[HN Gopher] Science upside for Starship
___________________________________________________________________
Science upside for Starship
Author : makaimc
Score : 171 points
Date : 2021-11-22 12:16 UTC (10 hours ago)
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| inasio wrote:
| One way to use excess capacity is to become an airline... Looking
| at the types of projects that Musk has been working with (Boring,
| barges, etc), it doesn't strike me as fully ridiculous
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The article seems to take wildly optimistic cost, capacity, and
| capability claims for granted. It then verges on the ridiculous,
| talking about Mars terraforming with giant light sails. I
| couldn't read past that, as it seemed to go into more and more
| examples of improbable technologies that are stopped by many more
| concerns than launch capacity.
| pjscott wrote:
| It's not that hard to estimate the payload of a rocket once you
| know its dry mass, amount of propellant, and specific impulse.
| Which SpaceX does.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| you must not be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling
| a-nikolaev wrote:
| Dreaming is fine, but Musk has a track record of not
| delivering on his over-optimistic promises. And a dream is
| not enough to overpower gravity and the laws of
| thermodynamics. There are very hard physical limits on how
| efficient a rocket can be, even in the most optimistic
| scenarios.
| mlindner wrote:
| Musk has a track record of over-promising and under-
| delivering both on time and product, but deliver he does.
| And the over-promise is usually so bonkers ridiculous, that
| when you scale it back it's only somewhat ridiculous and a
| lot more than the people who were predicting complete
| failure.
| atonalfreerider wrote:
| Last I saw, the roads are full of Teslas and there have
| been 5 crewed launches to orbit on reflown Falcon boosters.
|
| Without Tesla, the electric car market would probably be
| farther behind, and without SpaceX we'd definitely still be
| flying astronauts on Soyuz. These achievements seems
| routine now, but it's important to take stock of their
| significance.
| Ekaros wrote:
| So we were already flowing astrounauts in with proven
| technology. What new did SpaceX do in that field?
| cnlevy wrote:
| Cryogenic in-orbit refueling is not breaking any physics
| laws and allows to _reset_ the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation
| from orbit, so you can gain 2 orders of magnitude on
| payload weight. The hardest part would be logistics
| management (10 tanker launches for refueling a Starship)
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's kind of funny that we are on the verge of having too much
| launch capacity. Right now, SpaceX fills their launch schedule
| with Starlink satellites, as nobody can produce satellites for
| launch fast enough to fill their launch vehicles at the cadence
| they can be operated. And that's only for Falcon. Starship, if it
| works, will give us so much launch capacity that we'll be unable
| to fully utilize a handful of vehicles for more than a decade.
|
| Every satellite today is at the end of a long production chain
| with lots of bottlenecks, finding funding for launch being only
| one of them. We'll need assembly lines of them to feed this
| rocket.
| the_duke wrote:
| On top of that there are many new small to medium launch
| vehicles in the pipeline.
|
| Astra just made it to orbit a few days ago. Firefly almost did,
| and might very well do so on the next attempt. Relativity is
| supposed to launch next year. And then there is Blue Origin New
| Glenn , which also may (eventually...) be ready.
|
| The launch market hasn't really grown much, despite Falcon 9
| lowering the cost quite a bit. SpaceX gets a majority of
| revenue from government launches.
|
| I wonder what will happen to all those new companies.
| [deleted]
| shantara wrote:
| Even without Starship it would make sense to switch from
| current model of unique single item satellite production to a
| library of standard cheap mass produced designs. Instead of one
| JWST that takes multiple billions and decades to complete, we
| can have 10 or 20 less capable satellites built on the same
| budget. Same logic could be applied to communication, weather,
| terrain mapping and other kinds of satellites.
| cnlevy wrote:
| > Instead of one JWST that takes multiple billions and
| decades to complete, we can have 10 or 20 less capable
| satellites built on the same budget
|
| These 10 or 20 telescopes can be _as capable_ as the JWST.
| And not only because they could just be manufactured copies
| of the original. Remember the original budget for it was
| about 500M. A lot of the ballooning price was because they
| had extremely tight weight and size constraints (for example,
| the sunshide had to be insanely light, because almost all of
| the weight budget had already been allocated)
|
| By using Starship, weight can absolve many sins...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29189345
| rbanffy wrote:
| > By using Starship, weight can absolve many sins...
|
| This is one reason I always liked sportscars with small
| engines - it's much more fun when you have the same
| acceleration with a smaller car. There's also little
| subtlety in a 10 litre V-12...
| rnjesus wrote:
| are you a vat-grown ninja assassin by any chance?
| adfgergaehg wrote:
| We have always had too much launch capacity. You will notice
| that every program estimates prices based on how many launches
| occur a year, with the price going down the more launches there
| are. Large launch vehicles are less expensive per mass to orbit
| than small ones. There are huge economies of scale.
|
| It isn't that SpaceX has a lot of launch capacity and so fills
| it with Starlink satellites. SpaceX has a lot of launch
| capacity _because they 're launching so many Starlink
| satellites_. They only make large launch vehicles and they can
| only hit the prices they do if the launch regularly. If they
| stop manufacturing their own demand the price will rise
| precipitously.
|
| SpaceX is currently subsidized by investor money. The steady
| state remains to be seen.
|
| One of the reasons the Saturn V was discontinued was that there
| was no need for such a large vehicle. It was cheap per unit
| mass to orbit but there was not enough demand to justify it.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > One of the reasons the Saturn V was discontinued
|
| What happens when launching a Saturn-V sized payload becomes
| cheaper than launching an Atlas V sized one?
| adfgergaehg wrote:
| If and when that happens I'll re-evaluate. I don't buy the
| SpaceX marketing about the Starship for a millisecond. (And
| I'm baffled why a government contractor that isn't
| publicly-traded is marketing to the public in the first
| place.)
| pixl97 wrote:
| >. It was cheap per unit mass to orbit
|
| Cheap for whom? Governments with unlimited budgets? It was
| not cheap for commercial entities designing products for
| sure.
| adfgergaehg wrote:
| Cheap by the metric SpaceX is optimizing for, i.e. mass to
| LEO / price of launch.
| cstross wrote:
| Saturn V was cancelled in 1968.
|
| Back then, there were no commercial entities designing and
| launching satellites. The first two Telstar comsats were
| basically international collaborative experiments between
| national-level telcos; Telstar didn't actually get under
| way with operational comsats until the 1980s. Similarly,
| Inmarsat, the maritime comsat company, was founded in 1979.
| The first GPS prototypes weren't launched until the 1970s,
| and the civilian use of GPS didn't take off until the late
| 1980s. And in the 1960s, the only people with Earth
| Resources Satellites were national-level spy agencies.
|
| Short version: _civilian space applications barely existed_
| until 1-2 decades after the Saturn V was cancelled. The
| current efflorescence of communications, positioning,
| observation /meteorology, and broadcasting satellites were
| foreseeable and foreseen, but the entire manifest of
| commercial satellite payloads through 1990 could probably
| have fitted on top of a single Saturn V (although the need
| to deliver them to different orbits, over a 30 year period,
| would have made this a non-starter).
