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SpaceX Starship is planned for 2024, and with a cargo capacity in the hundreds of tons. Even if it gets delayed by four or five years it will be able to bring b

by jiofih 6y ago

SpaceX Starship is planned for 2024, and with a cargo capacity in the hundreds of tons. Even if it gets delayed by four or five years it will be able to bring back samples before this is is even launched. NASA’s plans seem very slow in comparison.

kiba 6y ago
NASA funds SpaceX though.
- treeman79 6y ago
  For big projects, a sound tactic is to spend a small portion on a cheap alternative implementation. Sometimes the smaller team will be far more successful. Better focus, a competitive drive to prove worth, etc. Unlimited budget is sometimes a hindrance.
- yohannparis 6y ago
  Not as much as you think: ~32% Source: https://www.spacexstats.xyz/#payloads-customers https://www.spacexstats.xyz/#payloads-customers
kerkeslager 6y ago
Marketing materials aren't plans. Musk has made a strategy of "overpromise, maybe deliver", rebranded as "vision" or "ambitious goals". Some of what his companies have delivered is impressive, but you never know what they're going to actually deliver until there are at least working prototypes.
- ben_w 6y ago
  Yeah, but that’s true for all space companies. The surprising thing about SpaceX is that SpaceX delivers more than other corporations which promise less than SpaceX promises.
  - kerkeslager 6y ago
    You agree with what I said, but the sentiment with which I said it wasn't positive enough, so now you've gotta jump in to defend SpaceX? That marketing scheme sure does work. It's no surprise that the best-funded company produces the best results, but it would be interesting to find out if a more honest company could produce better results with equal funding.
    - ben_w 6y ago
      No, I’m saying everyone else is more guilty of the same sins. Generally with more money behind them, too.
      - kerkeslager 6y ago
        > No, I’m saying everyone else is more guilty of the same sins. Given the sin in question is "lying", I'm pretty sure that's just not true. Can you give another example of a space corporation with such a consistent strategy of very publicly overpromising to win contracts and investment? > Generally with more money behind them, too. I'm not sure who you're referring to. NASA might have more funding, but if you subtract what they turn over to SpaceX I'm not sure that counts. Other aerospace companies have other obligations in the aero part of aerospace, so funds devoted to those obligations are not particularly relevant either.
        ceejayoz 6y ago
        > Can you give another example of a space corporation with such a consistent strategy of very publicly overpromising to win contracts and investment? All of them? We call them cost-plus contracts, and they're very common in space/military projects. Bid crazily low, because the bid doesn't matter! For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
        jiofih 6y ago
        They only got large funding from NASA after building fully production-ready rockets and demonstrating they could deliver. It took around $100m of private investment to get the first Falcon generation flying.
- kspacewalk2 6y ago
  > Marketing materials aren't plans. That's right, they aren't. Which is why it's mighty brave of the BBC to call it "first interplanetary cargo ship". We'll see who gets there first.
- nscalf 6y ago
  I that this has historically been the case, but I think there has been a lot more delivery in recent years. The estimates from Musk seem to be less off, and I think a massive part of that is that the ramp up to this point was all predicated on original design of parts. They design and build >90% of the parts in the space ships. I think now that they have a catalogue of parts they don't have to build from scratch, their design/development cycles for new products are much faster and predictable. This same thing goes for Tesla, I don't think Musk & co. get enough credit for building everything from scratch.
qayxc 6y ago
Keep in mind that the first Starship cannot return anything to Earth, due to the lack of fuel. The first Starship that might be able to return anything wouldn't be able to launch before 2026 either, so...
- ben_w 6y ago
  Are they not even planning to at least try and send a fuel factory on the first Mars launch?
  - qayxc 6y ago
    I don't know. But in any case, it's not just the fuel. Have you seen the proposed Moon-Starship? They'd require some quite impressive crane to even get cargo into the ship. Additionally, there's the problem of the landing site. It's considerably more difficult to land a rocket on unprepared, rocky terrain than on a carefully prepared landing pad. Plus a suitable area has to be found first, too. There's simply no guarantee the first Starship(s) even make it to the surface in one piece, let alone ready for refuelling and launch.
    - _Microft 6y ago
      The moon-starship will not require in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), i.e. no creation of fuel and oxidizer at the target. It is supposed to land with enough propellants to make it back.
      - qayxc 6y ago
        I only mentioned the Moon-Starship, because illustrations show nicely how far away from the surface the cargo bay is. I don't suppose the Mars version will be all that different in that regard, but we'll see.
        _Microft 6y ago
        Ah, OK. The cargo bay door being that high up wasn't an issue in my eyes. They can build rockets after all, so they should be fine with engineering a platform and a lift. Edit: Numbers - for fun: if the cargo bay door is 2/3 up the rocket (at 33m from the ground), and someone fell off the platform of the crane at half this height (16m), they would hit the ground with a speed of 7.2m per second which is the speed they would have after falling a distance of ~2.6m on Earth.
itsoktocry 6y ago
>SpaceX Starship is planned for 2024, and with a cargo capacity in the hundreds of tons. And Full-Self-Driving will be available in the summer of 2015, and a cross country autonomous drive will happen in 2017, and this year we'll have 1,000,000 autonomous Robotaxis on the streets. Let's go!
- valuearb 6y ago
  And Falcon 9 is nearing its 100th flight, and has made first stage recovery normal, and a Starship prototype has already flown with the new engine. Based on SpaceX typical cadence, full Starship prototypes will fly this year and achieve orbit next year. That’s three years to work out the kinks for the first Mars attempts.
thinkcontext 6y ago
Though I would very much like to see Starship succeed, it must be understood just how risky a project it is. Just having the rocket be able to work in Earth orbit is a risky proposition, given its novel design and materials challenges. Add to that the many novel challenges returning Starship would entail, refueling in space, landing and taking off from Mars, setting up multi megawatts of solar, mining, methane production, etc. Consider that Falcon Heavy was something like 5 years late. That was doing something that had been done before, strapping rockets together to make a Heavy version. Starship is many times more ambitious, with any of the challenges I raised above likely to hit multi-year delays.
- valuearb 6y ago
  FH was done on a shoestring budget for a small market and nearly canceled when it became clear Starship was the better path. But I agree with you that Starship has some challenges, specifically proving it can handle re-entry, be easily refurbed between launches, and be easily refueled in low earth orbit. But Super Heavy is just a bigger Falcon 9, using the same landing technology. Even if a Starship Reusability falls short, it’s very clear that the combo is going to put bigger payloads than the the SLS into orbit at 1/20th the cost.
  - thinkcontext 6y ago
    I agree they should look at putting Super Heavy into service before Starship. They could use a conventionally designed expendable upper stage, imagine how immense its payload capacity would be without having to lug the enormous Starship. It would allow them to fill out Starlink quickly and would open up the market for larger satellites sooner rather than later.
- tomp 6y ago
  > That was doing something that had been done before, strapping rockets together to make a Heavy version. That’s a common misconception - in fact, even SpaceX itself made this mistake! Musk said that making Heavy was almost as complex as designing a whole new rocket; which is also why they went with new next time (Starship) instead of incremental (Super Extra Heavy).
ballooney 6y ago
I've been on this website long enough to remember when everyone was saying 'of course manually-driven cars will be the exception by 2020', and believing Elon Musk's timescales has taken over as the new naive credulity of the HNer.
- wahern 6y ago
  Who actually believes Musk's timescales? Musk's overly optimistic yet technically plausible timescales seem to be part of the reason why his ventures are so successful. With the right culture and team members, it drives people toward the finish line. The challenge and constant pace of progress is motivating. With the wrong culture and team members (most companies, most people) it leads to crash & burn. Musk's exhausting personality is precisely what makes it all work.

