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SpaceX is completely changing the opportunities of getting to space. The reduction in price has been nuts. According to NASA the space shuttle was ~$450 millio

SpaceX is completely changing the opportunities of getting to space. The reduction in price has been nuts. According to NASA the space shuttle was ~$450 million per launch, or $16,364 per kg to LEO. The Delta 4 Heavy is $12,156 per kg. For some launches it's even higher- the Air Force paid $15,109 per kg for four launches. The Falcon 9 is $62 million, or $2,719 per kg to LEO. The Falcon Heavy is $2,351 per kg when expendable or $1,411 when reused. The BFR is supposed to have 2.5x the payload for 8% of the cost: $46 per kilogram. Even fully expendable it's $2,233 per kg. That's INSANE. It's space elevator money: > For a space elevator, the cost varies according to the design. Bradley C. Edwards received funding from NIAC from 2001 to 2003 to write a paper, describing a space elevator design. In it he stated that: "The first space elevator would reduce lift costs immediately to $100 per pound" ($220/kg).[1] If the BFR actually becomes reality it turns a journey to orbit into an airplane ride. A $10,000 airplane ride that will shake your fillings loose, but make no mistake: that completely changes everything about space. It makes putting satellites in orbit around Jupiter as hard as visiting the north pole. Fucking TV hosts will be able to go for a quick jaunt around the moon. If the BFR happens, we'll have a mars base just because it would be so cheap it's a no-brainer. Building a new ISS would be about as hard as building a new Sealab. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator_economics

