[HN Gopher] SpaceX will now let you book a rocket launch online ...
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SpaceX will now let you book a rocket launch online starting at $1M
Author : ajaviaad
Score : 112 points
Date : 2020-02-06 20:39 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I really want SpaceX to get into the end of life care market.
|
| I would much rather get on a one way rocket with big windows
| (that runs out of air after a few hours probably) than go to
| Hospice and die slowly over a few months or a year.
| dahfizz wrote:
| A rocket launch is a very violent thing to experience. If
| you're months away from being dead, there's a good chance the G
| forces during launch would be too much for your body to deal
| with.
| Diggsey wrote:
| There's a lot of vibration, but the G forces are not that
| high, and they are particularly low during launch. The
| highest G force is right before the main engines cut off,
| once the rocket is already in space, at which point you
| presumably don't care anymore...
|
| For falcon 9 you don't even reach 2G until more than 60
| seconds into the flight when the engines throttle back up
| after passing through max Q.
|
| Acceleration graph: https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-
| qimg-23ba4a3fe7f535430bed80... (from
| https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-acceleration-of-a-Falcon-9)
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Still beats going out in a bed plus all the burial, cremation
| etc.
| gibolt wrote:
| Do they charge more for a window seat? I'd imagine their extra
| luggage fee is out of this world.
| stetrain wrote:
| Riding on the back of a commsat probably isn't very luxurious.
| You'll have a hell of a view though between the cargo fairing
| opening up and the point where you run out of oxygen.
| wolf550e wrote:
| The payload fairing has holes, it's not hermetically sealed.
| The air escapes as the rocket ascends. It's a windshield, not
| a pressure vessel. Falcon 9 reaches above breathable air
| seconds after launch.
| jandrese wrote:
| 200kg capacity so you could build a tiny space capsule with
| enough air to keep you alive for a few hours. Getting back
| to Earth alive is an exercise left up to the reader.
|
| You'll also have to fit yourself (and your spacecraft) into
| a 24"x24"x24" space so I suggest consulting with some
| contortionists and losing some weight. Do you really need
| legs?
| dmurray wrote:
| So how long before the first space stowaway? Maybe when
| launches become 100x or 1000x more common, one firm will
| have lax enough security that some teenager can sneak
| aboard in a homemade spaceship or spacesuit.
| YawningAngel wrote:
| 100kg to space is a _lot_ of fuel, I think they'd notice.
| I'd be shocked if weight isn't checked on the launch pad.
| jedberg wrote:
| I couldn't find the exact dimension limits, but it sounds like
| you could launch a bunch urns for $1M.
|
| Seems like a business opportunity for a funeral home.
| jlmorton wrote:
| Already exists. SpaceX launched ~150 sets of cremated remains
| back in July, organized by a company called Celestis [1].
|
| https://www.celestis.com/
| stetrain wrote:
| You're still going to have to fill out a bunch of FAA paperwork
| about your ability to provide control over your box full of
| urns and ensure it re-enters in a predictable fashion and
| timeline.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Or just make sure it gets boosted into a graveyard orbit.
| skizm wrote:
| Did you just learn this term from today's xkcd? Because I
| did.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| Congratulations of being one of today's lucky 10000!
|
| Space burial was also discussed on xkcd, though not
| launching ashes but whole corpse: https://what-
| if.xkcd.com/134/
| SEJeff wrote:
| https://storage.googleapis.com/rideshare-static/Rideshare_Pa...
| Here is the guide from SpaceX on the specific details.
|
| The biggest size for each smallsat is 24" x 24" x 24", but they
| also offer a smaller 15" size.
| benibela wrote:
| Or you could ship the ashes further out to the moon with dhl
| yingw787 wrote:
| This is soooo cool! I'm excited for them to keep lowering the
| cost of access to space. Maybe one day it will be a few thousand
| dollars, and I can buy a satellite to hack around with.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| In the mean time, you could learn your chops by volunteering to
| work on one of the Amateur Radio satellites.
| anfractuosity wrote:
| This sounded interesting, on the topic of having your own
| little satellite (for a short time anyway, by the sounds of it)
| - https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/04/kicksat-2-project-
| launches...
| teruakohatu wrote:
| I don't understand the economics of space launches but it has
| reported that Rocket Lab charges about $5.7 mil to launch a
| 150-225kg payload. SpaceX seems to be miles cheaper at $1 mil for
| a 200kg payload. How can rocket lab compete? More flexibility?
| JshWright wrote:
| SpaceX is bundling more payloads together, so they get better
| economies of scale (plus the reuse thing).
