Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

The real problem for Starship (IMHO) is Falcon 9. Falcon 9 is now the most reliable launch vehicle ever created. With reuse the may well be $10m per launch or even less by now and likely to continue to drop. F9 can deliver ~22t to LEO and smaller payloads to geosynchronous orbit. The payloads F9 can't deliver are quite small.

What people forget is that payloads are deeply coupled to their launch vehicles. The launch vehicle will dictate the maximum weight and dimensions of the payload. You can't just take a payload designed for one vehicle and put it on another.

The evidence for this is the relatively few Falcon Heavy launches we've had and are planned.

So now SpaceX has all this launch capacity without the matching demand for it. It's a big part of why Starlink exists.

Cheaper and larger payload capacities will ultimately change the industry and create demand but that takes years.

It's likely Starship will launch ISS replacements but is there sufficient demand there for this ambitious launch vehicle? What else will it be used for? That's a bit of an open question.

View on HN

> What people forget is that payloads are deeply coupled to their launch vehicles. The launch vehicle will dictate the maximum weight and dimensions of the payload. You can't just take a payload designed for one vehicle and put it on another.

This is generally (but not always) false. SpaceX has been negotiating a lot of their commercial contracts in a vehicle agnostic fashion. Namely that SpaceX can pick which vehicle to launch a given payload on. This will allow them, as soon as Starship is flying reliably, to swap Falcon 9 payloads on to Starship. Also payloads that were designed for one rocket have been swaped on to Falcon 9. One example: https://spacenews.com/spacex-wins-contract-to-launch-nasa-sm... https://twitter.com/B_Garelick/status/1291029153119178754

> It's likely Starship will launch ISS replacements but is there sufficient demand there for this ambitious launch vehicle? What else will it be used for? That's a bit of an open question.

Starship is being designed with the intent that it will cannibalize all Falcon 9 launches eventually. I don't think it's an open question at all. It's been stated to be the case explicitly in fact.

> This is generally (but not always) false. SpaceX has been negotiating a lot of their commercial contracts in a vehicle agnostic fashion.

Here's another way of putting that: SpaceX has designed it so F9 and Starship payloads will be interchangeable. That's not quite the same thing. You can't just take an F9 payload and bolt it on top of an Ariane rocket.

> Starship is being designed with the intent that it will cannibalize all Falcon 9 launches eventually.

Sure but that's just going to take a long time, particularly if F9 is, say, sub-$15m per launch. There's a lot that still has to be done for Starship (eg the landing system, the crew component).

> Sure but that's just going to take a long time, particularly if F9 is, say, sub-$15m per launch.

This rests on the assumption that a starship launch costs SpaceX more than that. The whole starship program is a gamble that they can make cheap, fully and rapidly reusable rockets. If the marginal cost for a starship launch is more than for a partially-reusable falcon 9, then the project has failed (or is still in development)

> but that's just going to take a long time, particularly if F9 is, say, sub-$15m per launch.

1) SpaceX isn't a public company; among other benefits, there's substantially less pressure to maximize profits.

2) Starship launch costs don't need to compete with F9, they only need to compete with the other competition.

Also, it's worth repeating that the goal of this entire endeavor is reaching Mars. The above state of affairs isn't a coincidence, but a very deliberate part of Musk's plan. (Also, luck.)

"The above state of affairs isn't a coincidence, but a very deliberate part of Musk's plan."

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target

There is literally a public record that is well document about this strategy. Keeping the company private. Developing the larger vehicle. And so on.

Musk has been talking about Mars since SpaceX's infancy.

Correct. Musk has not kept a secret of what his ultimate goals are. Both Tesla and SpaceX have had the plans on their websites for decades.

Last I heard, reusable F9 launches cost SpaceX ~$30M. The goal is for Starship launches to cost about $2M, for ~5x the payload mass. Starship is also necessary for Starlink launches to be economical for the full constellation deployment.

The target cost for starship is $2M per launch for a much bigger payload. If they achieve that (but even if they arrive to several multiple of that) Falcon 9 is dead. It’s as simple as that.

> The target cost for starship is $2M per launch for a much bigger payload. If they achieve that (but even if they arrive to several multiple of that) Falcon 9 is dead. It’s as simple as that.

I wonder if that is entirely true.

There may still be a market for smaller bespoke launches that SpaceX won't want to cede to competitors (though this depends on the cadence of Starship launches, the latency of getting a payload included, and so on), and SpaceX may benefit from keeping F9 around as a platform that allows further iteration on the engines (though this depends on estimates of the increased risk for Starship launches that have a mix of engine versions).

