4 ms·

The thought of a next-gen trillionaire spending the millions of dollars required to launch a freaking rocket just so he can get to Europe in twenty minutes inst

The thought of a next-gen trillionaire spending the millions of dollars required to launch a freaking rocket just so he can get to Europe in twenty minutes instead of the couple hours a supersonic airliner would take.. man, talk about ostentatious.

trhway 6y ago
There aren't supersonic airliners. Anyway, let's calculate. Starship having passenger capacity about that of Concord, say 100, would burn 1000 ton, $1M, of fuel and oxygen, per a suborbital transcontinental flight. Capital cost say $100M per Starship. Say amortize over 100 flights. So $20K/ticket. Double for operations. $40K/ticket. I don't see any supersonic in near and mid future coming even close. If I remember correctly my middle school physics, ballistic trajectory is the most efficient one :) If anything, DOD is already the first in line for suborbital cargo, not warheads mind you, delivery using Starship.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  That isn’t so far fetched. I pay 5-6k each for several business class trips a year.
  - trhway 6y ago
    that is a tough one, yet lets try to think like an MBA, an exec from RyanAir - with Starship payload to LEO of 100ton+ (and actually we need less than LEO) and pressurized volume of 1000m3, the Boeing 747 would be a close match, so giving the very short flight time we can do a really tight cattle class of like 500 passengers, which brings us into the vicinity of $10K/ticket :) I wonder whether we're reaching the stage where suborbital will start to put out the very long distance passenger air out of business the same way like long distance passenger air put out of business the long distance passenger ships.
- nickik 6y ago
  Methane is pretty cheap, fuel should not be so expensive. Starship is made from cheap steal and should be less then $100M to produce. If you put people in seats, and not spaced out for going to Mars, you should get more then 100 people in on.
runarberg 6y ago
Seems like exactly what we need in the midst of our climate emergency.
sailfast 6y ago
The goal was to do it for the same price per seat as an economy ticket, and in a carbon-neutral way because of how the fuel was manufactured. https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/29/16383048/elon-musk-spacex-rocket-transport-earth-travel https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/29/16383048/elon-musk-spacex...

trhway 6y ago

There aren't supersonic airliners. Anyway, let's calculate. Starship having passenger capacity about that of Concord, say 100, would burn 1000 ton, $1M, of fuel and oxygen, per a suborbital transcontinental flight. Capital cost say $100M per Starship. Say amortize over 100 flights. So $20K/ticket. Double for operations. $40K/ticket. I don't see any supersonic in near and mid future coming even close. If I remember correctly my middle school physics, ballistic trajectory is the most efficient one :) If anything, DOD is already the first in line for suborbital cargo, not warheads mind you, delivery using Starship.

s1artibartfast 6y ago
That isn’t so far fetched. I pay 5-6k each for several business class trips a year.
- trhway 6y ago
  that is a tough one, yet lets try to think like an MBA, an exec from RyanAir - with Starship payload to LEO of 100ton+ (and actually we need less than LEO) and pressurized volume of 1000m3, the Boeing 747 would be a close match, so giving the very short flight time we can do a really tight cattle class of like 500 passengers, which brings us into the vicinity of $10K/ticket :) I wonder whether we're reaching the stage where suborbital will start to put out the very long distance passenger air out of business the same way like long distance passenger air put out of business the long distance passenger ships.
nickik 6y ago
Methane is pretty cheap, fuel should not be so expensive. Starship is made from cheap steal and should be less then $100M to produce. If you put people in seats, and not spaced out for going to Mars, you should get more then 100 people in on.

runarberg 6y ago

Seems like exactly what we need in the midst of our climate emergency.

sailfast 6y ago

The goal was to do it for the same price per seat as an economy ticket, and in a carbon-neutral way because of how the fuel was manufactured. https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/29/16383048/elon-musk-spacex-rocket-transport-earth-travel https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/29/16383048/elon-musk-spacex...