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Starship would allow the US to quickly and cheaply replace any lost infrastructure in space, therefore that vulnerability would be mitigated. (I'm not sure this
by wcoenen 5y ago
Starship would allow the US to quickly and cheaply replace any lost infrastructure in space, therefore that vulnerability would be mitigated. (I'm not sure this would be an advantage for long though. Once a working cheap launch system has been demonstrated, it will soon be copied.)
- dylan604 5y agoJust because you have launch capability doesn't mean you have the payload to utilize that.
- wcoenen 5y agoIf launches are expensive (e.g. 400M USD for a Delta IV Heavy launch) then you have to engineer the payload to make it worth that launch cost. It needs to be super reliable and last a long time, it needs to provide a lot of value, and you may get only one shot to get it right. There's not going to be a backup James Webb telescope if there's a glitch with the first one. If launches are cheap (e.g. a few million USD targeted by Starship), you can use more off the shelf hardware and iterate to see what works. Replacing satellites is not such a big deal.
- Robotbeat 5y agoStarlink, which can be used for both communication and geolocation (and some observation), does, though. I think people don’t understand the scale that Starlink operates at. SpaceX is planning to ramp up Starlink manufacturing capacity for STARSHIP, too. Falcon 9 does 40 200kg satellites at once. And plans to operate them eventually at below 400km, which makes them resistant to debris.