Comment by anonporridge | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonporridge | Hacker News Reader

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> We only need so many launches, especially super heavy rocket launches before we run out of payload.

Why do you believe this is true? It's entirely possible that there's a massive amount of unmet demand that's only economically feasible at lower price points that SpaceX is beginning to unlock with reusability and economies of scale.

Even SpaceX themselves is a huge customer with Starlink. An extremely low cost of launch not only means that you can put drastically more satellites up, but you can put them in lower orbit where they will have a shorter lifespan, because they decay orbit and burn up exponentially faster, mitigating the risk of Kessler Syndrome. You can also iterate the satellites much faster as technology advances and waste less time making sure that the satellite is 'perfect' because you only have one shot at launching a JWST after 20 years of work.

On that note, why is one Hubble or JWST enough? We probably need hundreds if not thousands of them if we want a sufficient observation coverage to be fully away of all extraterrestrial (asteroids and commets) threats that might be coming our way.

> waste less time making sure that the satellite is 'perfect' because you only have one shot at launching a JWST after 20 years of work.

Yes, this one shot mentality is extremely expensive and limiting.

Blast those probes out there in quantity, and iteratively fix them.

Move fast and break things

Let's not when it comes to human-rated spaceflight, though :-)

Why not? That's exactly what we did when we ventured onto the high seas and across unknown continents. The spirit of adventure and all that. I'm sure you'd have many thousands of volunteers.

Because the risks are different?

Do you have the same attitudes towards helmets whether you're walking on the street or riding a motorcycle? I'm assuming not, because you understand they are different risk profiles.

When risk profiles differ, so do the mitigation strategies. One of the ways spaceflight manages different risk profiles is by implementing a risk-based approach. For example, NASA classifies their software risk based on probability and severity. When risk is high, they leverage more requirements and more oversight as a way of mitigating the risk to an acceptable level.

What you seem to be insinuating is we should be willing to accept more risk. While I agree in principle, the hard part is getting stakeholders (from astronauts to contractors, administrators, politicians, and taxpayers) to agree. They get a say, too.

Starship will certainly enable some new things we could not do before, or that were simply not economically feasible. But even then there is likely still a severe limit to the demand for launching payloads. All those payloads cost serious money, and while you can save a significant amount by removing the necessity for very lightweight construction due to the enormous capacity of Starship, this might only move stuff from "extremely expensive" to "very expensive".

> But even then there is likely still a severe limit to the demand for launching payloads.

The Starship is about changing the approach, not applying state of the art to a changed parameter. Currently there is a limit. After Starship is offered on the market, that limit may significantly change, as its main reason to exist is the high price of the launch services.

> All those payloads cost serious money

Right, but if you, say, are going to send off-the shelf - or, ok, almost off-the-shelf :) - Caterpillar to the Moon, the payload cost suddenly drops. This is exaggerration, of course, but the idea is that payloads may become much - orders of magnitude - cheaper to produce.

If you can drive the price ($ per ton to orbit) down, more demand will be created. Historically and right now the payload cost dwarfs the rocket costs. That will change and be reversed over time.

Some very sophisticated stuff like space telescopes is much more expensive than their launch costs. But indeed, try launching stuff like propellant or shielding and the difference currently is so high its not funny.

> Some very sophisticated stuff like space telescopes is much more expensive than their launch costs.

Today. Space telescopes are much more expensive than their Earth-bound cousins. In a large part because you can't afford failure. With cheap launches you'll send much cheaper telescopes, which will still do the same science - and they are cheaper because they are not made not to fail with very high probability.

Agreed, still even in the future instruments will be likely more expensive than say bunch of liquid H2 for your NERVA engine & which would influence how they are being launched and moved around.

I think the whole long-term point is to be able to "build" fuel in space somehow, either on the moon or in orbit, because then the rocket equation has been effectively solved.

Starships bringing fuel up is a stop-gap.

Maybe, maybe not. Historically speaking, every time we make doing some expensive and rare thing dramatically cheaper or faster, somebody will dream up a way to make use of that new capacity. I'd be more than happy to see what people dream up to do if we manage to make access to space 10x cheaper.

Agreed, and even if there's not enough actual demand, think of all the extra resources that they can start to stockpile in space for a trip to Mars, etc. by hitching a ride on the same launch as customer payloads.

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