8 ms·

Great comparison of SLS vs. Starship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA69Oh3_obY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA69Oh3_obY Key points: https://i2.wp.com/eve

Great comparison of SLS vs. Starship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA69Oh3_obY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA69Oh3_obY Key points: https://i2.wp.com/everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Super-Heavy-Lift-Launcher-Capabilities.jpg?resize=1200%2C675&ssl=1 https://i2.wp.com/everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2... Mass to the Moon: - Saturn 5: 49 metric tonnes - SLS: 43 metric tonnes - Starship: 156 metric tonnes Price per launch: - Saturn 5: 1.2B dollars - SLS: 0.875B dollars - Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$) Price per kg: - Satrun 5: 25 600 $ - SLS: 20 000 $ - Starhip: 2 000 $ worse case scenario (Elon aims at 40$)

sandworm101 6y ago
>> Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$) Lol. No. That is beyond pipe dream territory. There a innumerable costs associated with spacelaunch that have absolutely nothing to do with reusability. Range closures. Payload integration. Regulatory compliance (ie safety). Telemetry. That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. That stuff doesn't happen for free. Unless SpaceX is given its own range, its own giant chunk of the atlantic ocean closed to everything but spaceX, massive launches are still going to cost well over 0.1B, 100 million. And... insurance.
- credit_guy 6y ago
  Insurance, regulatory compliance, the guy with the destruct button, all these costs go down as you demonstrate higher and higher reliability. If you only launch 10 rockets per year, and you get one failure once every two years, there's a lot of risk, and not that many points to draw statistical inference. If you launch 2000 rockets per year, and only one in 500 fails, then it's a completely different picture.
- Isinlor 6y ago
  It's reality. They do reusable Falcon Heavy flights at 90 million right now. Good chunk of that cost is second stage and fairings that are expendable. Starship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.
- throwaway45349 6y ago
  They probably said the same things about cargo planes once.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  > That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. I'm not going up until that job is eliminated!
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    Then you aren't going up. Rockets are massive tanks of explosives flying through the air at supersonic speeds. That person is there to protect the people on the ground. Launch escape systems will protect the crew, but given the energies involved, the crew is less important than the potential for killing hundreds on the ground, or potentially thousands onboard a cruise ship.
    - Jabbles 6y ago
      I hope it's actually 2 people like in nuclear missile silos. Is there any public information?
      - sandworm101 6y ago
        https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/30/spacex-falcon-9-failure-unknown/29502389/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/30/spacex-falcon... "CAPE CANAVERAL — Air Force safety officers sent commands to destroy SpaceX's failing Falcon 9 rocket after its launch from Cape Canaveral on Sunday morning, but long after a malfunction had already caused the rocket to break apart, officials confirmed Monday." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_safety "Some launch systems use flight termination for range safety. In these systems the RSO can remotely command the vehicle to self-destruct to prevent the vehicle from traveling outside prescribed safety zone. This allows as-yet-unconsumed propellants to combust at altitude, rather than upon the vehicle reaching the ground.[1]" "As of 2016, a total of 32 US orbital launch attempts have ended in an RSO destruct, the first being Vanguard TV-3BU in 1958 and the most recent being Cygnus CRS Orb-3 in 2014.[...] Some launch vehicles (for example, the Titan family) have included an automatic destruct system to activate in the event that the solid rocket motors or upper stages separate prematurely; this is separate from the standard RSO system which is activated by manual command."
- cowmix 6y ago
  Most of the stuff you are citing are ON TOP of the launch costs you are talking about.
- Denvercoder9 6y ago
  > And... insurance. To add to everything else already mentioned, when launch price goes down, it suddenly becomes feasible to build much cheaper satellites: both because you can afford to build them heavier, and you can take more risk. That reduces insurance costs.
  - bserge 6y ago
    That's an interesting thought. I wonder what advances could be made to satellites if they were allowed to make them twice as heavy, for example.
