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Comment by justapassenger | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

It’s not the new paradigm which requires higher volumes and lower margins, it’s SpaceX’s business model which requires it (or, I suppose, expects it)

It is possible that there is a cap in how much stuff people want to put into space.

(EDIT: I do think it’s possible for SpaceX to exist as an entity that is simply smaller and not wasting its time trying to make its CEO Baron Harkonnen , but hey corporate ownership law amirite?)

Am I alone in thinking that the Earth is finite and humanity has already outgrown it? We need to start making use of resources in space, because if we don't the ecological consequences are dire. Space doesn't have a biosphere. We need to take all the terrible things we're doing to this biosphere and move them out. There is no other long term solution. The needs of humanity will only continue to grow, even if our population levels off.

I very much get the picture that New Space has an if-you-build-it-they-will-come approach which is soon facing a reckoning. It is very important that the whole of society pivots their thinking to the only thing that will give Earth a long-term future.

> It’s not the new paradigm which requires higher volumes and lower margins, it’s SpaceX’s business model which requires it (or, I suppose, expects it)

I used the wrong word there. I was thinking more in terms of: SpaceX enables higher volumes, etc..

I know it's not a perfect analogy but cheap and predictable global shipping enabled business models which were not possible before.

Maybe cheap and predictable access to space will do the same.

>It is possible that there is a cap in how much stuff people want to put into space.

I’m still trying to figure out if Earth is the slave planet or Mars is the slave planet, and how that’s gonna play out.

Either way, lots of stuff to move.

> Either way, lots of stuff to move.

Have you heard about SpinLaunch? SpinLaunch really came out of left field for me as a serious contender.

Really curious how they plan to re-balance a multi-ton spinning mass when half the mass gets ejected at 10,000 RPM.

That sounds nuts but the scale test went OK, so I guess they have a handle on that?

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

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.

Competing with starlink is likely difficult, but there will be lots of room to disrupt observation, satellite radio, etc etc etc.

People are already doing earth observation from larger numbers of small satellites and very large numbers of cube sats.

https://www.planet.com/our-constellations/

They started with this strategy before Starlink was started.

Incumbents are governments, and government's favorite thing to do is increase economic output so as to increase tax revenue among other things, so I'd expect governments to find way to incentivize launches.

As far as how long it will take, it didn't take long for a single company to revolutionize the industry, I expect that those that want to keep up will fill the gap. It's honestly probably going to be mostly new names, some of which we have not heard of yet.

Eh...SpaceX has investors knocking down doors trying to throw money at them, even before starlink was announced. They'd be fine without starlink, though I am excited for orbital internet.

Investors is one thing, customers another. It is possible customers will appear, but most uses don't seem to need many launches.

Even a really big telescope doesn't seem to need more than 50 launches, $2.5B. A moonbase needs fuel depot runs in the tens per year, and the occasional crew exchange, all under $1B/y.

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’.

Agreed that Starlink will be a huge cash cow, anyway until competition surfaces. $60B ARR?

At issue is whether and when their planned launch capacity ever finds other customers. Once all 30k birds are up, will there be other uses for the launchers, besides going to Mars? Do they need more than a dozen or two, for the job?

Starlink's orbit is so low, especially the large constellation, that it requires almost constant replenishment of birds due to extremely fast decay (order of 1-2 years of useful service life?)

So yeah, if they ever launch the whole 30k, they'll be flying quite often; the first replenishment will likely happen before the constellation is complete if the start slow.

Alternative theory: People have a decent understanding of the value of satellites, and it's SpaceX who doesn't.

If you lower the dollar cost of going to the dentist by 10x, you're not going to see people going to the dentist 10 times more often.

If someone made having my mouth professionally cleaned more convenient, I would change the schedule to every 3 months instead of every six.

We can anticipate some businesses would benefit from having low-cost access to microgravity environments - right now you carefully select your experiments, because it's extremely costly, but, if it weren't, you wouldn't need to.

While satellite/probe/crewed-craft building has an extensive industrial chain with multiple bottlenecks that would hold it back if launch costs plumeted, there are others that have few and that would be enabled.

We'd probably need a lot of barriers so that people don't launch cubesats for $100 in volumes that make LEO dangerous.

And if someone had self-cleaning easier, you wouldn't be going in for cleaning at all.

Nobody cares about satellites themselves. What they care about is using them for something useful. Communication and imaging. At some point, both markets will become saturated.

I don't know what level of demand there is for them, but it's entirely conceivable that it will be long-term limited by something other than launch costs.

> 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...

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...

>>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.

> 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).

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?

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.

>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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

>Also, alien artifacts.

Indigenous people artifacts. Let's not be rude. ;-)

>There is absolutely nothing of any value whatsoever on Mars that can't be found much, much more easily on Earth.

