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>There's a lot more to Starship than that, right? Not for MVP, which is getting Starship to LEO. Once they do that, they can start using it for Starlink and a

by xoa 5y ago

>There's a lot more to Starship than that, right? Not for MVP, which is getting Starship to LEO. Once they do that, they can start using it for Starlink and a fair amount of commercial cargo, which means it starts paying for itself and their runway extends vastly >In-orbit refueling. Heat shield. The launch tower chopstick catch. First is only required for high energy, stuff like deep space. They don't need that to get iterating. Hell, they don't need second stage reuse even for their NASA Lunar contract, that was part of the risk assessment. Lunar Starship won't be landing back on Earth. If they can't do reuse it'd probably nuke most of the possible profit on that one, but it's not mission critical. Second is needed for reentry, but again, expended upper stage is fine. Most of the cost is in Super Heavy. Third is a nice economics thing. SH will be able to hover, landing legs add to dry mass, and landing raises more chance of damage which would slow cadence. Since there is no particular physical reason they can do a tower catch it's worth trying. But worst case they just give up (or give up temporarily) and go back to legs. That's still not at all a blocker for going to orbit. >Engineering a crew space. Hell, the big window. Manned won't be for a long, long while. I'm not sure what you're confused about here, you do realize that F9 was going to orbit with commercial cargo for a long while before any human launch right? >I don't doubt they'll get one into orbit this year, but that's not what I'd define as a completed Starship program. Well in that case, since I said "as far as getting to orbit" I'm not even sure what you're arguing with. SpaceX's entire thing here is MVP and iteration. MVP for Starship is getting SS to orbit and expending it while recovering SH. That's enough for it to start making them lots of money. Cargo SS will be quite cheap for a rocket. At that point they start to get working on reentry and landing that "for free", just like with F9. And with high cadence. How many dozens of times do you think it'll take them to figure it out? Because remember, they did 31 F9 launches last year alone. And they've got lots of margin in the design.

ceejayoz 5y ago
OK, so you're redefining Starship into "expendable second stage". I don't think that was inherently clear to anyone but you. I don't think that's the definition the parent poster meant in the context of "Starship is going to take years longer than originally predicted".
- xoa 5y ago
  >OK, so you're redefining Starship into "expendable second stage". That's not redefining, just SpaceX's confusing naming I guess but I thought I was quite clear for anyone who knows about the system. The "Starship launch system" consists of a first stage named Super Heavy (SH) and a second stage also named Starship (SS). It was obvious I was talking about expended second stage "Starship" because I explicitly noted that Super Heavy was important to land, why, and additionally why I thought that was also relatively feasible compared to the SS parts. >I don't think that was inherently clear to anyone but you. Only if you didn't actually bother to read the comment or don't know anything about Starship but are choosing to comment anyway. Yes, all of us wish that "Starship" wasn't an overloaded term, but it is. The context nevertheless was very clear. What else did you think I was talking about with Super Heavy? >I don't think that's the definition the parent poster meant in the context of "Starship is going to take years longer than originally predicted". It seems fairly clear given both the article and their "Starship is incredibly ambitious but if it doesn't reach orbit before 2025 I won't be surprised" statement? OP didn't write "if the second stage doesn't have full reuse before 2025 I won't be surprised", they wrote reach orbit. Please explain how else you can parse that except a claim that Starship won't reach orbit? And a refined expended second stage would still absolutely slaughter SLS and everything else too. And yes, I'd be surprised if it took them dozens and dozens of attempts to get SS to survive reentry, they've got plenty of mass margin for it and fundamental advantages vs a range of other reentry systems including the shuttle, and as far as landing, well they've already demonstrated the most aggressive version landing maneuver successfully! So I don't think it's going to take them 3+ years after getting to orbit to land SS.
- mercutio2 5y ago
  The original commenter in this thread said: > Starship is incredibly ambitious but if it doesn't reach orbit > before 2025 I won't be surprised. Just having Starship reach orbit isn't moving the goalposts, here, it's the contentious thing most folks in the thread are reacting to. If OP had said "Starship won't do everything everyone dreams of doing before 2025", then OK, that's not even vaguely contentious. But not reaching orbit by 2025? That seems very unlikely.

by xoa 5y ago

ceejayoz 5y ago

OK, so you're redefining Starship into "expendable second stage". I don't think that was inherently clear to anyone but you. I don't think that's the definition the parent poster meant in the context of "Starship is going to take years longer than originally predicted".

xoa 5y ago
>OK, so you're redefining Starship into "expendable second stage". That's not redefining, just SpaceX's confusing naming I guess but I thought I was quite clear for anyone who knows about the system. The "Starship launch system" consists of a first stage named Super Heavy (SH) and a second stage also named Starship (SS). It was obvious I was talking about expended second stage "Starship" because I explicitly noted that Super Heavy was important to land, why, and additionally why I thought that was also relatively feasible compared to the SS parts. >I don't think that was inherently clear to anyone but you. Only if you didn't actually bother to read the comment or don't know anything about Starship but are choosing to comment anyway. Yes, all of us wish that "Starship" wasn't an overloaded term, but it is. The context nevertheless was very clear. What else did you think I was talking about with Super Heavy? >I don't think that's the definition the parent poster meant in the context of "Starship is going to take years longer than originally predicted". It seems fairly clear given both the article and their "Starship is incredibly ambitious but if it doesn't reach orbit before 2025 I won't be surprised" statement? OP didn't write "if the second stage doesn't have full reuse before 2025 I won't be surprised", they wrote reach orbit. Please explain how else you can parse that except a claim that Starship won't reach orbit? And a refined expended second stage would still absolutely slaughter SLS and everything else too. And yes, I'd be surprised if it took them dozens and dozens of attempts to get SS to survive reentry, they've got plenty of mass margin for it and fundamental advantages vs a range of other reentry systems including the shuttle, and as far as landing, well they've already demonstrated the most aggressive version landing maneuver successfully! So I don't think it's going to take them 3+ years after getting to orbit to land SS.
mercutio2 5y ago
The original commenter in this thread said: > Starship is incredibly ambitious but if it doesn't reach orbit > before 2025 I won't be surprised. Just having Starship reach orbit isn't moving the goalposts, here, it's the contentious thing most folks in the thread are reacting to. If OP had said "Starship won't do everything everyone dreams of doing before 2025", then OK, that's not even vaguely contentious. But not reaching orbit by 2025? That seems very unlikely.