|
| Finally, NASA had a program for Apollo science missions
| (from 1966 onwards), the Apollo Applications Program:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Applications_Program
|
| Only two AAP missions eventually flew -- Skylab (plus three
| crew launches aboard S-IB stacks, and a spare "lifeboat"
| stack), and the Apollo-Soyuz Mission (IIRC ASM used the
| "lifeboat" stack for the US flight). The proposed Venus
| fly-by was cancelled, the Saturn V launcher to carry the
| Viking Mars lander was cancelled, and so on.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Finally, NASA had a program for Apollo science missions
| (from 1966 onwards), the Apollo Applications Program:
|
| It kills me every time I remember what could have been.
| We could already be multiplanetary.
| cstross wrote:
| Alternatively, we had a near-miss: given there was a
| solar maximum around 1972, the Venus flyby would probably
| have killed the crew (who would have died of radiation
| sickness weeks from Earth, live on TV). The Viking
| landers got to Mars and the Voyager probes launched atop
| Titan III-C anyway: the only real need for Saturn V was
| for crewed missions in the absence of something
| cheaper/better/more reusable. (Alas, the Shuttle turned
| out to be a white elephant with a couple of lethal design
| flaws.)
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Alternatively, we had a near-miss: given there was a
| solar maximum around 1972
|
| I think that by the time they actually built flyable
| hardware for that mission, they'd learn to properly
| shield the crew. They could at least hide behind the
| propellant tanks.
|
| Except that the 3rd stage would be empty by then :-(
|
| BTW, it'd be a cool movie, even if a bit Apollo 13-like.
|
| > Alas, the Shuttle turned out to be a white elephant
| with a couple of lethal design flaws
|
| Indeed. The Shuttle shouldn't even called "reusable", but
| merely "fixable" or "rebuildable", if you got lucky.
|
| In any case, I'd have loved more Skylab workshop launches
| and the AAP permanent lunar presence. The modules were
| huge compared to ISS ones. It was a tragic loss to have
| Skylab fall to Earth because they didn't have the money
| to build something to boost it up a little.
| cstross wrote:
| The Skylab reboost mission _was_ originally targeted for
| 1981, IIRC; but it was going to fly as a Shuttle payload,
| and in the meantime, Skylab de-orbited a couple of years
| early (just as the Shuttle flew a couple of years later
| than planned) due to a poorly-understood phenomenon. (The
| ionosphere extends upwards when it gets hot due to a
| solar maximum /solar flares, which increased the drag on
| Skylab, which caused it to drop into a lower orbit ...
| positive feedback ensued).
|
| Skylab wasn't great, _but_ if it hadn 't re-entered
| prematurely it could have been fixed up (new solar panels
| FTW!) and refurbed internally (methane scrubbers!) and
| used as a learning platform for a new space station,
| rather than the USA going nearly two decades without one.
| codeulike wrote:
| _I am still utterly baffled by the way people are impressed
| by a reusable launch vehicle. This stuff is old hat. This
| person worked at NASA! They probably worked on systems that
| were launched on Shuttles!_
|
| I'm a bit baffled as to how you dont see how Falcon 9 and
| Starship are different to the shuttle. Much more re-usable,
| must faster turnaround. And hence much cheaper cost per kg to
| orbit. Granted that Starship might turn out to not work (Musk
| likes to gamble, thats what innovation _is_) but even Falcon
| 9 is reusable in a much more comprehensive way than the SLS
| ever was.
| macintux wrote:
| (For anyone else confused like me: codeulike is replying to
| a different, dead comment by the same person.)
| nsonha wrote:
| > old hat
|
| to be fair to them the _idea_ is not new and shuttles could
| not have worked the way Space X rockets do, for that it
| requires sensors and computing power not available at the
| time.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Hasn't "too much capacity" existed since the moon missions? It
| was too expensive , but most other missions did not need those
| huge rockets. It wasn't utilized either. Remains to be seen if
| spaceX's capacity will be utilized.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It was huge capacity, but at a higher cost, so you try to get
| your payload to fit on the cheapest rocket you can.
|
| Starship turns everything upside down and, suddenly, makes
| the cheapest rocket a Saturn-V class heavy booster. With it,
| it's cheaper to add a huge kick stage to your Neptune probe
| to make it get there faster, put more solar panels so you
| don't need to deal with compliance around an RTG, or just use
| steel for structural elements (because why not?), and so on.
| pixl97 wrote:
| The question is price. If capacity is cheap, then you don't
| need to fill it with a billion dollar sat to justify the
| launch. We can start sending cheaper things to space, such as
| product/medical design labs to fill the cargo bay.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| >Starship, if it works, will give us so much launch capacity
| that we'll be unable to fully utilize a handful of vehicles for
| more than a decade
|
| humans are really good at finding ways to use excess anything.
| Look at the explosion of software use cases thanks to improved
| hardware
| rbanffy wrote:
| The production chains for aerospace are very long. It takes
| time to absorb extra capacity even if no other step in the
| chain were not constrained. We'd need more exoric alloys (or
| just use steel, weight be damned, as SpaceX is doing) and
| reinvent a lot of industries to be able to match that
| capacity to put stuff in orbit.
|
| We'd also need to invent new uses for sattelites, things we
| don't do now because launching is too expensive. Their
| suborbital passenger transportation is one such new demand
| generators, but only if they can solve launching and landing
| near population centers.
| cnlevy wrote:
| > if they can solve launching and landing near population
| centers
|
| They are planning a solution for that: offshore launch
| platforms [0] 30 km at sea, directly accessible by high-
| speed train, a la
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_International_Airport
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship_offshore_
| platf...
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Production chains would get a whole darn lot shorter if
| they didn't have to machine everything to spider thinness
| from exotic metals and build it to fold inside a thimble.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Launch capacity as a whole was never really a big bottleneck
| and is also driven by demand and supply. But even cutting down
| cost didn't really meaningfully increase demand, as Falcon
| showed.
|
| SpaceX is already in the spot they cannot utilize Falcon
| capacity - if you look at their earlier plans, they were
| expecting to lunch them more than once per week long time ago.
| Instead, even with a bulk of their launches being internal
| ones, they are still way below that goal.
|
| Assuming Starship can deliver on their design goals, we'll see
| if another price cut will actually drive up the demand.
| stetrain wrote:
| It's also likely that lowering launch cost does (and already
| has) increased demand. But the timescales are large. It took
| SpaceX less time to make a reusable rocket than it will take
| the industry to pivot to more and cheaper launches.
|
| But it is starting to have an affect already. There are
| multiple companies talking about launching and maintaining
| satellite "constellations", not just Starlink. Launching and
| maintaining that kind of network is difficult if you can only
| launch once a year and it costs what launches cost 10 years
| ago.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Starlink is the only thing that will keep SpaceX from
| imploding while they wait for people to understand their
| value.
