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Comment by mchusma | Hacker News Reader

I would hope we actively plan for much cheaper launches with Starship coming online. It seems like we can do many more projects, at lower cost and higher risk than before, because launch costs are low.

Instead of $1-$10B projects focus on things <$100M. Or at least focus on platforms to enable cheap probes without so much customization. It should be possible to pull off things like this soon without even government funding. Just buy a stock probe with some modifications and launch it cheaply in a direction you want.

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Probes could be mass produced and then shipped to space once a year with a Starship launch. A thousand probes per year would be great. Most of them could use the same gravity assist routes and then take off from there in slightly different angles. Space is huge.

Any billionaire looking for being remembered for millennia?

Maybe even some strategically placed [1] satellites as communication relays?

[1]: Maybe on lagrange points?

> Instead of $1-$10B projects focus on things <$100M

The entire mission budget for ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission/Mangalyaan probe was a mere US$74 million. Modi famously boasted that this was cheaper than the budget of the Hollywood film, Gravity (2014).

There are countries in the world besides the US which can reliably and very cheaply place satellites in orbit. India has been a launch provider for many other countries in the region (Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, etc) which do not have their own launch capability, and their PSLV/GSLV rockets are workhorses, having launched hundreds of satellites for customers worldwide.

What is its scientific output, though?

The problem with that is the launch costs are a small fraction of the total cost of these big missions. A launch on an Ariane 5 costs $177m, that’s a small slice of the total $10bn cost of the JWST. Starship will really shine for cheap heavy payloads.

A huge portion of the JWST cost was specially designing it to fold and unfold in a certain way due to the size of the rocket and the size of the spacecraft. First, smaller probes wouldn't have that restraint, and second, SpaceX's upcoming bigger launch vehicle won't have that restraint for JWST-sized craft.

Or we can build even bigger instruments, that fold out even larger, and do dramatically more science.

> much cheaper launches with Starship coming online

Are they actually cheaper, or are SpaceX shareholders just subsidizing what is essentially a commoditized service?

> I would hope we actively plan for much cheaper launches with Starship coming online.

(disclaimer: I'm a SpaceX fan) Savings that was supposed to be generated by rocket reuse with Falcon 9 haven't trickled down to clients, if I understand situation correctly. What makes everyone think that Starship will bring cheap kg-to-orbit era?

I think you’re misinformed. https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/10/05/how-much-cheaper-a...

What are you talking about? Do you have any idea how much money SpaceX has saved Nasa?

https://arstechnica.com/features/2020/05/the-numbers-dont-li...

Program | Cargo Dragon | Commercial crew | Constellation

Type | Private, fixed-price | Private, fixed-price | Government, cost-plus

NASA costs | $396 million | $5 billion | $34.5 billion

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