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The real problem for Starship (IMHO) is Falcon 9. Falcon 9 is now the most reliable launch vehicle ever created. With reuse the may well be $10m per launch or e

by jmyeet 5y ago

The real problem for Starship (IMHO) is Falcon 9. Falcon 9 is now the most reliable launch vehicle ever created. With reuse the may well be $10m per launch or even less by now and likely to continue to drop. F9 can deliver ~22t to LEO and smaller payloads to geosynchronous orbit. The payloads F9 can't deliver are quite small. What people forget is that payloads are deeply coupled to their launch vehicles. The launch vehicle will dictate the maximum weight and dimensions of the payload. You can't just take a payload designed for one vehicle and put it on another. The evidence for this is the relatively few Falcon Heavy launches we've had and are planned. So now SpaceX has all this launch capacity without the matching demand for it. It's a big part of why Starlink exists. Cheaper and larger payload capacities will ultimately change the industry and create demand but that takes years. It's likely Starship will launch ISS replacements but is there sufficient demand there for this ambitious launch vehicle? What else will it be used for? That's a bit of an open question.

terafo 5y ago
I believe that expendable upper stage alone costs 10 million. It can't cost them less than that.
- tigershark 5y ago
  I think that was in the region of 5-7M. If I remember correctly a Falcon 9 launch costs around $15M, maybe something less.
trhway 5y ago
>Cheaper and larger payload capacities will ultimately change the industry ... is there sufficient demand there for this ambitious launch vehicle? What else will it be used for? extended weekend around Moon in cattle class for say $100K/person. Suborbital flight LA to Shanghai in 1 hour for $5-10K. Though it seems that the first years the SpaceX Mars program will gobble almost all the capacity (according to that recent update Elon wants to launch non-stop several times a day to get several million tons into orbit), except for the high margin and/or already contracted stuff like NASA Moon. >The real problem for Starship (IMHO) is Falcon 9. F9/Heavy are cheaper than competition, yet not that cheaper to enable new revolutionary uses. They also will never be made to the airline level of safety/robustness/operational simplicity/etc. which is one of the goals of Starship and its Raptor 2 engine. In particular - according to that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor#/media/File:Raptor_2_Full_Flow_Staged_Combustion_Cycle_Estimate.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor#/media/File:Rapt... the full flow allows them to run turbines under 600 C for fuel and under 500 C for oxygen pump on Raptor 2 - it feels like cheating :) being like steel temperatures, and they of course are using Inconel which gives them great reliability here, like in order of magnitude better than on other engines. That naturally translates into capability to perform many reuses with very frequent launches with minimal operational costs. If anything i think with Elon having blazed the path there is an opportunity to quickly start and ramp up SpaceX copycats(s) as whatever capacity the industry would produce at the Starship level low prices and high convenience the demand will still be bigger.
- thebigman433 5y ago
  > extended weekend around Moon in cattle class for say $100K/person. But how long does this actually last? The amount of people that can afford to pay that is minimal, I dont see space tourism driving any serious markets for an extremely long time (if ever). And there is a reason point to point transfer isnt being mentioned anymore. The logistics and regulatory hurdles are going to be massive, and I seriously doubt we see that outside of maybe military tests for cargo transport.
  - trhway 5y ago
    >The amount of people that can afford to pay that is minimal average American wedding is close to $30K, so i think there is a large market at the top. Plus corporations with their outings/offsite/etc. for S/E/VPs flying business class to nice places, influencers/promotions/raffles, midlife crisis and retired doctors, lawyers, execs as well as tens (if not a hundred) of thousands of young FAANG employees making $500K+/year. It is just that Virgin Galactic and Bezos unfortunately don't do justice to the coming space tourism. >The logistics and regulatory hurdles are going to be massive That really hinges on whether Starship will reach airline level of safety which is a huge undertaking and naturally at least several thousand of launches away. Those coming several thousands of launches anyway are planned for bringing into orbit those several millions of tons destined in particular for Mars. I.e. i just don't see any spare capacity from Starship. As far as i see it will be utilized 110%.