What does the crew component have to do with payload launches a la F9? They can work out a lot of the kinks with Starship while still launching satellites.

I find that utterly mad why would you combine multiple small launches into a big one?

The tyranny of rocket equation suggests to me that you will have to burn a lot more to lift a lot more things to burn for the payloads that would have been in a different rocket.

I would like to be shown the math that it actually takes less fuel with a bigger rocket.

Economies of scale at every stage of the game. Fuel is basically the cheapest part of a launch. Last I checked, the cost of maintaining infrastructure was on roughly the same order as the fuel per launch. More launches per site drives the cost-per down.

Reusability is a spectrum. Falcon requires a nontrivial amount of inspection and refurb between launches, while Starship is aiming for jetliner levels of prep.

Musk is also aiming to drive down the capex costs as well. There's less complexity for unmanned cargo hoist missions. I think the target for Starship is low tens of millions USD, basically cheaper than Falcon Heavy, but more reusable, with more capacity.

I think the only thing that's not cheaper, is liquid methane is a bit more expensive per kJ. They are roughly the same price per kg, with RP-1 being more energy dense. But then again, I could see SpaceX vertically integrating and driving that cost down too.

Falcon Heavy was specified relatively early in the Falcon 9’s development cycle. They were originally going to do more Falcon Heavy missions but in the meantime, blocks 3 and 4 of Falcon 9 came out and the Merlin kept getting better and better, and with block 5 the Merlin D has almost double the thrust of the Merlins on the early Falcon 9s which is kind of nuts. So many of the missions conceived for Falcon Heavy were ultimately flown on a different rocket- a more capable single stick Falcon 9.

>Cheaper and larger payload capacities will ultimately change the industry ... is there sufficient demand there for this ambitious launch vehicle? What else will it be used for?

extended weekend around Moon in cattle class for say $100K/person. Suborbital flight LA to Shanghai in 1 hour for $5-10K. Though it seems that the first years the SpaceX Mars program will gobble almost all the capacity (according to that recent update Elon wants to launch non-stop several times a day to get several million tons into orbit), except for the high margin and/or already contracted stuff like NASA Moon.

>The real problem for Starship (IMHO) is Falcon 9.

F9/Heavy are cheaper than competition, yet not that cheaper to enable new revolutionary uses. They also will never be made to the airline level of safety/robustness/operational simplicity/etc. which is one of the goals of Starship and its Raptor 2 engine.

In particular - according to that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor#/media/File:Rapt... the full flow allows them to run turbines under 600 C for fuel and under 500 C for oxygen pump on Raptor 2 - it feels like cheating :) being like steel temperatures, and they of course are using Inconel which gives them great reliability here, like in order of magnitude better than on other engines. That naturally translates into capability to perform many reuses with very frequent launches with minimal operational costs.

If anything i think with Elon having blazed the path there is an opportunity to quickly start and ramp up SpaceX copycats(s) as whatever capacity the industry would produce at the Starship level low prices and high convenience the demand will still be bigger.

> extended weekend around Moon in cattle class for say $100K/person.

But how long does this actually last? The amount of people that can afford to pay that is minimal, I dont see space tourism driving any serious markets for an extremely long time (if ever).

And there is a reason point to point transfer isnt being mentioned anymore. The logistics and regulatory hurdles are going to be massive, and I seriously doubt we see that outside of maybe military tests for cargo transport.

>The amount of people that can afford to pay that is minimal

average American wedding is close to $30K, so i think there is a large market at the top. Plus corporations with their outings/offsite/etc. for S/E/VPs flying business class to nice places, influencers/promotions/raffles, midlife crisis and retired doctors, lawyers, execs as well as tens (if not a hundred) of thousands of young FAANG employees making $500K+/year. It is just that Virgin Galactic and Bezos unfortunately don't do justice to the coming space tourism.

>The logistics and regulatory hurdles are going to be massive

That really hinges on whether Starship will reach airline level of safety which is a huge undertaking and naturally at least several thousand of launches away. Those coming several thousands of launches anyway are planned for bringing into orbit those several millions of tons destined in particular for Mars. I.e. i just don't see any spare capacity from Starship. As far as i see it will be utilized 110%.

The logistics do not just revolve around safety (although that is a major factor), its also stuff like noise and environmental pollution. Residents werent happy with the Concorde noise, people are going to be furious with the noise of a Starship taking off. All of the launches are going to have to be done offshore essentially to avoid this, so now youre also looking at spending probably a couple hours waiting on ferries to come and go, and at that point, who even wants to deal with everything related to that kind of point to point transfer? Thats not even mentioning stuff like being uncomfortable while riding.