|
| Needing, and bankrolling, several hundred launches over
| several years will gradually get people used to the idea of
| bulk freight to orbit, and some will find other plausible
| uses for the capability, and shepherd the idea through
| fundraising channels. It will take time.
| baq wrote:
| Starlink is much bigger than that. It isn't life support.
| It's the ultimate cash cow, profits from which are in at
| least some part expected to fund some part of a Mars
| mission. This is why SpaceX isn't public - your wall
| street shareholders would suffocate Musk with lawsuits
| before he would be able to finish saying 'Martian
| mission'.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I am curious how long it will take the currently low
| volume and high margin satellite production industry to
| re-align to the new paradigm which requires higher
| volumes and lower margins.
|
| I could see the incumbents being very reticent to do so.
| wumpus wrote:
| Any company that wishes to compete with Starlink needs to
| be careful of costs. One reason OneWeb ran out of money
| is that they ended up spending 2X/satellite than their
| plan, in their fancy high volume factory.
| cptaj wrote:
| The other issue is that a really aggressive price cut hasn't
| happened yet because SpaceX doesn't have any competitors that
| can cut prices to match.
|
| Why cut further when you're already the cheapest?
| rbanffy wrote:
| Because they need demand to pay for the launches.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| But demand isn't hyperelastic, is it? If anything, a
| quick reduction in price would reduce total revenue (and
| total profit even more) as demand wouldn't immediately
| keep up. It takes time for mass demand to respond.
| ksdale wrote:
| I think it's hard to say there isn't demand since it was so
| ridiculously expensive prior to SpaceX. Getting things into
| orbit at this price point is quite a new thing. In a recent
| post on this blog, he talked about how before SpaceX, even
| basic things headed into orbit had to be redesigned entirely
| to satisfy grueling mass requirements. I wouldn't be
| surprised if it takes a few more years for people to realize
| that they're not subject to those restrictions anymore and to
| fully understand the import of that. (Indeed, the prior post
| I mentioned is called "Starship is Still Not Understood.)
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| I think you argument hinges on the fact that demand shows up
| immediately after the price is cut. That would require there
| is a backlog of payloads which are just waiting for the price
| to be low enough. That is obviously not true, I believe lower
| prices are dramatically accelerating the demand as evidenced
| by space sector investment (1), but the demand curve is
| lagging because building space vehicles is hard.
|
| (1) I could not find a good chart showing the historic Space
| Sector investment, but there were multiple articles talking
| about record amount of the investment:
| https://spacenews.com/space-industry-in-midst-of-
| transformat...
| spfzero wrote:
| >>building space vehicles is hard
|
| ...mostly because reliability must be so high and launching
| mass costs so much. If you can launch mass cheaply, and
| accept lower reliability, space vehicles should be much
| easier to build.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > That would require there is a backlog of payloads which
| are just waiting for the price to be low enough.
|
| Not only that, but they'd need to integrate with Starship
| and, right now, we aren't even sure which way the payload
| needs to go once the target orbit is achieved (it looks
| like it's sideways, while every other launcher releases the
| payload forward).
| dylan604 wrote:
| But isn't it SpaceX plan for getting to Mars to require
| something like 35 Starship sized lifts to get all of the
| supplies needed for one trip to Mars? Sounds like builtin
| needs for launch right there. Wasn't this "I can't get to
| space on my own so I'll sue everyone that can" Bezo's main
| critique in one of their attempts to make fun of SpaceX?
| rbanffy wrote:
| But who'll be paying for that trip? Does NASA have enough
| astronauts to crew a Mars base in addition to a Moon base?
| What private companies would want to do with Mars that
| can't be done on Earth? I'm all in for astronaut selection
| to be less rigorous (since I wasn't flying supersonic jets
| and earning a PhD when I was 18 - seriously, the bar is
| waaaaay too high) and would be delighted to be able to work
| that remotely, but I'd expect to be paid to go and have a
| return ticket already paid for.
| devit wrote:
| As weird as it may seem, it looks like that there may be
| people willing to pay positive sums of money to go to
| Mars even without a return ticket.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >What private companies would want to do with Mars
|
| Um, SpaceX. Private. Volunteers for the jobs are
| plentiful. They'll have a harder time culling the list
| than filling it.
| ncmncm wrote:
| After culling the people you would absolutely not ever
| want to be stuck in a metal can with even for six months,
| I wonder how many will be left.
| joconde wrote:
| How does it become profitable though? Maybe Musk can fund
| it as a very expensive pet project, but if the Mars base
| doesn't produce anything that can't be gotten more
| cheaply closer to Earth, the money must run out at some
| point.
| XorNot wrote:
| Depending on cost, Starship could fund itself purely off
| space tourism. Numbers as low as $100 per kg to LEO are
| flying about.
|
| If SpaceX hit something like that, we enter a whole
| different paradigm because a trip in relative comfort to
| orbit becomes comparable to middle class holiday prices.
|
| If you can send an average person to orbit for the price
| of a trip to Disneyland, your launch demand functionally
| becomes infinite. This would become _the_ thing to do for
| so many people.
|
| It's sort of like CPU manufacturing: making a CPU is a
| peak technology, multi billion dollar undertaking - but
| because we can sell the things for like $250, _everyone_
| on the planet now has one.
|
| Space access may go the same way if SpaceX get anywhere
| near those lower numbers. Blue Origin did one interesting
| thing recently, and that was launching William Shatner
| suborbital - if you can send a 90 year old, you can send
| anyone.
|
| Building the official hotel would become the next obvious
| thing, complete with spin gravity. It would be a while
| new dimension.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I have little doubt Starship itself will be profitable.
| I'm much less certain about Mars.
|
| Bring on the space hotels though! For the right price,
| that's absolutely a trip I would pay to make.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| This is the biggest issue with Musk's Mars colonization
| plans right now. He seems to be taking the approach of
| "build it and they will come" with his efforts to bring
| down the cost of getting payload to orbit (and thus the
| cost of interplanetary transportation), however even if
| he succeeds at that goal I don't really see how that's
| going to result in a self-sustaining city on Mars.
|
| We've had the technology to colonize Antarctica pretty
| cheaply for quite some time now. I don't see any self
| sustaining cities there; just small research bases. Why
| should Mars be different?
|
| Musk talks frequently about a self-sustaining Martian
| city becoming a "backup for humanity" in the case of some
| global extinction-level event (Asteroid impact, nuclear
| war, etc), which is all well and good. But who's going to
| pay for it? In order for Mars colonization to actually
| happen, it needs to be not only affordable, but
| profitable!
| dylan604 wrote:
| Because Antartica isn't really a stepping stone to
| anywhere. Mars could be a way station for
| Europa/Io/similar moons.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've been doing a compare&contrast to SpaceX colonies on
| Mars vs 15th century colonies to the new world.
|
| Travel time to "home" seems close enough in terms of
| months long voyages. Haven't decided which journey is the
| more treacherous option.
|
| The 15th century colonists came to a place that was
| resource rich in whatever a colony could need: food,
| water, building material, etc. Martian colonists will not
| have that luxury.
