39 ms·
SpaceX BFR [video]
- jacquesm 9y agoInteresting. Two little issues: safety and ticket costs. Also, your average overweight tourist isn't going to be very happy at several G's.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoHey, I'm a bit overweight and I would be very much happy with the G's :). That said, I think those are the two primary issues. Airplanes, cars and trains can break on you, but they generally won't explode.
- jacquesm 9y ago> Hey, I'm a bit overweight and I would be very much happy with the G's :). Your head would be happy but your heart might disagree. If a good chunk of the passengers gets moved to the ER, happy but with heart issues I think it won't be very popular.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoWell, you just ruined my day. But probably saved my life, so thanks. :(. :).
- wayanon 9y agoMy thought also, how will landing feel?
- bergie 9y agoThe Raptor engine can throttle lower than the current Merlin they use in Falcon 9. This means they should be able to make a much softer/slower landing
- FatalLogic 9y agoExtrapolating very naively from SpaceX prices[1] for Falcon Heavy to low earth orbit suggests a ticket price of about $150,000, at $1500 per kg That is ignoring safety, and other pros and cons such as Falcon Heavy didn't fly yet, Space-X doesn't have a passenger module, frequency and economic scale of passenger operation, different flight profile from LEO, lack of regulatory framework, and so on [1]http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities
- vincnetas 9y agoYou don't need to reach orbital speed, only ballistic trajectory. So i guess fuel consumption is less than low earth orbit trips.
- ascorbic 9y ago"About the same as full fare economy" So in the low thousands. Incredible if true. https://www.instagram.com/p/BZnVfWxgdLe/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BZnVfWxgdLe/
- rkangel 9y agoImpressive if they achieve that. The price point they need to reach though for this to be feasible is business class. As suggested by the NY<->Shanghai route in the video, the major use for this would be distant business meetings that either have to be week long trips or video conferences. Instead they could be overnight or even day trips. Businesses have more buying power as well compared to consumers.
- mtgx 9y agoIf they can maintain all ticket prices below $10,000 that would probably work. It would still be 2-3x what businesses normally pay, but they would arrive 10x faster, so it may be worth it at least for some. Musk just needs enough customers to make the business sustainable and so he can afford to build more such rockets and then keep dropping the price.
- modeless 9y ago
- puranjay 9y agoI trust SpaceX to figure this out. They've already solved the hardest problem: landing a rocket upright
- jacquesm 9y agoFuel cost is a constant for rocketry, there is nothing to figure out there, and people tend to go through a whole bunch of checks before they are allowed to be flown on a rocket to stop them from developing some critical issue in a place where there is no way to get help or be helped. You can't do emergency medical stuff while accelerating and decelerating in a rocket and this one is doing either one almost all the time.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoSo that's basically the first privately-owned ICBM?
- greglindahl 9y agoFalcon 9 is already that, with the bonus that it's got a big enough payload that you don't need to miniaturize the bomb.
- jacquesm 9y agoYou don't even need a bomb.
- greglindahl 9y agoThat would require additional software development and might not be nearly as accurate.
- stcredzero 9y agoThe marketing tagline: BFR are the bomb!
- unsigner 9y agoNo, the current SpaceX rockets are ICBM enough. This is much harder - ICBM's don't need to land at ~0 m/s vertical speed, and if they carry nuclear warheads (are there conventional ICBMs at all?) they don't need ~1 m landing precision.
- wayanon 9y agoThe security protections on the launch pads alone would have to be incredibly high. Looks vulnerable at sea like that.
- jacquesm 9y agoLike the security precautions at airports? Any airport that I'm familiar with has access roads and roads around it that are accessible to the public from where any idiot with an RPG or possibly even a rifle could attempt to bring down a passenger jet. And yet it does not happen.
- ben_w 9y agoI wonder why it does not happen, given that terrorist attacks in general do occur. Great policing, or do the bad guys just lack imagination? Hoping for the former, but if I were a civil servant I’d want to assume the latter and plan for surprise imagination.
