totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[kerbiloid]

The profit values from the known asteroid mining are listed at/in/on the wiki link above.

2 gigabucks per platinoid planetoid... Mwahahah... Wah-wah-wah... Better mine bitcoins and play KSP.

Edited April 29, 2020 by kerbiloid

[RCgothic]

Static Fire now Friday.

 

[tater]

6 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

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.

No, the point is recon. You have a rogue state that knows when the Keyhole comes over, and doesn't operate a facility when the flyover happens. They won't know that the unpredictable asset is over, and they won't/can't shoot it down (just as they don't or can't shoot down the KH).

Edited April 29, 2020 by tater

[tater]

5 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

What are people supposed to be mining from asteroids, anyway? We live right on top of a giant iron rock already.

Generally it's rare Earths you hear about. I'm unsure what the actual market is terrestrially. Bezos would presumably say that eventually they want all heavy industry in space (so Earth is light industry and nicer to live on), in which case we need all the resources from space we can get.

5 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

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.

There isn't any economic incentive to move off the Earth unless someone makes one. I'm usually the one here arguing that economics in space isn't a thing... because it largely isn't (communications and data from Earth observation being the 2 viable exceptions). It is a chicken and egg issue. It's like the ULA document about a cislunar economy. The government wants the facilities, and a market then exists to support those facilities, and mining (ISRU) delivers propellants cheaper than from Earth, and you end up with lunar mining of props. Increased industrial activity, plus cheaper dv means the entry level costs are lower, and other activities might get added. That's sort of a thing, I suppose, but whatever economic activity every happens in space that is truly industrial in scale, it will have to be created from nothing to bootstrap it. Now, 5 years from now, or 500 years from now. The economic case never improves, IMO, even if we had warp drive, someone would need to bootstrap an economy to start it by dumping money down a hole.

So either some billionaires do that, and maybe we get a space economy, or it never happens.

[SOXBLOX]

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.

[Shpaget]

6 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

And you folks want to get off our big iron rock to go to a bunch of iron pebbles.

Iron is not all that interesting, since it's cheap down here and bringing a valuable amount from orbit to Earth surface is hard due to, if nothing else, the sheer volume and mass of iron needed to make a buck.

But there are other, much more interesting industrial metals, like platinum. Total yearly world production of platinum is less than 200 tons. At $25 000 per kg, you don't need a lot to start making big bucks.

Mining asteroids is interesting because you can find asteroids with much higher concentration of target metals than what is available and accessible on Earth. The fact that Earth is giant iron rock is irrelevant, since vast majority of that iron is not accessible.

Finally, once we establish industry in space and we develop a need for huge amounts of iron in orbit and on Moon, having a giant iron rock in a form of asteroid already up there will be much more interesting than hauling it up from the depths of Earth's gravity well.

[SOXBLOX]

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. 

Edited April 29, 2020 by SOXBLOX

[cubinator]

2 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

However, it's ultimate goal is to colonize Mars. I believe it will fail to do this, not because it is a bad vehicle, but because no one needs it.

Do you think there will ever be a need to colonize Mars?

[SOXBLOX]

No!

 

[Elthy]

I thought there was another thread to discuss stuff like the need to colonize mars. Please keep this discussion to SpaceX only...

Edited April 29, 2020 by Elthy

[sevenperforce]

Asteroid mining may be a pipe dream that will never be worth anything. Or it could be ridiculously lucrative. The fact is that we don't currently know very much about the early solar system and planet formation. We know enough to know that it might be very lucrative, but we also know that it might not be.

But there are new synergies that become possible when launch costs drop. There is plenty of budget money out there for planetary geology, geomorphology, and cosmocheistry. Just like publicly-funded study of terrestrial geology was used by private companies to find oil and coal, it's not difficult to imagine a future where public research into the conditions of the early solar system produce commercially-useful data.

The reason this hasn't happened to date is that everything right now has to go through NASA and launch costs are extreme. If launch costs drop low enough, then there could be universities with the budgets to send up an asteroid sample return or even asteroid capture mission. If the data is good (and at this point we have no idea) then commercial entities would start sending up their own prospecting missions.

On another note, I've gotten the Build a Better Saturn spreadsheet closer to where I want it after cleaning up some of the kinks in the math. Please take a look, play around with it, and let me know if you see any inconsistencies or errors I need to know about.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UNuPfjZE-YVIrmLINiUMcOzJk-voZ2TqM6R7MgyaM-I/edit?usp=sharing

[Shpaget]

1 hour ago, SOXBLOX said:

The topic of this discussion has been whether SS has a use beyond launching Starlink. I am convinced that it doesn't.

If Elon can deliver the price tag he promised, the market will sprout out of nowhere, and not just for launch service, but for anything space related.

He promised 100 tons for $2M. At that price everybody can afford to launch something. Imagine a low cost cube sat kit with off the shelf modules. Even if Elon was too optimistic and if you can drop the launch price to $1000 per sat (a few kg), and offer the cube sat chassis+coms+power module for $5000, every university can afford to launch one. Add in another few thousand for mission specific stuff and you're still under $10k. It's peanuts and offers great motivation for kids to get involved with tech and space stuff. Even high schools can get in on the fun.