| jcims wrote:
| Given that rocketlab is now tinkering with reuse, they may be
| able to bring those costs down even more.
| SEJeff wrote:
| Given that space is tinkering with Starship and Superheavy,
| they will be able to bring their costs massively down. It
| will just take them a few more years most likely.
|
| In reality, the cheaper access to space opens up so many
| more opportunities for new customers. When it is affordable
| for a college to send up some cubesats for research,
| they're going to do it.
| torpfactory wrote:
| If you get on a SpaceX ride share, you don't get to choose your
| own orbit. You'll have to make-do with an orbit that may (or
| may not) be close to your desired one. Unless you want your
| satellite to have propulsion, which might eat up any cost
| advantage. With Rocket Lab, you'll get the orbit you want
| typically, since you'll probably be the only vehicle on board.
|
| I suppose if SpaceX had an enormous manifest of small sats they
| could bin them into similar orbits, but that would really
| depend on just how successful they are.
| ThisIsTheWay wrote:
| Slight clarification: SpaceX offers ride shares to distinct
| orbits, and customers can select what ride works best for
| their payload. Obviously if you're interested in an
| equatorial orbit, you're not going to select a launch from
| Vandenberg...
| wolf550e wrote:
| Bus vs taxi. Bus fare is cheap, but it only goes according to
| its schedule and only to predetermined stops. Recently SpaceX
| have announced improved schedule for rideshares (up to monthly
| frequency) but a rideshare still can't choose the day or the
| exact orbit.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Difference between a rideshare and a bespoke delivery orbit I
| presume. If it ain't going where you want to go, you're going
| to have to wait/hope that another ride comes along.
| thiscatis wrote:
| Bloomberg recently did a great video about this explaining the
| unit economics in more detail -
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2019-10-22/why-space-l...
| toraobo wrote:
| > How can rocket lab compete?
|
| The biggest claimed advantage is that customers get to pick
| launch date and exact orbit.
| TomMarius wrote:
| How important that is to them (and to how much of them)?
| nickik wrote:
| IF you have a payload that needs a non-standard orbit you
| absolutely need it to make your project work at all.
| Problem is that there are 50+ small launchers trying to
| make it and with the big volume going SpaceX its hard to
| see how the economics works out for that.
|
| The market size is growing, but not as fast as some people
| hopped.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Well, if you're going to a 53 degree orbit, you're in luck.
| But if you have a specific polar orbit, well... You'll need
| a special transfer vehicle package (SpaceX is partnering
| with Momentus), which will increase the mass you need to
| launch and has its own costs, making it more comparable to
| RocketLab.
|
| RocketLab will let you go to whichever orbit you choose.
|
| Also, RocketLab is pursuing reusability as well, so that
| may allow RocketLab to compete more directly on cost. Also,
| RocketLab can launch smaller payloads (in bundles with
| other customers) for less than the $1 million minimum
| SpaceX has.
|
| Still, I think SpaceX has a sizable advantage for a lot of
| launches.
| jaimex2 wrote:
| Well then, that's my funeral expenses sorted.
| transitivebs wrote:
| Self-serve rocket launches -- AMAZING
| Geee wrote:
| Anyone has an idea for a satellite? What kind of satellite would
| be useful?
|
| I hope it becomes possible to connect any satellite directly to
| Starlink, so that it's easy to control / connect to them over the
| Internet.
| csours wrote:
| I want one that goes PING!
| SEJeff wrote:
| I want one that goes PONG!
| benibela wrote:
| A quantum satellite that sends you entangled photons
| jcims wrote:
| I think a LetsEncrypt style certificate authority that issues
| certs directly over lora/4g/WiFi would be cool. Hard to beat
| the physical security.
| ethagknight wrote:
| Tangential, but I've wondered about the opportunity for a company
| like Fedex to send freight on rockets between Fedex's major hubs,
| like Memphis to Guangzhou, so that you could get literal 'next
| day' service to the other side of the globe. Obviously very
| expensive, but also, at just $2,200/lb, there might be plenty of
| things that would be viable, like rushing an organ transplant or
| delivering an iPhone prototype, cutting out the 14-16 hour flight
| from Memphis to Guangzhou. Surely there are some scenarios where
| it starts to make sense, even at $10,000/lb
| simonswords82 wrote:
| There's a ride share user guide that's got some incredibly
| interesting information:
| https://storage.googleapis.com/rideshare-static/Rideshare_Pa...
| [deleted]
| sorenn111 wrote:
| One thing I love about Spacex is just how more accessible they
| make space feel. Between the livestreams of launches, the car in
| space, this, etc.
|
| Good on Spacex
| Reedx wrote:
| Agreed. They keep delivering these kind of inspirational "we're
| in the future" moments like no one else.
|
| Also I suspect it's going to have an affect on the kinds of
| things people will want to be working on. Hard to get excited
| about many of the (ad) tech companies after seeing 2 rockets
| simultaneously return back to Earth...
