4 ms·

Interesting take. Is there a next after Starship?

by lquist 6y ago

justaguy88 6y ago
Elon Musk has mentioned an 18m wide version of starship (current is 9m)
- 6pac3rings 6y ago
  Is the cost to doubling the width of starship proportional to pizza?
  - AstralStorm 6y ago
    No, much higher, because of extra engines and more plumbing. Starship is already pretty marginal of an upper stage and it's fired early. More marginal than old Space Shuttle, but cheaper to refurbish.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      OTOH, the weight of the rocket grows mostly linearly (it's essentially a skin around propellants), the number of engines grows with the square of the diameter and the fuel volume grows at a cubic rate, so the engines can burn for longer (at some point, aerospike engines will become practical).
  - dang 6y ago
    Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? You've been doing it a lot and it's not what this site is supposed to be for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - 6pac3rings 6y ago
      I was wanting to compare the industrial scale cost of doubling the width of a pizza to doubling the width of the cross section of a starship. Your entitled to you're opinion
xoa 6y ago
Starship is significantly scaled down from their original plans. Despite being enormous, it's actually about the minimum viable size. Assuming there is the traffic to support one of course, there are actually a number of scaling advantages to greater size when using stainless steel as the construction material. So while it'd take a long while, SpaceX may well ultimately find it advantageous to do a larger Starship 2. Another area that humanity hasn't even gotten to the stage of considering yet would be dedicated interplanetary space transport craft. For now SpaceX is planning to just use Starships for getting out of gravity wells and getting between them. But the kind of cadence, $/kg, and sheer capacity Starship will enable also opens up the real option of permanent orbital assembly and maintenance facilities, and in turn the construction of spacecraft optimized purely for use outside of gravity wells (so much more emphasis on ISP vs thrust, no need to worry about aerodynamics, far less restriction on size, optimization for long time travel like potential synthetic gravity via spin, more radiation shielding, etc). No reason SpaceX couldn't lead the charge on that too in principle, though certain attractive forms of propulsion like anything using nuclear would probably necessitate more government involvement until/unless SpaceX can form their own mature government far down the road. Anyway, $100-200/kg (or less!) and huge volume/high cadence is so radically disruptive that it's kind of hard to predict how space will look a few decades down the line. It's going to be a wild thing to watch, with lots of opportunity.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  > permanent orbital assembly Sorry not familiar with these plans - does this mean that we assemble a bigger rocket (by using earth based rockets) at ISS level orbits and then relaunch to another planet?
  - NortySpock 6y ago
    I assume this is going to be not too much more than "we dock several components together in Earth orbit, then fly the whole thing where we want it to go" In theory this would work for anything that is permanently in vacuum, such as the NASA Lunar Gateway (though it's currently planned for lunar-orbit operations only), or some future low-Earth orbit station such as Gateway Station[1] or some sort of Venus, Mars, or Ceres orbital habitat. [1] https://gatewayspaceport.com/the-gateway/ https://gatewayspaceport.com/the-gateway/
Ajedi32 6y ago
After Starship, Elon has stated he wants an upgraded Starship with double the radius: https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-elon-musk-starship-the-next-generation/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-elon-musk-starship-the-next... After that, orbital infrastructure: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373132222555848713 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373132222555848713 And possibly nuclear propulsion? https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1153378777893888005 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1153378777893888005 Not to mention colonies on other planets: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373735946244431873 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373735946244431873 Most of that is pretty long-term though. I suspect Starship will remain a commercially viable platform for quite some time after its inception.
- Someone 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship mostly lists uses that don’t have a real market right now: - Reusable launch system - Intercontinental transport - Space tourism - Earth–lunar transport - Mars colonization - Multiplanetary transport The only thing with an existing market in that list is “launch system”. They’ll have to develop the market for 100 ton launches, though (100 tons is 20% of the mass of the ISS) Because of that, I would say starship still has to prove it is commercially viable. Space tourism, in particular, highly depends on how safe one can make the trip. A 1:1000 risk of death likely would make many would-be passengers think twice before booking a trip. It also would depend on making the trip nice. The first few tourists might go for bragging rights, but after that, one would need attractions in space. Building those there will increase the cost of a trip.
  - NortySpock 6y ago
    Earth-Lunar transport now technically has a market: CLPS https://www.nasa.gov/content/commercial-lunar-payload-services https://www.nasa.gov/content/commercial-lunar-payload-servic... Granted, it's a monopsony for now but... Also, the next market might be "companies who want to mine asteroids for rare metals or rocket fuel", in which case SpaceX may be in the "sells pickaxes to gold miners" business. Those who pursue asteroid mining would do well to review the history of recently dormant or acquired companies such as Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries, and Shackleton Energy Company.