- Boothroid 9y agoThere are tools available to help reduce the threat, e.g. http://www.cunningrunning.co.uk/sam-pras http://www.cunningrunning.co.uk/sam-pras 'SAM-PRAS is a unique market-leading solution used by counter-terrorism agencies to identify potential MANPADS launch points within range of flight paths.' I don't work for or have any association with this company BTW, just aware of their software.
- madamelic 9y ago>Great policing, or do the bad guys just lack imagination? Ease. It is likely quite difficult to get an RPG without getting eyes on you, then driving to an airport with an RPG, then lining up a shot and hoping to hit a plane moving at 100+ MPH. Or you can take a truck and drive it through a crowded mall.
- monk_e_boy 9y agoOr a drone with a grenade on it.
- maytc 9y agoHow big are the sonic booms gonna be?
- FBISurveillance 9y agoAt that height it doesn't matter IMO.
- ascorbic 9y agoThey're launching out to sea. Once they're over land, they'll be out of the atmosphere. In space no one can hear you boom.
- teekert 9y agoBFR, Big Freaking Rocket?
- arianvanp 9y agoIt's an id-software reference to the BFG (big fucking gun)
- neverminder 9y agoBig Fucking Rocket, actually.
- monk_e_boy 9y agoYep, they just talked about it on Radio 4. The comment was "So he's really called it that?" Then a sigh. Haha. Love it :)
- Boothroid 9y agoBeautiful. A middle finger to the usual bland corporate pomposity!
- Tepix 9y agoThe tame version is Big Falcon Rocket.
- bxu 9y agoThe jet lag must be pretty significant then :)
- yigithan 9y agoI guess it will be called rocket lag :)
- stoolpigeon 9y agoHere is the news A cure's been found for good old rocket lag (Here is the news) Someone left their life behind in a plastic bag -ELO 1982 "Here is the news"
- madisfun 9y agoNah, in half an hour you can always come back to sleep at home.
- tbabb 9y agoMusk says the ticket price would equal an economy international plane ticket. Back of the envelope calculation more or less confirming that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15362976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15362976
- jlebrech 9y agoeven if it cost multiples the cost of a concorde ticket, i'm sure some would want to fly from sydney to new york in one hour.
- ojosilva 9y agoI'm not sure here, but I think weather could play a major role in disrupting launches, greater than with jet liners, right? And not just due to windy conditions (which planes can better withstand up to a certain point), but also rough waters. Another issue is noise. I don't see rockets happening that close to shore in large cities. A long pad-to-city commute, with ship trip included, would be another inconvenience.
- InclinedPlane 9y agoMaybe. Rockets can actually fly through a variety of rough weather conditions. Indeed, they can even survive being struck by lightning (as Apollo 12 was). However, they are not, as a rule, designed to do so. And because they are multi-million dollar equipment that are only used once before being discarded it's easier to simply avoid launching in weather that might be too severe. However, in practice a rocket could be designed to fly in much more severe weather than is allowed for most launches today, it just takes designing it to do so. Because of the huge cost of rockets today designing a rocket to fly through adverse weather would add additional additional manufacturing cost onto each launch, which is not a good tradeoff. But if you can ammortize that over many flights, then it's not a big deal. Think about ICBMs and SLBMs. Do you think there is someone sitting in a Minuteman bunker looking at the weather, ready to tell the launch officers just after they've turned their keys "sorry fellas, I've overriden your orders, we can't launch today, the weather is too crummy, oh well, better wait until tomorrow, if there is one"? No, missiles are designed to launch on a moment's notice, and be capable of successfully hitting their targets even if the local weather is terrible. Their designed to be able to launch through thunderstorms and experience only a small percentage of losses in the most unusual conditions. Similarly, any orbital rocket can be designed to be able to launch through most typical severe weather events, with only a small percentage of conditions (compared to today) requiring a scrub because it would endanger mission success. The degree to which SpaceX will do such a thing is unknown, but it's within the realm of possibility. Also, it should be noted that a major reason weather has a historical role in disrupting launches is because one of the best locations for launches in the US (Florida: Easterly coast, as close to the equator as possible) is also one of the few places on Earth with the most thunderstorm activity (roughly one out of five days in Florida has a thunderstorm). The vast majority of other locations on Earth don't experience nearly the same level of launch-risk inducing severe weather.
- kensai 9y agoI wonder if they can compete with Boom Supersonic [https://boomsupersonic.com/ https://boomsupersonic.com/] at the fuel cost. One reason Concorde failed was NOISE and FUEL COSTS.
- LeonM 9y agoIf I have to believe Elon, the fuel for the BFR is 'incredibly cheap' to produce. And the concorde flew over land and cities, a rocket goes straight up (for the first part) so noise problems should be acceptable.
- monk_e_boy 9y agoI lived under the flight path of concord and the twin boom-boom was highly annoying.
- alexnewman 9y agoI am sure mil would love this tech
- metaphor 9y agoDoubt it. If you thought the JSF was an acquisition nightmare...
- perilunar 9y agoAbsolutely. 200+ paratroopers, anywhere in the world in under an hour? Land anywhere flat after the troops have jumped, refuel and recover later.
- stcredzero 9y agoLand anywhere flat Like the deck of an aircraft carrier? A specialized glider-reentry vehicle would allow the delivery of armored vehicles. It would also allow safer deployment of the rocket.
- jlebrech 9y agoI thought the ship was going to take off
- someperson 9y agoNot too get too off-topic with HN's strict rules, but here's an anime depiction of what I believe you to have been imagining: https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/ActualFeistyBettong https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/ActualFeistyBettong (sorry for the image macro, I couldn't find a HTML5 embed without it)
- jlebrech 9y agoI was thinking of it taking off more diagonally, but yes quite close.
- slimshady94 9y agoI had a vision of it diving inside the water and becoming some superfast submarine, perhaps cutting through the earth's crust or something. Anything can happen right!
- fuzzythinker 9y agoStart: https://youtu.be/S5V7R_se1Xc?t=26m12s https://youtu.be/S5V7R_se1Xc?t=26m12s
- jlebrech 9y agocan anyone think of scenarios where somebody has to be somewhere in an hour? what about making one of those the new airforce one?
- lmm 9y agoHistories of financial crises include a fair bit of catching Concorde between London and New York. That's the only case I can think of that's urgent and serious enough to justify face-to-face talks where it's safe enough to have an unplanned international visit.
- jlebrech 9y agoi'm thinking this is the new concorde (not in failure) Urgent signing and cancelling of business deals in person, or delivery of high tech expertise or knowledgable staff.
- grondilu 9y ago> can anyone think of scenarios where somebody has to be somewhere in an hour? Have you ever taken any long-haul flight? I guess some people don't mind, but I find it excruciating. Few people have to be somewhere in an hour. But lots of people would love to.
- InclinedPlane 9y agoIt's not even about the latency issue, in most cases. Today the biggest problem with, specifically, trans-pacific flights is that you burn an entire day in travel, both ways. That means if you want to take a weekend to go somewhere, you can't, because 2 days minus 2 days is zero days, you have no time to actually spend doing anything. And that's aside from the recovery time of that much air travel. Short duration trips are then only reasonable if you can cram in some very high priority activity, which is very limiting. For shorter trip times it becomes feasible to squeeze in short trips on a more regular basis. I had a coworker who lived in the Seattle area and flew down to LA every weekend to visit his wife for several months. That's only feasible if you can cram travel into Friday/Sunday evenings. That sort of thing will become possible with a service like BFREE. Most importantly, you don't burn entire days in travel, you simply add travel as a component into those days. These flights are expected to be in the $10k range, so basically anyone who makes more than about $4m a year will have a straight up logical cost/benefit reason to use BFREE for long distance flights instead of air travel, because it means they get the majority of that whole day back, instead of burning it flying.
- davman 9y agoI'm guessing there would be some environmental impact? It can't exactly be carbon neutral burning all that fuel?
- pvsukale1 9y agoI know people have valid reasons to be skeptical about such projects. But maybe after 50 years or so when this kind of transport will be very common we will remember this day as one of the most historic events in the course of humanity.