With the huge cargo space, SpaceX can perhaps set up a new (somewhat bigger) cubesat standard to simplify manufacture of components and offer greater flexibility for mission.

Have the standard service drop those sats in a 300-ish km orbit and you have a couple months of operation before the sats reenter. No worries about cluttering the orbit, it's a self cleaning setup, and the orbit is ready for the next launch.

Right now, cubesats are still fairly expensive, running into $40 000 ballpark just for the launch service. The fact that launch is this expensive means you want to make sure the sat works, meaning more stringent manufacturing and more costly components. However, if launch itself is dirt cheap, you may launch a relatively crude prototype, make adjustments and launch again. At $1000 this becomes a feasible approach.

Of course, we are talking playing around here, but this goes for any cargo. Want to launch a space telescope? Sure. It doesn't cost half a billion any more. It's just 2 million for your own dedicated chauffeured service. Cut corner on that spy sat and build it in fraction of time and launch another one next year. You're still vastly under the budget, compared to the current situation.

Tourism? Sure, for $20 000 you can go to space. There are millions who could afford that.

[tater]

2 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

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.

SS need not visit an asteroid. The startups that talked about doing it would still send their own spacecraft, but they would not have to be maximnally efficient, because mass is not a concern, for the price of sending a smallsat to an asteroid, you could send something giant there with Starship.

2 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

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.

Yeah, no. If there are cruise missiles attacking the US, we're in a nuclear war, and the rest doesn't matter. We're not launching spysats after a nuclear exchange, that;s not a thing.

2 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

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.

No they aren't. Global Hawk is a couple hundred million a pop, RQ-170 has to cost at least 10s of millions. Musk has said that cargo SS could eventually end up costing 5 million each. Not to fly, to build. Even off by 10X it's price competitive. Not that I see it being used as a weapon platform, it would be like the X-37 a recon asset.

 

12 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Tourism? Sure, for $20 000 you can go to space. There are millions who could afford that.

Tourism is the killer app for mas use of large space launches. People would need places to go (all built), it could be a big deal. BUT. The but matters, it has to be airline safe.

That is... incredibly difficult. So while I think it's the best possible reason for people in space, I also think it's the least likely any time soon (I'm happy to be proved wrong).

[tater]

One customer is NASA. Under the assumption that SS works for cargo, ie: it flies, can be operationally reused (near zero turn around cost), and can be refilled in orbit, then NASA no longer needs to consider expanding huge money sinks like SLS. Delivering payloads to the Moon becomes trivial, and even marked up substantially, lunar exploration becomes easily possible. NASA likely is forced to keep SLS/Orion for political reasons, but they dump improvements to it, and fly Block 1 only, with Orion as the only payload, ever. SS can deliver Gateway in 1 go. SS can deliver any lander anyone wants to Gateway, and can bring props to refill it there. A crew lander version could be made as well, with crew embarking to Gateway on Orion, landing on the lander, then returning to Earth on Orion. Eventually maybe Starship gets crew rated, obviating Orion.

Bottom line is that for the same budget, NASA (and international partners) could simply buy rides to the Moon, or buy cargo to the Moon at levels previously not seriously considered. It's much easier to have a Moon base when you can deliver a large, sustainable base in a few flights. They could charge a billion bucks to the lunar surface and it would be a steal at that price (and they'd make a ton of money if their costs were a few 10s of millions).

[sh1pman]

25 minutes ago, tater said:

The but matters, it has to be airline safe.

Airlines will always be safer than rocket launches. For the simple reason that airplanes won’t stop flying, gradually becoming safer, improving safety standards and regulations after every big incident. Rockets won’t ever catch up, always lagging at least several decades behind airliners.

[tater]

9 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Airlines will always be safer than rocket launches. For the simple reason that airplanes won’t stop flying, gradually becoming safer, improving safety standards and regulations after every big incident. Rockets won’t ever catch up, always lagging at least several decades behind airliners.

It has to reach some minimal level of safety akin to airlines at some point in fairly recent history for mass tourism to be a thing.

Looks like airline travel is about 16X or more safer than when I was a kid. We still flew places. Not sure what year to peg it to, but certainly not a 1 in a few hundred chance of death.

[SOXBLOX]

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. 

[Flying dutchman]

Maybe we could make a seperate topic about the economics of asteroid harvesting and/or rapid launch capabilties for miltary usage?

 

 

And @SOXBLOX

Edited April 29, 2020 by Flying dutchman

[tater]

22 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

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.

B-2 would never cost 5 million. It has 4 engines that each cost 10s of millions. Recon aircraft are aircraft, space assets can operate without any limitations over hostile territory. The only military use for spacecraft is in fact recon and comms.

 

22 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

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.

