Do y'all think the Space-X Super heavy/Star ship would work out?

[James Kerman]

I worked in international airfreight logistics for years and even though the actual flight might be 4 hours for P2P the paperwork and cargo preparation takes a lot longer than that (days).  Also the infrastructure to refuel, service and load would need to be established at the major international cargo hubs before SpaceX could be a viable alternative to the current system.

[Xd the great]

20 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

There's also a good chance of scrub because of weather.

*Insert soyuz laughter here*

[RedKraken]

1 minute ago, sh1pman said:

There's also a good chance of scrub because of weather.

Maybe not.

Some observations :

Falc 9 is a bendy piece of pasta. Wind sheer will trigger an abort. It will collapse  if it ever loses press.

Soyuz is much tougher. You can launch it in bad weather.

I think starship will be an order of magnitude stronger than soyuz.

Its already an order of magnitude heavier. Don't need press for structural strength.

If air freight is flying, then starship should be flying.

2 minutes ago, James Kerman said:

or P2P the paperwork and cargo preparation takes a lot longer than that (days)

Got me. Space X will have to solve that.

 

3 minutes ago, James Kerman said:

infrastructure to refuel, service and load would need to be established at the major international cargo hubs before SpaceX could be a viable alternative to the current system.

This too.

P2P might end up making a mars outpost look easy.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Xd the great said:

Still, veeeeeeery fresh. 

For that price you can buy that place and just live there.

35 minutes ago, RedKraken said:

It will take time critical cargo off jets. Its not going to handle antonov sized loads....fedex only.

Ok, please, an example of cargo to be sent by the rocket?

(Thousands tonnes of medicines, food, etc. are stored around the possible spaceport sites, as they should be right near a big city, not deep inside a desert.)

38 minutes ago, RedKraken said:

If I need a critical part shipped from NY to London in 4hrs

An anti-zombie vaccine? It weights less than 1 t. Just send it by a dismissed cargo minuteman once per century.

Otherwise what 200 t cargo could it be?

40 minutes ago, RedKraken said:

Corporations will pay big, big money for 4hrs global door to door delivery.

They even don't want to pay for Concorde.

[tater]

5 hours ago, RedKraken said:

Within 8 years, prestige missions to moon/mars....unmanned first, later crewed. Starlink half complete. Pad3. Booster3.

Starlink needs to be half complete in just over 5 years or they lose their license.

The rest of it, and P2P cargo... I don't see that as a thing.

[Rakaydos]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

How much cargo per route?

On ground: a standard railway wagon carries ~70 t.
A train contsists of, say, ~50 wagons.
3500 t per route.

A standard sea container (TEU) contains ~20 t.
A medium-sized ship carries ~500..1000 TEU. The biggest - 10 times more.

So, a typical ground or sea cargo route delivers several thousand tonnes at once. (And is almost safe.)
How many is it in BFRs?

Yes, it takes a week. But what about the joy of foretaste?

a 100 ton capacity BFS has the radius to fit 3x 20' intermodal shipping containers side by side, which if fully loaded mass 91.2 tons.

[kerbiloid]

1 minute ago, Rakaydos said:

a 100 ton capacity BFS has the radius to fit 3x 20' intermodal shipping containers side by side, which if fully loaded mass 91.2 tons.

But what would be the cargo in these containers to deliver by rocket?

Edited February 7, 2019 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

3 minutes ago, tater said:

The rest of it, and P2P cargo... I don't see that as a thing.

This bad boy can fit so many P2P hops in it!

[Rakaydos]

Just now, kerbiloid said:

But what would be the cargo in these containers to deliver by rocket?

The whole point of the Intermodal shipping standard is that it really doesn't matter.

[kerbiloid]

1 minute ago, Rakaydos said:

The whole point of the Intermodal shipping standard is that it really doesn't matter.

I mean, what is that thing which is not already present in a supermarket or a storehouse?

Food? Medicine? Furniture? Powerplant? Pump?

[Rakaydos]

Just now, kerbiloid said:

I mean, what is that thing which is not already present in a supermarket or a storehouse?

Food? Medicine? Furniture? Powerplant? Pump?

If there's enough of any one thing for a dedicated flight, they can make a dedicated cargo for it. Intermodal is all about mixed cargos.

[kerbiloid]

2 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

Intermodal is all about mixed cargos.

But I can't get what goods (to mix in the intermodal container) it's easier to deliver by a space rocket from another continent than by taxi.

And to repeat this enough often.

Edited February 7, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Rakaydos]

3 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

But I can't get what goods (to mix in the intermodal container) it's easier to deliver by a space rocket from another continent than by taxi.

