totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[Minmus Taster]

29 minutes ago, Exoscientist said:

Robert Zubrin’s made a key statement in this SpaceWatch.Global interview that Elon told him SpaceX could build Starship for $10 million.

This leads to a surprising conclusion: 

SpaceX can build a Moon or Mars rocket for ca. $10 million. Now.
Such a rocket could offer costs of $100/kilo to orbit. Now:

SpaceX routine orbital passenger flights imminent.
http://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2024/11/spacex-routine-orbital-passenger.html

 

 Bob Clark

 

Wow. That's big.

[AckSed]

The key thing I'm interested in here: Zubrin's refutation of the meme-complex that the Mars colony, and the entire motivation for SpaceX (and Blue Origin's aspirations of an O'Neill cylinder), is a way for all the billionaires to leave Earth and the proles behind to our fate. Which is straight out of Ben Elton's satirical Stark.

Granted, I haven't seen it lately, but it was entrenched in my circle of friends just a year ago, because (the feeling went) there must be a motive that lines up for all this effort. Now it's switched to, "Work in the mines for the megacorps on Mars and die."

[darthgently]

18 minutes ago, AckSed said:

The key thing I'm interested in here: Zubrin's refutation of the meme-complex that the Mars colony, and the entire motivation for SpaceX (and Blue Origin's aspirations of an O'Neill cylinder), is a way for all the billionaires to leave Earth and the proles behind to our fate. Which is straight out of Ben Elton's satirical Stark.

Granted, I haven't seen it lately, but it was entrenched in my circle of friends just a year ago, because (the feeling went) there must be a motive that lines up for all this effort. Now it's switched to, "Work in the mines for the megacorps on Mars and die."

Occam’s razor cuts through all these things, thankfully.  Life simply inherently desires to expand outward. It’s baked in.  All it takes is a simple walk in the woods and everywhere you look is life trying to spread out and gain new footholds and rootholds.  We just need to be humble enough to not deny this sublime inherent motive within ourselves.  And it is reason enough. No conspiracy theories required

Edited Thursday at 11:24 PM by darthgently

[AckSed]

8 minutes ago, darthgently said:

Occam’s razor cuts through all these things, thankfully.  Life simply inherently desires to expand outward. It’s baked in.  All it takes is a simple walk in the woods and everywhere you look is life trying to spread out and gain new footholds and rootholds.  We just need to be humble enough to not deny this sublime inherent motive within ourselves.  And it is reason enough. No conspiracy theories required.

This particular circle of friends is invested in their opposition, their hate. I have found myself keeping very quiet whenever space innovation (which is inevitably SpaceX) comes up.

[Terwin]

Just now, AckSed said:

This particular circle of friends is invested in their opposition, their hate. I have found myself keeping very quiet whenever space innovation (which is inevitably SpaceX) comes up.

That does not seem particularly mentally healthy, are you confident that spending time with those people is not having a deleterious effect on your own mental health?

[darthgently]

1 minute ago, Terwin said:

That does not seem particularly mentally healthy, are you confident that spending time with those people is not having a deleterious effect on your own mental health?

Agreed. On that path lies ungrateful extinctionism if one goes down it far enough.

[AckSed]

I don't think it's healthy for them, for sure: it's a FB conversation of a few old uni friends I occasionally mark "Read", only dipping in when I've braced myself enough and the last response isn't too cynical and matter-of-fact, "We're so smart, they're sleep-walking into this, why don't they see?" or words to that effect.

And round and round they go, posing their cynicism as rebellion.

I've stopped going to the monthly catch-ups.

[StrandedonEarth]

2 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

SpaceX could build Starship for $10 million.

This leads to a surprising conclusion: 

SpaceX can build a Moon or Mars rocket for ca. $10 million. Now.

I’m pretty sure $10M is for just Starship, not the booster as well. So not an entire Moon rocket for just $10M

And then there’s the cost of outfitting the ships. A cargo ship shouldn’t take much, but a manned ship? I reckon the price of a manned Starship should be at least double a cargo ship by the time it’s on the pad, and then there’s the price of the payloads in the cargo Ships. 

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, darthgently said:

Occam’s razor cuts through all these things, thankfully.  Life simply inherently desires to expand outward. It’s baked in.  All it takes is a simple walk in the woods and everywhere you look is life trying to spread out and gain new footholds and rootholds.  We just need to be humble enough to not deny this sublime inherent motive within ourselves.  And it is reason enough. No conspiracy theories required

Grabby aliens:
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff3000/fc02997.htm
Also fame and legacy, simply being rich is not enough. Build huge long lasting stuff and people will remember you. 

Now I don't see an self sufficient Mars colony as realistic this century, or the next unless stuff like nanotech replicators, in this case its also an good idea. 
 

[tater]

3 hours ago, AckSed said:

The key thing I'm interested in here: Zubrin's refutation of the meme-complex that the Mars colony, and the entire motivation for SpaceX (and Blue Origin's aspirations of an O'Neill cylinder), is a way for all the billionaires to leave Earth and the proles behind to our fate. Which is straight out of Ben Elton's satirical Stark.

Granted, I haven't seen it lately, but it was entrenched in my circle of friends just a year ago, because (the feeling went) there must be a motive that lines up for all this effort. Now it's switched to, "Work in the mines for the megacorps on Mars and die."

This claim I see online all the time has always been absurd—and in the case of Mars, Musk states it explicitly. It will be dangerous and hard. It's not some sort of space resort. Bezos says it a different way—he says Earth us the best planet, and we will move humans to space to preserve Earth.

