6 ms·

I don't think they intend to commercialize it from a tourism perspective, they very much intend to do point-to-point terrestrial transportation via rockets thou

by jpgvm 5y ago

I don't think they intend to commercialize it from a tourism perspective, they very much intend to do point-to-point terrestrial transportation via rockets though and that will be a commercial endeavor that carries people and cargo. I don't know if it will happen in practice, or if it will be successful when they try it but it would be damn cool.

ashtonkem 5y ago
Very cool, but a pretty worrying acceleration of fuel consumption for transit by the world’s rich. A Falcon 9 uses ~75,000 (depending on payload) gallons of RP-1, which is a type of kerosine. Meanwhile a LA to NYC flight takes roughly 5,000 gallons of kerosene (depending on direction). There’s obviously a sizable difference between the number of people in a typical cross country flight and in a Dragon crewed vehicle. Our usage of fuel for regular jet travel is already becoming A Problem. Making it easier to burn more fuel for fewer people to travel faster is emphatically not what we need right now.
- sneak 5y ago
  Yeah, someone over there at SpaceX should really address the issue of transportation fossil fuel use on a large scale. To only build orbital rockets while ignoring the climate crisis here on Earth would be irresponsible.
  - inawarminister 5y ago
    I've heard that the methane/oxygen (methalox?) used in Starship engines can be made carbon-neutral by concentrating the fuel from the atmosphere... And that the same process can be done on Mars too to refuel the rockets. Hopefully that's workable.
    - immmmmm 5y ago
      you need energy for this to happen
      - inglor_cz 5y ago
        Yes, but it may be "superfluous" energy provided by wind turbines or solar at a moment of very high production when no one is ready to consume it. Turning this energy into something useful is actually a bonus.
        immmmmm 5y ago
        is space tourism useful?
        overboard2 5y ago
        It helps fund the space industry
        immmmmm 5y ago
        appart from meteorological satellites and the like, for what space industry is useful?
        inglor_cz 5y ago
        Some reading on this topic. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/08/space-race-inventions-we-use-every-day-were-created-for-space-exploration/39580591/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/08/space-race-in... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies https://interestingengineering.com/15-space-age-inventions-and-technologies-we-use-everyday https://interestingengineering.com/15-space-age-inventions-a...
        immmmmm 5y ago
        ok i agree there is some tech transfer with NASA, so is with CERN for instance. this is however national space programs. my question was more towards commercial space programs, will the tech they invent be open? if so is it worth letting it expand basically out of any regulations?
    - sneak 5y ago
      It was a joke about Tesla. Atmospheric carbon is fungible. You don't need to neutralize methalox emissions if you are doing anything statistically significant about automobile emissions, as the latter will be much, much larger.
- avian 5y ago
  All terrestrial transport ideas from SpaceX I've seen involved Starship, not Falcon 9/Dragon. I don't know how that compares with a typical airliner in terms of miles per gallon (probably not much better than Dragon). However Starship runs on methane and that should in theory be easy to produce from atmospheric CO2 and electricity from renewable sources. In any case, I don't think many people took the idea of using Starship as a terrestrial passenger transport seriously.
  - immmmmm 5y ago
    be it methane or RP1 you're subjected to the laws of thermodynamics. namely converting CO2 to any of those will require more energy than delivered by your rocket or car. also rocket engines are already some of the most efficient thermal engines available/possible, starship won't change that.
    - xoa 5y ago
      None of which has anything whatsoever to do with the issue of AGW though. For the purposes of warming the planet, direct energy usage and emission by humanity is irrelevant (utterly swamped by solar insolation for starters). What's driving it is our changing the net levels of greenhouse gases and in turn the amount of energy retained vs radiated into space. So what matters for dealing with climate disruption is making sure our activities are greenhouse neutral (and for a while we should go carbon negative), all debates of "efficiency" or "luxury" or whatever are extremely foolish distractions. If everything is greenhouse neutral with associated prices becoming clear than people can figure the rest out from there about where they wish to allocate their extra resources. SpaceX intends to develop direct atmospheric methane generation from CO2, which they have to do anyway for their Mars plans because that's the only way to do in-situ refueling there (plenty of CO2 in the atmosphere, not exactly a lot of natural gas fields). Taking into account any methane leaks and correcting for its few decades of enhance greenhouse effect before it decomposes to CO2, they certainly could make Starship carbon neutral and if they do it doesn't matter how much "energy" in the abstract it uses beyond price. Solar and wind power have plenty positive power factors. Worth noting that in principle nothing is special about Starship here, carbon neutral RP1 could be made as well (at a further hit to conversion efficiency and thus price). In practice though green methane is more practical and will amortize better given its use elsewhere in the solar system.