And to repeat this enough often.

Amazon 2-day delivery, for one.

[kerbiloid]

11 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

Amazon 2-day delivery, for one.

Spoiler

Upd.
A Learjet jet.
Mtotal ~9.5 t.
Mdry ~6.2 t
Mpax ~0.8 t

L 3800 km
V 860 km/h

So, about 3 kg of kerosene per 1 kg of cargo.

Edited February 7, 2019 by kerbiloid

[StrandedonEarth]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Ok, please, an example of cargo to be sent by the rocket?

(Thousands tonnes of medicines, food, etc. are stored around the possible spaceport sites, as they should be right near a big city, not deep inside a desert.)

I think that answers the question right there. While regular scheduled P2P may not become a thing, having a disaster relief stockpile ready to go at a spaceport would be a good idea. Given that StarShip can land anywhere that’s flat enough, when a disaster strikes they could load and go. And have 100 tons of food,  water, and medical supplies on site within hours. Worry about recovering the StarShip later, and use it for shelter once unloaded, if needed. Details would need to be worked out, fershur.

I’m sure kids left homeless after a 9.0 quake would love to crawl around inside a real spaceship. 

[tater]

3 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

I think that answers the question right there. While regular scheduled P2P may not become a thing, having a disaster relief stockpile ready to go at a spaceport would be a good idea. Given that StarShip can land anywhere that’s flat enough, when a disaster strikes they could load and go. And have 100 tons of food,  water, and medical supplies on site within hours. Worry about recovering the StarShip later, and use it for shelter once unloaded, if needed. Details would need to be worked out, fershur.

I’m sure kids left homeless after a 9.0 quake would love to crawl around inside a real spaceship. 

This is a mission for the USAF, not a rationale for "same hour" commercial cargo.

Should they fly this thing, once demonstrated that's the customer. Just like we spend hundreds of billions a year so that when someone needs fresh water or electricity after a natural disaster, there's likely an CVN somewhere fairly close that can steam to them and help out. It's not the primary role, but it's a role made possible by their primary role (and very existence).

 

[StrandedonEarth]

3 hours ago, tater said:

This is a mission for the USAF, not a rationale for "same hour" commercial cargo.

 Should they fly this thing, once demonstrated that's the customer. Just like we spend hundreds of billions a year so that when someone needs fresh water or electricity after a natural disaster, there's likely an CVN somewhere fairly close that can steam to them and help out. It's not the primary role, but it's a role made possible by their primary role (and very existence).

 

I get your point. While I didn’t intend to make it a rationale for “Super Hot Rush” cargo, I suppose I did. Kerbiloid asked for an example of a cargo, and then listed what sounded like a disaster relief stockpile. 

Disaster relief is a mission undertaken by military assets because they have the capability, which is generally being underutilizied unless at war (I’m sure there are exceptions). But if a capability exists, there’s no reason not to use it (which is why the military gets involved) even if it’s not a regular service. Boots on the ground would still be needed to plant a landing beacon and to protect the supplies (and vehicle) from bandits  

But yeah, I cant really see a reason for regular StarShip cargo service. Even with the “time is money” logic, I can’t see the time saved being worth the millions a flight would cost for the occasional urgent need. Unless lives are at stake. 

Now, if Starship could carry enough fuel for P2P and back again, it could be useful for delivering urgent supplies or medivac service to really remote places. 

Edited February 7, 2019 by StrandedonEarth

[James Kerman]

On reflection a role I can envisage for transport P2P is in bulky cargo, if it has the ability to land and be serviced at mostly unprepared locations. 

The dimensions of the cargo space in an aircraft precludes some goods that are too heavy or can't be broken down into smaller pieces and it is fairly common in the industry for some companies (generally mining or shipping) to pay if the effect of downed machinery or loss of productivity will cost more than the cost of the flight.  Bulky/heavy goods are also prone to being bumped from flights because airlines usually prefer to upset 1 customer than 100.

[Starman4308]

For P2P, you have the issue that you need a landing site that doesn't catch fire when hit by tons of burning methane... and approach control, and owners of very expensive rockets thinking "Hm, it may only cost $9 million to fly... but likely over $1 billion to replace if something goes wrong at the other end". I find it unlikely that somebody would risk landing a Starship at anywhere but a pre-built, designated landing site.

For emergency humanitarian efforts, the Starship has to be compared to the dozens of air transports that can be there in less than 24 hours (substantially less if they start nearby), can literally drop non-fragile cargo onto any reasonably open area, and can be based from anywhere with a sufficiently large runway.

