totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[Rakaydos]

9 hours ago, Raven Industries said:

"Our project has not found a way to prevent detection of a large object reentering the atmosphere, but instead of writing off the whole thing, here's a way to send hundreds of 500 million dollar dummy Starships into the same area so that the enemy doesn't know which is the real one." 

"Arnt real starship only 1/5 that price?"

"They're really good decoys."

[Xd the great]

1 hour ago, Wjolcz said:

 I'm guessing developing those was relatively trivial compared to Raptors since I don't recall Elon boasting about them apart from saying they are basically mini Raptors.

Are they using pressure vessels to drive the fuel or are they using full flow staged combustion?

I guess it will be the former.

[ecat]

10 hours ago, Xd the great said:

Air force spends 500 billion trying to turn Starship into a stealth rocket.

They could just disguise it as, oh I don't know, maybe  a water tower?

[Xd the great]

Just now, ecat said:

They could just disguise it as, oh I don't know, maybe  a water tower?

A water tower with wings.

[Nothalogh]

17 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Anywhere that had a landing pad. And a refueling center. And launch facilities. Or else, of course, your reusable Starship just turned into a one-time-use Starship.

And I'm not sure there are many conflicts that can be won by a couple of platoons.

 

16 hours ago, tater said:

Egress would be... non-trivial.

Secure perimeter. Build ISRU facility. Harvest propellant and oxidizer from the air. Several months (years?) later, the troops head home. LOL.

 

15 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Nonsense.
 

Squad does a HAHO jump from a top hatch as soon as the vessel is subsonic, vessel then crashes into target in a huge explosion, eliminating both the target AND any need to recover the vessel, squad lands in a hellish, burning wasteland to mop up any survivors assist the locals. Egress via standard helicopters since any remaining hostiles within several kilometers have gone off in search of fresh chonies. 
 

Simple logic. 

I might have to use this...

 

13 hours ago, Jacke said:

As others have mentioned, two platoons of infantry aren't a significant force except when it's a special forces op (and it's usually just ingress, objective, egress).  And like all troops, they will quickly exhaust their supplies they bring with them, so it's either done and an extraction or a logistical tail has to be established.

But a Starship is going to be a very obvious object and will likely quickly lose tactical surprise either before launch or enroute, especially against better opponent armed forces.  And slower transport allows for better prestrike planning enroute on quick reaction.

As a strike weapon, it's a waste of a launch vehicle.  Cruise missiles and strike aircraft are more appropriate and accurate.

And like everything else, it's been thought of before: Ithacus Study 1966: http://www.astronautix.com/i/ithacus.html

That was envisioned as delivering 1200 troops, which is a more flexible size of unit.  Still, logistics still needs to be established.  And again, still likely to lose tactical surprise.

 

12 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Besides all that, launching a missile into a country with absolutely no warning is a good way to provoke a nuclear exchange.

Sweet jesus, you guys really missed the point.

The point is to utilize such technology to rapidly deploy personnel and gear from a stateside location to a forward operating facility, just a whole hell of a lot faster than riding in a C-17.

Once in theater, the personnel and gear would be transferred to conventional air, land, and or sea vehicles for the completion of the intended mission.

[sh1pman]

https://spacenews.com/elon-musk-space-pitch-day/

Quote

SpaceX’s cost to operate Starship will be around $2 million per flight, which is “much less than even a tiny rocket,”

 

[Xd the great]

59 minutes ago, Nothalogh said:

 

 

 

 

Sweet jesus, you guys really missed the point.

The point is to utilize such technology to rapidly deploy personnel and gear from a stateside location to a forward operating facility, just a whole hell of a lot faster than riding in a C-17.

Once in theater, the personnel and gear would be transferred to conventional air, land, and or sea vehicles for the completion of the intended mission.

So for transporting tanks to France just in case Russia decides to become a bad boy.

[Nothalogh]

1 minute ago, Xd the great said:

So for transporting tanks

No, for moving personnel and their immediate equipment into theater faster than any other method

[tater]

33 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

SpaceX’s cost to operate Starship will be around $2 million per flight, which is “much less than even a tiny rocket,”

That's $10,000 a metric ton.