All of this plus even if it wasnt too loud, you need countries to let you fly your rocket over their airspace constantly.

We can mention the launches to put millions of tons on Mars, but personally Ill believe that when I see it. That is going to have a massive cost, and I dont see that happening particularly soon at all, even if Starship gets to be completely operational.

Ferries? Fast helicopter to the nearest airport to pass customs/immigration.

Maybe it'd pull some of the crowd away from climbing Everest, which seems to currently be the biggest bragging rights feat for the upwardly mobile.

They solved this problem with F9 too, with their ride share program.

Starship will make it even cheaper to deliver small payloads too (you'll likely have to wait for enough payload to get lined up to make sense financially), however with the need to continuously deploy starlink satelites, they'll probably fill loads as required with them to fill starship up.

You raise a good point: taking multiple payloads could help bridge this gap. But I still believe it'll take quite awhile to match the economics of an F9 launch (assuming that payload is within the launch parameters).

Falcon Heavy is again evidence of this. We're not seeing ride-sharing on FH. We're seeing large (primarily military) payloads that F9 just can't do.

> Falcon Heavy is again evidence of this.

Not necessarily. I'm not a rocket scientist or economist, but it is possible that FH is less cost-effective per kg on LEO than F9. You need to accelerate three boosters to several thousand km/hour and then to decelerate them to 0 km/hour at ground level. And then to do all the maintaining on those boosters, which takes about a month. Does it allow for 3x payload?

There are other potential issues, like a volume: a payload is not just mass, but a volume too. It needs to fit into fairing. Adding two more boosters doesn't increase available volume.

> I still believe it'll take quite awhile to match the economics of an F9 launch

Musk says that he relies on Starship launches to make it work reliably as expected. And yes, I believe that it will take years. Maybe it will be faster than with F9, but not an order of magnitude faster.

Gravity and atmospheric drag does most of the slowing down of those boosters for free. The first stage uses something like 87% of it’s takeoff weight in fuel to get it and the second stage up to speed, but only 0.5% of it’s takeoff weight in fuel to slow down and land at sea.

> Does it allow for 3x payload?

Mass to LEO (from the SpaceX site): F9: 22,800 kg; FH: 63,800 kg.

So 2.8 times. Both expend the second stage, so if they recover all the boosters then FH possibly has lower cost per kg, but they're not saying.

The economic case for Starship is even better for small payload customers. At the moment if your launching a cubesat from anywhere but the Nanoracks ISS deployment facility attached to the Japanese Kibo module, then one of your launch costs is a PPOD which gets thrown away

These deployers can cost $10000, or even more depending on the specific cubesat size. So when Starship allows small payload aggregators like Spaceflight Inc to recover the PPOD/deployment hardware then it’s going to provide even further cost reductions beyond the simple dollars per unit mass lifted to orbit. The reusable nature of Starship will be a big part of how it changes the economics of space related industries.

What wouldn't it be useful for?

1. bigger and much more capable interplanetary probes

2. a much cheaper Webb telescope

3. build a base on the moon

4. make a mission to Mars possible

Nobody seems to think about space stations. You could launch much bigger modules with Starship, and many more of them, so you could create a much larger space station for a cheaper price.

You can actually repurpose a starship as a space station. ISS is 915 m^2, starship should be around 1100 m^2. Now imagine using several repurposed starship as space station modules..

Rockets and space station have very different material requirements.

It makes way more sense to launch the whole space station in one piece. ISS is how it is because they couldn't.

But why not build an even bigger space station by combining payloads from multiple launches?

Possibly, with bigger modules, you could build it in a way that each module is fully redundant, has its own power, thrusters, docking, etc. That way you'd have a fully operational station from the first module, and great redundancy if there was ever an accident.

We hardly have any use for the one we have. The best that could be done is one cheaper and better suited to the few uses we have discovered.

Instead we are intent on crashing the space station into the ocean.

Without the space shuttle, ISS has lost its reason to exist. Without ISS, the shuttle would have had no reason to exist.

The ISS orbit naturally decays without regular boosts due to atmospheric drag. I'm hopeful that Starship is fully operational by the time the ISS reaches EOL, maybe a few Starship launches would have enough delta-V to push the ISS up into a graveyard orbit.

NASA has a commercial station program ongoing and they are handing out contracts.

BlueOrigin suggested station does have modules far larger then current ISS, but its attended to be launched on New Glenn, not Starship.

> 1. bigger and much more capable interplanetary probes

One of the things I'd dearly love to see in lifetime is a return to the ice giants (ie Uranus and Neptune). We've only visited once and it was in the 1980s with the limited tech of Voyager 1 and 2. Think of what we could learn with a Cassini-level mission and Cassini itself is now ~14 years old.

