SpaceX Wins US Air Force Contract for Point-to-Space-to-Point Transportation | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX Wins US Air Force Contract for Point-to-Space-to-Point Transportation

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13 pointsworldvoyageur17 comments

This feels like so little money. It's an impressive accomplishment that this is so feasible. Spacecraft development is practically cheaper than aircraft development. Of course, launch costs will be, ahem, astnonomical. But the ability to quickly get a disaster support package anywhere, fast, that would be remarkable. I'm imagining a telecomm and power lackage being rapid deployed to Tonga.

It'd be so interesting to see if indeed there is a lot more versatility latent in these SpaceX launch systems, waiting to be eeked out.

Kg for Kg cost for small amounts of Kg, either moved via plan or the surface, using a reusable rocket could be much cheaper even when not accounting for time. If the military wanted to move 4k-kg to anywhere on earth, what would it cost them?

All in, I think many many places would be in the single digit millions.

The military applications of this are pretty impressive. Elon has said before that he plans on moving people with this and you can get between any two points on earth in under 30 minutes. Being able to go from a crisis happening anywhere on Earth to having troops and equipment on the ground within ~1 hr is going to make the USA almost unstoppable if Starship ends up being a success.

Can’t the Chinese replicate something like this pretty easily?

The long march family of rockets don't come near the capabilities required for these kinds of missions.

Based on their development roadmaps, potentially not for decades.

They need to demonstrate reusability of rockets first.

Sorry to burst your bubble but this will never happen. It's a vaporware pipedream being sold to get more tax payer money.

Aka "How to trigger the early warning ICBM detection system of every country in the industrialized world." (Note this is why we also don't use ICBMs to deliver conventional or kinetic payloads)

After you land a Starship in the middle of nowhere, what do you do with it? Scrap it in place? Build a refueling station next to it?

Its a payload delivery. It'll probably drop a capsule or perhaps even more likely just drop something out via parachute.

That's a cool idea that I hadn't thought about. It would be interesting if the military ended up using superdracos for propulsive landing even though NASA doesn't.

In the future (let’s say 100 years) could this replace airline travel? Or are there physical constraints making this impossible

Noise of a rocket launch is a pretty big issue that's likely not going to be overcome for a long time.

At best you could take a helicopter offshore and launch from there but that cuts into the time saved by the rocket.

This is 100 million dollar gift from the tax payer and nothing else.

It’s not very convenient for the average commuter. Launch sites need to be a long way from populated areas. And the physical stresses are a lot like a roller coaster ride.

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