$10/kg (best case with that analysis that gets 200t to LEO). It goes up to $20/kg at 100t, and all the small dollar values in between. If they make this work, all other rockets look useless. Still a big if, clearly. The margin is incredible, though. Costs can be multiples of what they expect---and it's still orders of magnitude cheaper than any other LV.

[sh1pman]

7 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

So for transporting tanks to France just in case Russia decides to become a bad boy.

In a war with Russia you won’t need tanks, though.

4 minutes ago, tater said:

That's $10,000 a metric ton.

$10/kg (best case with that analysis that gets 200t to LEO). It goes up to $20/kg at 100t, and all the small dollar values in between. If they make this work, all other rockets look useless. Still a big if, clearly. The margin is incredible, though. Costs can be multiples of what they expect---and it's still orders of magnitude cheaper than any other LV.

Yea, makes oldspace look ridiculously bad. Still, in order to have such a low price it needs to fly A LOT. Starlink helps quite a bit here.

[wumpus]

18 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

So for transporting tanks to France just in case Russia decides to become a bad boy.

I suspect it wouldn't have taken all that many men in Kuwait in 1990 (assuming you got them there fast enough) to avoid a (and in hindsight, two) war.  Granted, I'm pretty sure the US had a lot of forces in Saudi and still didn't invade Kuwait simultaneously with Iraq, but with a sufficiently rapidly deployable force it might have been an option.

[tater]

8 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Yea, makes oldspace look ridiculously bad. Still, in order to have such a low price it needs to fly A LOT. Starlink helps quite a bit here.

Why does it need to fly a lot? The question is if that figure is including a per-flight % of initial vehicle cost, or if that is just the operational cost he's quoting.

Getting vehicle cost down requires some mass production of engines (which has a baseline number of employees to facilitate, hence cost), once the vehicle is built, flight rate only matters if the vehicle cost is folded in to operational costs. I want to say estimates of propellant costs were on the order of a million bucks.

[sh1pman]

4 minutes ago, tater said:

flight rate only matters if the vehicle cost is folded in to operational costs.

Yes, I should’ve specified that I meant total cost, including vehicle cost and dev cost.

[CatastrophicFailure]

1 hour ago, Nothalogh said:

No, for moving personnel and their immediate equipment into theater faster than any other method

Or for launching a Mobile Infantry invasion of Planet P, which could only be a resounding success. 

[Would you like to know more..?]

[StrandedonEarth]

2 hours ago, tater said:

That's $10,000 a metric ton.

$10/kg (best case with that analysis that gets 200t to LEO). It goes up to $20/kg at 100t, and all the small dollar values in between. If they make this work, all other rockets look useless. Still a big if, clearly. The margin is incredible, though. Costs can be multiples of what they expect---and it's still orders of magnitude cheaper than any other LV.

You know, $10/kg would make mesospheric/stratospheric cremation fairly competitive with regular cremation. Another market to help get the flight rate up. 
Although there may be an ick factor for people living under the drop zone....

E: The ultimate way to go out in a blaze of glory. Terminally ill? Go out more at more than terminal velocity!

Edited November 6, 2019 by StrandedonEarth

[zolotiyeruki]

14 hours ago, Jacke said:

As others have mentioned, two platoons of infantry aren't a significant force except when it's a special forces op (and it's usually just ingress, objective, egress).  And like all troops, they will quickly exhaust their supplies they bring with them, so it's either done and an extraction or a logistical tail has to be established.

But a Starship is going to be a very obvious object and will likely quickly lose tactical surprise either before launch or enroute, especially against better opponent armed forces.  And slower transport allows for better prestrike planning enroute on quick reaction.

As a strike weapon, it's a waste of a launch vehicle.  Cruise missiles and strike aircraft are more appropriate and accurate.

If you're looking to simply blow up a target, then boots on the ground are not what you want.

As for detectability, that would be a problem in a contested area with substantial radar/AA systems, but when I think about high-value targets of the type the military pursues in the middle east, I don't see that being an issue.  I just checked the first Falcon Heavy launch, and the side boosters went transonic about 30-45 seconds before touchdown, with the landing burn starting about 20 seconds prior to touchdown.  That's not a lot of warning from either the sonic boom or the landing burn.  Also, generally on these missions, rapid exfiltration isn't a need--they usually take a few hours to secure the site, gather any sources of intel, etc before bogeying out.

