SOXBLOX

Here: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33339/x-37b-space-planes-microwave-power-beam-experiment-is-a-way-bigger-deal-than-it-seems

As the folks above have pointed out, this would have serious ramifications on established scientific research, forcing us to throw out our working models. Generally, physics works by building on and tweaking existing explanations. Aside from that, Kerbals, obviously, could not ride in such a ship. Also, due to the supposed, alleged, hypothetical repulsion mechanism for which evidence is sparse at best, these ships could never enter orbit of any body. This makes them generally useless for gameplay, making it *unlikely* they will be implemented.

And testing a beamed solar power experiment next launch! Very interesting. Perhaps it will let us keep electric UAV's aloft for longer?

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. 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!

[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]

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

I am still not convinced that by the time it is finally flying (around 2027, I expect, provided all goes reasonably well) it will not have accumulated so many development costs that it becomes as expensive as the SLS. Sure, anyone can make a pretty infographic and give cute speeches about colonizing places like Mars. Lots of people can roll sheet metal to build a shiny rocket fuel tank. The thing is, a launch vehicle like this has been possible for the last 10 years, at least. NASA is building SLS "because we should". But the fact that no one else is building a SHLV (besides maybe Bezos) tells me that wiser minds than Musk's have decided that it isn't worth it. I love the idea of orbital spaceflight, and even flights to other planets. I just don't see it happening in meaningful ways until we at least have orbital tethers. Really, the first thing to do is find an economic incentive to get people (humans, not robots) to go out there. Since there is no obvious choice for this incentive, sci-fi authors commonly invent something found in space and no where else. Winchell Chung calls it MacGuffinite. Seems to me that Musk is building a bridge to nowhere. This is also known as putting the cart before the horse, or trying to run before you can walk. As for terrestrial use, point me to a load of cargo which needs to fly at Mach 20. Then, if you do find some, please explain why anyone needs 100 tons of the stuff.

Current and future war doctrine certainly does not involve jumping to a nuclear exchange. The RQ-series and Lord knows what else we've got behind the curtain are real recon platforms. In this role, Starship would constitute a national disgrace. And really, 5 million a piece? "Eventually", he said. The B-2 Spirit could cost only 5 million if we mass-produced it. He's making so many assumptions about the future utility of his launch vehicle that it is ludicrous to the point of insanity. Military usefulness is out. Even if it were in, and you're right about the use of nukes, then it is a one-week market. Tourism is not a near-term possibility. Period. Even then, sending people on pleasure cruises is not a way to forge a sustainable space infrastructure. As for the ridiculously low costs of Starship, we haven't seen it fly, and costs anywhere near those he promises won't happen until it is being flown en-masse. So, it needs customers. Who are they, what will they do, where is their money coming from? These are questions no spaceflight plan has been able to answer with anything more than a handwave and some vacuous muttering about "new markets" and "public enthusiasm for the exploration of space". He needs a solid long-term money-making use for SS. NASA isn't a reliable customer; it changes its mind too frequently. Orbital tourism is not good enough; airlines don't fly just to show you the sights. Asteroid prospecting? Maybe. But it won't require a launch every day. In short, I think Elon ought to be pitching realistic uses for Starship. I'd say he could launch Starlink and maybe Europa Cutter with it. Maybe he could build an orbital station, though why we'd need it is a question with only a few dubious answers. Really, though, none of these satisfy the requirement for a huge, continuously buying customer base; there's no market.

No!

I am well aware of the potential for asteroid mining. That is not relevant, though. The topic of this discussion has been whether SS has a use beyond launching Starlink. I am convinced that it doesn't. However, it's ultimate goal is to colonize Mars. I believe it will fail to make enough money to survive long-term, not because it is a bad vehicle, but because no one needs it.

Taxicabs? I've gotta say, that's another bad example. People only build roads to places where there are other people, after the colonization of wherever has been completed. This is not comparable to trains, planes, or horse-drawn buggies. It is it's own unique challenge. People did make money off of building a "road" and putting "cars" on it, the American railroad network in its earliest years. Maybe SS could visit the asteroids, but there would not yet be anyone to sell the data to. They would have to wait until their product created a market. This kind of economic brute forcing just doesn't work, which is the reason SS is a solution without a problem, in my opinion. It can be cheaper than anything ever launched, bigger, or faster, but that doesn't mean people have to buy it. Since as far as we can see, there isn't a whole lot of money to be made in space, private companies won't. And I really hate to argue the point, but DARPA wants rapid launch because they are seriously concerned that in a major war enemy cruise missiles will be exploding over Kennedy SC and others. It would shred our current launch capabilities, making us incapable of maintaining a communication network and spysat system in space. Something which can fly over a location really fast with a big camera is no longer useful in the face of such tech as the RQ-170 or the fabled RQ-180. These are a lot cheaper than SS, can loiter for hours, carry weapons, and have a tiny mission turnaround time. SS is only useful during a major conflict. If the U.S. Military does its job, there won't be one of those.

