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Another significant thing is that Starship is designed to be mass manufactured at a relatively low cost. SpaceX can crank out thousands of Starships, fly them t

Another significant thing is that Starship is designed to be mass manufactured at a relatively low cost. SpaceX can crank out thousands of Starships, fly them to Mars and build a million people colony. Starship is truly a game changer!

eric-hu 6y ago
Can you recommend resources for reading more about the long term plans of Starship?
- yreg 6y ago
  Not the parent poster, but there is [0] Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species / Elon's original presentation from IAC 2016 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Uyfqi_TE8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Uyfqi_TE8 [1] Starship Update / 2019 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY
themgt 6y ago
Yep, and in addition to both of these, Starship is also designed: * to be fueled / ignited such that it can be refueled in-situ on Mars & then launched back to Earth, without advanced rocket fuels or the TEA-TEB chemical igniter. * to be able to refuel from another Starship in-orbit The combination of all of this, if they pull it off, will be the ability to send truly massive payloads to Mars, faster and cheaper than anyone could have imagined just a few years ago. To me it does really show the benefit of taking a systematic approach, working backwards from the goal "get to Mars and stay" in a resource-constrained environment. They've very strategically targeted the technology/engineering required to bring the costs down to something reasonable, while NASA's approach for 50 years has basically been versions of "can you give us one trillion dollars?" (or "we can put a couple humans on Mars for 3 days for $100 billion") Today's Starship hop is getting very near the nail in the coffin for SLS. I still have some concerns about their crazy re-entry flip, but the speed SpaceX is moving is leaving everyone else in the dust.
- extrapickles 6y ago
  Also, since its mostly made from steel, it will be fairly simple (as far as rockets go) to conduct repairs, you just need a welding rod or two. This is important for early stage bases where you don't have the equipment/materials to make carbon fiber or exotic aluminum alloy replacement parts.
  - paranoidrobot 6y ago
    Given how much difficulty they've had with welds and materials to date, is it really feasible to conduct in-situ repairs without a ton of advanced equipment?
    - ColanR 6y ago
      That's what I was thinking. At the very least, they'll either have to come up with some very fancy welding rod matrials, or train their welders in some interesting techniques. Reminds me of the difficulties in welding aluminum.
    - maxioatic 6y ago
      I feel the same way. Likely not to start but over time I think they would build up capability. I wonder how lesser gravity on Mars would help/hurt their efforts. Easier to heft heavy gear up high? I'm also thinking on the flip side, say a Starship somehow gets irreparably damaged getting to Mars (but successfully gets there). With some basic gear they should be able to part it out and re-use the steel. Like for a new door on all the Cybertrucks rollin' around up there. /s
      - nine_k 6y ago
        The idea of using parts of the landing unit for materials to build local structures and machines is not new. Probably, with proper planning and construction of the lander unit parts, it can be facilitated. But you have to plan for another mission to pick up the crew, unless you're on the Moon where you could use an electromagnetic catapult to achieve orbit, and then slowly ascend to the rocket that would take you home.
jacquesm 6y ago
You write that as if it is a done deal. Mars' atmosphere is roughly .5% of that of Earth and almost exclusively CO2. Temperature ranges are well out of what they are on Earth. It is hard for technology to survive there, it is impossible for people to survive there until there has been an unbelievable investment in infrastructure. If you think there will be a million people colony on Mars in your lifetime than you are not in touch with the physics of this kind of endeavor. All of our GDP for the next 50 years pooled together would likely not be enough to pull off a feat like that. The scale we're talking about here is too large to even contemplate. 10 people in a shitty little dome, maybe. Right up to the moment they die because of some small mishap.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  To get a sense of the difficulty, imagine sending a million people to the South Pole to set up a self-sustaining colony. That would be much more than 1000 times easier than establishing such a base on Mars.
  - shireboy 6y ago
    I’ve often said the same thing. South Pole and underwater cities would be easier than mars or even moon colony. As much as I want the later to happen- I think 1 million people on Mars or Moon will require something that makes them more appealing than even the worst Earth locations. That has to be something pretty drastic. Elon says motivation will be “it’d be cool”. I don’t think that is enough motivation. Still, I’d rather have the capability developed than not, and hopefully those motivations present themselves without being too dire (like a comet heading our way)
    - hugs 6y ago
      A science outpost, specifically as a place to put telescopes, seems the most compelling. The rest of the population would then grow along side the science outpost to service it (food, transportation, etc.) A looong time until a million people, though.
valuearb 6y ago
This is a very key point. The Falcon 9 isn’t cheap because of reuse (yet). It’s cheap because of mass manufacturing. The Rs-25 engine costs over $100m each, Ariansoace Vulcains around $20M, typical large rocket engines over $10M. SoaceX Merlin costs about $200,000 each to make. The Raptor will be close to that. Thats why SpaceX can pursue the large number of redundant smaller engines design strategy so successfully. Reuse has lowered Falcon 9 costs internally, and increased its private discounts, but not it’s public pricing. When the cost benefits of reuse finally cascade through public pricing and through the entire stack with Starship, you have a SuperHeavy launch system putting 150 tons in orbit even cheaper than a single Falcon 9 launch. For comparison, the Shuttle was over $40,000 per pound to Orbit. The SLS will be around $10,000/lb to orbit if you don’t count developmental costs at least 3x that. The Falcon 9 is $1,500/lb to orbit, and Falcon Heavy $1,100/lb to orbit. Starship will lift more payload to orbit than the SLS, and 4x as much as the Shuttle, for between $100 and $300 per pound.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > Reuse has lowered Falcon 9 costs internally, and increased its private discounts, but not it’s public pricing It's not just a discount - it is the reversed equivalent of banks charging interest for a loan due to failure risk. Private customers getting discounts accept the increased risk that some re-used part fails. Essentially SpaceX has managed to have their r&d subsidized by paying customers instead of having to borrow money, launch dummy payloads and pay the money back.
zamalek 6y ago
> mass manufactured at a relatively low cost. ... which also explains Tesla, mass production of Earth-faring machines is one way to prepare for mass production of space-faring machines (and battery tech is going to be important for living in space). When you look at Musk's ventures, they really all end at Mars.
- laichzeit0 6y ago
  The Boring company. Develop tech to drill deep tunnels on Mars? Electric cars and batteries cause you will need that on Mars? Even the Cybertruck looks like something destined for Mars.
  - ba2plus 6y ago
    And a Starlink network would mean an instant global Martian internet.