If a Starship were stationed closer, say at a military base in the region, it wouldn't need nearly as much fuel, would it?  If you're looking at only hopping a few hundred miles each way, would there be enough fuel to make both hops?

[tater]

2 hours ago, sh1pman said:

Yes, I should’ve specified that I meant total cost, including vehicle cost and dev cost.

I mean you are right, it matters. They could build a few SS/SH, then what, fire all the employees? I didn't mean to imply that flight rate doesn't matter... I think at 10s of dollars a kg, it might create whole new markets, though.

[sh1pman]

5 minutes ago, tater said:

I mean you are right, it matters. They could build a few SS/SH, then what, fire all the employees? I didn't mean to imply that flight rate doesn't matter... I think at 10s of dollars a kg, it might create whole new markets, though.

LEO tourism, hopefully. Bigelow can get involved, building even larger inflatables. LEO internet will be monopolized for the foreseeable future. Things like space burial or reentry-cremation. Near Asteroid mining for valuable metals - maybe. P2P - can’t really see it happening. Mars stuff - probably won’t create any markets for a looong time.

[Wjolcz]

2 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

P2P - can’t really see it happening.

Well, if we assume LEO tourism is a thing P2P is a matter of multiple landing sites. Besides, P2P is supposed to keep the reentry heat low while LEO tourism will be much more intense.

So, at least imo, P2P is much more likely to happen before LEO tourism, assuming the ground infrastructure is sufficient.

Now, I'm not saying P2P will become a thing in the near future (it has problems). I just think saying that it won't but LEO tourism will is a bit biased.

[tater]

I finally got a chance to read that article.

Quote

A single Starship will expend about $900,00 worth of fuel and oxygen for pressurization to send “at least 100 tons, probably 150 tons to orbit,” Musk said. SpaceX’s cost to operate Starship will be around $2 million per flight, which is “much less than even a tiny rocket,” he added.

So the 1.1 extra million is operational costs, per launch cost of GSE, and vehicle amortization is my guess.

100t is $20/kg, 150t would be $13.33/kg.

[Nothalogh]

1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Would you like to know more..?]

I already know more.

The MI rides in on single use entry pods, exfil is via a dropship of some sort.

The question is could you land a mostly fueled starship?

[Vanamonde]

Please keep the discussion on-topic, guys. Science fiction jokes don't belong here, and please avoid speculating about who might be fighting whom and who the "bad guys" will be in the next war. Some of our forum friends are from the countries in question, and we don't need to make enemies of each other just because our governments might clash. 

[Xd the great]

1 hour ago, Nothalogh said:

The question is could you land a mostly fueled starship?

Probably one half-filled.

Empty starship can land on 1 engine. Won't be surprising if a starship can land with 400 tonnes of fuel.

5 hours ago, sh1pman said:

LEO tourism, hopefully. Bigelow can get involved, building even larger inflatables. LEO internet will be monopolized for the foreseeable future. Things like space burial or reentry-cremation. Near Asteroid mining for valuable metals - maybe. P2P - can’t really see it happening. Mars stuff - probably won’t create any markets for a looong time.

And Moon flights for whatever reason. (If crew version comes out soon enough).

Also, Starship will not be crewed for a long time. I mean, look at how hard the development process from Dragon to Crew Dragon is.

They might stick with whatever small university/research payloads they can find. Or reentry cementry. Or landing tonnes of supplies on the Moon so Artermis 3 becomes a one-way trip with and the Astronauts live there forever.

[Nothalogh]

1 hour ago, Xd the great said:

Probably one half-filled.

Orbit to Surface to Orbit is a hell of a challenge

[tater]

2 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Please keep the discussion on-topic, guys. Science fiction jokes don't belong here, and please avoid speculating about who might be fighting whom and who the "bad guys" will be in the next war. Some of our forum friends are from the countries in question, and we don't need to make enemies of each other just because our governments might clash. 

What about using it to fly troops from Free Mars for the reconquista of Terra?

On topic:

Starlink 1

Launch window: 1451-1502 GMT (9:51-10:02 a.m. EST)
Launch site: SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida