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Comment by pmontra | Hacker News Reader

The passenger experience would be:

1. Get to the SpaceX terminal somewhere (maybe a major airport because of connecting flights), security checks, check in luggage and board an helicopter.

2. Fly to the launch platform.

3. Disembark, get up to Starship.

4. Many Gs of acceleration.

5. Fall to destination.

6. Many Gs of deceleration.

7. Disembark, board the helicopter.

8. Fly to the airport, immigration checks, collect luggage.

9. Leave the airport.

The two helicopter hops cost time, maybe not much more than some long rides on airport buses. The acceleration and deceleration will be exciting but maybe not everybody fit to fly can withstand them. I guess it's not for everybody.

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Just FYI, you can expect launch and reentry Gs <3, which a healthy adult can handle no problem.

Instead of helicopter, ferry can do.

Overall the process will be not dramatically different from modern airport experience.

> Instead of helicopter, ferry can do.

What about a seaplane? Depending on the number of passengers, that might make sense.

I also wondered about Hyperloop tunnel starting under the seabed, which a submersible capsule could dock with, but that seems much less realistic.

No real way to get from a seaplane up to the rig deck.

What about a simple floating pier ? Then elevator or stairs from that to the deck.

It's not like you need to park these ex-oil-rigs in the super hardcore sea state areas many of them need to operate when actually drilling.

Or standard high-speed train on a floating bridge ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_Point_Floating_Bridg...

No need to dig: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submerged_floating_tunnel

I haven't been in the oil business for a long time but to get from a boat deck to the rig deck (actually the heliport in my experience) requires a transfer by a personnel basket which is apparently still used. https://www.grandoceanmarine.com/marine-safety-equipments/pe...

That's a bit different from a "modern airport experience." We would usually take helicopters out but if weather didn't cooperate (or the oil company we were working for didn't want to pay for it), we would sometimes take work boats.

Added: I assume though if someone wanted to do so, they could design an enclosed capsule of some sort that people could sit in and that capsule could be lifted with a crane which would be a bit less "exciting."

They plan to use high-speed ferries, not helicopters.

Re-read his comment. Boat to rig personnel xfer is usually done by a crane/basket lift.

In this case, the helipad is just where they drop the basket, since it's already a designated clear zone.

For a passenger port though they'll probably come up with something different. Not sure if there's anything preventing a fairly normal dock from being added to the rig at water level with an elevator to take people to the main levels along on of the legs.

Among other reasons, waves. The boat moves, the rig doesn't.

If docks were feasible, they'd use them on existing floaters. They don't.

Most rigs don't receive large amounts of visitors either so the high cost and low volume of helicopter rides makes sense. A rig working as a rocket port needs to move more people through it so the economics of figuring out a dock makes more sense.

Also they have the tech with actively stabilized gangplanks to make the link between the more stable rig and the docks.

The point still stands. If you're handling a thousand passengers per day, you will obviously have more efficient transfers options than if you're operating an oil rig doing occasional personnel transfers. It's not a serious objection.

Maybe they can use these for transfer? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4FUBfp9kS0

Yea, construction companies also occasionally use similar baskets from a crane. Ex: https://www.lifttech.com/crane-suspended-man-baskets

The general public is going to get something looks like elevators, even if their all just baskets suspended from a wire. Honestly saving ~17 hours NYC to Auckland is going to be worth some inconvenience. However, a bigger issue is how calm the weather needs to be before their going to launch rockets, though that means people aren’t going to go out to the launch platform in bad weather.

Boat to boat transfers are tricky. I'd still put my money on some sort of lift. Though TBH if we're stipulating a level of science fiction that allows routine human suborbital flight, getting people out to a launch platform comfortably and safely is not a hard problem by comparison.

>However, a bigger issue is how calm the weather needs to be before their going to launch rockets, though that means people aren’t going to go out to the launch platform in bad weather.

I'm honestly not sure why you wouldn't just use helicopters. They're not that unsafe if flown in good weather. VIPs fly in them all the time.

Most cities have regulations around helicopters which may cause issues. I think the boat concept is based around moving people from the city center rather than speed after pickup.

Really, a 40+ MPH boat ride gets you to a launch site 8 miles out to sea in around 5 minutes which is both safer and good enough to not really benefit from using a helicopter.

Small children, babies, 85 year olds, disabled people all fly and probably make much more of the passenger population than you think. Also with the levels of obesity in many countries and other conditions I’m not sure how many “healthy adults” over the age of 30-35 you’ll find that could handle 3G without any risk.

I think the start ship on earth concept is a pipe dream, I give hyperloop a better chance of succeeding.

> The passenger experience would be:

Hundred(s) of people per flight, on helicopters? High Gs?

Perhaps something more like...?

1. Fly to coastal airport with SpX marine terminal. Board high-speed passenger ferry. Security, immigration, and luggage processing on board.

3. Disembark. Board Starship. (Maybe motion-compensated gangways? [1] - fun tech)

4. Few Gs acceleration.

5. Fall to destination. A comfort challenge - limiting head motion helps a lot.

6. Brief couple of Gs. It's only ~100 m/s terminal velocity.

7. Disembark. Similar ferry.

9. Leave airport marine terminal.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=latTbgwdywo

Those gangways look nice. They could make them look like normal jet bridges with the nice side effect of not scaring people with the fear of falling into the sea, etc.

About accelerations, many people scream when they are in a car braking or turning at some low 0.x G, so I wonder what a couple of Gs would be to them. Anyway, there will always be plenty of planes and they'll be much cheaper too.

> Those gangways look nice. They could make them look like normal jet bridges

Nod. And given the difference in duty cycle from supply ships and oil rigs, they might be mounted on the rig rather than the boat. Removing the "it has to fit folded up on the ship" constraint. And with luggage perhaps containerized onboard the ship, the containers would need to be transferred too.

Maybe 1 and 2 could be combined by using Seaplanes?

Hydrofoils are sort of seaplanes? They just keep the wing in the water. And so don't have to deal with being not-so-great airplanes, so they can focus on being good boats.

Starship might end up even more robust to weather than airliners. As are boats. But seaplanes combine the vulnerability of planes, with the those of poor boats. Taking off in a swell, is not a happy thing. I suppose SpX could hypothetically do JATO rocket-assisted seaplanes. :P

But consider the number of passengers. And choices of flying formations of existing seaplanes for each launch, or "let's create a brand new large airliner, and make it a seaplane too!" (even without the seaplane bit, those can be 'bet the aerospace company' gambles), or... order some ferries. Maybe even rent them to start.

I wonder by how many orders of magnitude that this would be less safe and more expensive that as commercial airline first class ticket to the same destination.

Those two helicopter hops probably make the trip 100x more dangerous by them selves.

They're not gonna be trying to land rockets in bad weather so the helicopter rides should pretty much all take place during ideal conditions. Point to point helicopter rides are also very safe relatively speaking. Industrial and emergency helicopter usage really drags down the average.

>Point to point helicopter rides are also very safe relatively speaking

Not for coastal ops. It falls in the more dangerous category.

All rig workers are required to pass HUET- Helicopter Underwater Egress Training.

The gyro forces of the rotating blades ensure any splashdown is followed immediately by the helicopter inverting itself- so underwater and upside down. It also involves the immediate need for survival swimming, with a presumption of a burning oil slick at the surface that must be splashed clear each time you surface, until you can clear the wreckage.

And since the water might be dirty, or covered in oil slick or debris, this training is often done blindfolded.

> And since the water might be dirty, or covered in oil slick or debris, this training is done blindfolded.

Is the blindfold rule new? I never heard about it when I took HUET.

It's not a rule (that I know of), but it's a standard part of the more serious training classes. The companies I'm familiar with have been teaching it that way for 15+ years. Edited to "often"

Can you honestly not see the difference between a taxi that will only be used on days clear enough to land a rocket and regular ship to shore operations characteristic of the oil industry?

Tesla's use case is likely less dangerous than the helicopters that fly VIPs all around NYC simply because the airspace will be so much less cluttered allowing for higher faster flights that are more tolerant of things going wrong.

If you see a significant difference, it's only because you want to see one.

The Gulf of Mexico already has the highest amount of helicopter traffic in the country. It's always cluttered. I'd expect most of the local helicopter services and pilots that ferry the oil industry would be also be ferrying for SpaceX.

>Tesla's use case

The SpaceX use case is based on high frequency launches. You don't get high frequency by sticking to Space Shuttle blue-sky launch requirements. (And the safety-obsessed oil industry isn't flying in weather it shouldn't be.)

But it's still coastal weather, and even blue-sky launches are going to require pre-dawn (or after dark), foggy and/or windy flights out to the rig (and back to shore).

If it's point-to-point rocket travel, daylight at the launch site means it's likely to be dark at landing, and vice-versa. Otherwise flight windows are going to be very restricted.

If anything, time windows are likely to be more constrained for launches than for the oil industry (who might have a day-long+ window for personnel changes), which means more flying when you have to, not waiting for when conditions are ideal.

>All rig workers are required to pass HUET- Helicopter Underwater Egress Training.

Interesting. Never heard of that in the 80s. I wasn't a "rig worker" but I was an engineer who flew out to drilling rigs a lot.

It was a thing back then I used to share an office with some one who had worked at RAE and flew on choppers for experiments who mentioned it.

He also would have like to do the proper bail out (parachute course ) but never got a chance.

My father was a rig worker in the 80s in the gulf. He has a lot of interesting stories to tell.

Also an engineer, but was first required to do it way back as a summer intern working on a deepwater support ship. A helicopter ride for me at the time would have only been for an emergency, but it was still required training.

I'm sure safety standards went up over time. For example, after the Ocean Ranger went down off Newfoundland, survival suits became standard (which they amazingly hadn't been previously even in cold weather operations).

> how many orders of magnitude [...] more expensive [...] commercial airline first class ticket

Estimates are order zero. Amortization on more frequent (because quicker) flights. Rocket vs airliner simplicity. Fuel is only a fraction of airline opex.

By the time it's open to the public, I'd expect for it to be approximately as safe as air travel currently is, possibly even more safe, given the very reasonable apprehension the public will have to rocket travel.

And I'd expect the US Government to be heavily involved in ensuring that to be the case.

Musk has mentioned using Hyperloop to transport people to the launch platforms. I don't have time to dig up the interview I heard it in but I'm pretty sure he said as much at one point.

It’s worth noting that Musk quoted 30-60 minutes rocket trip time for any pair of source/destination in the world, so there is a lot of room for time wasted around the launch while still being way faster.

That said, they probably have to run hundreds of thousands or millions of non-crewed launches before they can demonstrate it’s safe enough for civilian use. Current tech must be in the range of 3-4 orders of magnitude more dangerous?

The genius of this IMO is operating in international waters... I assume that puts them out of FAA/etc jurisdiction?

If so, we’ll be riding these way before UAVs.

Sounds like a nightmare. One key aspect is also the weather. Flying will only be possible under perfect weather conditions for both take off and landing.

Do your security/customs checks on the helicopter ride and that transport costs you zero time.

Will the passengers require a class-3 flight physical? High-G's can be risky to some people. blood pressure, risk of stroke, etc... Examples would be the number of medical issues that arise at roller coasters and the related posted warnings on them.

If the theme park industry can manage to stay in business and settle for posting some warnings, surely this is a hurdle that can be overcome.

I doubt point to point on earth will be used for humans.

I am almost certain that, at a certain point, the US military will use Starship to deploy some extra forces (specialists and equipment) to a distant theater of operations under a tight schedule. Or perhaps evacuate the sick and the wounded, if they can tolerate this rough ride but need to see a top hospital urgently. So as far as humans go, that will probably happen.

A regular service for civilian customers, that is another story. Just like Concorde, it might prove economically infeasible.

Will starship land with enough fuel to take off and return to friendly territory?

Can starship land in Earth like gravity on a standard concrete area?

Concorde's heels were

1) No supersonic over water

2) Limited Range

3) Limited use to reclaim development costs and ongoing maintenence costs

4) Eating into their owners fares -- standard London-NY cost was £8k return, or £13k today. That's in the same ballpark as an F return pre-covid, so BA weren't making more money.

And the NIMBY / NIH lobbying

I think you meant no supersonic overland

Yup, overland.

Not many nimbys if you're 20 miles off the coast of NY going to 20 mile off the Singapore coast (not that nimbys would have any say in Singapore), and nobody en-route would even know it's flying overhead.

OK you have a 30 minute ride at each end from downtown, but that's not much more than going to JFK/Changi from downtown. 1 hour checkin and 1 hour flight, you're doing end to end in 3 hours rather than 22.

> Will starship land with enough fuel to take off and return to friendly territory?

No. If you want it back, you land at a friendly base. The nominal use would not likely to be for insertion but logistics, like a really fast C-17.

It's intended to be quite cheap to build, however, so it's not impossible that it could be used one way (in a very high-value operation.)

> Can starship land in Earth like gravity on a standard concrete area?

Yes. They're doing that right now. Taking off from a flat pad, however, is unlikely, at least in current configuration. A "tactical" version with pre-main-ignition "hop" engines, like planned for the lunar lander version, might allow such ops (providing you can provide large quantities of liquid methane and oxygen on site!)

Many Gs of acceleration: I don't think it would be a huge problem, when lying on your back, in a g-suit or submerged in water. I don't think it would require liquid breathing, which is not fully developed yet.

Many Gs of deceleration: for the passenger, acceleration and deceleration have the same effects.

Nah!

1) Get into a rocket, lift-off, land on the platform. 2) Play with a complimentary Space Grenade Launcher™ on the rim of the platform while you wait for refuel. 3) Go to space for some time 4) Land in your destination platform 5) Summon your Tesla over the under-the-ocean tunnel 6) Go home.

Typically people flying on a helicopter to an oil rig need to be trained to ditch in the water. I think most would consider that prohibitive for the Starship transit clientele, so I wonder if they just live with the risks.

There are regular commuter helicopter services between islands over the ocean in Japan, like this one:

http://www.tohoair.co.jp/english/shuttle/

Given suborbital speeds and availability aerodynamic lift means that they can significantly limit the G's on re-entry.

Why helicopter ride to platform not by boat?

I believe the original mock up video had a boat.

Potentially burn in atmosphere twice.

It is my impression that suborbital jumps are much, much slower than a launch to the orbit and return from the orbit.

That would mean that a Starship decelerating to the destination would not create a classic "ball of fire" in front of it and risk a burnup.

Returning 1st stages of Falcon 9 do not require thermal protection either.

I don't think they're as different in energy as you're thinking. "Suborbital" ranges from throwing a baseball 100ft to going almost into orbit, and going halfway around the earth is just shy of a circular orbit. It would be different if you were doing a short hop, but Starship is impractical for short hops.

> I guess it's not for everybody.

Neither will the ticket price be, I guess. At least at first.

No. It would be a loop/hyperloop type system you get into.

Don't forget all the vomit. Put ten passengers in a single space, even trained astronauts, and at least one of them will be vomiting during the zero-G portion of the flight. Compare this to a first class seat on a BA transatlantic crossing.

(And the carbon costs of rocket-powered passenger services are maddening. This is not a service that anyone should support.)

Depends on the fish of the day that's served ;)

Starship is methane-powered. There are ways to generate methane sustainably (from C02 and water); that's even an essential part of the plan for Mars. I strongly suspect they'll want to test it on Earth before, and having an appliance on the platform that generates the needed propellant for passenger flight would be a very good test (developing something that works reliably with minimal / no human intervention).

The fuels in the rocket. The fuels in the support vehicles. The fuels for the platform. The fuels in the helicopters. Even if all of them are produced from solar power, a 747 needs less than 1% of the same total fuel per passenger. No matter how it is fueled, a ballistic rocket needs orders of magnitude more energy than conventional flight. It is not an energy-efficient means of realworld transport.

Then price in carbon neutral fuel production to the ticket. There will be passengers rich enough to pay it.

If you've got a problem with that I imagine your real issues are about status envy not environmentalism.

Lol, I'm no communist but I do appreciate that market forces alone will never address the carbon/energy problem, let alone the wider problem of pollution overall. Just because someone has the money do to so doesn't mean that we should support them burning away the energy to light a small city simply to get to their vacation spot a few hours faster than on a private jet.

How about reaching a dying father a few hours faster? A middle class person might judge the extra $5-10k (from savings) worth it.

If SpaceX/energy company deploys a new nuclear power plant (and one day fusion) to provide the energy, why should you care? It's a new energy source and not competing away your personal idea of worthwhile energy use.

Not sure where you're getting these figures. Here's an analysis which estimates CO2 emissions from Starship for E2E will be roughly similar to those from a 777 flight based on fuel consumption. Depending upon how the methane is generated it could be a carbon-neutral flight. This doesn't include support vehicles, but that would be quite speculative at this stage.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/12/spacex-rocket-emission...