Ungoverned land.

That's anti-value: it is much harder to live in ungoverned land than decently governed land. If you're fleeing North Korea, you'll flee to China or South Korea, not to an anarchy.

Indigenous North Americans were very helpful in a lot of circumstances for the colonists.

(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.

Despite north america being much more hospitable, plenty of people died in north american colonies. Will modern humans be willing to pay that price?

Is this a rhetorical question? Of course millions would gladly die as space colonizers.

I’m not sure what the intersection is of people (1) rich enough to do this, (2) willing to slum it in a tin can where none of the wealth they’ve accumulated thus far would even let them retire because the entire economy has to be constructed ex nihilo first, (3) have nobody binding them to Earth, either because they don’t exist or because they came with them to Mars, (4) is not too anti-social to function despite #3.

Don’t get me wrong, when Musk first announced this I was very interested, and could just about afford the target price. But then I tried a much more minor relocation — Cambridge to Berlin — and found myself much lonlier than I’d been primed to expect by my experience moving to Cambridge in the first place after I graduated.

It might be fine, I just wouldn’t assume that now.

The uber rich person doesn't necessarily have to be one that goes. It just so happens this one wants to. Some uber rich person could see it as just another way to generate money, so funds the endeavor while spending those earnings on terrafirma.

Its one thing for people to say they will, its another for them to actually do it.

Many will if the rest let them.

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.

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.

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.

One way it becomes profitable: paying colonists for research.

There are plenty of people here here who could benefit, possibly even financially, from research there. Paying what is essentially a monopoly on research capability on mars would be one avenue of profitability for the project.

Also think about this: once there's a profitable economy there of some kind, you'll get all sorts of capital interplay that doesn't actually need physical financial instruments to make happen, only networking.

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!

Because Antartica isn't really a stepping stone to anywhere. Mars could be a way station for Europa/Io/similar moons.

To what end? "We should colonize Mars because then we could go to Europa more easily" just kinda begs the question; what economic incentive exists for going to Europa?

It's like saying we should colonize Antarctica because then we'd learn things that would make it easier to colonize the North Pole. Doesn't really answer the question.

At the end of the day, space is what's next. Humans are explorers. We left the safety of the cave, we built ships to cross the vastness of the oceans. We're now building ships to cross the small section of the vastness of space we can.

So far, it's private money moving that direction. It's not tax dollars. If some uber rich asshole wants to spend his money on this, so be it. It's his money. If it doesn't work out, okay, we learn from it. But not going is just not going to happen. It's part of the human experience to ask "what's next" and then do it. Less adventurous can sit at home. The meek shall inherit the earth, the bold are going to space!

By all means; spend your money however you want, but a few billionaires using their personal wealth to fund Mars colonization efforts "just because" isn't going to be nearly enough to build a self-sustaining city there. Musk is talking about sending hundreds of Megatons to orbit every year, for the foreseeable future[1]. He wants an armada of one thousand Starships departing for Mars every 26 months[2]. That's what it would take to build a self-sustaining city on Mars, and it's a multi-trillion dollar effort; not the sort of thing that can be funded by a few wealthy donors.

The only way I can see large-scale Mars colonization happening is if there's a strong economic incentive for that. It isn't going to happen just because a few people want it to, or think it's the "next step for humanity".

[1]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1217986505513172992

[2]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1217993568482025472

A self sustaining colony in Antarctica would be a good blueprint for a similar one on the Moon or Mars. Remember Biosphere 2?

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.

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?

Mars has water (probably, or there won’t be any colonies), and CO2. Water, Oxygen, Hydrogen and Methane, all of which there could be a demand for in orbit.

Turn those rocks into rockets or rocketfuel, launch elsewhere in the solar system, rinse and repeat

Did you know we farm a lot of rocks in Earth too?

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.

Some materials are bought and used because they are expensive. Now imagine someone bragging about having walls from martian marble...

A rock from mars could easily be the new Pet Rock. I would buy one.

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.

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.

Those people should try serving three tours on a submarine first, and a few winters in the Antarctic, after.

My guess is, that short list of volunteers will get a lot shorter.

The difference isn't being stuck in a metal tube, it's being able to see space. See stars/constellations etc in person. On a sub you don't get to see anything. And I haven't heard much about the views from Antarctica.

You're not going to be seeing very many stars there, either. Your tin can's not going to have much in the way of windows.

Some of the Starship renders images published show extensive windows.

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?

Because they need demand to pay for the launches.

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.

Falcon 9 launched every 9 days for the first half of this year.

It should be able to launch a lot more than that. Maybe the expendable second stage is the limiting factor here.

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.

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.)

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