5 ms·

Yes, OP is a particularly ludicrous comment in the context of this article where Starship is getting compared to SLS. SpaceX's long term, self-set ultimate econ

by xoa 5y ago

Yes, OP is a particularly ludicrous comment in the context of this article where Starship is getting compared to SLS. SpaceX's long term, self-set ultimate economic goals will certainly take iteration and a lot of work. But that shouldn't disguise that "merely" going up at this point doesn't look that big a deal at all, which is itself a remarkable thing. Once they're getting to orbit it can start doing useful work and generating money while they work on reuse to make it cheap, making ongoing testing an iteration itself profitable. And they still have no competition in even medium-lift reusable rockets let alone heavy lift, which in turn means they have enormous economic leeway. They can afford to charge $/kg far far above their ultimate cost goal and beat the market anyway. As long as they can land Super Heavy, throwing away Starship every single time would still be market shaking for LEO. Where they will need full reusability is to make in-orbit refueling work out economically long term, and they need that to use Starship in deep space or other high energy work. Though even there if we're comparing to SLS it still looks good because SLS is just that stupid bloated.

ncmncm 5y ago
That assumes they will even find customers who want to launch that much stuff. For a long time, the only fully loaded Starships will be carrying Starlink satellites, and maybe fuel for an orbital tank farm. The Starlink launches will be physically full, but not boosting even close to the advertised cargo weight capacity, because those Starlink sats don't pack in tightly enough. Eventually, people may start to think of things that can use up that much load capacity or volume (rarely both). Suborbital freight will be a tricky business. It can take quite a lot more than 45 minutes to round up and pack enough freight to fill up a Starship, and to get it unpacked and distributed at the other end, so the 45 minutes aloft doesn't save as much time as you might expect. Same for passenger service: if it takes four hours to get everybody secured, and two hours to get everybody out to the curb after, you have to go pretty far to make it save enough time to be worth the extra cost. So, in order to take advantage of the new capability, a lot of boring stuff has to be invented and fielded. Practical air freight needed, besides the aircraft, a custom shipping container design delivered to everybody with freight to ship, and cargo bay floors with rollers built in to get them on and off fast enough.
- simonh 5y ago
  This is certainly an issue, launch capacity is likely to dwarf demand for a while, but on the other hand generic cubesat technology has been commoditised and easily available for a while. A basic kit costs well under $10k. This is partly why starlink has been able to ramp up so quickly, the tech in the satellites themselves doesn't have to be super ground-breaking. The constraint at the moment stopping every educational institution from many many high schools up having their own small sat, or even a fleet is launch costs. I can easily see Starship launching tens of thousands of cubesats a year for organisations all over the world within a few years.

by xoa 5y ago

ncmncm 5y ago

That assumes they will even find customers who want to launch that much stuff. For a long time, the only fully loaded Starships will be carrying Starlink satellites, and maybe fuel for an orbital tank farm. The Starlink launches will be physically full, but not boosting even close to the advertised cargo weight capacity, because those Starlink sats don't pack in tightly enough. Eventually, people may start to think of things that can use up that much load capacity or volume (rarely both). Suborbital freight will be a tricky business. It can take quite a lot more than 45 minutes to round up and pack enough freight to fill up a Starship, and to get it unpacked and distributed at the other end, so the 45 minutes aloft doesn't save as much time as you might expect. Same for passenger service: if it takes four hours to get everybody secured, and two hours to get everybody out to the curb after, you have to go pretty far to make it save enough time to be worth the extra cost. So, in order to take advantage of the new capability, a lot of boring stuff has to be invented and fielded. Practical air freight needed, besides the aircraft, a custom shipping container design delivered to everybody with freight to ship, and cargo bay floors with rollers built in to get them on and off fast enough.

simonh 5y ago
This is certainly an issue, launch capacity is likely to dwarf demand for a while, but on the other hand generic cubesat technology has been commoditised and easily available for a while. A basic kit costs well under $10k. This is partly why starlink has been able to ramp up so quickly, the tech in the satellites themselves doesn't have to be super ground-breaking. The constraint at the moment stopping every educational institution from many many high schools up having their own small sat, or even a fleet is launch costs. I can easily see Starship launching tens of thousands of cubesats a year for organisations all over the world within a few years.