointless to try to change your minds; shall we call it quits and leave each other in peace?

See y'all around, and thank you for the discussion!

Discussions are fine, [snip] (in the aerospace industry, no less, where literally every other player is thrown contracts worth orders of magnitude more money, for less value (10s of billions to Boeing alone in the last decade, for... nothing at all accomplished (and that's just SLS, they've only spent 4B gov money to not accomplish commercial crew)).

You even have someone in me here who agrees there is no point to Mars (and no economics to space colonization pretty much ever).

Regardless, Starship working makes every other LV on the planet obsolete. If it only works as an expendable, then it only makes SLS obsolete (more cargo for vastly lower cost).

What remains to be seen is if cheaper launch (orders of magnitude cheaper) can create new space industries. It's a counterfactual that has never been tried.

 

[Dman979]

Guys, it's not appropriate to personally attack someone, even if you think they are making unsound arguments. Address the argument, not the person.

Some content has been removed.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Dman979
Thread unlocked.

[RCgothic]

2 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

But SpaceX did receive money from the gov, money which picked up the development costs for Falcon and theirtrash cans with toilet plumbing engines. That is what has enabled them to get to this point.

The Merlin 1D is an amazing engine. The TWR is insane. No other engine has survived as many hours of operation, not even the RS-25.

And Raptor is an engineering marvel. Methalox stages equipped with Raptor engines will beat Hydrolox Centaur stages to high C3.

Both among the cheapest orbital rocket engines ever developed OR produced.

Trashcans with toilet plumbing does them an immense disservice.

[tater]

 

[Wjolcz]

I honestly don't feel the slightest desire to read any of the previous posts.

Good to see SN5 is almost ready.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Wjolcz

[RealKerbal3x]

Well, let's leave that behind, shall we? I, for one, have confidence that Starship will succeed, and that colonising Mars is vital for the future of the human race.

It's great that SN5 is almost ready to go, and I wish luck to SN4 and the team for the static fire tomorrow!

[Shpaget]

7 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

The fact is, SpaceX is building a bridge to nowhere

Actually, they are building a bridge to anywhere*

*in solar system

[kerbiloid]

In fact they are building a bridge to the nowhere which is everywhere.

[sh1pman]

17 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

In fact they are building a bridge to the nowhere which is everywhere.

It’s a bit funny that Starship is kinda vulnerable to the same criticism that SLS always gets: it’s a rocket without a clearly defined mission. It’s designed to do everything. You can call Mars colonization as its primary mission, but who knows when it’s actually going to fly there (and with people!). The difference between the two super-heavy rockets is that Starship is going to be much more capable and 200+ times cheaper to launch.

What impresses me the most about Starship is that SpaceX is doing something that only government agencies of superpowers could do before (super-heavy, reusable rocket and spacecraft), while also doing it alone, using its own money.
 

[kerbiloid]

I don't believe in the Musk's romantic Martian intentions, not even for a second.
But it's clear that the project steps match the Martian progress scheme till some pivot point, so it lets him get lulz from the Martian hype and avoid various questions.

[Guest]

Everyone's going on about how Starship is going to be so cheap to launch SLS will be left in the dust. How do you know that? The Shuttle was also hailed as the new, super-cheap access to space. Once it started flying, it turned out it wasn't so. The same may well be the case for Starship. We have a good idea of how much SLS will cost, it's pretty much all proven tech. Starship? Last time I've heard, it was using the same heatshield type as the Shuttle, for example, and unless Musk comes up with something clever, that alone will send the costs through the roof for reusable version. Even expandable, it will not be 200 times cheaper than SLS. It might be 20 times cheaper, because SLS has a lot of logistical overhead and uses LH2 as propellant, which is expensive to deal with. Even then, I think it won't even be that. There's quite a bit of distance between a flying water tower and an actual, usable LV. Lots of things can go wrong along the way.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Guest

[tater]

25 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Everyone's going on about how Starship is going to be so cheap to launch SLS will be left in the dust. How do you know that?

Good point.

We don't know this. My posts to that effect are always conditional, IF it works. Working means reusable—operationally reusable.

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The Shuttle was also hailed as the new, super-cheap access to space. Once it started flying, it turned out it wasn't so.