by jiofih 6y ago

kiba 6y ago

NASA funds SpaceX though.

treeman79 6y ago
For big projects, a sound tactic is to spend a small portion on a cheap alternative implementation. Sometimes the smaller team will be far more successful. Better focus, a competitive drive to prove worth, etc. Unlimited budget is sometimes a hindrance.
yohannparis 6y ago
Not as much as you think: ~32% Source: https://www.spacexstats.xyz/#payloads-customers https://www.spacexstats.xyz/#payloads-customers

kerkeslager 6y ago

Marketing materials aren't plans. Musk has made a strategy of "overpromise, maybe deliver", rebranded as "vision" or "ambitious goals". Some of what his companies have delivered is impressive, but you never know what they're going to actually deliver until there are at least working prototypes.

ben_w 6y ago
Yeah, but that’s true for all space companies. The surprising thing about SpaceX is that SpaceX delivers more than other corporations which promise less than SpaceX promises.
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  You agree with what I said, but the sentiment with which I said it wasn't positive enough, so now you've gotta jump in to defend SpaceX? That marketing scheme sure does work. It's no surprise that the best-funded company produces the best results, but it would be interesting to find out if a more honest company could produce better results with equal funding.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    No, I’m saying everyone else is more guilty of the same sins. Generally with more money behind them, too.
    - kerkeslager 6y ago
      > No, I’m saying everyone else is more guilty of the same sins. Given the sin in question is "lying", I'm pretty sure that's just not true. Can you give another example of a space corporation with such a consistent strategy of very publicly overpromising to win contracts and investment? > Generally with more money behind them, too. I'm not sure who you're referring to. NASA might have more funding, but if you subtract what they turn over to SpaceX I'm not sure that counts. Other aerospace companies have other obligations in the aero part of aerospace, so funds devoted to those obligations are not particularly relevant either.
      - ceejayoz 6y ago
        > Can you give another example of a space corporation with such a consistent strategy of very publicly overpromising to win contracts and investment? All of them? We call them cost-plus contracts, and they're very common in space/military projects. Bid crazily low, because the bid doesn't matter! For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
      - jiofih 6y ago
        They only got large funding from NASA after building fully production-ready rockets and demonstrating they could deliver. It took around $100m of private investment to get the first Falcon generation flying.
kspacewalk2 6y ago
> Marketing materials aren't plans. That's right, they aren't. Which is why it's mighty brave of the BBC to call it "first interplanetary cargo ship". We'll see who gets there first.
nscalf 6y ago
I that this has historically been the case, but I think there has been a lot more delivery in recent years. The estimates from Musk seem to be less off, and I think a massive part of that is that the ramp up to this point was all predicated on original design of parts. They design and build >90% of the parts in the space ships. I think now that they have a catalogue of parts they don't have to build from scratch, their design/development cycles for new products are much faster and predictable. This same thing goes for Tesla, I don't think Musk & co. get enough credit for building everything from scratch.