Mountain_Skies 7y ago
$100/lbs is pretty inexpensive but still high enough to cause some to spend some time with Jenny Craig before their flight.
- hwillis 7y ago
  $46/kg, or $21/lb. Probably not worth a gym membership, but it would be the most money I ever saved taking a dump.
DennisP 7y ago
It's the dawn of the true space age. And though Musk isn't a fan, this could even make solar power satellites economical. The monolithic designs from the 1970s would be absurdly expensive, but modern designs like SPS-Alpha get economies of scale by using lots of small identical parts that self-assemble in orbit. According to the book The Case for Space Solar Power, a 2GW satellite would deliver electricity at 15 cents/kWh at pre-SpaceX launch costs. I plugged BFR's $50/kg into its cost breakdown and got 4 cents/kWh, which is pretty good for zero-carbon baseload. Ground solar is cheaper by itself, but probably not after including storage. The basic idea is geosynchronous orbit, microwave power transmission with a phased array device that requires a reference signal from the target location, and a wire mesh collector several miles wide. Over 24 hours, a solar panel in geosynch collects 5.4 times as much light as one on Earth. At the time the book was written, the power transmission had been tested over a couple dozen miles, and was 40% efficient. Longer-term, if we collect fuel from the moon to go from LEO to GEO, we could make it even cheaper.
- newguynewguy 7y ago
  Aren't there some pretty serious health and ecological problems with such large-scale microwave transmission?
  - vardump 7y ago
    Perhaps, but several orders of magnitude less bad than health and ecological problems from sunlight.
    - test6554 7y ago
      How can you get more power from an orders of magnitude less powerful beam than from an orders of magnitude more powerful beam (sunlight) over an equal surface area? And if you can’t, why do it? This blows my mind.
      - MayeulC 7y ago
        Disclaimer: I do not know the specifics, but I guess neither do you. The gist of it is probably that more energy gets transmitted per surface unit, but in a way that's less dangerous than sunlight. Firstly, you have 24/365 production, always at peak power. All things equal, you need a lot less capacity for equivalent power generation. Then, I am fairly certain that the amount of power that can be collected depends a lot on antenna size, just like standard wireless transmission: the antenna needs to be "tuned". And a few hundred meters of steel cable would likely absorb a lot more energy than an 80 L water bag. And finally (but related), microwaves are likely a lot less dangerous than UV: it isn't ionizing, because individual photons cary a lot less energy. That also means that they penetrate more "cooking" (increasing temperature) more deeply the objects in its path. Instead of getting your skin burnt from the energy, you feel slightly warmed up (and would likely be able to dissipate the small extra heat in the atmosphere). A sizeable portion of this energy would likely end up in the ground, if no antenna is present to collect it. This technology is interesting, as it offers a lot of new possibilities: it's easy to relocate, for instance. We might also be able to split the beam to power multiple places simultaneously, reducing grid losses (and load balancing at the satellite).
narrator 7y ago
I think this illustrates what someone who actually understands the engineering being in charge of a company can really do to revolutionize a field. If a non-engineer is in charge of a space company, they'll look at the popular science articles and assume that single launch is the only way to do things. They'll also assume that we just need to get the material science right to be able to do space elevators. They'll assume that the only way to get into space is to get bigger and bigger space budgets. That will increase shareholder profits after all. When you have an actual engineer running the company, they can question all those assumptions. They can take everything apart and put it back together again in different ways and question the assumptions of the "thought leaders" in the space. In a way, this outside "thought leadership" by research institutes has hindered science by leading researchers given grants to carefully conserve and develop their pet solution to a problem that they are an authority on. If their idea falls out of favor, then they will lose their grant money. It's the extreme version of the innovator's dilemma. An entrepreneurial engineer just wants to get the job done. If they can't deliver a great product, they'll lose their revenue stream. If they can leapfrog the competition by capitalizing on their innovator's dilemma, then they'll move to true greatness.
- navigatesol 7y ago
  I love how we've suddenly decided that all the solid engineering done in the space industry, for decades, was done by fools reading pop science. But now a "real engineer" is showing us the way. SpaceX is standing on the shoulders of giants.
  - chasd00 7y ago
    I'm a real fanboy of SpaceX but, yes, you're absolutely right.
  - woodandsteel 7y ago
    For the first few decades after WWII, the rocket and space industry was run by brilliant engineers. After Apollo it got taken over by mba's and political types, and basically stagnated. That is why you have SLS which is actually inferior to Saturn V. But then Musk took over and once again a brilliant, innovative engineer was in charge, and so we are back to making real progress in space travel. By the way, I am not talking about the space probe designers. They have been brilliant, and have produce an astounding series of scientific advances. But the rocket industry has stagnated.
aperrien 7y ago
$50 a kilogram makes it almost cheap enough that immigration to the moon would be practical. Certainly if a large enough group wanted to band together and pay for the launching of their own infrastructure and passenger rides, they could do it. Forget "just" the start of a new Space Race. This would be the opening of the space version of the Oregon Trail!
simonh 7y ago
I've seen some say this will put the trad space companies, Lockheed, Boeing, Airbus, etc out of business. It's going to hand them the biggest bonanza they have ever seen. All that launch capacity Starship brings online will have to be used to launch stuff, and these guys are going to be building the stuff. They're not just rocket manufacturers, but have huge satellite manufacturing arms. If I had the money, I'd be investing in space technology stocks like crazy right now.

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

$100/lbs is pretty inexpensive but still high enough to cause some to spend some time with Jenny Craig before their flight.

hwillis 7y ago
$46/kg, or $21/lb. Probably not worth a gym membership, but it would be the most money I ever saved taking a dump.

DennisP 7y ago

It's the dawn of the true space age. And though Musk isn't a fan, this could even make solar power satellites economical. The monolithic designs from the 1970s would be absurdly expensive, but modern designs like SPS-Alpha get economies of scale by using lots of small identical parts that self-assemble in orbit. According to the book The Case for Space Solar Power, a 2GW satellite would deliver electricity at 15 cents/kWh at pre-SpaceX launch costs. I plugged BFR's $50/kg into its cost breakdown and got 4 cents/kWh, which is pretty good for zero-carbon baseload. Ground solar is cheaper by itself, but probably not after including storage. The basic idea is geosynchronous orbit, microwave power transmission with a phased array device that requires a reference signal from the target location, and a wire mesh collector several miles wide. Over 24 hours, a solar panel in geosynch collects 5.4 times as much light as one on Earth. At the time the book was written, the power transmission had been tested over a couple dozen miles, and was 40% efficient. Longer-term, if we collect fuel from the moon to go from LEO to GEO, we could make it even cheaper.

