totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[YNM]

1 hour ago, Spaceception said:

Well, each one has the new titanium grid fins, it's much easier to reuse, so some new structural changes. Engine improvements, better fuel tanks I suppose. Updated landing legs.

Not surprising it doesn't take too long... Maybe when they announced it the production's shifted already.

[tater]

3 hours ago, sh1pman said:

Though I still don't get the economics of this. Shotwell said it's going to cost the same as a business class ticket, lets say a $1000 per seat. With 100 passengers, it's going to generate a hundred grand per flight. Now, I understand that reusability is a game changer, but surely a BFR launch can't cost less than that. 

Yeah, this is strange. Musk said that costs would be coach class sorts of prices, and I figured out that this was possible if the crew volume of BFS was used to the full extent (a 100% economy classed A380 number of people, several hundred.

Maybe Shotwell is thinking first class sorts of prices. Even then, we're only talking on the order of 1 M$/flight, and profit would have to be in there as well. I wonder what the single stage limit is on travel with BFS, vs the whole stack is...

[sh1pman]

5 minutes ago, tater said:

I wonder what the single stage limit is on travel with BFS, vs the whole stack is...

You mean range? Honestly, no idea, but if it's only going suborbital, it should have enough fuel left for landing, even with 10-20t of people and luggage. With non-standard engine setup (e.g. 5 SL and 2 Vacuum Raptors) it should have decent TWR.

[tater]

Looks like you could do 100 people then as a single stage vehicle. This would vastly lower the logistical complications.

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

2 hours ago, Wjolcz said:

 

Also, when was the last successful barge landing? Last year?

I think it was Zuma, which was this January.

[sevenperforce]

15 minutes ago, tater said:

Yeah, this is strange. Musk said that costs would be coach class sorts of prices, and I figured out that this was possible if the crew volume of BFS was used to the full extent (a 100% economy classed A380 number of people, several hundred.

Maybe Shotwell is thinking first class sorts of prices. Even then, we're only talking on the order of 1 M$/flight, and profit would have to be in there as well. I wonder what the single stage limit is on travel with BFS, vs the whole stack is...

I suppose they could pack more than 100 people in.

One of Elon's schticks with Tesla is that they do NOT offer discounts. No employee discount, no friends-and-family discount, nothing. The only time they sell a Tesla below sticker price is if it's used or a showroom model or something like that. The goal of the no-discount pricing is to keep the price the same for everyone, rather than making retail purchasers subsidize the purchases made by "preferred" people.

So I would anticipate an honest-to-goodness suborbital BFS commercial flight to have the same sort of arrangement. There would be no discounted economy tickets, no dizzying array of fare classes. Just one full-fare ticket price. 

A fully-flexible economy-class ticket from NY to Brussels will run around $5000. 200 people paying $5K each will get you $1M. I would guesstimate the propellant cost of a single-stage BFS flight at around $300K, which is far greater than the percentage cost that airlines pay for their fuel.

Hard to know.

19 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

You mean range? Honestly, no idea, but if it's only going suborbital, it should have enough fuel left for landing, even with 10-20t of people and luggage. With non-standard engine setup (e.g. 5 SL and 2 Vacuum Raptors) it should have decent TWR.

Single-stage has always made far more sense to me. There are only a handful of flights a single-stage BFS couldn't handle, given the right engine config.

 

[Ultimate Steve]

I have an idea that I will restate, as I have said it before - many members of the population would probably go on one of these flights just for the thrill of going into space - so why not have a few dedicated space tourism flights with a small amount of training, a smaller crew count, and a week or so in orbit? Price would be higher, but attainable, I'd imagine.

[sevenperforce]

7 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I have an idea that I will restate, as I have said it before - many members of the population would probably go on one of these flights just for the thrill of going into space - so why not have a few dedicated space tourism flights with a small amount of training, a smaller crew count, and a week or so in orbit? Price would be higher, but attainable, I'd imagine.