eric-hu 6y ago

Can you recommend resources for reading more about the long term plans of Starship?

yreg 6y ago
Not the parent poster, but there is [0] Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species / Elon's original presentation from IAC 2016 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Uyfqi_TE8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Uyfqi_TE8 [1] Starship Update / 2019 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY

themgt 6y ago

Yep, and in addition to both of these, Starship is also designed: * to be fueled / ignited such that it can be refueled in-situ on Mars & then launched back to Earth, without advanced rocket fuels or the TEA-TEB chemical igniter. * to be able to refuel from another Starship in-orbit The combination of all of this, if they pull it off, will be the ability to send truly massive payloads to Mars, faster and cheaper than anyone could have imagined just a few years ago. To me it does really show the benefit of taking a systematic approach, working backwards from the goal "get to Mars and stay" in a resource-constrained environment. They've very strategically targeted the technology/engineering required to bring the costs down to something reasonable, while NASA's approach for 50 years has basically been versions of "can you give us one trillion dollars?" (or "we can put a couple humans on Mars for 3 days for $100 billion") Today's Starship hop is getting very near the nail in the coffin for SLS. I still have some concerns about their crazy re-entry flip, but the speed SpaceX is moving is leaving everyone else in the dust.

extrapickles 6y ago
Also, since its mostly made from steel, it will be fairly simple (as far as rockets go) to conduct repairs, you just need a welding rod or two. This is important for early stage bases where you don't have the equipment/materials to make carbon fiber or exotic aluminum alloy replacement parts.
- paranoidrobot 6y ago
  Given how much difficulty they've had with welds and materials to date, is it really feasible to conduct in-situ repairs without a ton of advanced equipment?
  - ColanR 6y ago
    That's what I was thinking. At the very least, they'll either have to come up with some very fancy welding rod matrials, or train their welders in some interesting techniques. Reminds me of the difficulties in welding aluminum.
  - maxioatic 6y ago
    I feel the same way. Likely not to start but over time I think they would build up capability. I wonder how lesser gravity on Mars would help/hurt their efforts. Easier to heft heavy gear up high? I'm also thinking on the flip side, say a Starship somehow gets irreparably damaged getting to Mars (but successfully gets there). With some basic gear they should be able to part it out and re-use the steel. Like for a new door on all the Cybertrucks rollin' around up there. /s
    - nine_k 6y ago
      The idea of using parts of the landing unit for materials to build local structures and machines is not new. Probably, with proper planning and construction of the lander unit parts, it can be facilitated. But you have to plan for another mission to pick up the crew, unless you're on the Moon where you could use an electromagnetic catapult to achieve orbit, and then slowly ascend to the rocket that would take you home.