|
| New world colonists faced an indigenous poplulation that
| Martian colonists won't have. Probably a good thing, as
| the examples provided by the new world colonists on how
| to interact with indeginous people does not bode well (at
| least for those who continued to follow).
|
| Communication time back to home is actually in the
| Martian colonist's favor. As is the fact the area will
| have been surveyed quite exetensively in advance of
| arrival, so preparations can be better made with that
| knowledge. Full detailed maps will be available as well.
| This will help finding more barren wasteland even easier
| than just wandering around looking for barren wasetland.
| Effeciency will be key with the constrained resources.
| simiones wrote:
| > The 15th century colonists came to a place that was
| resource rich in whatever a colony could need: food,
| water, building material, etc. Martian colonists will not
| have that luxury.
|
| But this is the key point: there were plenty of desirable
| things in the Americas. There is absolutely nothing of
| any value whatsoever on Mars that can't be found much,
| much more easily on Earth.
| admissionsguy wrote:
| The adventure and freedom to shape a new society
| (relatively) free from historical constraints might be
| valuable in itself for some people. I might be
| interested, but the quality of life and size of closed
| system habitats would need to improve by a large factor
| compared to what exists currently.
|
| Also, alien artifacts.
| majou wrote:
| Indigenous North Americans were very helpful in a lot of
| circumstances for the colonists.
| dylan604 wrote:
| (at least for those who followed).
|
| Once the powers that be regarding the colonists realized
| ownership issues were going to be had with the indigenous
| population, those relationships didn't go so well though.
| that's what I meant by those who followed. "Hi, here's a
| lovely friendship blanket" doesn't speak well for
| relationships with those indigenous people.
| bawolff wrote:
| Despite north america being much more hospitable, plenty
| of people died in north american colonies. Will modern
| humans be willing to pay that price?
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Is this a rhetorical question? Of course millions would
| gladly die as space colonizers.
| njarboe wrote:
| Many will if the rest let them.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| A $300 billion trust fund with 5% inflation-adjusted
| returns gives you $15 billion per year indefinitely. At
| $1.5 million per launch, that's 10,000 Starship launches
| per year just out of the trust fund. About 1 Megaton
| IMLEO indefinitely. Anything else, like servicing a
| permanent NASA and international base on Mars or the Moon
| or Starlink or whathaveyou would be on top of that.
| mr_toad wrote:
| In theory Mars can put stuff in orbit for a much lower
| cost than Earth can. The delta v is so much lower that
| you could supply Earth orbit from Mars with less fuel
| than launching from Earth.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Great, here's some more Martian rocks for space. We don't
| have a lot of variety here on Mars, but what we do have,
| we've got plenty of it. We got some red rocks, some
| slightly less red rocks, we got some red dust, we got
| some red sand. Is that what we really want to launch into
| orbit?
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Did you know we farm a lot of rocks in Earth too?
| dylan604 wrote:
| But according to GP, those rocks are really expensive to
| get off the ground, so, enjoy these nice Martian rocks
| instead. They're the generics to your name brand.
| wumpus wrote:
| Falcon 9 launched every 9 days for the first half of this
| year.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It should be able to launch a lot more than that. Maybe the
| expendable second stage is the limiting factor here.
| wumpus wrote:
| It seems unlikely that there were more payloads sitting
| around waiting to launch. If there were, then second
| stages (always expended), fairings (imperfectly reused),
| and weather/pad/ship operations are all possible limiting
| factors.
| mlindner wrote:
| > Launch capacity as a whole was never really a big
| bottleneck and is also driven by demand and supply. But even
| cutting down cost didn't really meaningfully increase demand,
| as Falcon showed.
|
| I disagree. The excess payload and cheapness of Falcon 9
| created a huge market for smallsats and microsats as
| secondary payloads. If you look at the _number_ (not mass) of
| operational payloads since Falcon 9 has come online, the
| numbers have been shooting up dramatically (and that is
| excluding Starlink). There's been a 5-fold increase in the
| number of smaller satellites being launched (excluding
| Starlink) since the last decade.
|
| See (pdf): https://brycetech.com/reports/report-
| documents/Bryce_Smallsa...
| adfgergaehg wrote:
| I am still utterly baffled by the way people are impressed by a
| reusable launch vehicle. This stuff is old hat. This person
| worked at NASA! They probably worked on systems that were
| _launched on Shuttles_!
|
| Can anyone explain this to me? I realize that the Shuttle was not
| beloved, but how could someone write thousands of words on
| reusable launch vehicles and somehow forget that the U.S. has
| been operating them _since the '80s?_
| idlewords wrote:
| Let's maybe see the magic rocket fly first, at the promised cost
| to orbit. Musk enjoys making promises about doing stuff at huge
| scale and fractional cost.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The entire article seems to hinge on taking all of Starship's
| promises for granted (not just the ridiculously low cost to
| orbit, but also in-space refueling and other sci-fi ideas!). I
| think skepticism on this very premise is more than warranted,
| as you're also saying. The ampunt of people who just want to
| believe is almost astonishing.
| sq_ wrote:
| I don't disagree that skepticism may be warranted, but I
| think that people are also willing to believe in SpaceX's
| ability to solve hard problems, given their track record.
|
| As far as I can tell and have heard other people much smarter
| than me say, there's no real physics-level barrier to any of
| Starship's goals. There's plenty of tough, tough engineering
| problems to solve, but it doesn't require unobtanium in order
| to work.
|
| SpaceX has already pulled off landing an orbital-class first
| stage (not to discount the prior work in the form of DC-X and
| others, but they weren't orbital), and they've gotten to the
| point where they can refly those stages many times in
| relatively quick succession. Seems reasonable to believe that
| they can figure out Starship, even if it may not be in the
| exact form or on the exact timescale that they want.
| idlewords wrote:
| It's important to distinguish engineering promises (where
| SpaceX has a great track record) and economic promises,
| where Musk just applies the same algorithm over and over
| (promise 10x performance for 1/100 the cost). I don't doubt
| SpaceX's ability to build an amazing rocket, but I wish
| there were more realism about the claimed costs of mass to
| orbit. See hyperloop, cheap tunnels, electric cars,
| batteries, you name it.
| slownews45 wrote:
| The good news is we have some direct comparisons.
|
| NASA has invested more than SpaceX in the Space Launch
| System (think $20B plus in spending). This will be a
| rocket that is disposable, every launch it lands in the
| ocean, all work lost. Estimated per launch costs and
| sustaining costs for all the facilities involved run
| about $2B-$3B - NASA isn't saying actually.
|
| Anways, once things are head to head we will get to see
| if Musks promise of cheaper access to space vs the rocket
| with tons more money invested pans out.
|
| Facility List for SLS by the way to give you just a sense
| of the cost base Musk is competing against.
|
| Booster Fabrication Facility (BFF) - 45-acre site at KSC
| used to refurbish, manufacture, and assemble the aft
| skirt assembly and forward assembly for the SLS boosters.