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| Their HD live streams have been amazing. If we had any Saturn V
| rockets still around, I would pay to see a launch with all
| their cameras installed.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| You're in luck. SLS is the rocket being built by NASA (and
| contractors) and is the same class as Saturn V and will
| launch in a year or two. (SpaceX's Starship likely to do the
| same.)
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Hopefully they will build in the same level of remote
| cameras as SpaceX does. It's way more fascinating to watch
| a live view from the rocket, 2nd stage, etc. on SpaceX's
| streams than to see a 90s-era-quality 3D rendering of a 2nd
| stage in orbit with a few data points in Courier on the
| screen.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| Ah yes, selling a vaporware product with no timeline for delivery
| to a crowd of adoring fans, definitely one of the hallmarks of a
| totally above-the-board enterprise.
| loceng wrote:
| I'm curious what your thoughts or beliefs are regarding Tesla's
| position, condition?
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| The stock is finally now completely disconnected from the
| fundamentals of the company, so tbh I'd probably consider it
| too radioactive to touch on the long _or_ short side, unless
| you are a very experienced and nimble trader and keep
| position sizes very small.
|
| Haven't really been keeping up with the company internals too
| much to comment, but Montana Skeptic is posting again and is
| probably a good place to look if you want to catch up. I did
| see he mentioned recently that Q1 will be a disaster but did
| not dig into his reasoning.
| loceng wrote:
| I wasn't specifically asking if it was a good investment at
| its current valuation - however clearly it shows enough
| people believe it is a good investment. It sounds like
| you'd invest in Tesla if it was at a lower valuation though
| - but not SpaceX or other spinoffs?
| privateSFacct wrote:
| I think they've got SpaceX confused with the SLS system - now
| that has sucked up billions for zero launches.
| JshWright wrote:
| I'm not sure you know what 'vaporware' means. SpaceX has
| successfully completed 81 launches to space, including many
| smallsat payloads (which is what they're selling here).
| nickik wrote:
| And they are operating the biggest rocket anybody has
| launched in like 30+ years.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| What the blazes are you on about? SpaceX have had 81 successful
| falcon series launches.
| stetrain wrote:
| Seems like pretty concrete timelines to me, and I don't think
| adoring fans are too interested in booking commercial satellite
| launches.
|
| https://www.spacex.com/smallsat
| jlv2 wrote:
| Falcon 9 rideshare launches are not vaporware.
| paxys wrote:
| Just think of the credit card points on that one.
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| I wonder if they take PayPal?
| Invictus0 wrote:
| 3x on travel!
| CarVac wrote:
| It'll use up all your miles though.
| no1youknowz wrote:
| I know at the moment there is some controversy with the spacex
| satellites blocking astronomy viewing and I really hope there is
| a fix soon.
|
| But I would really like to see the day when governments aren't
| the only ones who build telescopes like the Hubble or James webb.
|
| That instead amateur enthusiasts crowdfund and build custom
| telescopes, launched on sub $250k rocket launches which then can
| allocate hours of control at a time at cost or at least give the
| telemetry for free. Imagine 25, 50, or 100 telescopes in space
| all looking out and mapping the night sky at ever increasing
| rates.
|
| Couple this with advanced ML techniques for anyone to go over the
| data. I'm sure a golden age for star gazing would just be
| beginning.
|
| According to [0], we have only discovered a small glass in
| comparison to a sea on earth.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwtC_4t2g5M
|
| p.s If you haven't see The Age of A.I. on youtube, it's an
| amazing documentary consisting of 8 episodes.
| krastanov wrote:
| I am similarly excited and hopeful, but you are somewhat
| misrepresenting how amazing current telescopes are. ML and
| other tricks are not enough to turn a bunch of cheap telescopes
| into a Hubble.
| themagician wrote:
| Why?
|
| This is one thing that "governments" are really, really good
| at. NASA routinely launches things into space designed to last
| a few weeks that end up lasting for a decade or more because
| they are so amazingly overengineered. They don't do it for
| profit. They do it for science.
