zizee

It's ridiculous because the much ridiculed SLS has a launch cost of 2 billion dollars. If you think SpaceX is throwing billions of dollars into developing a vehicle that costs thisuch to launch, you clearly haven't been following SpaceX at all.

You know there is going to be more that 5 flights, and you know people in this thread are not amortizing total R&D into flight costs. People are talking about 68 million per flight for New Glenn, which no doubt has has many hundreds of millions on R&D spend, and hasn't flown one time.

Good luck to them. SpaceX is great, but healthy competition is always important at driving progress. I'd like to take a trip to space one day, and even if SpaceX nails rapid reusability, the best chance of them being motivated to pass on launch savings is a competitor hot on their heals.

I would also love to see Blue Origin spend more time on building space habitation. If Starship does bring heavy lift costs right down, I want to see all the interesting things that people start putting into space

2 billion is ridiculous, and I can only imagine that number was a misunderstanding SpaceX/Musk saying that they were spending 2 billion in a full year of R&D on Starship.

https://spacenews.com/spacex-investment-in-starship-approach...

This changes if SpaceX can get full reusability working, which they have been making very steady progress towards.

But it's not just that guy.

> Starship rocket to less than $10 million. However, Starship is still very much a development program, and Payload estimates it currently costs around $90 million for SpaceX to build a fully stacked Starship rocket. The vast majority of this cost goes toward the rocket's 39 Raptor engines and labor expenses.

So it's going to be somewhere over $100 for a fully disposable launch. What happens when they start reusing the booster? What happens when they have optimised production further?

Are you sure that your anti-musk bias isn't clouding your judgement?

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/rocket-report-a-new-es...

This is just not true. A hydroelectric dam failure has demonstrably more potential for mass disaster https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

Ok, so your argument for Starship not being the best choice for all mission profiles is based solely on cost. If Starship was cheaper, then you'd agree that it serves the mission profiles?

An estimate of 2 billion per launch is laughable, and suggests you are not arguing in good faith. 100m is more accurate for a fully disposable launch, and SpaceX has demonstrated great progress on reusability of the booster, which will cut costs considerably.

We should put a stop to hydro electric as well https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

Which mission profiles does Starship not make sense for?

The same can be said about most large scale have man engineering efforts.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

And we're back to the beginning. One of the major costs of current reactors is regulatory burden. One of the reasons we don't see improvements in costs is it is extremely hard to release changes or new designs.

Which part of the linked article do you dispute?

They don't want to what? Don't want to give up poorly designed regulations? Or do not want nuclear power?

The latter is largely due to the anti nuclear movement, as sponsored by the petroleum industry. This will go down in history as one of the biggest self-owns in trying to protect the environment.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...

The economics of nuclear power is dominated by a poorly designed regulatory environment (which can be changed if regulators are suitablely motivated).

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power...

No need to give up anything, except a poorly designed regulatory environment :

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power...

Well, back to my original point that the challenges are political in nature.

Nuclear has one of the lowest mortality rates per megawatt hour. It would be even better if only modern reactor designs were considered.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

It's not irrational, but it's a similar concern to things like lead poisoning (similar because you cannot see it, and the effects are long term).

Like with any risk, there should be appropriate and proportional risk mitigation strategies put in place. Current strategies are outsized compared to the risk.

The anti-nuclear environmental movement will go down in history as one of the biggest own goals. If nuclear power had have had continued investment into engineering improvements, the world would be in a much better place WRT climate change.

Vitrification of the waste (mixing it into and storage deep underground provides a safe way to store waste for 1000s of years.

> There is no place in the world geologically stable for the required period (we have no way to know)

This can be said of anything, which is IMO a defeatist attitude. Nothing we do is guaranteed to not cause harm. Likewise, our inaction could also cause harm.

For the specific question of stable geology, past performance can help predict future performance. We can make educated guesses. If it has been stable for the last million years, it's a good be it will be stable for the next 10,000.

> We have no way to communicate with people about the dangers for over 100_000 years.

The need to communicate the dangers over vast timeframes presupposes that society has fallen into ruin, and our record keeping has been destroyed. I will argue that if that has happened, it means countless billions will have perished, and people+or lizardmen) living primitive lifestyles will have far bigger worries than and increased cancer risk.

> The political impetus is to get future generations to pay for our current consumption

We are paying for our current consumption of fossil fuels right now. How many deaths from climate change over the next 200 years are appropriate to ensure the safety of an unknown number of people thousands of years from now?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrification

You are probably being cheeky, but just in case:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiom

https://hinative.com/questions/18367967

Most of the storage challenges are political, rather than engineering.

There is so much fear around this stuff, but it's usually based on the incorrect notion that radioactive wastes is both super dangerous, and lasts forever. But this is not true. The super dangerous stuff doesn't hang around that long, whilst the stuff that does isn't that dangerous.

The super-duper dangerous radioactive waste has a relatively short half-life, and volume. The vast amount of waste is fairly benign.

It's a solvable problem.

My experience with exec types is they most often will either agree with the problem, but not want to listen to proposed solutions (because they want to be "the one"), or they won't want to acknowledge the problem is real, and then try to dominate the conversation explaining how you are wrong.

Thanks for sending me down a rabbit hole :-)

A fun collection of articles!

If you like Project Orion, you might like to read about the Medusa Drive, which is a related, but probably more promising concept using a sail instead of a giant pusher plate.

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2012/07/20/medusa-nuclear-pu...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DYuBt2nFG98

Ancient humans causing extinctions and environmental change is at odds with the image of "indigenous societies are perfect environmental stewards", which has been popularized for various reasons.

I don't think the "interrupt" part of this is what I find concerning.

Given the wide variety of views expressed in this HN discussion, it's clear there isn't consensus on how this is being interpreted, so I think you're wrong in claiming that there is only one type of behaviour being discouraged.

That said, I'm just as a casual observer lying in bed with the flu, I probably should just shut up until I know more the situation.

The "chilling" effect is still the same.

How frustrating. Hopefully my comment above didn't lead anyone to miss any part of that historic event yesterday. Mea culpa!

Good stuff. Fingers crossed this will help a bit.

The cost to orbit is the current limiter for a mars mission because no one will invest in solving all the other challenges until cost to orbit is solved. It's also a lot easier to solve the problems you raised when cost to orbit is lowered.

Early variants of starship will not be human rated. That will only happen once Starship has a proven track record. The is also no reason a human rated starship variant could not be built using the same safety systems seen with the dragon capsule.

It sounds like you are having trouble seeing merit in starship. Falcon 9, whilst great, is not going to the end of launch system development. SpaceX believes Starship will bring significant improvements/benefits. This process is no different to how Automobiles and aircraft have seen improvements to their capabilities over the years.