    - thebigman433 5y ago
      The logistics do not just revolve around safety (although that is a major factor), its also stuff like noise and environmental pollution. Residents werent happy with the Concorde noise, people are going to be furious with the noise of a Starship taking off. All of the launches are going to have to be done offshore essentially to avoid this, so now youre also looking at spending probably a couple hours waiting on ferries to come and go, and at that point, who even wants to deal with everything related to that kind of point to point transfer? Thats not even mentioning stuff like being uncomfortable while riding. All of this plus even if it wasnt too loud, you need countries to let you fly your rocket over their airspace constantly. We can mention the launches to put millions of tons on Mars, but personally Ill believe that when I see it. That is going to have a massive cost, and I dont see that happening particularly soon at all, even if Starship gets to be completely operational.
Victerius 5y ago
> $10 per launch You mean $10,000,000.00, not $10.00, right? $10.00 launches would be amazing.
- sdenton4 5y ago
  I was about to say it would be terrible because so much fuel would be burning with these cheap launches that we'd probably destroy the atmosphere in a few years... But for just $10, we can't really be using fuel in the first place.
- jmyeet 5y ago
  Yes I meant $10m. Sign me up for $10 launches. Interestingly there are proposed launch systems that, while not being $10, would potentially be under $1000 and transform passenger and freight movement on Earth too. I am of course talking about orbital rings [1]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E
bmcniel 5y ago
It seems like the thesis is if cost per kg fall enough then the implausible becomes plausible. F9 reduced costs to make starlink possible, what will starship make possible?
- qayxc 5y ago
  "The consequences for SpaceX if we can not get enough reliable Raptors made is that we then can’t fly Starship, which means we then can’t fly Starlink Satellite V2 (Falcon has neither the volume nor the mass to orbit needed for satellite V2). Satellite V1, by itself, is financially weak, while V2 is strong." Seems to me as if Starlink without Starship isn't all that great. Also, OneWeb - despite being smaller in scope - managed to do a similar thing without reusable rockets. Now that doesn't make F9 bad - it's still a great machine - it's just not the game changer many hoped it to be.
  - tigershark 5y ago
    No, OneWeb didn’t do anything remotely comparable. Starlink satellites are currently more than all the human satellites ever launched. Smaller in scope is a euphemism, you are comparing a mere 650 satellites with 42k, 2 orders of magnitude more.
    - qayxc 5y ago
      There aren't 42k Starlink satellites in orbit. It's about 1,500 active satellites versus 600 + ~50 spares - quite comparable.
      - tigershark 5y ago
        The plan is for 42k satellites, currently there are still more Starlink satellites than all the other satellites ever launched.
        qayxc 5y ago
        The "plan" also was to land a Dragon capsule on Mars by 2018 [0]. The "plan" also was to fly people around the Moon in 2018 [1]. It's pointless to base your assessment on plans if the past showed how quickly they evaporate in light of new developments. [0] http://spaceref.com/mars/spacex-will-start-going-to-mars-in-2018.html http://spaceref.com/mars/spacex-will-start-going-to-mars-in-... [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/spacex-moon-2018-elon-musk-dragon-space-science https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/spacex-mo...
inevaexisted 5y ago
They solved this problem with F9 too, with their ride share program. Starship will make it even cheaper to deliver small payloads too (you'll likely have to wait for enough payload to get lined up to make sense financially), however with the need to continuously deploy starlink satelites, they'll probably fill loads as required with them to fill starship up.
- jmyeet 5y ago
  You raise a good point: taking multiple payloads could help bridge this gap. But I still believe it'll take quite awhile to match the economics of an F9 launch (assuming that payload is within the launch parameters). Falcon Heavy is again evidence of this. We're not seeing ride-sharing on FH. We're seeing large (primarily military) payloads that F9 just can't do.