But these missions take a long time to develop. We actually have a launch window coming up in the early to mid 2030s where we could feasibly reach the ice giants but the development period is so long and no proposals are at an advanced enough stage that we've likely missed it (which makes me sad).

> 2. a much cheaper Webb telescope

Would we make a cheaper version? Or would we take the opportunity to make an even bigger version? I suspect the latter. And JWST took 20 years to develop.

> 3. build a base on the moon

I actually believe we'll see a man on the Moon in the next 20 years. It could be much sooner but these are still government programs subject to change at any moment. I mean think where we could be if the SSC had been completed.

Apollo was driven by Cold War era competition. Our appetite for risk has changed. This means we may not see a Moon mission until rescue in the event of a catastrophe is actually possible. That will delay things.

> 4. make a mission to Mars possible

There's a thread about this from earlier today. IMHO a manned mission to Mars makes almost zero sense. Despite Musk's wildly infeasible and impractical predictions about Mars colonization, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see men on Mars before 2050.

All of the things you've listed here though aren't really commercial enterprises. Or at least they're far from it. They're flagship missions by governments because they're so wildly expensive. This creates some demand but is it sufficient to justify the program? I don't know.

I do suspect we need to find commercial enterprises to justify the Starship economics and I'm just not sure what that looks like yet.

> I do suspect we need to find commercial enterprises to justify the Starship economics and I'm just not sure what that looks like yet.

At $1 MM per launch with 100 t per launch puts Starship roughly at $10 per kg.

Asteroid mining: Will be a huge industry. Especially with growing environmental concerns all around Earth. Waste can basically be disposed of very cheaply into the atmosphere or sun.

Starlink, Kupier, etc constellations: will continually need maintenance. Including similar constellations across the Moon and also Mars.

Entertainment: Assuming 500 kgs per human (because of life support, seats, luggage, food, etc), that is $5000 per ticket to LEO. This is a very reasonable price point for luxury vacations, especially considering an "all inclusive" trip like a cruise or resort. In line with this, a space hotel/casino is very reasonable to get constructed.

> All of the things you've listed here though aren't really commercial enterprises. Or at least they're far from it. They're flagship missions by governments because they're so wildly expensive.

You're using past data to predict the future. Which is typically a good heuristic. However, when it comes to game changing technologies you can no longer use past data to predict future performance. SpaceX will continue to make margins off Starlink and regular F9-like flights. These profits are all going to be reinvested until a Moon and Mars colonies exist and regular trade begins.

Finally, other companies like Relativity Space are creating amazing 3D printers for rockets. These new technologies are only used in a small way in Starship, but could greatly reduce costs for Starship or the next ship. If the 2010s were about F9, and 2020s are about Starship, then the 2030s call for another SpaceX ship that gets even better tech advantages.

The military wants a C-130 payload anywhere in the world in 1 hour. Military up the wazoo in contracts. Militarization of space is inevitable, they'll want bases up there. If the payload costs are true for starship, they'll put big ones up there.

Starship will represent a total paradigm change in space superiority on economics alone. I'm surprised China and Russia aren't loudly complaining about this. It would enable an actual space fortress to some degree. 10 billion dollars for a 1000 tons of hardware in space? Um, that's less than an aircraft carrier.

An aircraft carrier is 100,000 tons...

As stated, space tourism will be HUGE. If 5g/ticket is true, I mean, who on hackernews wouldn't go on that trip? Even if 1% of people in the world take only one flight that in our lifetime that's 80 million people.

How many people want to do the Red Bull parachute from space? I would guess: A LOT.

Just wait for the private Starships. Hey they should be cheaper than megayachts. Show up at starport, anywhere on earth in an hour.

My biggest dream: starship payloads to get a moon-launched 1.5 million ton Project Orion pulse nuclear ship. That is serious equipment payload to do real asteroid mining. One heavy metal/rare earth metal asteroid will pay for that round trip.

But really, I'd argue we just need to enable:

https://space.nss.org/technologies-for-asteroid-capture-into...

Why fly it out of the gravity well? Need material? It's out there. A bit hard to catch, but it's out there.

Um, China is pretty vocally going after Starlink which is part of what makes this financially feasible, so it's not like they are doing nothing. And not to be all conspiracy theory but their complaint sure is being amplified on the interwebs. I think their bigger issue though is it's going to be a whole lot harder to hide things in they want to do in orbit with so many satellites up there all of a sudden.

"Just wait for the private Starships. Hey they should be cheaper than megayachts."