- willyt 9y agoAnd if it becomes that common, in 150 years time, New York will be under water. I remember reading that the instantaneous power output of one Apollo rocket taking off is roughly the equivalent of the entire average electricity load of the UK. Surely burning a country's worth of rocket fuel every time you want to travel long distance is not sustainable?
- awiesenhofer 9y agoWell, New York City probably will be largely underwater in 150 years anyways, but not because of the BFRs. SpaceX plans to synthesize the fuel by using water, solar power and captured carbon dioxide from the earths athmosphere - just like it will be done on mars.
- hossbeast 9y agoIs it true that an extrapolation of existing trends puts NYC underwater in 150 years?
- nickik 9y agoIf there only were some sort of technology that could make it possible to keep water away. Also, you can just generate that fuel from the air and make it carbon neutral if that was really the issue.
- mtgx 9y agoFusion power can't come soon enough. Maybe it's time for Musk to start working on that. He actually said in an older interview that he would like to tackle it eventually.
- corradio 9y agowait and what's the energy usage of that thing? Carbon footprint?
- Shivetya 9y agosadly this is all I started thinking, but only because of how much he pushes EVs and Solar. It seems like a complete opposite move but given current technology there isn't a clean method to do what he wants. I would be really curious how much works has gone into neutral fuels. pretty sure lox and such can be made neutrally with solar powered chillers but what is his other fuel? a hydrogen type would be similar would it not?
- eightysixfour 9y agoMethane + oxygen (methalox).
- triplesec 9y agoThat produces C02, and given the energies required, would produce a lot. A retrograde step.
- averagewall 9y agoHe mentions the possibility of making the fuel from solar power, water and CO2 on Earth in the same way he plans to for Mars. It wouldn't make economic sense now though. If you care about the environment that much, use the same process to make the same methane and run your ICE car off it. That's old tech.
- frafra 9y agoMusk said that the fuel (methane and oxygen) for Mars expeditions has to be produced on Mars, using solar panels, water and capturing carbon dioxide available in the atmosphere, and he also stated that the very same procedure could be used on Earth.
- mtgx 9y ago
- diegoperini 9y agoHow many hours early should we arrive to the launch pad? Are laptops allowed?
- suprfnk 9y ago> Are laptops allowed? No idea. But the fastest flight (non stop) from NYC to Shanghai right now is almost 15 hours. This promises 39 minutes. Would you rather fly 15 hours with a laptop than 39 minutes without?
- saiya-jin 9y ago39 minutes plus how many hours before & after, so we can compare the whole trip duration? I can give you a nice example - flying from Geneva to Paris is maybe 40 minutes. Taking fast TGV train is 185 minutes. Overall only desperate fools would ever fly this trip (unless continuing to fly someplace else). Train is vastly superior experience - much more room, quicker, no security idiots everywhere. Unless they can land on the main airports or similarly connected places, time gain might not be so great. Flying in the outer space is another thing...
- mtgx 9y agoI think that depends on whether or not the ticket is something like 50x more expensive. If Musk is proposing this idea then I assume it won't be too expensive, even for rich people. So it should cost significantly less than what private jet trip costs them (because the BFR is not so private after all). Of course, the faster time to destination should also balance things out, but I have a feeling a trip would be more like 2h with the boat trips and waiting time included, because as others have said, I doubt the launchpad will be that close to shore.
- jpatokal 9y agoYou can't fly NYC to Shanghai on a private jet (unless it's a 777 or equivalent, which 99.9% of private jets aren't). This is a real game changer in aviation terms.
- jokoon 9y agoAren't supersonic jets more affordable? I mean I know SpaceX is about changing the world, and I know SpaceX is about rockets, but in terms of market, I think having a new Concorde would better fit the idea of earth to earth travel. I like how SpaceX innovates, but I think this is a "too soon", bad product idea because it will be too expensive at first, and supersonic jets would be a better competitor. Although I have to admit I really like the disruptive way of "showing the way to the future" communication ad. But to be frank, I wonder if people at SpaceX are not full of zeal sometimes. One bigger problem for SpaceX might be "how to sell space to consumers, or make money with space?". Maybe that is the reason NASA existed as a government agency, because there is no real, direct ROE with space exploration. In the end SpaceX might make money with wealthy people who can afford going to mars or the moon, but I doubt that many people would be interested if there is no financial gain (or maybe for the hell of it). Innovation from NASA research was shared or benefited the military. I want SpaceX to endure and succeed but I really wonder about the money/market sides of it. It requires a lot of vision, which goes beyond the reality of capitalism.
