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Agreed... Mass production needs to be designed-in and developed with the whole system. Related question: Just how many Starships do you think will be necessary
by JanSolo 6y ago
Agreed... Mass production needs to be designed-in and developed with the whole system.
Related question: Just how many Starships do you think will be necessary to fulfill all our launch demands? Given that it's designed to be reusable and it has a huge payload capacity, perhaps there is less need to mass-produce them, since fewer vehicles will be able to do the same job as many expendable vehicles...?
- garmaine 6y agoThat's a question about demand. My goal is to move all resource extraction and heavy industry off-Earth, and to open the space frontier to permanent and self-sufficient human settlements. For that many, many Starships will be required. Note that the killer feature of Starship, IMHO, is in-space refueling. This isn't a Earth-based heavy-life vehicle... it's a re-configurable spaceship able to explore the entire solar system through fuel depot staging (with Starships themselves serving as both tankers and fuel stations).
- greedo 6y agoIt's not just re-usability, but turn around time as well.
- mr_toad 6y agoI think launch demands might expand to fit the capacity. It’s hard to predict what uses people will put a new technology to. “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
- 101404 6y agoPlan is to get a million people to Mars within a few decades. You can only fly every other year when orbits sync up. Initially, I imagine many Starships will stay on Mars as shelter and raw material. Then there is the idea of using Starships for very fast transport on earth. Fly from NYC to Sydney in half an hour. If that catches on, they may be replacing part of the airplane fleet. Then there is lunar shuttle services, satellite transports and asteroid mining. My guess is: a lot.