Starship and regular aircraft don't compare. This is another example of someone underestimating how utterly different space is. Starship will be carrying people to completely barren, literally alien locations, where there is nothing to do until you make something to do. It does not serve the same purpose as an airliner; so comparing the two is like comparing blue and Tuesday, it does not make sense. *cackles maniacally*

Lots of raw materials? Privyet, Siberia. By the time you've set up a supply chain infrastructure in SPAAAACE! you will not be making much more money than trucking Earth rocks around. Asteroid mining also does not require the colonization of space. As for the major powers nuking each other, the balance is changing. 30 years ago, there was a research program called Star Wars by the public. The military has things so classified that it would blow your mind. Now, we have the capabilities to make the SDI a reality. We are also at least 20 years ahead of the world in this field. Even if you disregard that, the nature of any future conflict is so far removed from WWII that you cannot have any conception of it without a significant rethink of your assumptions. Most likely, a war between China and America (an example, no more) would be over in just weeks. No nukes need be exchanged. Not the forum for this topic, though. Yes, the SR 72 just proves my point. A capability no one needs. The AF isn't interested. Exactly. And you folks want to get off our big iron rock to go to a bunch of iron pebbles. Trust me, we'll go once there is a real economic incentive to go. It will be permanent and much more meaningful that way.

Ah, yeah, the asteroids. That's a whole new pile of engineering challenges. Those were markets leveraging mainly services that common people could use, whether by owning their own PC or learning how to code. I really don't see a Starship parked in front of every house, ever. An iPhone os inherently useful, combining a large number of functions which already existed. None of your points are valid, as Starship would exist in a technological vacuum. It would have no defining, lasting purpose. With your line of reasoning, we should all be flying helicopters to work. Though technically feasible, we don't do it because not enough people want it. I've gotta get to bed: it's 2:00 AM here. I've greatly enjoyed the discussion, and I'll check in later this morning.

The whole point of a rapid, unpredictable launch is to surprise the enemy and REPLACE WARTIME LOSSES. This assumes a war has started, and that it is one involving peer state competitors with ASAT capabilities. If you think the military wants to fly really fast over a target an photograph it, sorry, but we had a plane that could do that. We never designed a successor because it was not useful enough. Even if it were, a new hypersonic aircraft would be better than SS, it could be stealthed. Oh, wait, we already have recon drones that can do this sort of thing. Nevermind that entire market opportunity... As for Mars One, how many people were actually serious, or really knew what they were asking for? My guess is not many. If someone wants to pay 100k to fly a little higher, that's their choice. But really, most folks won't, and probably not those with families, as they would want to bring the kids along. If they can't bring the kids, they probably won't go. And really, it only takes on failure of a manned flight before the government slaps so many regulations on space tourism and launch vehicles that Starship becomes an anachronism. Anyhow, human-rating that steel tub will take a while, even once (if) it's built. But whatever. As long as Musk isn't wasting my tax money on this, he can do what he wants.

I still say any long-term colonization scheme by a company like SpaceX is doomed to failure. It would be a HUGE net loss that would A) Force Elon to shell out Starshiploads of cash to maintain or B) Force the colonists themselves to finance the voyage, infrastructure, etc. Starlink, once complete, shouldn't take many flights per year to keep running, due to the massive payload touted by SpaceX. This means it spends a lot of time sitting around doing nothing. This, coupled with the need to maintain the maintenance capabilities, leads to a problem like what Electric Boat experienced; paying smart people to twiddle their thumbs until the rare time they're needed. This makes it more efficient (more efficient, maybe not cheaper; there's a difference) to just use a smaller LV, like Falcon. It's either this, or pull a market out of thin air in a matter of years. Ain't happenin'. What besides Starlink will fly on this?

They want minimal infra because it allows them to launch from anywhere-ish. This keeps our adversaries guessing. And no, you are quite wrong on how hard it would be for, say, China to spot and track SS. BMEWS, or the Chinese version thereof, could find it seconds after it appeared, and fire a shot from a system like a small version of GBSD. More resolution from orbital cameras is hardly necessary; 8m is past the point where aperture increases make headway against atmospheric interference. So no, I don't see a vast military potential for Starship. Even if the military could use it, it is only useful in war, when corporations are essentially forced to cut their profits to nigh-zero or appear to be capitalizing on the suffering of many, many people. This tiny market would last only a year or two, at most, due to the way even a near-peer conflict would be fought.

Starlink will be a market, but not the way you think. Once those starlink sats have died and become hypervelocity impactors, they will have to be removed in order to de-Kesslerize Earth. I wonder what launch vehicle could pull that off... Oh yeah,... Starship, coincidentally made and flown by the same government -subsidized corporation that made the mess in the first place. And also coincidentally, because not all the space trash up there is SpaceX 's, then it will be perfectly justifiable to pay SpaceX to remove it. Difficult to see, you say? I presume you mean me, but I'll ignore this. If Starlink is proves itself to be so wonderful, then it will naturally create competition. Competition launched by other companies, of course. If there is no other competition, they run into anti-monopoly regulations. Do you think rich, prosperous millionaires and billionaires want to leave their mansions and coastal resorts for a highly regimented community with strict laws living in a fragile tin can, again, in muscle -destroying low G? Not likely. Not that I hate SpaceX, but 100 years from now, i think whoever invents a mass-production technique for C nanotubes will be laughing at Elon's plans to colonize Mars with a steel tube.

