4 ms·
This is not happening soon. Safety/redundancy of rockets (including SpaceX's) compared to airliners is abysmal—about five orders of magnitude worse. With pass
by tbabb 7y ago
This is not happening soon.
Safety/redundancy of rockets (including SpaceX's) compared to airliners is abysmal—about five orders of magnitude worse.
With passenger manifests in the hundreds (necessary for the economics to work), and with any failure being catastrophic, you'll be seeing multiple Tenerife disasters [1] per year.
You also can't launch a rocket (especially one that big) anywhere near a major city for sound and safety reasons, which means at best you are building an offshore spaceport, which is terrible for the logistics and economics. But that's still nothing compared to the safety problem.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster
- randyrand 7y agoWhen does startship need to light its engines on landing? What about landing in a 2000 foot deep hole in the ground?
- tbabb 7y agoI don't follow. What's the hole for?
- londons_explore 7y agoThe sound reasons could potentially be mitigated by launching behind a wall, acting as a sound reflector right? Humans can build walls 1km high or more without much difficulty, and by the time the rocket is 1km up, it is already moving pretty fast, and is already much further away.
- tbabb 7y agoAt 13 miles distance, a Starship-size rocket is ~65dB, which is about as loud as a vacuum cleaner, and is the FAA noise limit for residential neighborhoods near major airports. Near the rocket, the loudness is over 200dB, which the essentially the loudest sound that can be experienced at sea level, because the pressure is fluctuating between two atmospheres and zero. That sound level is enough to melt concrete.[1] Ground crews would have to be at considerable distance to avoid serious danger from the sound alone. I don't know how you got the idea that a 1km wall is "easy", but a 13 mile wall is out of the question, let alone a rocket-resistant one. [1] https://kottke.org/14/10/the-worlds-loudest-sound https://kottke.org/14/10/the-worlds-loudest-sound
- jcranmer 7y ago> Humans can build walls 1km high or more without much difficulty The tallest structure in the world is 0.83km high. The second tallest is 0.63km, and most of the structures in the 0.6km height range are guyed masts and not free-standing structures. At that height, the only effective structures are tubular systems and guyed systems, to resist the lateral loads of wind at altitude. Turning that into a wall is going to be difficult, especially one that is designed to resist the massive forces of the pressure wave with rocket launch.