Pthigrivi

Hey, Darth i think it got lost in the mix but I did retract my last comment. Lost my patience and was being a jerk. Apologies.

Edit: Im retracting my previous response here. Disagree as we may I dont have to be a condescending jerk about it.

Look, here's what Im saying: Starship is one of the coolest things thats happened to spaceflight in generations. It's absolutely wild. Thats why I come here and like talking about it. I say that with you all knowing my feelings about Elon as a person. For me it's about all those young engineers pouring their souls into this. I also personally think Gwynne Shotwell is pretty brilliant, so its complicated. All that said SpaceX is not a charitable organization. It's a private company that relies almost entirely on private equity investors. Those investors don't need to care if SpaceX turns out to be revolutionary to the human race or a white-elephant hype bomb that collapses in 10 years. They just want to know that their PE shares will be worth more next year than they are this year. Thats it. If next year they pull out everything stops. To prove to those people that SpaceX is a good investment they need to sustain the story that Starship has real profitability. There are basically 3 ways starship makes money: government contracts to the moon and defense payloads, revenue from an expanded starlink constellation, and private launch contracts. Out of those potential profit centers I think the former is probably the firmest, starlink second, and private launches third. I think it's entirely possible that there just isn't enough private demand to launch dozens of ISS's worth of cargo per year, that they built this whole rocket factory and there just aren't enough customers lined up to fill it. Artemis and other government contracts are the most solid but just don't account for dozens of starship launches per year. So a LOT is riding on starlink not just showing a profit by itself but potentially underwriting most of what SpaceX does. And maybe it can! Or maybe the customer base just isn't there. Maybe it can't compete with 5G over the next few years. Maybe they just lose confidence because of weather attenuation or bad customer service and can't grow fast enough to sustain the burn rate of relaunching 10's of thousands of satellites every 5 years. Maybe Elon himself just becomes such a toxic commodity that people stay away out of general principle. If any of those or a million other things happen then Starship could start to look all dressed up with nowhere to go. Those PE investors don't care at all about a colony on Mars. If the revenue dries up and the numbers stop making sense they're gone. I say all that and I sincerely do still hope starship succeeds because it means I may get to see a live moon mission and maybe the first humans set foot on Mars. That would be awesome. I have no love for the Chinese government but it would be cool to see them land on the moon and Mars too, to give credit to the thousands of passionate workers and engineers while rolling our eyes at the few at the top who take credit. It's possible to feel both things. I think its important to be sober and have the personal depth and moral backbone not to delude oneself about what is actually behind all of these huge and complicated projects--passion, greed, pride, exploitation, wonder, all of it.

Yes, I agree, thats all nice. The question is whether starlink can increase marketshare at the rate they need to and whether those remote communities are capable of sustaining starlink profitability over the long run. Maybe they can, maybe they can't. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-04-10/is-elon-musk-s-starlink-profitable-spacex-satellites-are-money-losers

Yeaah that makes sense. I guess we'll see. Hey somewhat on topic I remember Globalstar and other satellite networks had problems with the South Atlantic anomaly. Does anyone know how Starlink deals with that? Oh definitely, where I live cell service is particularly tough because of the dense, hilly terrain. I think serving rural villages sounds awesome. The question for me was whether the economics will pan out in the long run.

I dont know I live in VT and there are a lot of dead zones. How many of my neighbors are going to pay twice to avoid that? For like a fifteen minute stretch on a few highways? Not many. Data service is a commodity. Most people live in cities or towns and pay as close to baseline if possible. There’s already a baseline thats much less than what starlink is offering. Some people will absolutely pay more for better coverage but i don’t see that being a huge market share, certainly not globally. Only if Starlink can start offering fast, reliable service for less than 50$/mo. Right now they’re charging 120$/mo for 100 mbps or less.