I certainly trust Boeing a lot less than Lockheed. Lockheed is still very reliable, though. They've managed to stave off most of the internal corporate bureaucracy which is dampening the capabilities of the brains at Boeing to innovate. Definitely don't knock these guys; they've been pushing the limits of aerospace for the number one aerospace customer, the American military, for the last 80 years. They appear to move slowly only because they can't waste taxpayer dollars. Congress is ruthless in its spending cuts (absolutely not a political comment, just a fact) and will crush them if they don't know exactly what they're doing. As for the Space Force, they're looking for a small, cheap launcher which can launch unpredictably using minimal infrastructure, i.e. any convenient air base, during a near-peer conflict. I would guess that this doesn't apply to SS. SS would also make a very juicy target for ASAT weapons. That would mess up the economies of reusability a bit. As for the launch costs of Starship, we cannot possibly have any hard numbers yet, seeing as how they haven't actually built and flown it. The aerospace industry has a time-honored tradition of running into unexpected technical problems (read: bigger costs), and something as novel as Starship will likely see more than its share of gremlins. As for tourism, ahhhh... Yeah. Not a very sustainable market by my guesses. But who knows...

And as for the actual colonization of space, the first step is to make people want to leave Earth. That is, they must want to trade blue skies and zero-cost breathable atmosphere for health issues in low or zero G, dusty Mars, and life in a cramped tin can. In that case, it won't be us uber-rich first world Americans going. Probably the best way to make people move to space is to nuke not Mars, but Earth. That's right, about the only thing which could force a mass exodus would be a full-scale nuclear exchange. After which, by the way, there would be no Hawthorne, CA. Next, you need a place to go. Building this is entirely out of the reach of whole nations, much less small companies like SpaceX. Gravity ring stations in cislunar space built with SS launches? Oh please. Get realistic, people. This isn't Star Trek, no matter how hard you shout.

What I mean is that there are no missions for Starship to fly. NASA isn't about to fund anymore JWST-sized scopes, and certainly not any planet-imagers, in the near-future. The NRO is quite content already, and would much prefer to launch on proven launchers. Gateway is the only conceivable destination outside of low-earth orbit, and it may not even be built. Launches to specialty orbits are so expensive only because the current launchers are so limited; Starship would eat up the very small amount of demand there is, and would fail to make money regardless. Five sats per launch? Congrats, you just cut the price to a fifth (or less) of the original. As for colonizing Mars, Starship could *maybe* do it, but it would be losing money all the way. Keeping even an unrealistically tiny Earth-to-Mars supply chain open for any useful duration would rapidly bankrupt SpaceX. There's no money being made by a Mars colony for the first few years at least, it just eats cash. A 100 ton payload is impressive, but serves no practical purpose. What serious endeavour requires this launch vehicle?We could switch the electric grid to solar, but we don't because the effort would be a net monetary loss. We could build a maglev train system covering the continental United States, but we don't because there is no profit to be made on any realistic timescale. Even if we had all the necessary tech to put a colony on Mars today or in the next decade, we wouldn't unless there was a real economic incentive to justify the necessary effort. Elon Musk is no idiot, but at heart he is a businessman. When Starship continually fails to make money, he will retire it. Furthermore, flying this thing with crew would be risky. When it fails (and statistically it will surely fail, being so complex) and 100 civilian passengers die on it, then what? Could the Starship program, or even SpaceX itself, recover? It would provide a massive boost to all the other launch providers, that's for sure. Many SpaceX fanboys don't realize it, but ULA has enormous resources behind it from its parent companies, Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Both are aerospace and defence tech giants, with access to tech far beyond anything SpaceX has developed. If they put together a Skunk Works style team, they could build an equal or better launcher, and do it faster and cheaper. They haven't, and won't for the foreseeable future, mainly because it isn't a solution to a problem anyone is serious about solving. So, until there is a viable economic incentive for colonizing space or using super-heavy launchers, Starship is an answer to a question nobody is asking. By the time that question is asked, and there is a market more solid than "It's cool, so of course people will fly on it", SS will be obsolete, and rusting in a museum somewhere.

Perhaps one could design the ship so that the engine could fire prograde for the first 50% of the flight, and then point retrograde for deceleration while still maintaining the forward facing magnetic scoop. Worst-case, one could use cascade vanes...

I dunno. I'd love to see either of them. Those plus a new fuselage cross-section type would make a killer DLC, though.

Someone's been on Atomic Rockets! Great post, man! I certainly wasn't considering a pure matter-antimatter drive concept for those reasons and more. A much better use would of course be AM catalyzed fusion, which is what I believe we'll see in KSP2, if we do get antimatter.

So the devs say colonies will produce "advanced fuel types". Of course that is where we'll get our mH, but what else will they produce? I'm thinking that the torchdrive will at least be antimatter catalyzed. How feasible do you think antimatter propulsion is, and do you think it will appear in KSP2?