One, this is simply impossible for SpaceX, they don't have a factory available to print money like NASA does. Two, because of this, if the design ended up being wrong (not operationally reusable), they'd try something else. The iterative model helps them here. NASA had loads of great Shuttle designs, the nature of the process to select one (and the target goals added to the program) killed all the good designs.

 

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The same may well be the case for Starship. We have a good idea of how much SLS will cost, it's pretty much all proven tech. Starship? Last time I've heard, it was using the same heatshield type as the Shuttle, for example, and unless Musk comes up with something clever, that alone will send the costs through the roof for reusable version.

Huh? The Shuttle tiles were each unique. These tiles being tested are the same. They appear to snap on to the surface (I'm thinking my guess was pretty close to right). The target here is operational reuse, so if they had to spend X thousand man-hours per flight recaulking the tiles, etc... SS has failed. The crtical inflection point is cost. If they have some refurb that results in increased costs, it's fine as long as it's still cheaper to operate than other LVs. SS will be a test vehicle for a while, though as they work this out.

 

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Even expandable, it will not be 200 times cheaper than SLS. It might be 20 times cheaper, because SLS has a lot of logistical overhead and uses LH2 as propellant, which is expensive to deal with. Even then, I think it won't even be that. There's quite a bit of distance between a flying water tower and an actual, usable LV. Lots of things can go wrong along the way.

The first SLS will have cost (minus Orion), what, 30 billion? Each subsequent one for a while will cost 2-3 B? How many flights to amortize the dev cost differential? 10? If something like that, I'd expect you're right, maybe 20 times cheaper expendable (300M$) than SLS? Note that I'm talking SpaceX cost here, not what they'd charge, given the cost of SLS, SpaceX would be foolish sans competition to not jack the price up to whatever level makes SLS look like a poor choice, but is still the most  they can get. Charging half or 1/3 of an SLS flight would of course be a steal (more capability, less cost).

There are a lot of "ifs" in this thread where SS is concerned. Some people are more "when" but I try to be conditional. At almost any level of "working" SS obviates SLS. (in this case I'm broadening "working" for something less than "operational reuse")

Edited April 30, 2020 by tater

[sevenperforce]

23 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Everyone's going on about how Starship is going to be so cheap to launch SLS will be left in the dust. How do you know that?

Because even expendable, it leaves SLS in the dust.

23 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

The Shuttle was also hailed as the new, super-cheap access to space. Once it started flying, it turned out it wasn't so. The same may well be the case for Starship. We have a good idea of how much SLS will cost, it's pretty much all proven tech. Starship? Last time I've heard, it was using the same heatshield type as the Shuttle, for example, and unless Musk comes up with something clever, that alone will send the costs through the roof for reusable version.

There's very little similarity between the tiles on Starship and the tiles on the Shuttle.

23 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Even expandable, it will not be 200 times cheaper than SLS. It might be 20 times cheaper, because SLS has a lot of logistical overhead and uses LH2 as propellant, which is expensive to deal with. Even then, I think it won't even be that. There's quite a bit of distance between a flying water tower and an actual, usable LV.

There's also quite a bit of distance between a flying water tower and a leaky one.

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

Because even expendable, it leaves SLS in the dust.

Again, how do you know the projected costs are accurate (hint: they never are)? It doesn't matter, expandable or not. How do you know that, when you account for everything, Starship's costs do not end up ballooning, and that payload capacity won't end up dropping due to unforeseen weight increases? 

The Starship you're all imagining is a paper rocket. You're comparing it to SLS, which uses flown components (it's basically a Shuttle launch stack with a Delta IV second stage stuck on top). Once Starship uses actual, flown components (read: once it flies), then you will be able to compare them. 

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

There's very little similarity between the tiles on Starship and the tiles on the Shuttle.

Yeah, they are hexagonal and Shuttle had square ones. Sure, that might help. Let's face it, in both cases, these are ceramics. Why would Starship tiles not require disassembling and detailed inspection after every flight? 

[RCgothic]

Raptor is a flown engine.

Starship has about as much in common with Starhopper and Falcon 9 as SLS does with STS.

The tiles don't require detailed inspection because 1 - they aren't glued on, so the glue doesn't need inspecting, and 2 - Starship's stainless hull can mostly survive without them.

Edited April 30, 2020 by RCgothic