Isn't that New Shepard?

[Ultimate Steve]

Just now, sevenperforce said:

Isn't that New Shepard?

But with a larger crew, larger space, and a week in orbit.

[sevenperforce]

9 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

But with a larger crew, larger space, and a week in orbit.

Oh, I thought you were talking suborbital.

[Ultimate Steve]

Of course, the orbit would have to be rather low to avoid most of the orbital debris, but high enough to not fall down to Earth early.

[sh1pman]

39 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I have an idea that I will restate, as I have said it before - many members of the population would probably go on one of these flights just for the thrill of going into space - so why not have a few dedicated space tourism flights with a small amount of training, a smaller crew count, and a week or so in orbit? Price would be higher, but attainable, I'd imagine.

wow, I had the exact same thought 15 minutes ago. If BFR launch is that cheap, then just launch it all the way to LEO, packed with food and drinks for a week, then bring it back down. If it's $10k or less, I'd absolutely, 100% go for it (and I'm a poor PhD student)!

[CatastrophicFailure]

57 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

So I would anticipate an honest-to-goodness suborbital BFS commercial flight to have the same sort of arrangement. There would be no discounted economy tickets, no dizzying array of fare classes. Just one full-fare ticket price

And a load of high-priority, outsize cargo that absolutely, positively, has to be there today. 

[sevenperforce]

4 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

And a load of high-priority, outsize cargo that absolutely, positively, has to be there today. 

Suborbital cargo flights seems like a very small market. I suspect it will take longer to get the cargo to the rocket, load it, fly it, land it, offload it, and get it to its destination than it would to use conventional high-speed shipping.

Air freight is a growing market, but it's hard to see what segments of air freight would see suborbital rocket shipping, even co-manifested with passengers, as a viable and competitive alternative.

[sevenperforce]

Another thing -- air freight will likely start to shrink, since supply-chain management and globalized infrastructure have made it much easier to anticipate demand and maintain flexibility. Cargo which is in high demand can be inventoried and planned for, obviating the need for fast freight. Cargo which is not in high demand cannot benefit from the economies of scale required to make fast freight viable.

[zolotiyeruki]

$10k for a week in space?  I'm there.

[wumpus]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

Suborbital cargo flights seems like a very small market. I suspect it will take longer to get the cargo to the rocket, load it, fly it, land it, offload it, and get it to its destination than it would to use conventional high-speed shipping.

Air freight is a growing market, but it's hard to see what segments of air freight would see suborbital rocket shipping, even co-manifested with passengers, as a viable and competitive alternative.

A lot depends on if you save anything on fuel thanks to the lack of air resistance in flight.  Last I heard, you only saved fuel compared to mach 3 flight, pretty much killing the idea of suborbital cargo at least as long as we are limited to chemical rockets based on methods listed in Ignition!.  I also can't imagine the BFR ever being safer or remotely as efficient as the Concorde, which doesn't help make it common in the modern world (not the US and EU, maybe China is more bold).

[CatastrophicFailure]

@sevenperforce My very specific example is an ultrasound machine. Too big to fit in a standard cargo plane, weeks to get anywhere by sea. Knowing a couple people in the shipping businesss, there is definitely a market for high-speed, high-priority and outsize cargo. Whether P2P BFR pans out or not remains to be seen, but if it does work even a fraction as well as they’re saying, the market is there. 

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

A lot depends on if you save anything on fuel thanks to the lack of air resistance in flight.  Last I heard, you only saved fuel compared to mach 3 flight, pretty much killing the idea of suborbital cargo at least as long as we are limited to chemical rockets

It’s not about the money savings, it’s about time. And time is money. If they can make the entire system work as quickly as they’re saying, I think customers will line up, even at a premium price. 