jacquesm 6y ago

You write that as if it is a done deal. Mars' atmosphere is roughly .5% of that of Earth and almost exclusively CO2. Temperature ranges are well out of what they are on Earth. It is hard for technology to survive there, it is impossible for people to survive there until there has been an unbelievable investment in infrastructure. If you think there will be a million people colony on Mars in your lifetime than you are not in touch with the physics of this kind of endeavor. All of our GDP for the next 50 years pooled together would likely not be enough to pull off a feat like that. The scale we're talking about here is too large to even contemplate. 10 people in a shitty little dome, maybe. Right up to the moment they die because of some small mishap.

ncmncm 6y ago
To get a sense of the difficulty, imagine sending a million people to the South Pole to set up a self-sustaining colony. That would be much more than 1000 times easier than establishing such a base on Mars.
- shireboy 6y ago
  I’ve often said the same thing. South Pole and underwater cities would be easier than mars or even moon colony. As much as I want the later to happen- I think 1 million people on Mars or Moon will require something that makes them more appealing than even the worst Earth locations. That has to be something pretty drastic. Elon says motivation will be “it’d be cool”. I don’t think that is enough motivation. Still, I’d rather have the capability developed than not, and hopefully those motivations present themselves without being too dire (like a comet heading our way)
  - hugs 6y ago
    A science outpost, specifically as a place to put telescopes, seems the most compelling. The rest of the population would then grow along side the science outpost to service it (food, transportation, etc.) A looong time until a million people, though.

valuearb 6y ago

This is a very key point. The Falcon 9 isn’t cheap because of reuse (yet). It’s cheap because of mass manufacturing. The Rs-25 engine costs over $100m each, Ariansoace Vulcains around $20M, typical large rocket engines over $10M. SoaceX Merlin costs about $200,000 each to make. The Raptor will be close to that. Thats why SpaceX can pursue the large number of redundant smaller engines design strategy so successfully. Reuse has lowered Falcon 9 costs internally, and increased its private discounts, but not it’s public pricing. When the cost benefits of reuse finally cascade through public pricing and through the entire stack with Starship, you have a SuperHeavy launch system putting 150 tons in orbit even cheaper than a single Falcon 9 launch. For comparison, the Shuttle was over $40,000 per pound to Orbit. The SLS will be around $10,000/lb to orbit if you don’t count developmental costs at least 3x that. The Falcon 9 is $1,500/lb to orbit, and Falcon Heavy $1,100/lb to orbit. Starship will lift more payload to orbit than the SLS, and 4x as much as the Shuttle, for between $100 and $300 per pound.

mschuster91 6y ago
> Reuse has lowered Falcon 9 costs internally, and increased its private discounts, but not it’s public pricing It's not just a discount - it is the reversed equivalent of banks charging interest for a loan due to failure risk. Private customers getting discounts accept the increased risk that some re-used part fails. Essentially SpaceX has managed to have their r&d subsidized by paying customers instead of having to borrow money, launch dummy payloads and pay the money back.

zamalek 6y ago

> mass manufactured at a relatively low cost. ... which also explains Tesla, mass production of Earth-faring machines is one way to prepare for mass production of space-faring machines (and battery tech is going to be important for living in space). When you look at Musk's ventures, they really all end at Mars.

laichzeit0 6y ago
The Boring company. Develop tech to drill deep tunnels on Mars? Electric cars and batteries cause you will need that on Mars? Even the Cybertruck looks like something destined for Mars.
- ba2plus 6y ago
  And a Starlink network would mean an instant global Martian internet.