by jpgvm 5y ago

ashtonkem 5y ago

Very cool, but a pretty worrying acceleration of fuel consumption for transit by the world’s rich. A Falcon 9 uses ~75,000 (depending on payload) gallons of RP-1, which is a type of kerosine. Meanwhile a LA to NYC flight takes roughly 5,000 gallons of kerosene (depending on direction). There’s obviously a sizable difference between the number of people in a typical cross country flight and in a Dragon crewed vehicle. Our usage of fuel for regular jet travel is already becoming A Problem. Making it easier to burn more fuel for fewer people to travel faster is emphatically not what we need right now.

sneak 5y ago
Yeah, someone over there at SpaceX should really address the issue of transportation fossil fuel use on a large scale. To only build orbital rockets while ignoring the climate crisis here on Earth would be irresponsible.
- inawarminister 5y ago
  I've heard that the methane/oxygen (methalox?) used in Starship engines can be made carbon-neutral by concentrating the fuel from the atmosphere... And that the same process can be done on Mars too to refuel the rockets. Hopefully that's workable.
  - immmmmm 5y ago
    you need energy for this to happen
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Yes, but it may be "superfluous" energy provided by wind turbines or solar at a moment of very high production when no one is ready to consume it. Turning this energy into something useful is actually a bonus.
      - immmmmm 5y ago
        is space tourism useful?
        overboard2 5y ago
        It helps fund the space industry
        immmmmm 5y ago
        appart from meteorological satellites and the like, for what space industry is useful?
        inglor_cz 5y ago
        Some reading on this topic. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/08/space-race-inventions-we-use-every-day-were-created-for-space-exploration/39580591/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/08/space-race-in... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies https://interestingengineering.com/15-space-age-inventions-and-technologies-we-use-everyday https://interestingengineering.com/15-space-age-inventions-a...
        immmmmm 5y ago
        ok i agree there is some tech transfer with NASA, so is with CERN for instance. this is however national space programs. my question was more towards commercial space programs, will the tech they invent be open? if so is it worth letting it expand basically out of any regulations?
  - sneak 5y ago
    It was a joke about Tesla. Atmospheric carbon is fungible. You don't need to neutralize methalox emissions if you are doing anything statistically significant about automobile emissions, as the latter will be much, much larger.
avian 5y ago
All terrestrial transport ideas from SpaceX I've seen involved Starship, not Falcon 9/Dragon. I don't know how that compares with a typical airliner in terms of miles per gallon (probably not much better than Dragon). However Starship runs on methane and that should in theory be easy to produce from atmospheric CO2 and electricity from renewable sources. In any case, I don't think many people took the idea of using Starship as a terrestrial passenger transport seriously.
- immmmmm 5y ago
  be it methane or RP1 you're subjected to the laws of thermodynamics. namely converting CO2 to any of those will require more energy than delivered by your rocket or car. also rocket engines are already some of the most efficient thermal engines available/possible, starship won't change that.
  - xoa 5y ago
    None of which has anything whatsoever to do with the issue of AGW though. For the purposes of warming the planet, direct energy usage and emission by humanity is irrelevant (utterly swamped by solar insolation for starters). What's driving it is our changing the net levels of greenhouse gases and in turn the amount of energy retained vs radiated into space. So what matters for dealing with climate disruption is making sure our activities are greenhouse neutral (and for a while we should go carbon negative), all debates of "efficiency" or "luxury" or whatever are extremely foolish distractions. If everything is greenhouse neutral with associated prices becoming clear than people can figure the rest out from there about where they wish to allocate their extra resources. SpaceX intends to develop direct atmospheric methane generation from CO2, which they have to do anyway for their Mars plans because that's the only way to do in-situ refueling there (plenty of CO2 in the atmosphere, not exactly a lot of natural gas fields). Taking into account any methane leaks and correcting for its few decades of enhance greenhouse effect before it decomposes to CO2, they certainly could make Starship carbon neutral and if they do it doesn't matter how much "energy" in the abstract it uses beyond price. Solar and wind power have plenty positive power factors. Worth noting that in principle nothing is special about Starship here, carbon neutral RP1 could be made as well (at a further hit to conversion efficiency and thus price). In practice though green methane is more practical and will amortize better given its use elsewhere in the solar system.