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      None. If you want a heavier satellite you simply have to pay proportionally more to launch it. Nobody outside of government agencies comes anywhere close to the maximum load of a single super heavy launch, and even that "battleship" approach to satellites is giving way to smaller devices. So the mass isn't really the limiting factor, rather it is cost. Doubling of launch weights for a price, being able to launch at a 50% discount, won't result in any spectacular technology. What will happen is that big communication satellites will be given large fuel tanks, longer service lives, that ironically might reduce the number of needed launches of large satellites to geostationary orbit. NASA will be able to more cheaply explore the solar system. While people wanting to launch on the cheap will benefit, they generally won't have the funds to push any technological boundaries.
- JshWright 6y ago
  > That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. That person (the Mission Flight Control Officer) doesn't exist for SpaceX launches, they use an automated system. https://www.unoosa.org/documents/pdf/icg/providersforum/2019/PF22_2019_03.pdf https://www.unoosa.org/documents/pdf/icg/providersforum/2019...
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    I hear mixed stories about this. The automated system does exist, but there is also a need to supervise the automated system and so I read that there is still human in/on the loop. The russians suffered an accident tied to a similar system that triggered a launch escape tower prematurely, causing a fire that eventually destroyed the entire rocket on the pad. The flight had been delayed but the system was still activate. After several hours it perceived the slow rotation of the earth as the rocket being off course and triggered.
- maccam94 6y ago
  Falcon 9 launches are often less than $60M. A big chunk of that is the disposable second stage. Fairings are also a few million dollars. Insurance rates on Falcon 9 launches are currently 4%, so ~$2.4M. I'd be shocked if non-rocket/fuel costs were more than $15M.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  >That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. I think (at least at the Eastern Range), they started leaving this seat empty for Falcon launches in 2017 once the automated flight termination system was qualified. This system also reduces staffing requirements at the radars in Bermuda and all over the place
- __panick21 6y ago
  SpaceX is already launching for less then 100 million. You don't need to close a larger part of the ocean for a bigger rocket. SpaceX is actually building its own rocket launch facilities in South Texas. They are also already evaluating sea platforms. Insurance rates for Falcon 9 are already very low, the lowest in the industry. If Starship can double or triple the flight rate insurance will go down by quite a bit. Also the costumers pay for insurance, its not part of the SpaceX price quoted here. In addition, government don't actually insure things like Artemis program. > That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. That job doesn't exist anymore for SpaceX launches. In fact, if you look at the total labour for launch, its going down considerably and it will continue to go down. Look at SpaceX operation in South Texas, an explicit goal of their whole design process is to make things cheaper and faster and that goes for operations as well. Another example is the capsule retrieval operations. During Appollo damn near a whole battle fleet was sent, now its one ship and some available cost guard. 2 million $ per launch is quite extreme however there is absolutely no reason why it should cost over 100 million. Even with the Falcon 9 today, the second stage is actually large part of the cost and a fully reusable system would reduce that consderably. The fuel for Starship is actually cheaper then for the Falcon 9 as the Falcon 9 uses RP-1, helium and a couple other things Starship no longer has. The steel construction should actually end less expensive then the Falcon 9 construction. This of course doesn't go for the full human capable Starship, but just the Cargo version of the rocket compared. The Raptor rocket engine is more complex then Merlin and will likely be somewhat more expensive until it significantly overtakes it in production rate. However SpaceX has shown to be able to make engine quite cheaply and with reuse the per flight cost is trivial. Please explain why Starship should cost (internal cost) more then 2x of Falcon 9.
blackrock 6y ago
This also makes the big assumption that Starship is successful. And that Starship’s cost estimates are even realistic.