qayxc 6y ago

Keep in mind that the first Starship cannot return anything to Earth, due to the lack of fuel. The first Starship that might be able to return anything wouldn't be able to launch before 2026 either, so...

ben_w 6y ago
Are they not even planning to at least try and send a fuel factory on the first Mars launch?
- qayxc 6y ago
  I don't know. But in any case, it's not just the fuel. Have you seen the proposed Moon-Starship? They'd require some quite impressive crane to even get cargo into the ship. Additionally, there's the problem of the landing site. It's considerably more difficult to land a rocket on unprepared, rocky terrain than on a carefully prepared landing pad. Plus a suitable area has to be found first, too. There's simply no guarantee the first Starship(s) even make it to the surface in one piece, let alone ready for refuelling and launch.
  - _Microft 6y ago
    The moon-starship will not require in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), i.e. no creation of fuel and oxidizer at the target. It is supposed to land with enough propellants to make it back.
    - qayxc 6y ago
      I only mentioned the Moon-Starship, because illustrations show nicely how far away from the surface the cargo bay is. I don't suppose the Mars version will be all that different in that regard, but we'll see.
      - _Microft 6y ago
        Ah, OK. The cargo bay door being that high up wasn't an issue in my eyes. They can build rockets after all, so they should be fine with engineering a platform and a lift. Edit: Numbers - for fun: if the cargo bay door is 2/3 up the rocket (at 33m from the ground), and someone fell off the platform of the crane at half this height (16m), they would hit the ground with a speed of 7.2m per second which is the speed they would have after falling a distance of ~2.6m on Earth.

itsoktocry 6y ago

>SpaceX Starship is planned for 2024, and with a cargo capacity in the hundreds of tons. And Full-Self-Driving will be available in the summer of 2015, and a cross country autonomous drive will happen in 2017, and this year we'll have 1,000,000 autonomous Robotaxis on the streets. Let's go!

valuearb 6y ago
And Falcon 9 is nearing its 100th flight, and has made first stage recovery normal, and a Starship prototype has already flown with the new engine. Based on SpaceX typical cadence, full Starship prototypes will fly this year and achieve orbit next year. That’s three years to work out the kinks for the first Mars attempts.

thinkcontext 6y ago

Though I would very much like to see Starship succeed, it must be understood just how risky a project it is. Just having the rocket be able to work in Earth orbit is a risky proposition, given its novel design and materials challenges. Add to that the many novel challenges returning Starship would entail, refueling in space, landing and taking off from Mars, setting up multi megawatts of solar, mining, methane production, etc. Consider that Falcon Heavy was something like 5 years late. That was doing something that had been done before, strapping rockets together to make a Heavy version. Starship is many times more ambitious, with any of the challenges I raised above likely to hit multi-year delays.

valuearb 6y ago
FH was done on a shoestring budget for a small market and nearly canceled when it became clear Starship was the better path. But I agree with you that Starship has some challenges, specifically proving it can handle re-entry, be easily refurbed between launches, and be easily refueled in low earth orbit. But Super Heavy is just a bigger Falcon 9, using the same landing technology. Even if a Starship Reusability falls short, it’s very clear that the combo is going to put bigger payloads than the the SLS into orbit at 1/20th the cost.
- thinkcontext 6y ago
  I agree they should look at putting Super Heavy into service before Starship. They could use a conventionally designed expendable upper stage, imagine how immense its payload capacity would be without having to lug the enormous Starship. It would allow them to fill out Starlink quickly and would open up the market for larger satellites sooner rather than later.
tomp 6y ago
> That was doing something that had been done before, strapping rockets together to make a Heavy version. That’s a common misconception - in fact, even SpaceX itself made this mistake! Musk said that making Heavy was almost as complex as designing a whole new rocket; which is also why they went with new next time (Starship) instead of incremental (Super Extra Heavy).

ballooney 6y ago

I've been on this website long enough to remember when everyone was saying 'of course manually-driven cars will be the exception by 2020', and believing Elon Musk's timescales has taken over as the new naive credulity of the HNer.

wahern 6y ago
Who actually believes Musk's timescales? Musk's overly optimistic yet technically plausible timescales seem to be part of the reason why his ventures are so successful. With the right culture and team members, it drives people toward the finish line. The challenge and constant pace of progress is motivating. With the wrong culture and team members (most companies, most people) it leads to crash & burn. Musk's exhausting personality is precisely what makes it all work.