- codeulike 9y agoElon Musk: Cost per seat should be about the same as full fare economy in an aircraft. Forgot to mention that. source: https://www.instagram.com/p/BZnVfWxgdLe/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BZnVfWxgdLe/
- jokoon 9y agoReally? I'm surprised. Well then...
- ncallaway 9y agoI think the key difference is if you're designing specifically for travel on earth then supersonic jets probably are much cheaper. However, if you're designing for space and can allocate the R&D costs to space business units, you end up potentially developing something that has better marginal costs to transport people across the earth. Basically, the R&D of building this is astronomically higher than the supersonic jet. But the (theoretical) promise is the marginal cost isn't that different. However, if you're already doing the R&D for other purposes, then you find yourself owning a system that's (potentially) better for global travel.
- miguelrochefort 9y agoIt's not like people will be able to reach their destination within an hour of booking their ticket. These flights will probably occur once or twice a day, which kind of defeats the purpose?
- bergie 9y agoRegular intercontinental flights have the same problem. With transport this fast, you could theoretically fly in the morning, have a full day of meetings, and be home by the evening. With regular flights you'd spend a full day traveling both ways
- miguelrochefort 9y agoFair enough. In the meantime, I'll stick to Skype.
- baybal2 9y agoI will call this "Intercontinental Ballistic Taxi"
- jeandejean 9y agoMarketing of that product is awesome. But does it scale? Very unlikely! That's great to have impossible goals to make people dream, but stop bullshitting people saying it will replace commercial airplanes and everybody will be an astronaut for the same price. Why is the Concorde not in service anymore? Simple: it was a very little market, over-polluting for over-privileged and we do not need that to enhance traveling, we already tried! How would this BFR be different?
- nickik 9y agoThe Concorde was one airplane. Its not like we have tried every possible way of increasing travel speed. They will build this rocket anyway, the will have to make it reusable anyway. All they did is consider using it as a transporter for people on earth. Its just one way the can potentially make money with this technology. Does not hurt to try. No reason to shit on the idea and claim its some absurd fantasy.
- jeandejean 9y agoWell my bad, all I did was clicking on the link, I made a lot of assumptions on what they intended to do with that. Indeed it doesn't hurt to try!
- caio1982 9y agoMusk didn't say it would replace regular planes nor we would all be astronauts, that's just you saying it. Also, his talk was about 43min long and only the very last "slide" and couple of minutes discussed the why-nots of reusing BFR for local transportation, because technically it is possible.
- jeandejean 9y agoWell I just watched the video, it clearly imagine a world where you could fly BFR like airplanes... I don't see how it would be accessible to the mass, therefore it's a niche product for the very rich, no big deal!
- drinchev 9y agoI think if we measure the travel time from door to door the benefits of the fast rocket shrink in a relation to where is located. With airplanes this is solved, by the big infrastructure ( cities sometimes have even 2-3 airports ). Where I live ( Berlin ) with a flight to NYC would look like : 1. City center -> TXL - 20m 2. Check-in / security - 30m ( no joke, the airport is small ) 3. Flight - 9h 15m 4. Check-out / luggage - 50m 5. EWR -> City center - 50m ------------- TOTAL ---- 11h 25m This means that ( ignoring the BFR flight time, since it's just minutes ) the time between you leave the city-center and entering the BFR should take less than 5 hours ( for Berlin ), otherwise you will not arrive faster than a plane.
- krisroadruck 9y agoTotal Time is only one portion of the suckage of air travel though. It's that long window of time where you are cramped in a small seat, potentially with large strangers spilling into your space from either side that I dislike the most. If I only have to deal with that bit for 30 minutes, the rest of the trip can take as long as it reasonably wants.