| Includes the Multi-Purpose Logistic Facility used to
| receive, inspect and store shipped flight hardware.
|
| Vertical Assembly Building (VAB) - Large (456 ft H max)
| vertical rocket integration facility. Floor load capacity
| of 12 million lbs, cranes located throughout building.
| Handling and storage of hazardous/ nonhazardous
| commodities.
|
| Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHSF) - The Payload
| Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHSF) was built in 1986. It
| is a Level 4, class 100,000 clean room that can be used
| as a Payload Processing Facility (PPF) and/or a Hazardous
| Processing Facility (HPF).
|
| Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) - 832 acre production
| complex located in New Orleans. MAF is one of the largest
| manufacturing plants in the world with 43 environmentally
| controlled acres (174,000 m2) under one roof. Includes
| two Vertical Assembly Buildings. Current site of the
| majority of core stage manufacturing and assembly and
| planned location for EUS manufacture and assembly.
|
| Systems Integration Lab (SIL) - The Systems Integration
| Lab (SIL) supports end-to-end integrated avionics and
| software integration, check-out, verification, and
| validation. It demonstrates real-time flight control of a
| launch vehicle, such as SLS, during ascent. This lab at
| NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,
| Alabama, not only includes the flight computers and
| avionics identical to the core stage avionics but also
| includes emulators for the rocket's boosters and engines,
| the Launch Control Center and Orion.
|
| Systems Integrated Test Facility (SITF) - The Software
| Integration and Test Facility (SITF) at MSFC on Redstone
| Arsenal integrates and tests software specifically for
| the SLS Core/Upper Stage avionics system.
|
| Software Development Facility (SDF) - This Capability
| Maturity Model (CMM) Level 3 certified facility at MSFC
| performs a complete range of flight software activities
| from requirements development and analysis, software
| processes and planning, design and development, to
| systems integration and development testing. Products
| developed at the SDF are installed and tested at MSFC's
| SITF.
|
| Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) - At MSFC on
| Redstone Arsenal, the HOSC is capable of distributing
| secure mission voice, video and data anywhere in the
| world. Includes Engineering Support
|
| SLS Engineering Support Center (SESC) - Engineering
| Support Center (SESC). Certification runs for
| contingencies are performed by engineers responsible for
| the major elements of the SLS. Located in the HOSC, the
| SESC leverages remote architecture built for the ISS
| Payload Operations Center to allow engineers to focus on
| the engines, boosters, and stages of the SLS during
| testing and launch.
|
| Advanced Manufacturing and Weld Facility - Located in
| MSFC's Building 4755 on Redstone Arsenal, this friction
| stir welding facility uses advanced robotic tooling to
| weld barrel or dome segments up to 33 feet in diameter.
|
| MSFC Flowrate and Structural Test Stands -Located at MSFC
| on Redstone Arsenal, designed to push, pull and apply
| pressure loads to SLS cryogenic tanks. Cutting-edge
| technology is also adaptable for future large-scale
| rockets and systems. Testing and data can be safely
| monitored from a control room via fiber optic cables.
|
| Stennis Space Center - Multiple propulsion testing
| facilities for components, engines and stages located
| near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Facilities include the
| B-2 test stand used for the SLS core stage green run.
| Formerly used for Saturn V and Space Shuttle testing,
| this stand is equipped with a 195-ton (US), main derrick,
| lifting crane, with a 20-ton jib crane and is capable of
| static-firing test articles up to 33 ft in diameter.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The SpaceX business team is worlds above the business
| team (if there even is a business team) for any of Musk's
| random ideas. He _may_ be making up all of the estimates
| himself, but unlike the other examples he might not be.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| The previous article in the series (linked at the top of the
| article) discusses this. The author discusses the track
| record and suggests that while the system is not proven yet,
| there is a good chance it will succeed.
|
| SpaceX has a good track record of success with their rockets
| and with this project in particular. They seem to have the
| skills and backing to make it work, and they aren't
| discouraged by setbacks. Of course it is not guaranteed to
| succeed, but it seemed clear to me that the point of this
| article was to explore what could be done with starship if it
| does succeed.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| The thing is though, Starship is so radical that even if it
| only delivers on some of its promises (I think it will fly in
| one form or another), it's going to be a game changer.
|
| So for example if it's not as cheap as expected, it's still
| huge that it can deliver volumes larger than the interior of
| the ISS to orbit in a single launch -- that alone means much
| less of a need to resort to exotic materials and expensive
| engineering to cut down on weight and volume on projects like
| the James Webb Space Telescope. It could also have huge
| implications for which types of orbital stations it's
| practical to build.
| abecedarius wrote:
| I don't follow at all closely, but my impression of SpaceX's
| track record vs. Musk promises is that they're usually late
| but usually get there in the end, in functional terms if not
| in exact approach. Is that wrong?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| My take is, they tackle problems whose difficulty is
| increasing exponentially. Making a rocket that flies, from
| scratch, is X% harder than building one that already exist.
| Making it land again, X%. Reusing it, X%. I'm also skipping
| intermediate points here - like about the engines have a
| particular closed-loop design that is more fuel efficient.
|
| Starship seems to, again, require a few of these X%
| improvements. And the thing about exponential growth, as
| Covid kindly reminded us, is that eventually it is
| overwhelming.
|
| So I don't think you can simply extrapolate from "they have
| a good track record of solving hard problems", because the
| problems they tackle are getting harder and harder.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I like the idea of a ringed station made of starship shells. But
| I wonder if instead of making hollow starships and then having to
| deal with all the engines and fuel tanks when converting to a
| ring segment, perhaps it would be possible to make a tubular
| section which fits over the outside of starship like a sleeve? I
| suppose it would need cutouts for the flaps since that starship
| would ideally be reusable, and it would need to be two halves
| since there is no way to slide it off if there are flaps there.
| But IDK maybe it could work!
| reportedcalls1 wrote:
| Cold Calling: https://reportedcalls.net/
| _joel wrote:
| The post mentions an expendable version at 15m d but that can't
| be done on either the current iteration (9m) or v2.0 (12m). The
| original plan was for 15m but that would require around 100
| raptors to get it off the ground!
| Foxcoditrad54 wrote:
| Can you elaborate on why it can't be done? Edit: I mean 15m
| fairing on a 9m starship.
| zardo wrote:
| Could you elaborate on what that would be? You're thinking of
| a Starship with a disposable fairing on top of it?
| cryptonector wrote:
| TFA elaborates:
|
| > For a relatively trivial fraction of the overall
| telescope budget, non-recurring engineering costs could
| weld together an expendable Starship variant (no TPS, no
| flaps, no landing legs) with a 15 meter diameter payload
| fairing. Almost overnight, endless gnashing of teeth about
| the relative mirror diameters of Luvoir or Habex, or the
| relative difficulty of performing coronography with a
| segmented, non circular mirror, go away.
| _joel wrote:
| As I've noted in other replies, you'd need an entire new
| stage0 to accomodate this. Even larger than the 2.0
| planned. It'd be have to be made especially for this.