  - ordu 5y ago
    > Falcon Heavy is again evidence of this. Not necessarily. I'm not a rocket scientist or economist, but it is possible that FH is less cost-effective per kg on LEO than F9. You need to accelerate three boosters to several thousand km/hour and then to decelerate them to 0 km/hour at ground level. And then to do all the maintaining on those boosters, which takes about a month. Does it allow for 3x payload? There are other potential issues, like a volume: a payload is not just mass, but a volume too. It needs to fit into fairing. Adding two more boosters doesn't increase available volume. > I still believe it'll take quite awhile to match the economics of an F9 launch Musk says that he relies on Starship launches to make it work reliably as expected. And yes, I believe that it will take years. Maybe it will be faster than with F9, but not an order of magnitude faster.
    - perilunar 5y ago
      > Does it allow for 3x payload? Mass to LEO (from the SpaceX site): F9: 22,800 kg; FH: 63,800 kg. So 2.8 times. Both expend the second stage, so if they recover all the boosters then FH possibly has lower cost per kg, but they're not saying.
    - 5y ago
inasio 5y ago
I suspect it could disrupt at least some form of earth transportation. The fuel costs are not that different than a transatlantic 787 flight, and it's likely simpler and with fewer moving parts. In similar style to Tesla's vertical approach, they could own the full stack (rocket, fuel production, launch/landing facilities).
- qayxc 5y ago
  There is no way in hell a huge ICBM would get international overflight rights. The logistics of such system would be hell, too - Concorde only had limited routes due to noise. A rocket of Starship's size is another thing entirely. You'd basically have to launch and land it offshore so the logistics getting to and from the launch site and into the vehicle would kill all benefits. Not to mention the simple things like weather, closing airspace, and the lack of cross-range capabilities, which would make emergency landings or evading bad conditions on the landing site pretty difficult.
  - vimy 5y ago
    The Pentagon wants to use Starship for military transport. Getting troops anywhere on earth within an hour would be a huge advantage.
    - newsclues 5y ago
      I thought there was potential for medivac rockets. Land near combat and take off to America or Europe for surgery.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        That, anyway, will not happen. Once one has landed somewhere not a spaceport, it will not be launched again without a huge production. More likely the valuable engines will be removed and shipped home, the rest left as so much scrap metal.
        5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mlindner 5y ago
> What people forget is that payloads are deeply coupled to their launch vehicles. The launch vehicle will dictate the maximum weight and dimensions of the payload. You can't just take a payload designed for one vehicle and put it on another. This is generally (but not always) false. SpaceX has been negotiating a lot of their commercial contracts in a vehicle agnostic fashion. Namely that SpaceX can pick which vehicle to launch a given payload on. This will allow them, as soon as Starship is flying reliably, to swap Falcon 9 payloads on to Starship. Also payloads that were designed for one rocket have been swaped on to Falcon 9. One example: https://spacenews.com/spacex-wins-contract-to-launch-nasa-small-astrophysics-mission/ https://spacenews.com/spacex-wins-contract-to-launch-nasa-sm... https://twitter.com/B_Garelick/status/1291029153119178754 https://twitter.com/B_Garelick/status/1291029153119178754 > It's likely Starship will launch ISS replacements but is there sufficient demand there for this ambitious launch vehicle? What else will it be used for? That's a bit of an open question. Starship is being designed with the intent that it will cannibalize all Falcon 9 launches eventually. I don't think it's an open question at all. It's been stated to be the case explicitly in fact.
- jmyeet 5y ago
  > This is generally (but not always) false. SpaceX has been negotiating a lot of their commercial contracts in a vehicle agnostic fashion. Here's another way of putting that: SpaceX has designed it so F9 and Starship payloads will be interchangeable. That's not quite the same thing. You can't just take an F9 payload and bolt it on top of an Ariane rocket. > Starship is being designed with the intent that it will cannibalize all Falcon 9 launches eventually. Sure but that's just going to take a long time, particularly if F9 is, say, sub-$15m per launch. There's a lot that still has to be done for Starship (eg the landing system, the crew component).