I mean maybe for a relatively small subset that are willing to pay more for coverage in the woods or on their yacht? The average for home internet is 75$/mo in the US, between 20-50$/mo globally. Starlink is currently 120$/mo? Like they can probably bring that down but can they bring it down by a factor of 4? Im sure they will have customers but is it really a cash cow game changer or a nice toy for the wealthy?

Oh for sure. Its basically already 2 generations ahead of the competition. The heatshield may prove a bugaboo for true second stage reusability “like an airplane” but a lot of progress has been made and I have high hopes for version 2. Time will tell. My real worries for starship are economic. Starlink is cool but the vast majority of the world’s population is already being more affordably served by terrestrial fiber optic and cell service. It’ll be interesting to see starlink’s market penetration beyond rural and beyond-last-mile customers. Same with private big-mass to orbit customers. Maybe the demand is there or maybe its not. This is all very build it and they will come and its either the internet or its 3d tv, or AR, or self driving cars. Potentially revolutionary or maybe its DoA or perpetually 10 years from breaking out. Either way Starship really needs those fat government contracts to the moon and beyond as a reliable income stream to justify the overhead in the short term. Hence the marketing and the campaign finance bribes. Like its weird we’re not talking about starship and asteroid mining, which has some actual long term economic viability. The reason we’re not talking about that is it would need to pass actual quantitative muster on investment horizons. If it did that would be the pitch in Spacex’s PE funding rounds, but its not. Instead we’re talking about Mars because your average US senator is prone more to legacy and vanity than ROI. The attractiveness Starship presents to Goldman and Saudi Arabia is that it’s kind of got lock on US space contracts both military and civil, and maybe some upside on Starlink and private launch contracts. SpaceX potentially assuming the lion’s share of US taxpayer investment in space over the next few years probably looks like a decent fallback.

Exactly. I have real doubts about the economic viability of a mars colony but I think starship if it works presents above all the opportunity for high-mass, high-redundancy in space, given these initial missions to the moon and mars are funded by the US government. It becomes a pleasant face for spending billions in taxpayer dollars on dominance in space and maybe between starlink and some private contracts that accounts for the demand-need starship's PE investors are depending on for realized returns. Boeing is basically done and Bezos is not much better so there's a strong case for merging the SX monopoly with government in a way they think will be competitive with China's regulatory attitude toward its own space endeavors. I think given the pretty clear advantage they have in terms of cost/mass to orbit even if the US administration changes they're well positioned--unless they do something stupid and kill a bunch of people. Hopefully not. But let's say given a chaotic future starship remains publicly and privately funded and we have orbital payload, tanker, and moonlander variants. At this point we're launching dozens of starships into space. You'll need first a proof of concept, unmanned lander on mars. Great. Maybe that even happens in 2026 or maybe the aerobrake fails and it blows up. Eventually you want multiple ISRU variants, unmanned equipment delivery variants, probably Mars orbital station component delivery, potentially more efficient reusable NERVA or NSWR transfer systems... like at what point is Starship honestly best suited as a simple mass-to-orbit platform and all of the actual to-mars equipment maybe based on a different platform and starship is just delivering THAT platform to orbit? Like originally Dragon was advertised as a mars lander. That was... not it. Maybe Starship aint it either? Just a means to an end?

For sure aero-capture before going in for landing seems like a must for safety margin if no other reason. Might even be worth transferring to a purpose-built reusable lander in mars orbit rather than trying to land the interplanetary transfer stage?

Boooo no for catch

Prop load!

Hey, all. Another fun day. I might even be able to chat here at liftoff tonight this time

I know in the film industry there's a process called "turnaround" where a production thats had issues or the studio just wants to offload is basically put up for sale to other studios. Generally in this process the new studio is required to buy-out the production and cover the previously sunk costs to absorb it which often leaves really troubled films in indefinite limbo. Is that similar to how games are sold?

Sadly its probably just some PE/holding company planning to liquidate the assets but even if thats the case someone real might buy up the IP in the firesale. The bummer is the actual premise and scope of KSP was pretty good, just fell apart in details + technical side. Probably interstellar should have been pushed back, and frankly I've never thought multiplayer for KSP would really work.