|
| Private business is almost always about short term gain
| (because it kind of has to be). I don't think I want a bunch of
| crowdfunded garbage just adding more crap to the skies hoping
| to turn a quick buck. We have enough crowdfunded garbage here
| on earth. The only crowdfunded thing I'd support at this point
| is filling a rocket with a bunch of e-scooters and shooting it
| into the sun.
|
| I know it's super trendy now more than ever to hate on the
| "government" but space exploration is one that that all
| governments--the US in particular--seem to do really, really
| well.
| caconym_ wrote:
| Imagine a world where e.g. a moderately well-funded
| university science department can launch instruments into
| space. It sounds absolutely fucking amazing. Near-Earth space
| is going to fill up regardless, and I'd like to live in a
| world where big corporations and governments aren't the only
| entities that can afford to put stuff up there.
|
| Meanwhile, our space exploration program basically exists as
| an excuse to rob the American taxpayer to fund massive,
| obsolete rockets and get politicians re-elected. That's not
| to say that the instruments themselves aren't examples of the
| finest technology ever created by the human species, but
| their way of doing business needs an overhaul. They need some
| competition, and SpaceX and other new space companies are
| bringing it.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > NASA routinely launches things into space designed to last
| a few weeks that end up lasting for a decade or more because
| they are so amazingly overengineered.
|
| i worked on some of those. they're not overengineered,
| they're underpromised.
|
| and no, i can't provide a source for that because the whole
| point is to look good to the public. there's not a line in
| the proposals about how long things are _actually_ supposed
| to last if you want to ever get another contract.
|
| if the delivery estimates were good, we'd see a nice uniform
| distribution about expected lifetime. instead we see
| everything lasting so much longer than "expected". if we're
| attributing it to the engineers, then that's bad engineering.
| but the discrepancy isn't the fault of the engineers.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Private business has much longer term perspective than
| government.
|
| Typically, governments are run to make things look good by
| the next election. That's a planning horizon of 2 years on
| average, assuming 4 year terms.
|
| Meanwhile, forestry companies routinely plant trees that
| won't be harvested for 50 years.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Government routinely plans projects on horizons spread over
| decades. See for example, the MTA, the Big Dig, LA's Metro
| system, pretty much everything handled by NASA, the Army
| Corps of Engineers, the NPS, the Dept of Transportation,
| DARPA, etc.
|
| Private business has trouble seeing beyond this quarter's
| financials... especially when said business is publicly
| traded.
|
| _Meanwhile, forestry companies routinely plant trees that
| won 't be harvested for 50 years_
|
| Depends very heavily on the type of tree. Red Oak is on a
| 50-year timeline, but Douglas fir is usually on a 5-10 year
| timeline (depending on whether it's grown for Christmas
| trees or for lumber), most big box store lumber is on the
| 10-20 year timeline, and bamboo is frequently harvested the
| same year it's planted (but is also technically not a
| tree...). This is a matter of necessity, not far-term
| vision. If they could get away with not thinking long-term
| they would, but the modern lumber industry has learned from
| the excesses of the colonial and pre-Industrial lumber
| industry.
| ThisIsTheWay wrote:
| The cost and schedule overruns on JWST are a good argument
| against the statements you have made. The program is ~$4B
| over budget, and 3 years behind schedule.
|
| NASA does some things well, and is absolutely terrible at
| others.
| powowowow wrote:
| We need to stop pretending that these missed estimates are
| a catastrophe. They're inventing new things, and there's
| uncertainty.
|
| We'd be a lot better served, as a nation and a society, if
| we accepted these realities in the same way that our best
| businesses do. Instead, we're stuck with a Day 2 mentality,
| where the risks associated with grand endeavors are
| unacceptable because a bunch of whiners will complain.
|
| The same assholes who whinge about the JWST being $4b over
| budget will happily cheer for hundreds of billions to be
| spent on wars or whatever. They're not arguing honestly,
| and we need to learn to ignore them.
| Amarok wrote:
| I see an age where our orbital space is so full of waste we can
| no longer leave the planet
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Newer satellites usually have a fuel budget to de-orbit or at
| least go into a parking orbit. That, plus there's work on de-
| orbiting passive objects from earth or from cleaning
| satellites. I'm with GP that this has huge potential, even if
| it's not in the hubble class.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The problem is the "usually" since that's generally only
| Western (i.e., US and EU) companies that pay for that sort
| of EOL.
|
| Indian and Chinese companies don't bother to EOL their
| satellites by burning them up; they just leave them where
| they are.