Any space rocket can turn the whitehouse, the Kremlin or 10 Downing street into a crater withing 30 minutes, with minimal chances of air defence to stoping it. If we start handing out starships to random shady conpanies registered in tax heavens, 9/11 will look like a peacefull day in comparison

You're not wrong, but a private 747 could probably pose a similar threat to your stated targets, but who knows if they actually put in a worthwhile air defense after 9/11.

Submarines also. Today

Sub marines can't turn the Downing Street let alone Washington DC into rubbel. Rockets launched from submarines can. No one but nation states have this capability today.

You mean ballistic missile submarines? Do we sell them to random rich people?

Umm, what is the CO2 cost ? Oh I forgot, the world is burning up, but it's buisness as usual... I do appreciate the discussion, though , it's justsad to see a lack of concern for real existential worries...

You're talking to a diehard Anthropogenic GW proponent, at least 20 years.

Space will be rounding error on suburbia in emissions. At this point it's necessary because population and resource consumption growth has exceeded Earth's footprint by quite a lot. We need people and resources moved to space in the long run.

The military sucks as a funding source morally, but it is as big as you can get as a practical/politically achievable one. Where else can you get a trillion dollars? We need asteroid mining, space habs, launch loops to get humanity to space.

GW has to be addressed through urbanization (centralize people in cities), electrification of transport, artificial meat, synthfuels for long haul transit, alt energy for power gen. I'm not saying we'll make it with those, but at least all of that is somewhat underway.

Consumer culture seems to be defraying birth rates. So while consumer monoculture is bad in many ways, if it perversely constricts population growth then it's good. Kind of like if the oligarchs effectively starve everyone of money needed to have big families... it is perversely good for the environment.

But you're talking to someone who's political alignment is "despotic environmentalist".

> they'll want bases up there

They'll be highly expensive and highly vulnerable targets. You can't armor a space station.

That's why you capture an asteroid... link at the end of the post. A million tons of rock is GREAT armor.

Traditional naval theory is that you can build a battery onshore 10x bigger than the one on a battleship. Things change when you are in space though. Missiles have to escape the gravity well. Lasers have to get through the atmosphere. Sure it's expensive to get up there, but if you have space superiority, you do have certain advantages.

Not with that attitude...

if I had 5k to burn I'd get a nice ebike, the view is fine from down here, thank you

You can’t really get better than starship with the current chemical rocket technology. The reason is simple: the Tiranny of the Rocket equation. Starship exists just because of Raptor (2). An incredible engine, the first full flow engine to ever fly and that should be capable of about 230t of force.

> IMHO a manned mission to Mars makes almost zero sense.

Whether it "makes sense" or not, there are a lot of people that want it to happen, and it also happens to be the express purpose of SpaceX and Starship. That's it's raison d'etre.

> And JWST took 20 years to develop.

Likely a great deal of that was trying to optimize it for weight. Also, it was a government program - not known for cost or time efficiency.

When did private business pay for scientific instruments, like particle colliders and gravity enterferometers?

Isn't that literally every major university ever?

They did before the government got involved in it.

But if you want to spend $23 billion for a collider, you're probably going to need to forcibly take the money to do it. Of course, it's worth it if it's someone else's money.

Are you imaginging a JWST or similar telescope that isn't a government program?

Why not? Capitalism has a record of funding a lot of scientific expeditions, for example.

Let's say Microsoft wanted to generate goodwill in the scientific community? What could be better than funding a space telescope?

Microsoft has had many incidents in which generation of goodwill would've been very valuable, so where's the Microsoft space telescope?

Goodwill isn't going to cut it. There needs to be a tangible incentive.

> IMHO a manned mission to Mars makes almost zero sense

That's certainty not an opinion most people interest in space agree with.

And Musk doesn't want to start with a colony.

> 1. bigger and much more capable interplanetary probes

The limitation there is capable RTGs, not launch vehicles.

> 2. a much cheaper Webb telescope

Webb couldn't have fit into a Starship fairing either.

> 3. build a base on the moon

For whom? Launching stuff is one thing, but you'd need to design, build, maintain, and supply such station. If you think the ISS was expensive, a Moon base would dwarf the ISS costs. Even if launches would be cheaper, there's still a lot of logistics and support behind such station, which is one of the reasons no one did it yet.

> 4. make a mission to Mars possible

That could be done without Starship - as much as I think Zubrin has drifted into the nut job corner over the past decade, he still has a point: crewed Mars missions would've been possible since the 1980s.

> Webb couldn't have fit into a Starship fairing either.

Let's all quit at the very first obstacle!