newguynewguy 7y ago
Aren't there some pretty serious health and ecological problems with such large-scale microwave transmission?
- vardump 7y ago
  Perhaps, but several orders of magnitude less bad than health and ecological problems from sunlight.
  - test6554 7y ago
    How can you get more power from an orders of magnitude less powerful beam than from an orders of magnitude more powerful beam (sunlight) over an equal surface area? And if you can’t, why do it? This blows my mind.
    - MayeulC 7y ago
      Disclaimer: I do not know the specifics, but I guess neither do you. The gist of it is probably that more energy gets transmitted per surface unit, but in a way that's less dangerous than sunlight. Firstly, you have 24/365 production, always at peak power. All things equal, you need a lot less capacity for equivalent power generation. Then, I am fairly certain that the amount of power that can be collected depends a lot on antenna size, just like standard wireless transmission: the antenna needs to be "tuned". And a few hundred meters of steel cable would likely absorb a lot more energy than an 80 L water bag. And finally (but related), microwaves are likely a lot less dangerous than UV: it isn't ionizing, because individual photons cary a lot less energy. That also means that they penetrate more "cooking" (increasing temperature) more deeply the objects in its path. Instead of getting your skin burnt from the energy, you feel slightly warmed up (and would likely be able to dissipate the small extra heat in the atmosphere). A sizeable portion of this energy would likely end up in the ground, if no antenna is present to collect it. This technology is interesting, as it offers a lot of new possibilities: it's easy to relocate, for instance. We might also be able to split the beam to power multiple places simultaneously, reducing grid losses (and load balancing at the satellite).

narrator 7y ago

I think this illustrates what someone who actually understands the engineering being in charge of a company can really do to revolutionize a field. If a non-engineer is in charge of a space company, they'll look at the popular science articles and assume that single launch is the only way to do things. They'll also assume that we just need to get the material science right to be able to do space elevators. They'll assume that the only way to get into space is to get bigger and bigger space budgets. That will increase shareholder profits after all. When you have an actual engineer running the company, they can question all those assumptions. They can take everything apart and put it back together again in different ways and question the assumptions of the "thought leaders" in the space. In a way, this outside "thought leadership" by research institutes has hindered science by leading researchers given grants to carefully conserve and develop their pet solution to a problem that they are an authority on. If their idea falls out of favor, then they will lose their grant money. It's the extreme version of the innovator's dilemma. An entrepreneurial engineer just wants to get the job done. If they can't deliver a great product, they'll lose their revenue stream. If they can leapfrog the competition by capitalizing on their innovator's dilemma, then they'll move to true greatness.

navigatesol 7y ago
I love how we've suddenly decided that all the solid engineering done in the space industry, for decades, was done by fools reading pop science. But now a "real engineer" is showing us the way. SpaceX is standing on the shoulders of giants.
- chasd00 7y ago
  I'm a real fanboy of SpaceX but, yes, you're absolutely right.
- woodandsteel 7y ago
  For the first few decades after WWII, the rocket and space industry was run by brilliant engineers. After Apollo it got taken over by mba's and political types, and basically stagnated. That is why you have SLS which is actually inferior to Saturn V. But then Musk took over and once again a brilliant, innovative engineer was in charge, and so we are back to making real progress in space travel. By the way, I am not talking about the space probe designers. They have been brilliant, and have produce an astounding series of scientific advances. But the rocket industry has stagnated.

aperrien 7y ago

$50 a kilogram makes it almost cheap enough that immigration to the moon would be practical. Certainly if a large enough group wanted to band together and pay for the launching of their own infrastructure and passenger rides, they could do it. Forget "just" the start of a new Space Race. This would be the opening of the space version of the Oregon Trail!

simonh 7y ago

I've seen some say this will put the trad space companies, Lockheed, Boeing, Airbus, etc out of business. It's going to hand them the biggest bonanza they have ever seen. All that launch capacity Starship brings online will have to be used to launch stuff, and these guys are going to be building the stuff. They're not just rocket manufacturers, but have huge satellite manufacturing arms. If I had the money, I'd be investing in space technology stocks like crazy right now.