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I think part of the point that the author misses is that while designing a spacecraft for a Starship launch does remove a lot of the constraints there is not th

I think part of the point that the author misses is that while designing a spacecraft for a Starship launch does remove a lot of the constraints there is not the infrastructure to take advantage of that (yet). There have been some preliminary studies on spacecraft that could take advantage of a Starship launch capability, but we currently can't transport a spacecraft that large over the road. It would most likely have to be transported by ship from the manufacturing facility to the launch site. Additionally, new test facilities like thermal vacuum chambers, acoustic cells and anechoic chambers would likely have to be created to handle the large spacecraft that a Starship could enable. And NASA is not going to make that investment until there is a higher probability of the Starship succeeding. Those in the industry are pretty cautious about Elon's promises. Back in 2011, SpaceX advertised that the first Falcon heavy flight was going to be in 2013 [0], but the demo flight didn't occur until 2018, with the first launch of an actual payload in 2019. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/space-business-rocket-idUSN0513302920110405 https://www.reuters.com/article/space-business-rocket-idUSN0...

bryanlarsen 5y ago
When your primary customer says that they will never man-rate your rocket, as NASA's administrator Bolden did, it's more surprising that they actually went on to finish Falcon Heavy than that it was late.
- dr_orpheus 5y ago
  Yeah, that's fair. But the original first operational launch of the Falcon Heavy (USAF STP-2) was to help certify it for the National Security Space Launch. So one of their main targets was to get classified business that was going to the Delta Heavy rockets. So I don't know how much/little NASAs planned use of the Falcon Heavy affected their decision.
panick21_ 5y ago
> Those in the industry are pretty cautious about Elon's promises. Back in 2011, SpaceX advertised that the first Falcon heavy flight was going to be in 2013 [0], but the demo flight didn't occur until 2018, with the first launch of an actual payload in 2019. This is misleading. SpaceX pushed Falcon 9 so much that it actually reached the targeted Falcon Heavy payload years before that. Many early Falcon Heavy costumers launched on Falcon 9. There was very little market for Falcon Heavy and the main costumer was DoD and their launch was scheduled for pretty late. The simply didn't work on Falcon Heavy until Falcon 9 was at the end of its evolution and they had figured out re-usability. However the end result was more then double as powerful then the version announced in 2013.
- dr_orpheus 5y ago
  But what was supposed to be the first launch of the Falcon Heavy (USAF STP-2) was initially scheduled for March 2017. So maybe 2013 to 2019 isn't fair to compare, but 2017 to 2019 is still launching 2 years late. This is not to say that what SpaceX is doing isn't incredible. But I get frustrated when articles like this take the promises of things like "<$10m per launch, and up to thousands of launches per year" as an absolute truth. Edit: Had the original contracted launch date for the STP-2 mission wrong
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    That is fair, but in the space world that is not so much. I mean even if it is 10x more expensive and 3 years later, changing the approach is still needed sooner rather then later.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Conversely, I get kind of frustrated when people take "Elon time" as an argument that SpaceX can't deliver on what it promised. It does deliver. Just a year or three late. Given the amount of transformation they're causing, compared to previous 30 years of developments in space industry, these kinds of delays are irrelevant. It's like considering a million dollar software project a failure just because a couple sprints run a week late.

bryanlarsen 5y ago

When your primary customer says that they will never man-rate your rocket, as NASA's administrator Bolden did, it's more surprising that they actually went on to finish Falcon Heavy than that it was late.

dr_orpheus 5y ago
Yeah, that's fair. But the original first operational launch of the Falcon Heavy (USAF STP-2) was to help certify it for the National Security Space Launch. So one of their main targets was to get classified business that was going to the Delta Heavy rockets. So I don't know how much/little NASAs planned use of the Falcon Heavy affected their decision.

panick21_ 5y ago

> Those in the industry are pretty cautious about Elon's promises. Back in 2011, SpaceX advertised that the first Falcon heavy flight was going to be in 2013 [0], but the demo flight didn't occur until 2018, with the first launch of an actual payload in 2019. This is misleading. SpaceX pushed Falcon 9 so much that it actually reached the targeted Falcon Heavy payload years before that. Many early Falcon Heavy costumers launched on Falcon 9. There was very little market for Falcon Heavy and the main costumer was DoD and their launch was scheduled for pretty late. The simply didn't work on Falcon Heavy until Falcon 9 was at the end of its evolution and they had figured out re-usability. However the end result was more then double as powerful then the version announced in 2013.

dr_orpheus 5y ago
But what was supposed to be the first launch of the Falcon Heavy (USAF STP-2) was initially scheduled for March 2017. So maybe 2013 to 2019 isn't fair to compare, but 2017 to 2019 is still launching 2 years late. This is not to say that what SpaceX is doing isn't incredible. But I get frustrated when articles like this take the promises of things like "<$10m per launch, and up to thousands of launches per year" as an absolute truth. Edit: Had the original contracted launch date for the STP-2 mission wrong
- panick21_ 5y ago
  That is fair, but in the space world that is not so much. I mean even if it is 10x more expensive and 3 years later, changing the approach is still needed sooner rather then later.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Conversely, I get kind of frustrated when people take "Elon time" as an argument that SpaceX can't deliver on what it promised. It does deliver. Just a year or three late. Given the amount of transformation they're causing, compared to previous 30 years of developments in space industry, these kinds of delays are irrelevant. It's like considering a million dollar software project a failure just because a couple sprints run a week late.