I doubt it in the near term as well, but it is literally the only reason to have large numbers of people in space. Large numbers requires low cost, and high safety (which is why it's so unlikely).

 

22 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

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".

It doesn't have to fly en-masse, it simply needs to work. Meaning is operationally reusable. It's already cheap as a SHLV compared to the only competitor, SLS, which will have many 10s of billions in dev costs to amortize before it ever leaves the ground, and which is saddled with billions of $ of program costs just to keep the lights on each year, regardless of flights.

New markets are important. Simple question, are you actually interested in spaceflight ever being more than some commsats, the occasional space probe to someplace in the solar system, and people on ISS? Without a state change in capability, nothing improves in the next 50 years along those lines.

 

22 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

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.

I think tourism needs someplace to go, which is space means built. I go places to see the sights, and I hike places to see things from different angles than I usually do. Like I said, it's predicated on cost/safety. Both are necessary requirements. Safe but crazy expensive won't cut it.

 

22 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

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. 

Terrestrial use is a secondary goal, though it's partially to compete with BO. F9 had reuse retrofitted, and SpaceX needs their next-gen LV before BO hits the market (If Jeff Bezos tells you he's coming to eat your lunch, he's coming to eat your lunch). Bigger is better for a number of reasons, it only seems wrong through the lens of old-school dev, where they look at a 9m rocket, and assume it must cost about what their 8.4m rocket costs, plus some multiple for reuse, when in reality their 8.4m rocket has cost some large multiple of what it ever should have cost to develop in the first place.

[SOXBLOX]

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.

[tater]

8 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

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.

It can't possibly cost as much to develop as SLS, SpaceX doesn't have that sort of money to spend, not within an order of magnitude.

Really large, reusable LVs have been a concept since the 1960s. It's the only way to reduce cost to space, which is the only way it ever can be anything other than the niche purview of state actors.

 

8 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

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.

There's a job for Starship right there. A friend of mine is a tether guy (he did rockets too, worked on Constellation for NASA back in the day), working on arbitrarily long nanotubes, actually.

Tethers make a ton of sense, and it helps to have a LV capable of large mass to orbit, cheap to build them. The two can work hand in hand to become a system.

If launch costs are on par with a FedEx shipping charge per kg, tehers make sense, sounds like a good startup in the Starship world since launching over 1000 tons would be possible over a few launches.

 

8 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

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.

There will NEVER be an economic argument for human space colonization. If someone wants to build one, then it becomes a market entirely because it's a place with people who need stuff. They have no special powers, though, so their ability to make things that people on Earth want (and can afford to import) is no better than anyone else's.

If some people wany to try and live on mars... more power to them, won't be me.

 

8 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

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.

Anything going to the Moon, for one. If various governments want a pet project like ISS, but more exciting, they want  a Moon base. Starship can provide the materials to build such a base, then the overly expensive Orion can help bring them there (makes more sense with the lousy flight rate if the base could be made big enough people could live for months at a time).

Regardless, for LEO (that's what I meant by terrestrial, around Earth, servicing Earth) all that matters is cost to orbit, excess capacity not used doesn't matter.

[RCgothic]

The idea that SLS is designed for anything optimal related to actual spaceflight is cute. It isn't remotely optimised for cost, cadence, or payload, which are the three things that matter for putting large amounts of mass into space.

Orbital tethers require hundreds of thousands of tons of upmass.  Cheap rapidly reusable superheavy launchers are essential. They're a prerequisite. Nobody will EVER build a space tether without first building something like starship.

So instead of complaining that there's no use for a superheavy launcher like that, be glad that there are people willing to put their own money into making uses and actually advancing the things we can do in spaceflight, because I am NOT content to spend another 30 years going at a snail's pace because NASA is contractually prevented from breaking things and learning fast.

Edited April 29, 2020 by RCgothic

[Raven Industries]

Starship's capabilities may exist nowhere else except in pretty infographics and cute speeches at this point, but Musk already has one reusable cost-effective spacecraft, which is one more than everyone else. I daresay he's at least somewhat qualified to say that Starship is a viable idea. 

Edited April 29, 2020 by Raven Industries

[mikegarrison]

Let me tell you a story about two airplanes.

The first is the 747. When this airplane was designed, it was about twice as big as the biggest airliners before it. It required the construction of the biggest building in the world to make it. There was no established market because there had never been anything like it. It remained in production for over 50 years.

The second one is the A380. It was even bigger. It went out of production in less than 15 years.

Conditions were right for the 747 to create a new market for a giant airplane. Conditions were not right for the A380 to do the same thing.

If Starship is a technical success, will it also be an economic success? Will it be serving a previously unserved market? Or will it just be a really expensive way to serve a market that smaller rockets could already serve? The only way to know for sure is to roll the dice and find out.

[cubinator]

2 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

If Starship is a technical success, will it also be an economic success? Will it be serving a previously unserved market? Or will it just be a really expensive way to serve a market that smaller rockets could already serve? The only way to know for sure is to roll the dice and find out.

Well there's one thing I know for sure: I want to go to Mars.