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Comment by sveit | Hacker News Reader

Starship is a devastatingly powerful space access and logistical transport mechanism that will instantly crush the relevance of every other rocket ever built.

If I am a launch provider other than SpaceX, I'm out of business in probably 3-5 years.

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Countries will keep their own launch systems alive for both national security and national pride reasons. Commercial customers however will flock to SpaceX.

Don't forget that China is launching more rockets into space than the US in 2018, and is close to be the same in 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_in_spaceflight#By_country

SpaceX still has about 10 launches officially scheduled in 2019, but I'd be surprised if they launch half of it. And in total, for SpaceX, this represents less launches than in 2018, not to mention some of these are test launches and others serve their own Satellite venture.

Does this mean that the market is contracting? Is there less money in space launches?

I personnally find this fact more disturbing; SpaceX is a very successful venture, but the US is second in terms of launches anyway (of which SpaceX represents only about 50%) behind China, and I feel like 2019 will be a small year. Their last launch was 84 days ago (!! https://spacexnow.com/stats.php#Turn_Arounds ), and the back order sheet is not gigantic either.

Why does launch count matter?

Should we tell him that Russia has been outpacing us in launches per year for pretty much the entire existence of space travel?

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Number-of-launches-per-y...

I wouldn't worry: SpaceX are talking about lobbing up >30k Starlink satellites.

> Does this mean that the market is contracting? Is there less money in space launches?

The reason SpaceX launched so many last year was that they built a very large backlog of launches, and last year their "steamroller" finally came online and because of reuse they could launch at much higher rate. Early this year, the backlog ran out.

This reminds me of the rock climbing story from yesterday that made the point that just knowing someone else had successfully climbed a route makes it far easier to achieve again. Elon Musk could become the Alex Honnold of space entrepreneurs, blazing the path.

The US government won't allow that to happen. Its a national security risk to have only one launch provider available.

And this is true for many other launch providers; most foreign launch providers in particular. But it does make competing for commercial satellites really hard for those firms. ULA basically gave up on commercial launch.

We'll have national firms emulating Starship within 5-10 years.

You really think that ULA etc is going to be able to catch up to SpaceX in a decade? For the US, I see SpaceX dominating launch just as Boeing dominated passenger jets. Eventually Congress will realize the fiscal futility of hamstringing NASA. The only thing that Boeing etc will be building will be ICBMs/SLBMs.

ULA will have engines from Blue Origin, and both ULA and BO will have second mover advantage in designing their own fully reusable launch systems.

Once SpaceX has got Starship working even only for LEO missions, China will have a clone up and running within two years. ULA might be a bit slower due to overly zealous bureaucracy.

Eventually these launch providers will mean SLS gets cancelled with NASA funding switching more to pure science (eg: building missions to look for life on icy moons, not the rockets to get them there).

Congress will continue to hamstring NASA even as their best and brightest depart for commercial operations with bigger R&D budgets.

China can't even manufacture military grade jet engines. You think that they'll be able to clone Raptor? I haven't looked at BO's engine tech since there's so much vaporware with them, but is it close to Raptor?

They don’t have to clone Raptor, just use an open cycle hydrolox and suffer a weight penalty of extra insulation. That will still give them a reusable LEO launch vehicle with tens of tons payload capacity. Raptor is what it is because SpaceX wants it as part of their Mars project, meaning hydrogen is off the table due to long term storage requirements.

As for the jet engines, is that what you know or what you have been told? What is the provenance of that data? Is there any chance that you are victim to a Chinese disinformation campaign?

The Chinese have been trying to manufacture fighter grade jet engines for over 20 years, with a pretty dismal result. They tried to clone the various Russian engines that have come with the Su-27's they've purchased, but they've had trouble with the metallurgy. Even their latest stealth fighter (J-20) is using an upgraded version of this engine (Saturn AL-31).

And considering BO had previously said they'd have manned missions by 2018, I'm skeptical of anything in their forecast.

Especially given that launches become cheaper - even without SpaceX.

In USA there is obviously BlueOrigin (well, they have to get to orbit; will they in 5 years?), so no too much worries.

They promised New Glenn launches in 2021. They have a history of meeting promised dates.

http://spacenews.com/blue-origin-on-track-for-human-suborbit...

I'm not sure they have quite the history you're implying.

John Cusack in his podcast with Joe Rogan made an interesting point: that BlueOrigin's slow and steady approach might be counterintuitive to space flight. He said that you want to be fast and test out as many crazy ideas - moonshots - as you can, and that having essentially limitless money can actually slow your progress down.

Can I have a link to the podcast? I haven't seen that one and for some reason I can't find it through search.

I'm an idiot. I wrote John Cusack when I wanted to write John Carmack. I don't know how I could even confuse the two names.

Here's the Carmack podcast where he talks about it. Fantastic listen for anyone honestly. Carmack is a fascinating guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udlMSe5-zP8

The government thinks it's a national security risk to have only one launch vehicle available. They seem comfortable with having one launch provider as long as there's two vehicles with different enough heritage.

I would think that pre-existing contracts would keep competitors limping along. Add to that pre-existing relationships + a bit of nepotism, and they might last quite a while.

Proven results will be enough to get the major ones through the next 20 years.

No one is strapping the James Webb or a similar payload on to a rocket with no proven reliability.

At the pace they plan to launch, it won't take long for Starship to have more proven reliability than everything else.

1. It's not always feasible to launch your spacecraft with Starship (e.g. it wouldn't make sense if you are just launching a cubesat).

2. That's a pretty aggressive timeline to have Starship built and flight-proven.

> it wouldn't make sense if you are just launching a cubesat

You’re both thinking through the consequences of complete system reusability and rapid reflight. What costs less, throwing away a complete cube stat launch vehicle, or refuelling Starship?

Imagine you are SpaceX. You are going to be launching a Starship. Given how booked your launch manifest is, would you rather launch a cubesat or a full-sized payload? Which would earn you more money?

I think Elon shares the tech, and wants others to use it. This makes him super special!

He can't do that legally to other countries. And will be stupid to do it with his competitors in the USA. Since there competition is fierce and he is not on good terms with them.

I think you are confusing Elon's pledge to "opensource" tesla patents, in 2014 - which to the best of my knowledge, not a single company has taken an interest in because of strings attached to it.

You can read more about it here: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ca6c332f-2cc5...

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