Interesting take. Is there a next after Starship?

by lquist 6y ago

Interesting take. Is there a next after Starship?

justaguy88 6y ago

Elon Musk has mentioned an 18m wide version of starship (current is 9m)

6pac3rings 6y ago
Is the cost to doubling the width of starship proportional to pizza?
- AstralStorm 6y ago
  No, much higher, because of extra engines and more plumbing. Starship is already pretty marginal of an upper stage and it's fired early. More marginal than old Space Shuttle, but cheaper to refurbish.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    OTOH, the weight of the rocket grows mostly linearly (it's essentially a skin around propellants), the number of engines grows with the square of the diameter and the fuel volume grows at a cubic rate, so the engines can burn for longer (at some point, aerospike engines will become practical).
- dang 6y ago
  Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? You've been doing it a lot and it's not what this site is supposed to be for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - 6pac3rings 6y ago
    I was wanting to compare the industrial scale cost of doubling the width of a pizza to doubling the width of the cross section of a starship. Your entitled to you're opinion

xoa 6y ago

Starship is significantly scaled down from their original plans. Despite being enormous, it's actually about the minimum viable size. Assuming there is the traffic to support one of course, there are actually a number of scaling advantages to greater size when using stainless steel as the construction material. So while it'd take a long while, SpaceX may well ultimately find it advantageous to do a larger Starship 2. Another area that humanity hasn't even gotten to the stage of considering yet would be dedicated interplanetary space transport craft. For now SpaceX is planning to just use Starships for getting out of gravity wells and getting between them. But the kind of cadence, $/kg, and sheer capacity Starship will enable also opens up the real option of permanent orbital assembly and maintenance facilities, and in turn the construction of spacecraft optimized purely for use outside of gravity wells (so much more emphasis on ISP vs thrust, no need to worry about aerodynamics, far less restriction on size, optimization for long time travel like potential synthetic gravity via spin, more radiation shielding, etc). No reason SpaceX couldn't lead the charge on that too in principle, though certain attractive forms of propulsion like anything using nuclear would probably necessitate more government involvement until/unless SpaceX can form their own mature government far down the road. Anyway, $100-200/kg (or less!) and huge volume/high cadence is so radically disruptive that it's kind of hard to predict how space will look a few decades down the line. It's going to be a wild thing to watch, with lots of opportunity.

systemvoltage 6y ago
> permanent orbital assembly Sorry not familiar with these plans - does this mean that we assemble a bigger rocket (by using earth based rockets) at ISS level orbits and then relaunch to another planet?
- NortySpock 6y ago
  I assume this is going to be not too much more than "we dock several components together in Earth orbit, then fly the whole thing where we want it to go" In theory this would work for anything that is permanently in vacuum, such as the NASA Lunar Gateway (though it's currently planned for lunar-orbit operations only), or some future low-Earth orbit station such as Gateway Station[1] or some sort of Venus, Mars, or Ceres orbital habitat. [1] https://gatewayspaceport.com/the-gateway/ https://gatewayspaceport.com/the-gateway/

Ajedi32 6y ago

After Starship, Elon has stated he wants an upgraded Starship with double the radius: https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-elon-musk-starship-the-next-generation/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-elon-musk-starship-the-next... After that, orbital infrastructure: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373132222555848713 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373132222555848713 And possibly nuclear propulsion? https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1153378777893888005 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1153378777893888005 Not to mention colonies on other planets: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373735946244431873 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373735946244431873 Most of that is pretty long-term though. I suspect Starship will remain a commercially viable platform for quite some time after its inception.

Someone 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship mostly lists uses that don’t have a real market right now: - Reusable launch system - Intercontinental transport - Space tourism - Earth–lunar transport - Mars colonization - Multiplanetary transport The only thing with an existing market in that list is “launch system”. They’ll have to develop the market for 100 ton launches, though (100 tons is 20% of the mass of the ISS) Because of that, I would say starship still has to prove it is commercially viable. Space tourism, in particular, highly depends on how safe one can make the trip. A 1:1000 risk of death likely would make many would-be passengers think twice before booking a trip. It also would depend on making the trip nice. The first few tourists might go for bragging rights, but after that, one would need attractions in space. Building those there will increase the cost of a trip.
- NortySpock 6y ago
  Earth-Lunar transport now technically has a market: CLPS https://www.nasa.gov/content/commercial-lunar-payload-services https://www.nasa.gov/content/commercial-lunar-payload-servic... Granted, it's a monopsony for now but... Also, the next market might be "companies who want to mine asteroids for rare metals or rocket fuel", in which case SpaceX may be in the "sells pickaxes to gold miners" business. Those who pursue asteroid mining would do well to review the history of recently dormant or acquired companies such as Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries, and Shackleton Energy Company.