- icc97 9y agoNo more deep vein thrombosis. Or screaming kids kicking the back of your chair cause they've got nothing to do for 10 hours. London to Sydney would be a massive improvement because often you have to stop halfway. Plus you get all the benefits of paying for a Virgin Galactic trip
- cjsuk 9y agoGenuinely don't care if this is a stupid idea or if it works or not but I'd ride it :)
- idlewords 9y agoMusk seems to enjoy making promises about all kinds of fantasy transport, promising orders of magnitude cost reduction from already mature technologies like tunneling, rocketry, or high-speed rail. These promises meet with very little skepticism here. Pan Am once offered tickets to the Moon.
- drcross 9y agoIt would be different if this was coming from the mouth of the Comcast CEO but it's coming from Musk who has a series of successful achievements of his own, a profitable space company with the worlds first re-usable rockets, the first company to successfuly market an electric car, fastest growing battery storage solution on the market. These things matter.
- idlewords 9y agoThey do, but the crux of every Musk fantasy is a radical drop in the cost of these things, a promise he has never delivered on.
- davedx 9y agoRoadster: 110k Model S: 70k Model 3: 35k
- tptacek 9y agoThe Roadster, Model S, and Model 3 aren't the same car.
- OrwellianChild 9y agoTesla Roof is cheaper than many traditional roofing materials and provides solar. See the chart here. [1] Air Force launches with SpaceX are less than half the price of ULA launches. [2] Can you clarify how you believe Musk's companies haven't delivered? [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-10/tesla-s-solar-roof-is-finally-ready-for-you-to-buy https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-10/tesla-s-s... [2] https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/16/us-air-force-spacex-ula-launch-costs/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/16/us-air-force-spacex-ula-...
- codeulike 9y agoCost per seat should be about the same as full fare economy in an aircraft. Forgot to mention that. - Elon https://www.instagram.com/p/BZnVfWxgdLe/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BZnVfWxgdLe/ Looks like fun. I'd love to see the in-flight safety video! "Make sure there's nothing in your pockets because we'll be hitting 3 Gees. If anything goes wrong, we're all probably toast." I think this was just an interesting idea thrown out at the end of a talk that had much more interesting stuff, such as redirecting all of SpaceX's resources away from Falcon to build the BFR, and putting humans on Mars by a 2024 'aspirational goal'
- thinkcontext 9y agoIt will have to do intercontinental cargo flights for a while before it can be FAA human certified. They'll probably need to invent whole new classes of safety requirements before it can take passengers.
- gbhn 9y agoTo me this looked like it could be the key to the whole thing... That is, the idea is that you build a high-speed airline with spaceports all over the world, refueled by huge solar arrays refining Ox and CH4 out of the air. Then it turns out your airliners, by virtue of the fact they are orbiters, can also launch satellites and go to Mars and other interplanetary destinations (where similar spaceport situations can be built). The key to the whole thing is to make the second stage an orbiter big enough to do re-entry so the whole system is re-usable. Re-usable second stages are a giant pain, but if the secret is to get big, and that means you're kind of "accidentally" running an airliner, then perhaps SpaceX has found the right business model for commercial space flight in such high volume that things like going to Mars and asteroids and so forth are sort of on the cost order of chartering a private flight -- well within the reach of many organizations.
- dzhiurgis 9y agoI doubt they will have any cabin crew and different regulation could potentially mean cheaper operation.
- sschueller 9y agoVirgin galactic seems to be a more reasonable solution which could probably use existing airport with slight modification.
- rtkwe 9y agoTheir craft are much smaller though. To get to Musk's full fare economy equivalent price you kind of have to go to larger scale craft I'd think.
- mikeash 9y agoSpaceShipTwo is a very much suborbital craft that would only have a range of a few hundred (maybe a thousand?) miles if used for travel. You'd have to build something much bigger to do antipodal travel like this. The capability you need to go suborbital from one side of the Earth to the other is essentially the same as what's needed to go into orbit. (Thus all the ICBMs that got repurposed as orbital launchers.) Any vehicle that can't reach orbit probably can't do what BFR could do.
