4 ms·

I still remember reading all the Readers Digest books my mom gave me to read in the 90s that were from the 70s. The amount of excitement in these articles about

I still remember reading all the Readers Digest books my mom gave me to read in the 90s that were from the 70s. The amount of excitement in these articles about colonies all around the solar system in the early 2000s captivated me. While reality proofed all of these predictions wrong the current Starship development brings back these fond memories and the exciting outlook on unparalleled developments in space in the somewhat near future.

mabbo 5y ago
> While reality proofed all of these predictions wrong the current Starship development brings back these fond memories and the exciting outlook on unparalleled developments in space in the somewhat near future Here's a fun question: how much of what Starship is doing would have been impossible in the 70s? In my view, the reason we don't have space colonies already is because we decided not to. Nothing we're doing now was strictly impossible then, just a little bit harder. No one was trying, was the problem. It reminds me a bit of Brian May. In the early 70s he was getting a PhD in astrophysics, studying interplanetary dust. He stopped because his band, Queen, was doing pretty well. In 2006, he realized no one else had ever picked up his particular avenue of research. He resumed his PhD research and completed it.
- dale_glass 5y ago
  > Here's a fun question: how much of what Starship is doing would have been impossible in the 70s? Probably a lot. The Raptor engine uses 3D printing, which I don't think was a thing in the 70s. Modern CNC machining wasn't a thing either. Nor modern design and simulation software. Or computers. I mean, maybe if you really wanted to and money was no object, something Starship-like would be doable, but it'd be more expensive, harder to design, harder to build, carry less weight and likely uneconomical. But the very point of Starship is saving money.
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    > more expensive, harder to design, harder to build, carry less weight and likely uneconomical. Compared to Starship, sure. But compared to the Shuttle? That's a pretty low bar that's pretty easy to beat. Starship is basically the Shuttle done right. major differences: Methalox instead of hydrolox & solids. Stainless steel. Uniform tiles. Vertical landing. No cross-range capability. Any or all of those changes would have made the shuttle better. Full-flow staged combustion might be impossible without modern metallurgy. The Soviets had that in the 70s but the Americans didn't. OTOH the Americans had the F1 in the 60s and a new version of that would certainly provide suitable thrust to weight ratios. Kerosene means more frequent refurbishment, but still better than the Shuttle. Vertical landing would be tough with 70s computing but certainly would be possible with 80s computing.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- maccam94 5y ago
  The main issue was cost. A lot of basic research had to be done, developed, and put into production on an accelerated timescale. Control systems and processing capabilities were much more primitive which hampered reusability. Materials and fabrication technology were less efficient so we had to build big to get useful payload mass fractions. CAD modeling and computational fluid dynamics were just entering use, so designing rocket engines was as much an art as a science. You could work around most of this by just throwing money at the problems, but Nixon felt it wasn't worth the cost.

mabbo 5y ago

> While reality proofed all of these predictions wrong the current Starship development brings back these fond memories and the exciting outlook on unparalleled developments in space in the somewhat near future Here's a fun question: how much of what Starship is doing would have been impossible in the 70s? In my view, the reason we don't have space colonies already is because we decided not to. Nothing we're doing now was strictly impossible then, just a little bit harder. No one was trying, was the problem. It reminds me a bit of Brian May. In the early 70s he was getting a PhD in astrophysics, studying interplanetary dust. He stopped because his band, Queen, was doing pretty well. In 2006, he realized no one else had ever picked up his particular avenue of research. He resumed his PhD research and completed it.

dale_glass 5y ago
> Here's a fun question: how much of what Starship is doing would have been impossible in the 70s? Probably a lot. The Raptor engine uses 3D printing, which I don't think was a thing in the 70s. Modern CNC machining wasn't a thing either. Nor modern design and simulation software. Or computers. I mean, maybe if you really wanted to and money was no object, something Starship-like would be doable, but it'd be more expensive, harder to design, harder to build, carry less weight and likely uneconomical. But the very point of Starship is saving money.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  > more expensive, harder to design, harder to build, carry less weight and likely uneconomical. Compared to Starship, sure. But compared to the Shuttle? That's a pretty low bar that's pretty easy to beat. Starship is basically the Shuttle done right. major differences: Methalox instead of hydrolox & solids. Stainless steel. Uniform tiles. Vertical landing. No cross-range capability. Any or all of those changes would have made the shuttle better. Full-flow staged combustion might be impossible without modern metallurgy. The Soviets had that in the 70s but the Americans didn't. OTOH the Americans had the F1 in the 60s and a new version of that would certainly provide suitable thrust to weight ratios. Kerosene means more frequent refurbishment, but still better than the Shuttle. Vertical landing would be tough with 70s computing but certainly would be possible with 80s computing.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
maccam94 5y ago
The main issue was cost. A lot of basic research had to be done, developed, and put into production on an accelerated timescale. Control systems and processing capabilities were much more primitive which hampered reusability. Materials and fabrication technology were less efficient so we had to build big to get useful payload mass fractions. CAD modeling and computational fluid dynamics were just entering use, so designing rocket engines was as much an art as a science. You could work around most of this by just throwing money at the problems, but Nixon felt it wasn't worth the cost.