sandworm101 6y ago

>> Staraship: 0.1B dollars worse case scenario (Elon aims at 0.002B$) Lol. No. That is beyond pipe dream territory. There a innumerable costs associated with spacelaunch that have absolutely nothing to do with reusability. Range closures. Payload integration. Regulatory compliance (ie safety). Telemetry. That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. That stuff doesn't happen for free. Unless SpaceX is given its own range, its own giant chunk of the atlantic ocean closed to everything but spaceX, massive launches are still going to cost well over 0.1B, 100 million. And... insurance.

credit_guy 6y ago
Insurance, regulatory compliance, the guy with the destruct button, all these costs go down as you demonstrate higher and higher reliability. If you only launch 10 rockets per year, and you get one failure once every two years, there's a lot of risk, and not that many points to draw statistical inference. If you launch 2000 rockets per year, and only one in 500 fails, then it's a completely different picture.
Isinlor 6y ago
It's reality. They do reusable Falcon Heavy flights at 90 million right now. Good chunk of that cost is second stage and fairings that are expendable. Starship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.
throwaway45349 6y ago
They probably said the same things about cargo planes once.
BurningFrog 6y ago
> That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. I'm not going up until that job is eliminated!
- sandworm101 6y ago
  Then you aren't going up. Rockets are massive tanks of explosives flying through the air at supersonic speeds. That person is there to protect the people on the ground. Launch escape systems will protect the crew, but given the energies involved, the crew is less important than the potential for killing hundreds on the ground, or potentially thousands onboard a cruise ship.
  - Jabbles 6y ago
    I hope it's actually 2 people like in nuclear missile silos. Is there any public information?
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/30/spacex-falcon-9-failure-unknown/29502389/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/30/spacex-falcon... "CAPE CANAVERAL — Air Force safety officers sent commands to destroy SpaceX's failing Falcon 9 rocket after its launch from Cape Canaveral on Sunday morning, but long after a malfunction had already caused the rocket to break apart, officials confirmed Monday." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_safety "Some launch systems use flight termination for range safety. In these systems the RSO can remotely command the vehicle to self-destruct to prevent the vehicle from traveling outside prescribed safety zone. This allows as-yet-unconsumed propellants to combust at altitude, rather than upon the vehicle reaching the ground.[1]" "As of 2016, a total of 32 US orbital launch attempts have ended in an RSO destruct, the first being Vanguard TV-3BU in 1958 and the most recent being Cygnus CRS Orb-3 in 2014.[...] Some launch vehicles (for example, the Titan family) have included an automatic destruct system to activate in the event that the solid rocket motors or upper stages separate prematurely; this is separate from the standard RSO system which is activated by manual command."
cowmix 6y ago
Most of the stuff you are citing are ON TOP of the launch costs you are talking about.
Denvercoder9 6y ago
> And... insurance. To add to everything else already mentioned, when launch price goes down, it suddenly becomes feasible to build much cheaper satellites: both because you can afford to build them heavier, and you can take more risk. That reduces insurance costs.
- bserge 6y ago
  That's an interesting thought. I wonder what advances could be made to satellites if they were allowed to make them twice as heavy, for example.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    None. If you want a heavier satellite you simply have to pay proportionally more to launch it. Nobody outside of government agencies comes anywhere close to the maximum load of a single super heavy launch, and even that "battleship" approach to satellites is giving way to smaller devices. So the mass isn't really the limiting factor, rather it is cost. Doubling of launch weights for a price, being able to launch at a 50% discount, won't result in any spectacular technology. What will happen is that big communication satellites will be given large fuel tanks, longer service lives, that ironically might reduce the number of needed launches of large satellites to geostationary orbit. NASA will be able to more cheaply explore the solar system. While people wanting to launch on the cheap will benefit, they generally won't have the funds to push any technological boundaries.
JshWright 6y ago
> That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. That person (the Mission Flight Control Officer) doesn't exist for SpaceX launches, they use an automated system. https://www.unoosa.org/documents/pdf/icg/providersforum/2019/PF22_2019_03.pdf https://www.unoosa.org/documents/pdf/icg/providersforum/2019...
- sandworm101 6y ago
  I hear mixed stories about this. The automated system does exist, but there is also a need to supervise the automated system and so I read that there is still human in/on the loop. The russians suffered an accident tied to a similar system that triggered a launch escape tower prematurely, causing a fire that eventually destroyed the entire rocket on the pad. The flight had been delayed but the system was still activate. After several hours it perceived the slow rotation of the earth as the rocket being off course and triggered.
maccam94 6y ago
Falcon 9 launches are often less than $60M. A big chunk of that is the disposable second stage. Fairings are also a few million dollars. Insurance rates on Falcon 9 launches are currently 4%, so ~$2.4M. I'd be shocked if non-rocket/fuel costs were more than $15M.
Rebelgecko 6y ago
>That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. I think (at least at the Eastern Range), they started leaving this seat empty for Falcon launches in 2017 once the automated flight termination system was qualified. This system also reduces staffing requirements at the radars in Bermuda and all over the place
__panick21 6y ago
SpaceX is already launching for less then 100 million. You don't need to close a larger part of the ocean for a bigger rocket. SpaceX is actually building its own rocket launch facilities in South Texas. They are also already evaluating sea platforms. Insurance rates for Falcon 9 are already very low, the lowest in the industry. If Starship can double or triple the flight rate insurance will go down by quite a bit. Also the costumers pay for insurance, its not part of the SpaceX price quoted here. In addition, government don't actually insure things like Artemis program. > That USAF person in the back of the room with their finger on the destruct button. That job doesn't exist anymore for SpaceX launches. In fact, if you look at the total labour for launch, its going down considerably and it will continue to go down. Look at SpaceX operation in South Texas, an explicit goal of their whole design process is to make things cheaper and faster and that goes for operations as well. Another example is the capsule retrieval operations. During Appollo damn near a whole battle fleet was sent, now its one ship and some available cost guard. 2 million $ per launch is quite extreme however there is absolutely no reason why it should cost over 100 million. Even with the Falcon 9 today, the second stage is actually large part of the cost and a fully reusable system would reduce that consderably. The fuel for Starship is actually cheaper then for the Falcon 9 as the Falcon 9 uses RP-1, helium and a couple other things Starship no longer has. The steel construction should actually end less expensive then the Falcon 9 construction. This of course doesn't go for the full human capable Starship, but just the Cargo version of the rocket compared. The Raptor rocket engine is more complex then Merlin and will likely be somewhat more expensive until it significantly overtakes it in production rate. However SpaceX has shown to be able to make engine quite cheaply and with reuse the per flight cost is trivial. Please explain why Starship should cost (internal cost) more then 2x of Falcon 9.

blackrock 6y ago

This also makes the big assumption that Starship is successful. And that Starship’s cost estimates are even realistic.