Look deeper at those numbers. Net fuel consumption/emissions is different than "rocket emissions". Rocket fuel isn't diesel. The emissions from the actual rocket in flight do not capture the total emissions generated in the creation/preparation/compression of rocket fuels. Some rockets produce literally zero carbon during flight (liquid hydrogen + liquid oxygen = water) but that doesn't mean plenty of coal/oil wasn't used in the creation of those fuels.

Yep - pushing air away for 12+ hours at high sub sonic speeds might indeed be less efficient than a sub orbital flight where you exit the atmosphere in a couple minutes and cover most of the distance without meaningful air resistance in the vacuum of space.

Do you have any numbers to back that up? A 747 burns 10-11 tons of fuel per hour and carries about 360 passengers. For a 12 hour flight, that is about 350kg of fuel per passenger. Starship's tanks hold approximately 250 tons of fuel and 950 tons of liquid oxygen. In order to match the per passenger fuel efficiency of a 747 they would need to carry about 700 passengers. Starship has about 20% more internal volume as a 747, so it seems likely that they would be able to fit at least the same number of passengers. That puts them at about 50% of the fuel efficiency of a 747.

In addition, methane combustion produces 2.75kg of CO2 per kg of fuel, while kerosene produces 3kg CO2 per kg of fuel. If they are able to fit 20% more passengers than a 747 due to the larger internal volume then they would be within about 66% efficiency on a CO2 emissions per passenger basis.

As I replied to others, rocket fuel is very different. The total carbon emissions include not just the fuel used by the rocket but the fuels used to create those fuels before the flight. Liquid oxygen is not carbon-free as creating liquid oxygen requires lots and lots of energy. So too methane which is heavily refined/compressed/cooled, processes that take more energy, create more emissions, than burning the fuel itself during flight. The fuel for a 747 is not nearly as energy/carbon-intensive to create.

> Starship is methane-powered. There are ways to generate methane sustainably (from C02 and water);

It's not about the generation. Burning methane results in a 1:1 emission of CO2 [0]; literally the equivalent of just dumping pure carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-products-of-methane-burne...

In the process that would likely be used the CO2 would be sourced from the atmosphere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction

Ya, but that isn't happening. Look at where liquid hydrogen for rockets is sourced. It could be made from water. In reality, it is made from hydrocarbons because that is cheaper. And even if CO2 is pulled from the air, a huge amount of energy is need to compress/store that rocket fuel, energy that could be put to far better uses. Instead of launching a passenger rocket to london, I'd rather divert that energy into shutting a coal-fired powerplant for a week or two. Once all those powerplants are shut, then we should look at passenger rocket services.

I don't doubt you're right for most existing rockets, but I think the main difference here is that SpaceX has every reason to test the hell out of their propellant-producing appliances here on Earth, even if it's not economical at the beginning. They depend on these appliances working perfectly on Mars for the return trip, so they need to be _very_ reliable.

If these vehicles were from anyone besides a company whose explicit goal is to develop an interplanetary colony ship whose duty cycle will require the launch infrastructure on the other planet to convert atmospheric CO2 into methane using solar power, I’d agree — it hasn’t been done, it’s not economical to do it that way yet.

But Musk needs this process to become economical so that Mars can become economical.

(The same tech may, ironically given Tesla, compete with batteries for the energy storage PV calls for).

If that CO2 was taken from the air in the first place, it's a neutral process overall:

Take CO2 from air => Turn it into methane => Put it into rocket => Burn it back into the air

This process requires far more energy than just using it to power normal modes of transportation. There's no free lunch.

Doesn't matter if it is solar.

That doesn't matter if you made the methane by extracting CO2 from the atmosphere. Then you are just putting the CO2 back from where you got it.

The bad part with burning fossil fuels is that you are putting carbon in the form of CO2 into the air which was previously locked under ground in the form of coal/gas/oil. If you are burning carbon that you extracted from CO2 in the atmosphere, there is no such problem, assuming you didn't use fossil fuels to extract that carbon.

>That doesn't matter if you made the methane by extracting CO2 from the atmosphere. Then you are just putting the CO2 back from where you got it.

It's not that simple. What you're describing is free energy. We're still burning fossil fuels to extract the methane. Maybe that could be powered by renewables one day. But as of now, it is not.

The point is you could do it with renewables without burning fossil fuels. There would be losses in the step between renewables and methane sure, but it doesn't require "free energy".

Indeed, it's more like molecular assembly & disassembly powered by renewables. Here's a good explanation for a well-tested ethanol process:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/former-playwright-ai...

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