- martin1b 9y agoDo we get an in-flight snack?
- mmjaa 9y agoI think this is amazing - but what are the military implications? I mean, the military-industrial complex is not likely to stand by and watch this capability become so commonplace that it invalidates the purpose of having fast-attack forces at the readiness. I mean, I guess the answer is pretty clear: the US Military will be the first customer for the BFR, before any transportation companies get it .. they already hold technology in reserve for their war-fighting abilities, so .. its going to be interesting to see what the MIC version of this is going to be .. assuming they don't already have it. (Some people think they do ..)
- DanielBMarkham 9y agoA few thoughts not covered yet. First, instead of people, a great first market for this would be cargo. It would enable same-day delivery of goods anywhere in the world. Surely there's a market for that. I know for a lot of tech gear, when you need it, you need it right now. Factoring in the cost of a business-class ticket (per kilo), isn't anywhere near being a show-stopper. Second, time-to-load could be a real factor, especially if you have to reach city center, then load into a boat, then go to the pad, then load in the rocket, then wait for fuel loading, etc. A better way to do this would be to use hyperloops in a spider fashion from the launch pad out to several of the burbs around the city. I could see the hyperloops ending underwater near the pad, with a nice mall and places for people to wait until their rocket was in position for flight. God help us, you'd still have the TSA nonsense. Third, it just shows a barge, but this would be an entire "thing" -- launchers, rockets, fueling stations, malls, security, and so forth. Maybe cargo is a pretty good way to get started. Adding people just makes the complexity worse. Fourth, before you do cargo, you could do a few high-profile people shots every month, for folks with lots of money who want to be remembered as some of the first folks to ever travel sub-orbitally. Hell if you'd want an accident in those days, though. Public relations will be a bear. It reminds me of the early days of flight, when most folks had a deep and profound fear of the machine. Do you want to get on to the top of a huge stick of dynamite? I do, and most HN'ers might, but a few YouTube explosions that kill people could shut the entire thing down (or worse, delay it for decades)
- wiredfool 9y agoThis looks like a large volume version of the cars in Too Like the Lightning -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Like_the_Lightning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Like_the_Lightning
- thesash 9y agoThere are three things that would factor into my decision about whether to strap myself to a rocket rather than fly in a plane: time, cost, and safety. Musk & SpaceX are talking a lot about time and cost, but safety is obviously a lot more important. Based on data I found on the internet (so it must be true!) the loss rate for rockets is 20k - 165k higher than the fatal crash rate for airplanes over the past 20 years. Loss rate for manned rocket launches [1]: 0.79% Loss rate for unmanned rocket launches [1]: 6.68% Rate of airplane crashes with at least one fatality [2]: < 0.00004% Even if SpaceX is able to make manned space flight 10x safer, I'm not sure I'd trade 19 of the 20 hours I spent traveling from LA to South Africa this summer for a 1/1,300 chance of blowing up during launch. [1] https://space.stackexchange.com/a/12229 https://space.stackexchange.com/a/12229 [2] http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm
- Robotbeat 9y agoLoss rate for space launches is largely due to the fact that the systems are essentially munitions (i.e. expendable, single-use) and flight rates are very low. Rocket failures for crewed rocket launches are extremely rare, occurring once every couple decades. It's hard to improve on that because low flight rates make data very hard to come by. Airplanes fail much more often in absolute terms, giving you a lot more data to work with (especially when combined with near-misses) allowing you bring the relative failure rate very low. Increase flight rates by 5 orders of magnitude, and you may be able to increase reliability by, say, 4 orders of magnitude.
- thesash 9y agoThe loss rate for manned space launches over the past 20 years has been 0.79%. What you're pointing out (only once every few decades) is a factor of the small number of manned launches per year. Actual loss rate is very high. 1/130 chance of loss.
- ncallaway 9y ago> is a factor of the small number of manned launches per year That's true, but the person you're replying to spent most of their comment directly addressing that fact.