For more regular commercial traffic, you have to compare it to aircraft that can launch from and land on a very wide selection of runways, can be refueled with standard jet fuel (no cryogenic methane and oxygen), have well-understood all-weather capabilities, and are presumably easier to load and unload.

There's also the issue of payloads. Again, this is going onto an enormously expensive launch vehicle, so payloads will need to be vetted for "will not destroy the Starship". That's true of aircraft as well, but A, that's much better understood, and B, there are many payloads that will survive low-pressure, low-altitude flight... but not outright vacuum.

Shaving some hours off transit is all nice and well... but air transport is much better understood, has a lot more infrastructure behind it, is more flexible, and a big chunk of the total shipment time is in handling, not in transit.

[RedKraken]

18 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

if Starship could carry enough fuel for P2P and back again, it could be useful for delivering urgent supplies or medivac service to really remote places

This is good :

How about a very small suborbital drone 100t glow?

Dry mass would be about 7t, max cargo 11t.

You could recover with a heli or a just a truck if you go one way emergency.

For two way you don't even have to risk landing

...just parachute it in from altitude and head home.

For small payloads (200kg), you might have 8600 m/s  --> range = 650 km ( 5000 km one way)

Payload 3t, you have about 7500 m/s ---> range = 450 km ( 3000 km one way)

Max payload 11t, you are down to 5500  m/s --> range= 200 km ( 1400 km one way)

Assume your flight losses (gravity + drag + steering) are 20% and you landing deltav is 250 m/s, and your final range is 70% of that on an airless body.

[kerbiloid]

The next SpaceX project we will know about.

Spoiler

 

Wait... Oh, ...

Edited February 8, 2019 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

14 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

I think that answers the question right there. While regular scheduled P2P may not become a thing, having a disaster relief stockpile ready to go at a spaceport would be a good idea. Given that StarShip can land anywhere that’s flat enough, when a disaster strikes they could load and go. And have 100 tons of food,  water, and medical supplies on site within hours. Worry about recovering the StarShip later, and use it for shelter once unloaded, if needed. Details would need to be worked out, fershur.

I’m sure kids left homeless after a 9.0 quake would love to crawl around inside a real spaceship. 

There are significant doubts that a large rocket can be launched from an unprepared pad on Earth, or even landed on it. This killed the very similar ITHACUS proposal.

Blast trenches are there for a reason. Research on transport rocketry concluded that it’s either a pad-to-pad affair or a one-way affair.

Plus, it provides very little added value over a supply paradrop - indeed, “worry about recovering later” is the very definition of paradrops.

16 hours ago, Rakaydos said:

If there's enough of any one thing for a dedicated flight, they can make a dedicated cargo for it. Intermodal is all about mixed cargos.

Sure, if you’re willing to pay an exorbitant price for such mundane payloads. The situations where P2P’s supposed advantage in transit time is actually required are extremely few and far between - too far between to justify maintaining such a transport system. And if it can wait just a bit longer, the much cheaper freight jets win.

Edited February 8, 2019 by DDE

[kerbiloid]

42 minutes ago, DDE said:

There are significant doubts that a large rocket can be launched from an unprepared pad on Earth, or even landed on it. This killed the very similar ITHACUS proposal.

Blast trenches are there for a reason. Research on transport rocketry concluded that it’s either a pad-to-pad affair or a one-way affair.

Iirc, Rombus was going to start from a pad above a water pool, to reduce the acoustic pressure on the surrounding structures.
The launch shockwave would be making the water surface to shape like parabola.

So, maybe they could have rocket pools to start and to land/splash.
In this case the trenches could appear/disappear right in the water.

P.S.
Giant waves. We need them in KSP. Otherwise a splash is not a splash.

Edited February 8, 2019 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

17 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Iirc, Rombus was going to start from a pad above a water pool, to reduce the acoustic pressure on the surrounding structures.
The launch shockwave would be making the water surface to shape like parabola.

So, maybe they could have rocket pools to start and to land/splash.
In this case the trenches could appear/disappear right in the water.

P.S.
Giant waves. We need them in KSP. Otherwise a splash is not a splash.

Water landing does start to sound more plausible for such applications, yeah - the engineering problems end up on the side of the rocket and not the landing area.

[Rakaydos]

4 hours ago, DDE said:

 

Sure, if you’re willing to pay an exorbitant price for such mundane payloads. The situations where P2P’s supposed advantage in transit time is actually required are extremely few and far between - too far between to justify maintaining such a transport system. And if it can wait just a bit longer, the much cheaper freight jets win.

At a million dollars per launch and 100 tons of mixed cargo, the transport costs are $10 per kg. That's probably the upper bound of when point to point cargo starts making sense.