[sevenperforce]

3 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

@sevenperforce My very specific example is an ultrasound machine. Too big to fit in a standard cargo plane, weeks to get anywhere by sea. Knowing a couple people in the shipping businesss, there is definitely a market for high-speed, high-priority and outsize cargo. Whether P2P BFR pans out or not remains to be seen, but if it does work even a fraction as well as they’re saying, the market is there. 

Well, unless I miss my guess, the only advantage here is cargo size, not necessarily super-speed. An ultrasound machine probably doesn't care TOO much if it arrives in 30 minutes or 2 days.

There, again, it will take much longer to transport to the launch pad and from the landing pad to the final destination than the trip will take.

[KSK]

3 hours ago, zolotiyeruki said:

$10k for a week in space?  I'm there.

I'll see you up there. 

Man, if they really can get down to those sort of prices - and decide it's a market they want to try and start - then I'll be crossing one giant, gloriously improbably item off my bucket list. And that is too awesome for words.

[DerekL1963]

12 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

My very specific example is an ultrasound machine. Too big to fit in a standard cargo plane, weeks to get anywhere by sea.

And also can't take significant G forces I bet.  And probably is shipped broken down into components anyhow as it has to fit through standard doors and down standard hallways and fit the load limits of standard elevators.

And almost certainly very rarely has to be shipped now to some arbitrary distant destination.
 

14 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Knowing a couple people in the shipping businesss, there is definitely a market for high-speed, high-priority and outsize cargo.

Here in 2018, no mode of transport makes its money on cargo of irregular sizes and wildly varying demand (either in time and in geography).  Standardized sizes (of containers if nothing else), predictable demand, and steady schedules rule the roost - anything more is going to cost the big bucks.

[HebaruSan]

2 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

And probably is shipped broken down into components anyhow as it has to fit through standard doors and down standard hallways and fit the load limits of standard elevators.

You might be surprised. A clinic near here received some new imaging equipment a couple years ago (I don't know whether it was US or some other modality), and they cut an external wall open for it.

(I agree about the G forces, though.)

[CatastrophicFailure]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

There, again, it will take much longer to transport to the launch pad and from the landing pad to the final destination than the trip will take.

And this is the other side of the equation that will need to be worked out. Convenient, isn’t it, how the whole P2P concept just happens to synergize so well with Musk’s hyperloop idea, isn’t it?  

Granted, there’s a lot of regulatory and logistical hurdles to be worked out, but it’s a chicken or egg sorta thing: there’s no impetus to reform regulations and logistical bottlenecks because there’s no transportation system that could take advantage of it because there’s too many regulatory and logistical problems. 

55 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

And almost certainly very rarely has to be shipped now to some arbitrary distant destination.

It’s not uncommon, right now, for my wife to basically have to rent an entire truck for a single unit because it absolutely has to be there right now. It’s also not uncommon for a customer to have to wait weeks for a unit because it simply won’t fit on an airliner and has to go ocean freight. These are just two examples, from one small segment of the market. My dad, who works in aerospace and has been doing this longer than many people on this forum have been alive, could probably come up with pages and pages more.

And both shippers would be more than willing to pay.

The market is there, if the system can perform as SpaceX projects. 

51 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

I agree about the G forces, though

This is a simple engineering issue, once again chicken-or-egg thing. 

But the shipping crates my wife has told me about for some of these systems are pretty dang impressive in what they can do to mitigate full on “crap it fell off the forklift” moments. 

Edited April 12, 2018 by CatastrophicFailure

[DAL59]

59 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

And almost certainly very rarely has to be shipped now to some arbitrary distant destination.

The military would really like that.  

7 hours ago, sh1pman said:

Where can I get a model F9 like that?

Do you have a 3d printer?  You can probably find it online for free.  

[Wjolcz]

About that tourism thing: if the prices were meant to stay low they would probably need to generate fuel on-site (launchpad), so underwater fuel storage of sorts? How much power/$ would it take to produce fuel that way? Unless we're talking floating solar cells (like it is in some places in China). But then it would probably take months to make fuel that way.

Edited April 12, 2018 by Wjolcz