Did you know that a lot of things don't fit into a 747, either?

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

The lunar lander also didn't fit into a Saturn V.

Don't tell engineers what they can't do.

> Don't tell engineers what they can't do.

I don't - just a small hint there: Webb fit just fine into an Ariane V fairing...

It does, at $20B cost. A simpler JWST that takes advantage of the large fairing of Starship will cost less and take less time to build

You know what costs even less? Building a larger fairing.

Atlas V has different fairing sizes for different payload types as well.

Sure, a bigger fairing will simplify a space telescope, but you still need to fold it and the bulk of the costs went into developing instruments and the mirror.

There's nothing "simple" about a state-of-the-art scientific instrument. If you want Hubble 2.0, NASA has two of them just lying around for over a decade now; gifted to them by the NRO.

You know how much converting them to useful scientific instruments costs? According to the latest report, it's about $3.2 billion so please give me a break with your "simpler and cheaper because fairing".

A lot of people wondered why Boeing was blowing all this money developing the 747. Who needed an airplane that big?

It turned out to be the biggest moneymaker ever for Boeing - and the people who bought them.

And look what happened - the A380, an even bigger plane - was discontinued because it turned out smaller planes are more economical.

> because it turned out smaller planes are more economical

Per seat the A380 is still the cheapest way of moving a person by air. The 777X should beat it, but it's not in service yet.

The problems with the A380 were (1) it wasn't aerodynamically radical enough to maintain that advantage beyond one generation of airliners and (2) you need to fill it to compensate for (1)

I believe that expendable upper stage alone costs 10 million. It can't cost them less than that.

I think that was in the region of 5-7M. If I remember correctly a Falcon 9 launch costs around $15M, maybe something less.

> With reuse the may well be $10m per launch or even less

That is a very low estimate. Most people assume more like $20m per launch. Some say $15m.

You still need to manufacture a complex upper stage and complex engine. Reuse of the Merlin is not perfect. It involves a lot of transportation. It involves having a substantial navy and so on.

All in all including fix cost, I would say the can't make it much cheaper.

To get cheaper a next generation rocket is needed.

While somewhat true, its not universal. Many adopters are standards. And as long as the conditions are not so different. Like if you move between a liquid and a solid rocket, the environment is not that different.

> The evidence for this is the relatively few Falcon Heavy launches we've had and are planned.

There are 5 Falcon Heavy launches planned.

And the thing with Falcon Heavy is that most payloads are volume constraint, and the Falcon Heavy doesn't actually increase that over Falcon 9 while being strictly more expensive.

At the end of the day, the worst case is Starship is a marginally cheaper Falcon 9.

> What else will it be used for? That's a bit of an open question.

Certainty a problem but only once you get to the very high launch rate musk wants. If on a per launch bases its cheaper then Falcon 9, it will have a reason to exist. And from there you can hopefully increase rates over time as the industry takes it into account.

While I don't agree that reuse will bring the price down further, I can 100% get behind the other points.

Even the argument that demand isn't there because launch costs are high doesn't hold - the bigger the sat, the more expensive it is and the trend goes towards smaller and cheaper sats.

Building commercial space stations (plural!) could be done using all-up launches and that would be like what - one launch every couple of years?

It's still early days, but it's not as if 100t to LEO is novel or anything - the Energia rocket could do that 35 years ago. The Soviets and later Roskosmos abandoned the vehicle, because they couldn't find a use for it either (after Buran was axed).

> While I don't agree that reuse will bring the price down further

Why? If you have to spend almost 10M$~ on an expensive high tech upper stage you your just gone throw in the ocean its clearly give you a price lower bound.

> it's not as if 100t to LEO is novel or anything

Starship does 150t in its early version while being fully reusable.

> The Soviets and later Roskosmos abandoned the vehicle, because they couldn't find a use for it either

The Soviet union collapsed and they didn't have the money for it.

I thought the cost per launch for Starship was going to be even less than the non-heavy F9 because it's more reusable.

> The evidence for this is the relatively few Falcon Heavy launches we've had and are planned.

I don't think that's very good evidence. The first Falcon Heavy flight was only 4 years ago and there have been 3 launches until now. Presumably people design their missions around what's available and proven reliable so I would expect it to ramp up. Looks like there are 5/6 Falcon Heavy launches on the cards for this year.

It seems like the thesis is if cost per kg fall enough then the implausible becomes plausible. F9 reduced costs to make starlink possible, what will starship make possible?