- pjungwir 9y agoIn startups you often have tech that is more general than it needs to be, and you start thinking about all the opportunities, but it can be a mistake. In your go-to-market strategy, you need focus. If you say, "We have 3 business models", it means you don't yet have a business model. I hope Elon the best, but I wonder if that is happening here. SpaceX is going to sell Internet, do fast air travel, do space tourism, . . . . Same with Tesla: we aren't just a car company, we're a battery company! There is a hyperloop and a digging company and solar rooftops. I think it's true there are many opportunities, and history has had its conglomerates like GE, but there is risk in losing your focus. Still, I'm thrilled he is pushing us forward!
- Shank 9y agoThese are all related to the core business though. If you can launch rockets, you can launch sats. If you can discount sat launches, you can launch a lot of sats. If you can launch rockets capable of re-entry and reuse and need to finance building rockets to go to Mars, you can build rockets for cross-continental travel. It's not like SpaceX is building a smartphone. They're building in their core competencies.
- stcredzero 9y agoIn your go-to-market strategy, you need focus. If you say, "We have 3 business models", it means you don't yet have a business model. It's pretty clear that SpaceX is in the reusable rocket business. By your logic, Boeing didn't have focus, because they built seaplanes, flying boats, fighters, cargo planes, and passenger planes. (This is what they did, in the order that they did it.) They apparently had at least 5 business models. Whoops. I guess they didn't have a business model!
- SurrealSoul 9y agoDo we get to wear the super cool spacesuits?
- stcredzero 9y agoThey should charge extra for Daft Punk cosplay.
- idibidiart 9y agoWouldn't that mess with our nuclear early warning system? How can you tell if it's an ICBM nuke or a passenger rocket?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- marbu 9y agoIf this acctually happens, it would be interesting to see how the international law, ai<del><del>space trafic control and military missle defence systems develops, so that SpaceX can land one of these in Shangai without having to worry about accidentaly starting a thermonuclear war.
- ryandrake 9y agoWhy not instead work on ways to reduce the need to move people from one place on Earth to another, thereby eliminating the cost, hassle and pollution of air travel and hypothetical rocket travel? There's a huge amount of progress that can be made in telepresence technology--it seems silly to get hung up on the assumption that in order to do something or experience something somewhere you need your bag of water and meat to physically be there. We're very close to mass adopting remote employment--to the point where the barriers are no longer technical but cultural. Why not work on the same for other areas of business and for personal vacations? Physical travel should seem like a silly inefficiency! We should focus on making the Holodeck, not rockets.
- njarboe 9y agoWhy don't you start working on Holodecks. Musk wants to get humanity off this rock. Funding the building of a ship designed to land anywhere in the solar system, including Earth, by using it for Earth transport is brilliant. If one can make the trip from New York to Shanghai in 40 minutes, for the same fuel per person and ticket price as an airplane, why not. Having a fully reusable rocket will be amazing. Once reliability is proven one could even start thinking about nuclear powered rockets and get those CO2 emissions to zero. I'm sure it is on Elon Musk's mind and Mueller has even mentioned looking into nuclear rockets. Solar system travel could really use nuclear rockets to get reasonable travel travel times.
- ryandrake 9y agoI fully applaud efforts to "get humanity off the rock". To the extent that building a rocket airline helps move humanity toward this goal, great! But, other than as a stepping stone to something bigger, this just seems like a silly distraction. As for the very HN-ish "why don't you just go make XYZ?" retort, obviously it's because, like most of us (and unlike Elon Musk), I don't have the necessary truckloads of $100 bills necessary to make that happen. I'll get back to you after my windfall from selling PayPal...
- njarboe 9y ago
- fahd777 9y agoInteresting article about it: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/29/16385026/elon-musk-spacex-rocket-transportation-point-to-point https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/29/16385026/elon-musk-spacex...
- jbkkd 9y agoWhat about pollution? Rockets seem to waste much more fuel compared to a plan on an equivalent distance, though I might be wrong and the main burn would consume less overall.
- grondilu 9y agoThey should really not put windows on this. At least not in the first models. Sure, passengers would love to see outside, but really it makes the design much more complicated for little benefit. It can be stressful not to have any idea of what is happening outside, but you can simply alleviate that with external cameras and screens on board.