Elon himself said SH drymass would be 160-200t and we are definitely on the higher end given recent hardware addons. Tater thinks we’re less than a billion on OLM, the tower, fueling systems, deluge, and the last 3 years of launch-site development. I think he’s out to lunch. Because SX doesn’t disclose that information there’s no way to know.

Yeah I mean the full test flights.

Exactly. The last bit has been the clearest challenge so far (well that and the TPS system). Certainly they’ve made progress but only full test runs help solve the big hurdles now. This also probably figures into the risk/reward of a catch attempt, actually having a chance to inspect SH intact post flight if by miracle all goes to plan. It’ll be fun to watch either way.

Hey I thought unqualified and barely informed speculation was what this thread is all about!

Oh for sure, but its gonna be close and again the risk here is a non-nominal, multiple engine-out scenario or FTS a few hundred meters above the tower. Obviously SX is fine with the risk and its still worth it even with the FAA delays that entails. Im just wondering if thats actually wise given we haven't seen a nominal simulated landing yet.

Im talking about the tower and OLM. Given the time and energy that went into stage zero a billion dollars is probably pretty conservative. On one of the walkthroughs (Tim Dodd I think?) Elon said it was far and away the most complicated and expensive part of the project. Again it's not the explosion, it's the inertia of a 200 ton rocket hitting the tower or the OLM because of a major engine failure during the landing burn. It's kind of like hitting it with the statue of liberty going 100mph. None of the SH landings so far have been nominal and its widely speculated this is because of ice contamination in the fuel during re-lights. They seem to have been working very hard to resolve this and hopefully they have, but maybe not. One of the engines failed to re-light on IFT4 and in the footage from the water you can see that there are flames pouring out of the side. It's not hard to imagine a fire like that compromising adjacent engines just a few hundred meters over the tower. Obviously like any of us Im just a casual observer armchair quarterbacking. It just seems to me like the risk/reward here doesn't make a lot of sense vs doing one nominal over-water hover to be reasonably sure they have things nailed. It feels similar to IFT1 when they blew a crater below the OLM showering the area with debris because they didn't want to take the time to install the deluge system. It's risking a lot of unnecessary damage and delay for very little gain.

Id be surprised if China doesn’t have something like the USS Parche: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a37260563/uss-parche-tiny-ski-legs/

Yeah this is why I say it probably doesn't matter and will indeed be approved. SpaceX has anticipated at some point having a daily launch cadence which may matter for things like bird nesting. Again it probably isn't different given the extended area but Im not shocked that some review is necessary. Id personally expect more like 4 weeks than 8 weeks but I mostly deal with state agencies.

I think this is probably right, but being somewhat entangled with state regulation in the course of my day job (you all would lose your minds if you knew about VT Act 250) technically speaking, just because the sonic boom doesn't affect species within X radius doesn't mean it wont affect species within Y radius because there may be a wider range of biology in the wider area. If there's a nesting site for something endangered just outside the X radius boundary it might affect species recovery. I have to deal with these kinds of questions for basic housing and commercial projects with 2-20m budgets. Honestly the fact that they're able to build a rocket factory and launch site in an active wetland is kind of mindboggling to me so whining about "Oh you've increased your impact area but we'll review and get back in 60 days" seems like wildly generous deference to me.

This is the key item in the current delay, and is a direct result of them deciding to do the booster catch for IFT5 instead of waiting till IFT6 while the increased area is reviewed. And yes, if you increase the affected area there's going to be some review. Im sure SX legal team knows that. To be honest SpaceX is getting preferential treatment to be operating in this area at all but again, as a company they're given a certain amount of deference because they're important to the US's strategic goals. It's a good launch site. Its not carte blanche though. I get they want to work the ump but this a lot of whining over a 2 month delay SpaceX themselves incurred.