"The consequences for SpaceX if we can not get enough reliable Raptors made is that we then can’t fly Starship, which means we then can’t fly Starlink Satellite V2 (Falcon has neither the volume nor the mass to orbit needed for satellite V2). Satellite V1, by itself, is financially weak, while V2 is strong."

Seems to me as if Starlink without Starship isn't all that great.

Also, OneWeb - despite being smaller in scope - managed to do a similar thing without reusable rockets. Now that doesn't make F9 bad - it's still a great machine - it's just not the game changer many hoped it to be.

No, OneWeb didn’t do anything remotely comparable. Starlink satellites are currently more than all the human satellites ever launched. Smaller in scope is a euphemism, you are comparing a mere 650 satellites with 42k, 2 orders of magnitude more.

There aren't 42k Starlink satellites in orbit.

It's about 1,500 active satellites versus 600 + ~50 spares - quite comparable.

The plan is for 42k satellites, currently there are still more Starlink satellites than all the other satellites ever launched.

The "plan" also was to land a Dragon capsule on Mars by 2018 [0]. The "plan" also was to fly people around the Moon in 2018 [1].

It's pointless to base your assessment on plans if the past showed how quickly they evaporate in light of new developments.

[0] http://spaceref.com/mars/spacex-will-start-going-to-mars-in-...

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/spacex-mo...

OneWeb is not even in the same category. Their technology is several generations behind in both their sat and ground terminal tech.

There is a reason they went bankrupt and were mostly solved by government bail-outs. Because its in fact not viable as a business if you have to launch on traditional rockets and have contractor produce your sats.

I suspect it could disrupt at least some form of earth transportation. The fuel costs are not that different than a transatlantic 787 flight, and it's likely simpler and with fewer moving parts. In similar style to Tesla's vertical approach, they could own the full stack (rocket, fuel production, launch/landing facilities).

There is no way in hell a huge ICBM would get international overflight rights.

The logistics of such system would be hell, too - Concorde only had limited routes due to noise. A rocket of Starship's size is another thing entirely. You'd basically have to launch and land it offshore so the logistics getting to and from the launch site and into the vehicle would kill all benefits.

Not to mention the simple things like weather, closing airspace, and the lack of cross-range capabilities, which would make emergency landings or evading bad conditions on the landing site pretty difficult.

The Pentagon wants to use Starship for military transport. Getting troops anywhere on earth within an hour would be a huge advantage.

That wouldn't be possible - first, Starship cannot take off without significant support infrastructure, so it'd be a one-way trip.

Additionally, have you seen the hatch on the Lunar Starship? That thing is ~30m above ground and only has a small platform. Loading and unloading that thing would be slow and dangerous compared to simply dropping cargo from a flying aircraft that doesn't even need to touch down or just driving on and off the ramp in case of landed planes.

The concept of rocket transport isn't new either - it has been considered several times and always turned out to be a bad idea.

To see where some of this comes from, look here: [0]

[0] http://www.astronautix.com/i/ithacus.html

> Starship cannot take off without significant support infrastructure, so it'd be a one-way trip.

Well it needs fueling infrastructure but if the mission is designed sich that there is enough fuel left to fly to some air craft carrier protected barge nearby the rocket might not be stuck there

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/04/us-military-rocket-cargo-pro... I remembered wrong, they are looking at more than just Starship. You’re right but I’m assuming they want a militarized version that solves these problems.

I thought there was potential for medivac rockets.

Land near combat and take off to America or Europe for surgery.

That, anyway, will not happen. Once one has landed somewhere not a spaceport, it will not be launched again without a huge production. More likely the valuable engines will be removed and shipped home, the rest left as so much scrap metal.

If dry weight is 85 tons, with ~11 tons of engines, that leaves 74 tons of scrap. At 15 cents a pound, that's worth $22k. Maybe more as souvenirs.

The flaps & actuators might be worth taking, but the top ones are inconveniently high up unless you tip it over. Probably the electronics is worth shipping home if it's easy enough to strip off.

I don't know why the thrust plate isn't titanium. A 30 ft diameter thrust plate would in any case be inconvenient to ship home, from most places.

Oh my gid, do you understand that these rockets carry Millions of liters of fuel? Thats the energy of a small nuclear bomb.

Unlike planes, they carry oxidiser and fuel, so they do not burn, they detonate. Minimal safe exclusion zone is measured in square miles!

Simpler? The fuel is chilled 2/3 of the way to absolute zero, and the engines are at several thousand degrees. Tiny manufacturing error and everyone dies.

> Unlike planes, they carry oxidiser and fuel, so they do not burn, they detonate.

This isn't true. They cause a conflagration. They do not detonate. The fuel and oxidizer are not well mixed.

