totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[AckSed]

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2024/04/ift-4-prepares-starships-future-focus/

https://ringwatchers.com/article/s29-b11-updates

Since those articles, the most that's happened is that Booster 4 has been taken into the hangar and scrapped, and Booster 13 has gone for cryo-testing to Massey's and back.

Presumably, S29 and B11 will be ready for OFT-4 when it's ready.

[tater]

 

[tater]

 

[Deddly]

9 hours ago, Entropian said:

Merely having one, or even multiple satellites in an image does not mean that it's "destroyed."

My understanding, at least with regards to amateur astrophotography, is that the photographer will normally take many consecutive images and use software to compare all the frames and even out anomalies like satellites, asteroids and noise. I somehow don't see how satellites can ruin serious photos. But then, I don't have that kind of equipment or software, so there are surely many factors beyond my current understanding. 

[tater]

 

[tater]

 

[Entropian]

8 hours ago, Deddly said:

My understanding, at least with regards to amateur astrophotography, is that the photographer will normally take many consecutive images and use software to compare all the frames and even out anomalies like satellites, asteroids and noise. I somehow don't see how satellites can ruin serious photos. But then, I don't have that kind of equipment or software, so there are surely many factors beyond my current understanding. 

This is what amateur astrophotographers do - the process is called "stacking."  There's many, many ways to eliminate unwanted pixels from individual images before stacking.  In professional astronomy, stacking is less prevalent for a variety of reasons (mostly because temporal information is lost), but the data analysis and sorting is far more advanced generally.

[tater]

 

[tater]

Ron Baron (a large investor in SpaceX—~$1B) was interviewed on CNBC, and as part of an answer about how SpaceX is dominating launch via reuse of rockets he said "$20M it costs us to get to space..." (Falcon 9). Said soon to be $6M (Starship, presumably).

[cubinator]

18 minutes ago, tater said:

Ron Baron (a large investor in SpaceX—~$1B) was interviewed on CNBC, and as part of an answer about how SpaceX is dominating launch via reuse of rockets he said "$20M it costs us to get to space..." (Falcon 9). Said soon to be $6M (Starship, presumably).

That's what, 1000x cheaper than SLS?

[tater]

32 minutes ago, cubinator said:

That's what, 1000x cheaper than SLS?

Just about.

That is internal cost, not retail, of course.

The only way we'll see actual retail cost reduction is with competition.

[Spaceception]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Ron Baron (a large investor in SpaceX—~$1B) was interviewed on CNBC, and as part of an answer about how SpaceX is dominating launch via reuse of rockets he said "$20M it costs us to get to space..." (Falcon 9). Said soon to be $6M (Starship, presumably).

There's something prophetic about a guy who's last name is Baron able to invest $1 billion in anything (looking him up, he's apparently got $45 billion in assets).

And he'd have that information too, wouldn't he?

[AtomicTech]

Just consider me excited

[tater]

9 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

And he'd have that information too, wouldn't he?

He also says going public in a few years... though this must be Starlink I think, not SpaceX.

[Ryaja]

Spoiler

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fdELVCg2Ank&pp=ygUKU3BhY2V4IGV2YQ%3D%3D

This been posted yet?

[tater]

18 minutes ago, Ryaja said:

This been posted yet?

No need for the spoiler, that's even an official video

The youtube has not, though the crappy twitter video version has been (YT one is better).

[Ryaja]

27 minutes ago, tater said:

No need for the spoiler, that's even an official video

The youtube has not, though the crappy twitter video version has been (YT one is better).

I just put it in a spoiler for organization purposes.

[Lukaszenko]

22 hours ago, Deddly said:

My understanding, at least with regards to amateur astrophotography, is that the photographer will normally take many consecutive images and use software to compare all the frames and even out anomalies like satellites, asteroids and noise. I somehow don't see how satellites can ruin serious photos. But then, I don't have that kind of equipment or software, so there are surely many factors beyond my current understanding. 

This guy takes this concept to another level. Not sure how well this translates to astrophotography, but I'm guessing the problem with Starlink is not as catastrophic as it first sounds. 

 

Edited May 7 by Lukaszenko
Typo

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, Lukaszenko said:

This guy takes this concept to another level. Not sure how well this translates to astrophotography, but I'm guessing the problem with Starlink is not as catastrophic as it first sounds. 

 

Now this is impressive, but I guess some cheating because of parked cars who might stay for 0.1-4 hours 

[tater]

 

[Jacke]

9 hours ago, tater said:

Ron Baron (a large investor in SpaceX—~$1B) was interviewed on CNBC, and as part of an answer about how SpaceX is dominating launch via reuse of rockets he said "$20M it costs us to get to space..." (Falcon 9). Said soon to be $6M (Starship, presumably).

I'm skeptical about those numbers.  But beyond those numbers, there's the rough rule-of-thumb costing of LEO/GTO satellites into about 5 equal shares:

• Satellite mission components.
• Satellite bus (power, cooling, basic comms).
• Launch Vehicle.
• Integration of all of the above.
• Launch Facility costs.

Note that any real reductions--for which we have no real public numbers except for NASA--only impact the costs of the 3rd part, maybe partly the 5th part. Some effort can be made on the other costs.  But I do not think there will be true radical cost reductions.  There's already a lot of competition for the LEO/GTO market.  If someone's selling the service at a particular price, there's an expectation they have some profit but without other inside information, it's impossible to say what the true costs are.

For beyond LEO/GTO, well, that's a whole 'nother cost realm.

[tater]

1 hour ago, Jacke said:

I'm skeptical about those numbers.  But beyond those numbers, there's the rough rule-of-thumb costing of LEO/GTO satellites into about 5 equal shares:

The $20M is for just the launch, not the payloads.

Several years ago, a SpaceX engineer giving a talk at a conference said their marginal internal cost was ~$25M a launch (I posted the vid here at the time, but it was pulled down—possibly because he talked about those numbers). This was long before they were flying 20 times+, and before they recovered fairings much if at all. So $20M seems pretty reasonable as a current ballpark.

[tater]

 

[tater]

 

[tater]