| astro123 wrote:
| Yeah, I'll second what others have said that designing (good)
| telescopes is not a quick/easy thing. Also, any telescope that
| is easy to slap together is probably so many orders of
| magnitudes worse that existing ones that you don't get any
| usable data from it.
|
| I'll throw a couple examples out for you:
|
| DESI[1] has 5000 individually movable fiber optic cables. It's
| also sitting on a 4m mirror. It is a massive engineering
| project, but also would make anything with similar goals that a
| handful of people could hack together for a few million dollars
| obsolete. It can get 5000 spectra every 15 mins and a small,
| slit based telescope can maybe do a handful per night. Large
| scale projects like "mapping the night sky" are going to be
| dominated by massive projects. See also GAIA [6]
|
| Space based makes things way harder. Let's take JWST[2] as an
| example. Someone else has mentioned the tolerances on the
| mirror. You also need to keep everything cold (7 kelvin!). You
| need to be able to control this, keep it pointed in the right
| direction with stunning accuracy, etc, etc. And all this needs
| to work in space, after being shaken around through a rocket
| launch. You also need a really compelling reason to go to space
| for a telescope. Those reasons include, observing things that
| you can't see from the ground (X-rays for example). You need
| really good seeing (no atmosphere). You need really low noise
| observations. I'd be surprised if those were what a small
| operation needed. Especially when it makes all the other things
| (control, servicing, etc) so much harder.
|
| In fact, there are gaps where pretty simple ground based
| hardware can do good scientific work. Though, it is usually for
| pretty specific goals. [3] is a bunch of DSLRs that is one of
| the best instruments for finding really diffuse galaxies which
| are really interesting systems at the moment.
|
| On the ML techniques, those are definitely being used in
| astronomy. One recent example [4] but go to ADS and look for
| things with ML in the title and you'll get a lot.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1LVMox0KNc [2]
| https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/observatory/ote/mirrors/index....
| [3] https://www.dragonflytelescope.org/ [4]
| https://www.kaggle.com/c/PLAsTiCC-2018 [5]
| https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/search/filter_database_fq_data...
| [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(spacecraft)
| rst wrote:
| Designing and fabricating optics comparable to Hubble's is not
| an amateur job -- it requires engineering meter-sized objects
| to micrometer tolerances, with similar requirements for
| alignment. (This was initially botched in Hubble itself, with a
| 2.2-micron fabrication error in the 2.4-meter diameter primary
| mirror seriously compromising the instrument, until some of the
| other optical elements were swapped out with replacements
| designed to cancel out the error.)
| zomg wrote:
| From an accounting perspective, this is a strategic way to pump
| up your balance sheet.
|
| And I agree with @paxys, I'd love to get those credit card points
| too! :)
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| How does this pump up the balance sheet? SpaceX takes in $1
| million in a rideshare deposit, and now has a corresponding and
| equal liability to provide the service (hopefully for $1mm or
| less in costs) at a future point in time.
|
| It helps the cash balance, sure.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Falcon fleet sitting in the Cape warehouse is paid for. It's
| just opex for each launch at this point. They're optimizing
| for revenue traditionally ignored by launch service
| providers.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| They're not amortizing the costs of the rockets over the
| launches? I thought that was the whole point of making them
| reusable in the first place.
| wolf550e wrote:
| The first launch of a Falcon9 pays for the rocket in full
| (manufacturing costs, not development costs).
| OJFord wrote:
| If you buy a laptop to build software on, you can pay for
| the laptop with what you earn in a year, but that doesn't
| stop you amortising the cost over three. (It just
| increases your year one profit at the expense of years
| two and three, making the books more consistent.)
| Diederich wrote:
| > It's just opex for each launch at this point.
|
| Almost...the 2nd stage is one use only. I saw a post on
| Reddit that estimated that each 2nd stage costs SpaceX
| about $10M...which is peanuts.
| SEJeff wrote:
| There was an internal SpaceX presentation video which was
| leaked to r/SpaceX that stated their launch cost to be
| $30 million per launch. The video was taken down later
| that day, but that's the currently best known number for
| how much a fully loaded reusable Falcon 9 launch costs.
| aguyfromnb wrote:
| Well, there are whispers today that SpaceX is going to try to
| spin off Starlink and IPO. Seems odd, considering Musk has
| spent 2 years railing against the public markets. If that's
| the case when will get to see the financials.
| apendleton wrote:
| We'd only get to see the financials of Starlink, not of
| SpaceX (that's a big motivation of spinning it off).
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(page generated 2020-02-06 23:00 UTC)