It can be quite hard to tell the difference, particularly from on board, moreso if you are dead.

>The fuel costs are not that different than a transatlantic 787 flight [...]

LOL, not even in the same order of magnitude ...

A 787 holds 127,000 litres of kerosene and a Falcon 9 holds 175,000 litres of kerosene. That 787 will travel 13,500km on that fuel (1/3 the circumference of the Earth), whereas the Falcon 9 can go all the way around the world on its fuel.

Not all "kerosene" is the same. Jets use Jet Fuel A which is ~$5/gallon while Merlin engines use RP-1 which is ~$100/gallon.

Also, on the latter, you need a similarly sized tank of liquid oxygen that the jet gets for free from the atmosphere.

$5 and $100 kerosene emit the same amount of CO2 per liter.

Starship's methane is cheaper than Jet A.

Liquid Oxygen is an order of magnitude cheaper than Jet A or methane.

Sure, but we were talking about fuel cost.

>Starship's methane is cheaper than Jet A.

Is this true yet? I'm honestly unaware of it. I've heard they were planning on it to be quite cheap when they find a way to extract it from the atmosphere, but don't know how far they are through that.

A Starship can't land at any random commercial airport, a 787 can. The 787 can also divert to any other airport due to aircraft issue, weather, or whatever. Starship doesn't have anywhere close to the same cross-range capability.

Does it need to? Sure, if it is trying to make the 787 and other such aircraft obsolete, it needs to have infrastructure everywhere, but there are a dozen far flung coastal cities for which it could be useful. NYC to Tokyo, Sydney, or Shanghai would be useful. Might be a while before SpaceX could fly to China but other coastal destinations that currently are exhausting flights would have a customer base if the price/time ratio was right.

Yes, the infrastructure for rocket travel doesn’t exist... yet. That can change.

We are moving from being able to crawl to walk with this new capability. What happens when we can run?

Airports do not have minimal safety distance measured in miles.

Catastrophic failure of a plane causes a fire, catastrophic failure of a rocket causes a detonation the size of a small nuke.

So you are saying space ports will need to be far out from civilization, and connected to cities by some sort of high speed transport, maybe one located underground for safety reasons?

> Catastrophic failure of a plane causes a fire, catastrophic failure of a rocket causes a detonation the size of a small nuke.

Rockets do not detonate. They cause rapid burning. The fuel and oxidizer are not well mixed so cannot detonate.

I meant 'they explode" in laymans terms

The terms "nuke" were used which conveys the entirely wrong message. Even if you release the energy of a nuke, if you release it slowly you can even generate electricity from it. What matters is how fast the energy is released and a rocket explosion releases energy relatively slowly.

Building airports is already difficult, because they require a lot of space and cause a lot of noise. People also oppose them for environmental reasons or simply because they don't like them. Spaceports are going to be worse in every aspect.

I don't see spaceports appearing in the densely populated areas of Europe or US East Coast or in LA, and definitely not in the Bay Area. You have to build them in remote areas or in international waters, and then you have to pair them with a conventional airport or with high-speed rail.

The main issue would be how far off the coast the launch and landing platforms would need to be to minimize negative impacts to the local population.

Airports aren't naturally occurring. They have to be built.

They already have plans for this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0

There is a reason Musk and co have stopped pitching the point to point transfer on Earth. Aside from technical challenges, this is a massive regulatory and logistics problem

They didn't stop pitching it, they just focused the pitch on the sole customer really interested in it for now: the Military.

https://spacenews.com/spacex-wins-102-million-air-force-cont...

Musk was pitching this idea (but for cargo) just last week.

Asteroid mining. I really cant believe its not on Elon's mind, talk about disruptive!

Why? There are no minerals available in space that wouldn't be cheaper to mine on Earth. Even with Starship's vastly reduced costs.

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/08/27/there-are-no-k...

I think the argument would be in conjunction with orbital factories.

The cost may well be (much) higher than mining it on earth, but could still be much less than mining it on earth and then launching it to geosync.

Once you have orbital refuelling that changes the asymptotics little so it might be profitable then but that's like post moon station.

> $10 per launch

You mean $10,000,000.00, not $10.00, right?

$10.00 launches would be amazing.

I was about to say it would be terrible because so much fuel would be burning with these cheap launches that we'd probably destroy the atmosphere in a few years...

But for just $10, we can't really be using fuel in the first place.

Yes I meant $10m. Sign me up for $10 launches.

Interestingly there are proposed launch systems that, while not being $10, would potentially be under $1000 and transform passenger and freight movement on Earth too. I am of course talking about orbital rings [1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E

Reply on news.ycombinator.com