| ncmncm wrote:
| I don't know what you mean. Are you saying there is not
| enough room for that next to the stacking tower?
|
| I don't think people are talking about changing Super
| Heavy.
| cryptonector wrote:
| You wrote:
|
| > The post mentions an expendable version at 15m d but
| that can't be done on either the current iteration (9m)
| or v2.0 (12m). The original plan was for 15m but that
| would require around 100 raptors to get it off the
| ground!
|
| However, that's not obviously true. This is just a
| _fairing_. The fairing can be made wider w /o adding
| engines or making the booster (or the bottom of starship)
| wider.
|
| Then you mentioned the stage zero issues, but if an
| expendable starship with a wider fairing doesn't need to
| be reused then there's plenty of space right now between
| starship's nose and the launch tower for a wider fairing,
| and a crane can be used to stack it instead of the
| chopsticks if the wider fairing makes using the
| chopsticks impossible. Even if modifications to stage 0
| are needed -or a new one altogether-, if SpaceX ends up
| building more stage zeros elsewhere (like, say, at Cape
| Canaveral), they'll have a chance to accommodate larger
| fairings then.
| _joel wrote:
| Ok, I guess only time we'll have to wait and see then, I
| just don't see it being any time soon.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Certainly. First things first. They have a year's worth
| of testing ahead of them just to make 100t to LEO
| reusable launch vehicle a thing. Once they've done that
| they'll be able to build a new stage zero, work on larger
| and smaller launch vehicles (smaller because why let
| others take the by then obsolete Falcon 9's business?)
| (larger only for large telescopes and such).
| _joel wrote:
| You'd need to build an entirely new stage0 system. How would
| a 15m fairing fit onto the current orbital launch pad?
|
| Not saying it can't be done, just that it's not as simple as
| just whacking a larger fairing on, there are lots of
| considerarations to deal with. Perhaps it's worth it for 15m,
| but then again even a 9m would be a vast improvement from
| 2.4m
| [deleted]
| cryptonector wrote:
| Did you read the same post I did? TFA talks about a "15 meter
| diameter payload fairing". I don't see why Starship couldn't do
| that. Full quote:
|
| > For a relatively trivial fraction of the overall telescope
| budget, non-recurring engineering costs could weld together an
| expendable Starship variant (no TPS, no flaps, no landing legs)
| with a 15 meter diameter payload fairing. Almost overnight,
| endless gnashing of teeth about the relative mirror diameters
| of Luvoir or Habex, or the relative difficulty of performing
| coronography with a segmented, non circular mirror, go away.
| _joel wrote:
| I've never heard it mentioned by anyone working at SpaceX or
| any commentators (bar this person, it seems).
|
| You'd have to build an entire new stage0 system, for
| starters, even if you've built a new one for starship 2.0 as
| it wouldn't accomodate the larger fairing size.
| ncmncm wrote:
| We should expect to see a bunch of alternative configurations
| for Starship. A big fairing is just one possibility.
|
| On Falcon, and in the future with conventional Starship,
| Starlink launches are volume-limited, not mass-limited. Thus, a
| Starship with more interior space would allow them to send up
| many more satellites per launch.
|
| When they get their production line up, we might see them
| launch Starlink in disposable second stages, dispensing with
| heat shielding and landing engines, and with substantially
| smaller fuel tanks, leaving room for more Starlink cargo. They
| could park the carriers in orbit, and gather up the Raptor
| engines to bring home once enough have piled up there; and
| maybe turn the empty hulls into a fuel depot.
|
| Launching, say, 150 satellites at a time, that's more than a
| hundred launches to fill out the constellation. It should not
| be hard to find a use for some fraction of those hulls given
| they have already been boosted to orbit.
| _joel wrote:
| They'd need a stage0 systems built specifically to support a
| 15m large fairing. I'm not saying this will never happen, I
| just don't think it will be on the cards for a long time, if
| at all. Basing things around 9m/12m may be a better idea if
| they want to get something in the sky sooner, rather than
| later.
| bmcahren wrote:
| This writing reminds me of when popular science was good.
| Game_Ender wrote:
| It really does. Brings me back to when I was kid and would pour
| over every issue and to learn about what the FUTURE would
| bring. Very impressive thoughts about the what the power of
| cheap scale can do: "Quantity has a quality all of its ow "
| really hits home.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| The aside section of what Starlink can do, sounds to me like the
| kind of thing that gives militaries sleepless nights.
| jacknews wrote:
| Do they also have a division researching the black orchid,
| Orchidae Nigra?
| gammarator wrote:
| > I know dozens of astronomers who would donate half their meager
| salaries in perpetuity so they didn't have to endure That Guy
| dragging Jill Tarter and insisting that it was an alien artifact,
| ever again.
|
| This is accurate.
| dvh1990 wrote:
| This sounds mind-blowing, except that current public sentiment
| seems strongly against space exploration and that may catch up
| with budgets.
|
| Even though SpaceX does the launches, it is government agencies
| that deal with launching missions, and government budgets are
| influenced by public opinion.
| Causality1 wrote:
| It's hard to blame the public for feeling that way when space
| projects run two decades behind schedule and two thousand
| percent over budget.
| rozab wrote:
| It seems to me that Bezos and Branson have done irreparable
| _damage_ to public perceptions of space exploration. Flying up
| billionaires does not inspire people.
| mdorazio wrote:
| I'm not sure why you think current public opinion is opposed to
| space exploration? It's definitely opposed to space tourism for
| the rich, but that's a separate thing.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| >>> public opinion is opposed to space exploration
|
| It's always been true ;)
|
| If you put it to a vote, majority of americans will allocate
| public funds towards terrestrial concerns over a new space
| lab. Even though provable, tech transfer in aerospace
| innovation proves most abundant. In today's dollars, what was
| nasa's highest yearly budget: maybe $30B? Let's see what 5%
| of US GDP devoted to Space R&D and Peaceful Expansion by mid
| century looks like!
| bnralt wrote:
| > Even though provable, tech transfer in aerospace
| innovation proves most abundant.
|
| When someone (usually NASA or NASA fanboys) does a Gish
| gallop and drops of huge list of things supposedly created
| by NASA, it's worth picking a couple to take a deep dive
| into. When you look at the details, the amount of tech
| transfer is often not anywhere close to the amount claimed.
|
| Still, there is good science and technology that comes out
| of NASA. But it's likely we'd have a lot better results if
| a large chunk of the NASA budget wasn't spent throwing
| people up into space for no reason.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| >>> huge list of things supposedly created by NASA
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies
|
| Bowflex ;)
| runarberg wrote:
| I honestly don't understand why public opinion matters so
| much for space exploration while the military budget is not
| held to the same standard.
|
| Honestly though several really nice space exploration
| projects have been well founded by several governments
| (including India, China, Europe and North America). Some
| really silly projects have also been privately funded (e.g.
| space tourism for the rich). People are rightly questioning
| how people get so insanely rich that they can afford this.