Both are true.

[AckSed]

It's rather like the fact that Europa Clipper would not exist without John Culbertson pushing for it, because he is a science geek: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/10/were-finally-going-to-the-solar-systems-most-intriguing-but-unexplored-frontier/

'They' have these qualities 'we' have heard about, so there must be an angle that matches, to complete the image. They can't care about it, because look at all the other things they've done.

The new hires at SpaceX come in believing that Mars is a cover for making rockets, but discover that both Musk and Shotwell are serious about it.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, AckSed said:

both Musk and Shotwell are serious about it.

Meaning we should see efforts to land there and do things in a reasonably short time.  Likely much shorter than I was waiting for the completion and launch of JWST.   I.e. My kids might see people on Mars before they have kids. 

 

On the flip side - once we get there, we might do Moon Landing things for a while and then not return for decades.  There is no telling what the economic and political situation of the next few decades will bring. The technology to do anything productive or profitable still needs to be invented. 

Honestly - the thing I'm excited to see SX do is land a truly monstrous rover with lots of capabilities and sample return.  Something that looks like a repurposed military 8x8 with arms and excavators / drills galore.  That is maybe something I can see in the next ten years. 

I just don't want to see the 'one way trip' scenario (even if there are people who would volunteer). 

[AckSed]

Okay, actually having listened to that Zubrin clip, he's supposing a market in used Starships (or Starship clones) will spring up. If the $10 million cost $20 million price comes true and the mature human-rated Starships could carry 100 people, and be sold used for $2 million, that is a co-op price per person of $20,000.

This might not be too batty, as V3 of the Superheavy is, if Eager Space is right, "as close to SSTO as practical" to make a V3 Starship work, by passing more of the work reaching orbit onto the 'Ship.

So you and your pals might bodge together a pressure-fed booster for your first stage and latch, tape and glue the Starship on top in an abomination of rocketry that would make Kerbals flinch.

If you plan on reusing, maybe you could rent a fuelling, landing and handling spot at one of the launch & catch towers at 'a' Starbase.

Now that's rocketpunk.

[darthgently]

On 11/28/2024 at 9:57 PM, tater said:

This claim I see online all the time has always been absurd—and in the case of Mars, Musk states it explicitly. It will be dangerous and hard. It's not some sort of space resort. Bezos says it a different way—he says Earth us the best planet, and we will move humans to space to preserve Earth.

Both are true.

Yes, I find the “billionaires escaping to a Mars paradise” so humorous.  Can you imagine being a billionaire and choosing to “escape” to McMurdo Station in Antarctica?  Yeah, no.

 It isn’t about “escape”

Edited Saturday at 04:33 AM by darthgently

[darthgently]

 Though it does occur to me that Howard Hughes in his ragged final days with his precious bodily fluid collection may have liked McMurdo Station if he had it to himself.  But he was a mere multimillionaire iirc

[AckSed]

YT link to podcast of Zubrin interview. Useful because of the automatic transcript (go to "Show more" in the description and click "Transcript":

 

 

[darthgently]

F9, 30x the flight rate of Shuttle, 1/100th the cost
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/spacex-has-set-all-kinds-of-records-with-its-falcon-9-rocket-this-year/
 

[AckSed]

The key points Zubrin makes about the motivation of the first Mars settlers and the ones that will be successful are:

They want to be free, to retain their identity. Commercial reasons will be there, but the draw that makes people move all the way there to live will be ideological. It's the same reason, the same motivation for immigrants today, with the same debates of "Who is worthy?". Here, though, there's no government to say, "You're not getting in";

The settlers that make communities and grow will outcompete the outposts, the indentured workers and strip-miners with limited population;

While it will be more difficult, they will be able to extract the resources of the new land just like the American settlers did with wood, coal and iron;

Worker shortage and an educated populace will spur new developments, new solutions to problems we haven't considered yet. Zubrin points out how steam engines were improved upon in American trains and the improvements fed back into Britain. (Personal bet: something like Red Mars where biotechnology engineers a solution to either DNA damage and/or mitigate the effects of low gravity.);

The risk of radiation is overstated. He also makes the case that modern humans spend 80% of life inside, so living inside a buried habitat on Mars is not going to change much:

Quote

The radiation problem is overdrawn. The rad dose on the Martian surface, the dose rate (25 rems a year) is about the same as that at the International Space Station. That is, contrary to popular belief, the Earth's magnetic field does not shield us from cosmic rays - it doesn't, it's too weak. What does shield is the atmosphere, which is akin to 10m or water above you. And having the Earth below you, like in [LEO], that cuts the dose by half. So the dose rate at the space station is half that in interplanetary space and the dose rate on the surface of Mars is also half that for the same reason - you have Mars under you.

[...] the linear no threshold methodology of evaluating radiation doses - and this is a methodology which is so conservative as to be simply fallacious - that is the linear no threshold methodology says that if you had 1% of a fatal dose you have a 1% chance of dying. That's like well if you drank you know a 100 glasses of wine in one night you'd probably die, but would you have a 1% chance of dying if you drink one glass of wine? No. If you drink one
glass of wine per night for a hundred nights are you going to die? No.

[...]if the Martians were to live in houses that were mostly underground with just their roofs outside or a [domed] City that they can go into when they are, as it were, out of doors, that means that for 80% of their time they would be completely shielded and therefore the doses would be reduced by a factor of five and it would take not 80 years but 400 years to get the same hazard as an average American smoker.

 

[darthgently]