| They ask if they are paying their fair share of taxes, if
| they pay their workers fairly, and which contracts the
| government have offered them.
|
| If you separate those two classes of space projects I bet
| you would find way more support for the former (or at least
| some indifference) while you would find that people
| vehemently oppose the latter.
| mdorazio wrote:
| I don't really think that's the case - it's more nuanced.
| Most Americans are pro space exploration [1], but against
| manned missions and colonization efforts [2]. I have a
| strong feeling most people are probably also against
| boondoggle projects like SLS and seemingly-constant massive
| cost overruns on things like JWST.
|
| This makes sense if you think about it - flying humans
| around the solar system just doesn't make much sense until
| we have actual orbital industry at some point in the future
| to bring the costs down to a reasonable level. And I
| personally have to agree with the camp opposed to Mars
| colonization, but for different reasons than most. Mars is
| kind of a crappy place to try and live by most metrics. It
| seems like colonization efforts would be better allocated
| to large asteroids or water-rich moons.
|
| [1]
| https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2018/06/06/majority-
| of-a...
|
| [2] https://morningconsult.com/2021/02/25/space-force-
| travel-exp...
| virgilp wrote:
| If you put it to a vote, majority of Americans will
| allocate public funds towards stimulus cheques and not the
| military.... what majority of Americans would allocate
| funds towards is not necessarily the thing that gets done.
| criddell wrote:
| If you put it to a vote and said we can continue to fund
| NASA or your taxes can be lowered by $75 / year, NASA would
| be done.
| mrfusion wrote:
| You could probably say that about most government
| programs though.
| criddell wrote:
| Yep.
| dvh1990 wrote:
| There's a strong anti Mars settlement sentiment going on, not
| just anti "space tourism". The idea, which I don't really
| subscribe to in this context, that we should utilize whatever
| resources we assign to space towards fighting climate change
| and fixing problems here on Earth.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I think mars settlement is an eventuality, someone will be
| there. I also think that settlement of mars has a huge
| first mover advantage, maybe unlike anything else in human
| history. It may even come before that with the first
| permanent lunar base and launch platform.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I actually doubt that. Unless they also ship massive
| number of very specialized and power weapon systems.
|
| Planets are big, like absolutely massive. You can easily
| catch up, specially if you get intel on inevitable
| failures of first movers.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| There were always people that opposed space exploration.
| They've been wrong every time.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Having been wrong changes few people's minds. Even about
| whether they were wrong.
| ruph123 wrote:
| It is one thing to be against a Mars settlement and another
| to be against space exploration.
|
| E.g. it would serve the latter better if we would explore
| Venus, Europa, Titan, etc. than trying to live underground
| on a dead poisonous planet.
| bdamm wrote:
| Trying to live underground on a dead planet might just
| prove that we need Earth. Lots of people say space
| tourism is silly and then go gas up their car while
| complaining that Teslas are how the coastal elites will
| take their retirement.
| runarberg wrote:
| Just to put it out there: An individual car owner is
| insignificant when talking about climate change. This is
| regardless of how the car is powered. A Tesla owner that
| owns stock in Shell and votes conservative is much more
| problematic then a non-voting F-150 owner that works
| paycheck to paycheck. However both of them are
| insignificant next to the Shell board of directors or the
| US government who bear the real responsibility here in
| prolonging climate inaction.
|
| This is all just to say. A non-voting F-150 owner who
| talks shit about rich people going to space is actually
| not doing any damage while filling up his truck, next to
| that rich conservative voter that emits more greenhouse
| gas than the F-150 ever can ever hope in a singe space
| visit for his own amusement.
| maccolgan wrote:
| >Tesla owner that owns stock in Shell and votes
| conservative is much more problematic then a non-voting
| F-150 owner that works paycheck to paycheck.
|
| >rich conservative voter that emits more greenhouse gas
| than the F-150 ever can ever hope
|
| Wow
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| To add on, I think there's a lot of value to be had in
| the various science that can only be done with boots on
| the ground on Mars. The rovers have been great don't get
| me wrong, but a team of scientists with a Starship full
| of equipment can do volumes more research in a couple of
| weeks than a rover can during its entire mission,
| including things that weren't originally planned.
|
| What we learn there can be helpful for understanding the
| history of the solar system as well as planetary dynamics
| (remember that in terms of well-studied planets, we're
| currently at sample size = 1).
| runarberg wrote:
| How fast do we actually need to learn about Mars? How far
| are we willing to go, how much are we willing to spend
| just to speed things up there?
|
| We don't live in the 1950s or the 1890s any more. We are
| not willing to sacrifice the lives of our explorers like
| we did when we went to the moon or Antarctica in the
| 1960s and 1900s respectively. We are not engaging in
| juvenile races to "get there first" which is both
| expensive and dangerous.
|
| The space exploration of today is more collaborative and
| careful then the explorations of the past. So we don't
| risk the lives of our explorers nor the unnecessary
| expenses of getting things done 20 years when we can do
| it in 50 for far less money and with infinity more
| safety.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| It's difficult to answer that question with any level of
| certainty. That said, there's a line of thinking that we
| should do these things while we still can, because
| there's no guarantee that we'll continue to be able to do
| them. I tend to agree with that.
|
| So it's not about trying to race and and get there first,
| but rather making sure that the opportunity doesn't pass
| us by.
|
| As far as cost goes... these sorts of missions are
| expensive relative to the amounts of money most of us
| work with in a regular basis, but compared to the vast
| sums that get put toward far more questionable and
| frivolous uses it's a drop in the bucket. If saving money
| or rerouting funds to more deserving causes is a goal,
| there's several tens of bushels of lower hanging fruit
| elsewhere that should be looked at first -- anything with
| scientific purpose should be trimmed last.
| soperj wrote:
| The 2 Rovers from the last 2000s cost about a billion
| dollars. If we can get someone to moon for $2.9 billion
| (contract that spacex just won), I think that's worth it.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Anyone that has seen Blade Runner and the news should see
| that as a concern.
|
| The rich would spoil Earth and defile it and then move off
| to the ultimate gated community of Mars, leaving us to deal
| with the consequences of their actions.
| pixl97 wrote:
| This has always been a bad idea based of unrealistic
| science fiction.
|
| Mars is the spoiled planet, and will be until some point
| technology is a lot further along. The rich are not going
| to run away to some wonderland. Earth is the garden, and
| nothing else is like it in space.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Just look at decadence in rather inhospitable
| environments on earth... Let's take Dupai or some deserts
| in USA with golf courses. No way whole Earth will get
| worse than that. And basically we already have luxury
| lifes in such places, air conditioned malls, apartments,
| cars. Over use of water to water lawns...
|
| Also, it is not like you couldn't vastly more cheaply and
| easily build Mars bunker on Earth. As we are centuries
| away from planet scale geo-engineering.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Agreed, I think another thing missed by so many is that
| if we can settle mars that same technology can be used
| here on earth to make inhospitable parts of the planet
| usable again should we mess it up badly enough.
| handrous wrote:
| Yep. The list of things that could make Earth a worse
| place to live than Mars is _very_ short. A big enough
| asteroid to liquefy the entire crust would do it, for a
| while. A "mere" dinosaur-killer wouldn't be enough. Nor
| would nuclear war. Most of the rest of the options are
| still sci-fi, like Grey Goo events, or a _very_
| contagious _very_ deadly infectious disease (and that
| would have to have some way of sticking around for a long
| time, for an orbital habitat or sealed earthbound habitat
| not to still be better than Mars, since you could get
| back more easily once it was gone or we had a way to
| fight it).
|
| Otherwise you've gotta start stacking disasters to get
| close, and even then it's pretty difficult. Mars is
| _really_ bad.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Yes I know that. But do THEY know that? I'm not so sure.
| Elon/Bezos seem to think you can hand wave/buy the
| radiation away like they do their problems on earth.
| Maybe with absolutely massive amounts of money they could
| find a way. And we would be the ones footing the bill for
| that.
| maxerickson wrote:
| We don't have the technology to make Mars anything better
| than a miserable hell.
|
| If we did, it would still work better to just use it here
| on some isolated land.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| No no, didn't you read the article? With Starship we
| could launch 12 * 100,000 30m wide light sails and heat
| up Mars!
|
| Such a ridiculous idea puts the rest of the article in a
| very questionable light for me.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It is a fact that we could launch light sails, and even
| heat up Mars a bit. The idea might be silly, but at least
| it is thinking big. Some other big idea will be better,
| including several of those listed _after_ the light-sails
| bit.
|
| The earth-sized radio telescope made out of Starlink
| transceivers is an obvious winner. Total coverage ground
| radar using the transceiver antenna is another.
| Ekaros wrote:
| If such thing could be used to heat up Mars, could it be
| used to cool down Earth?
| whatshisface wrote:
| The technology to make mars psychologically livable may
| simply be having some people grow up there.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The comment I replied to was about people with wealth and
| power "escaping" there.
| handrous wrote:
| I, for one, think permanent Mars settlement is a dumb idea,
| but I look forward to watching someone try it.
| adfgergaehg wrote:
| There's a strong "Mars settlement is impossible" sentiment
| going on, which is different.
|
| I am all for exploring space. I just loathe the fact that
| we have billionaires with no technical training calling the
| shots.
|
| (Well, maybe not "exploring". There isn't much to see! I'm
| very much for _using_ space.)
| [deleted]
| wffurr wrote:
| But doesn't Starship dramatically reduce budget needs for
| exploration? The whole point of the essay series is to try to
| get institutions and researchers thinking about the economics
| of exploration with a steady cadence of reusable Starship
| launches.
| dvh1990 wrote:
| Oh I get the purpose of the article and it got ME excited.
| However, I'm concerned about other voices which may speak out
| against it in the context of my original reply.
|
| It'd be interesting to follow this thread and see if this
| sentiment can be heard here.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I would caution against giving to much credit to social media /
| leftist politicians railing against spending money on space
| when we can use the money on earth. These people have a loud
| platform but I don't think most people agree with them. Similar
| to how so many loud 'woke' people make you think democrats are
| all focused on forcing workspace equality no matter the cost or
| anti cop. Social media and indeed traditional media (both for
| and against) looking for clicks has spotlighted these people
| but their influence is limited amongst the majority. I think
| most people are excited about space and mars and all for it,
| understanding that creating a base on mars or the moon is a
| completely unrelated thing to fixing global warming here on
| earth. I say this as someone that votes democrat.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| TBF most of the places where starship will go have already been
| explored. I think spaceX's plan is more about exploitation
| cnlevy wrote:
| A human in ONE day can explore more than a rover in a year.
| There's no comparing the amount of research which can be done
| by a teleoperated rover to what can be done by a real human
| on-site.
|
| As a comparison, Opportunity rover covered 45.16 km in 15
| years. The Apollo 17 crew covered 35.74 kilometers in 3
| _days_.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| that was 50 years ago, and it was largely a series of
| prestige missions. humans are the problem now, robots can
| do everything better
| cryptonector wrote:
| A human can also mine and bring back valuable stuff.
| Initially rock samples for testing. Eventually minerals
| (asteroid mining comes to mind). Space exploration does not
| pay for itself commercially at this point. Maybe that's one
| more thing Musk can change.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| A rover can do that too. In fact, Perseverance already
| has the ability to collect samples and prepare them for a
| future pick-up mission.
|
| It is just that we are not found of sending people and
| letting them die there, so a human mission implies a
| return mission, and if there is a return mission, of
| course you want to bring back souvenirs.
|
| In fact, a sample return mission can be seen as a step
| towards a manned mission. First you try to bring back a
| pile of rocks, then you consider bringing back humans.
|
| And yes, humans are far more efficient than robots at
| space exploration today, but robots keep improving, and I
| think it will take many years before we put people on
| Mars, so by the time we are ready for a manned Mars
| mission, we will probably have much better robots. Not as
| good as humans, but digging lots of rocks and moving
| faster than a snail will probably be well within their
| abilities.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Will anybody really ever come by to pick up
| Perseverence's samples? That has struck me as really
| implausible. If it could carry the sample containers to
| wherever it fills them, it could carry them to wherever
| it ends up, too, and whatever is supposed to fetch them
| could make a single stop. Sending another lander just to
| sweep up after it seems massively wasteful.
|
| Clue?
| ff317 wrote:
| I get what you're saying. It's ineffective to robotically
| collect them this way (ever), and if humans go collect
| them, they could just collect a lot more while they're
| there, making it all pointless.
|
| Perhaps an answer is that one of the contingencies being
| covered by the Perseverance sample-collecting is against
| future contamination? Maybe the NASA missions have been
| extraordinarily careful about not contaminating Mars with
| earth microbes, but they're worried that future
| commercial crewed missions won't be able to be so
| careful. Then when the humans get there, they'll have
| some unspoiled sample containers to experiment on and
| compare to the post-human samples.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Perseverance will take samples from a variety of
| locations, and cache them in one location for pickup. The
| pickup mission won't need to drive around the surface for
| a year with drilling equipment.
| apeace wrote:
| I don't know anything about this, but I was surprised to read
| about the light sails proposal for heating Mars.
|
| > Mere dozens of such Starship launches would be needed to
| substantially increase net insolation on Mars and begin raising
| the temperature, without the emplacement of any surface
| infrastructure.
|
| Heating sounds like a good step, but aren't the major challenges
| a lack of atmosphere and magnetosphere? Having one without the
| others seems a bit useless to me. What am I missing?
| mrfusion wrote:
| Heat should help add atmosphere to some degree. Solid co2 could
| gasify and some frozen water could enter the atmosphere.
| wongarsu wrote:
| If you can heat the planet up, you can start redirecting comets
| or asteroids rich in water ice and frozen CO2 into it to get a
| thicker atmosphere.
| cnlevy wrote:
| I'm looking for the day where 1000 Starships pull a million
| ton ice asteroid into Mars in order to thicken its
| atmosphere.
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