  - wahern 5y ago
    > but that's just going to take a long time, particularly if F9 is, say, sub-$15m per launch. 1) SpaceX isn't a public company; among other benefits, there's substantially less pressure to maximize profits. 2) Starship launch costs don't need to compete with F9, they only need to compete with the other competition. Also, it's worth repeating that the goal of this entire endeavor is reaching Mars. The above state of affairs isn't a coincidence, but a very deliberate part of Musk's plan. (Also, luck.)
WalterBright 5y ago
What wouldn't it be useful for? 1. bigger and much more capable interplanetary probes 2. a much cheaper Webb telescope 3. build a base on the moon 4. make a mission to Mars possible
- qayxc 5y ago
  > 1. bigger and much more capable interplanetary probes The limitation there is capable RTGs, not launch vehicles. > 2. a much cheaper Webb telescope Webb couldn't have fit into a Starship fairing either. > 3. build a base on the moon For whom? Launching stuff is one thing, but you'd need to design, build, maintain, and supply such station. If you think the ISS was expensive, a Moon base would dwarf the ISS costs. Even if launches would be cheaper, there's still a lot of logistics and support behind such station, which is one of the reasons no one did it yet. > 4. make a mission to Mars possible That could be done without Starship - as much as I think Zubrin has drifted into the nut job corner over the past decade, he still has a point: crewed Mars missions would've been possible since the 1980s.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    A lot of people wondered why Boeing was blowing all this money developing the 747. Who needed an airplane that big? It turned out to be the biggest moneymaker ever for Boeing - and the people who bought them.
    - qayxc 5y ago
      And look what happened - the A380, an even bigger plane - was discontinued because it turned out smaller planes are more economical.
      - dingaling 5y ago
        > because it turned out smaller planes are more economical Per seat the A380 is still the cheapest way of moving a person by air. The 777X should beat it, but it's not in service yet. The problems with the A380 were (1) it wasn't aerodynamically radical enough to maintain that advantage beyond one generation of airliners and (2) you need to fill it to compensate for (1)
qayxc 5y ago
While I don't agree that reuse will bring the price down further, I can 100% get behind the other points. Even the argument that demand isn't there because launch costs are high doesn't hold - the bigger the sat, the more expensive it is and the trend goes towards smaller and cheaper sats. Building commercial space stations (plural!) could be done using all-up launches and that would be like what - one launch every couple of years? It's still early days, but it's not as if 100t to LEO is novel or anything - the Energia rocket could do that 35 years ago. The Soviets and later Roskosmos abandoned the vehicle, because they couldn't find a use for it either (after Buran was axed).
- panick21_ 5y ago
  > While I don't agree that reuse will bring the price down further Why? If you have to spend almost 10M$~ on an expensive high tech upper stage you your just gone throw in the ocean its clearly give you a price lower bound. > it's not as if 100t to LEO is novel or anything Starship does 150t in its early version while being fully reusable. > The Soviets and later Roskosmos abandoned the vehicle, because they couldn't find a use for it either The Soviet union collapsed and they didn't have the money for it.
throwawaylinux 5y ago
I thought the cost per launch for Starship was going to be even less than the non-heavy F9 because it's more reusable. > The evidence for this is the relatively few Falcon Heavy launches we've had and are planned. I don't think that's very good evidence. The first Falcon Heavy flight was only 4 years ago and there have been 3 launches until now. Presumably people design their missions around what's available and proven reliable so I would expect it to ramp up. Looks like there are 5/6 Falcon Heavy launches on the cards for this year.
nycdotnet 5y ago
Falcon Heavy was specified relatively early in the Falcon 9’s development cycle. They were originally going to do more Falcon Heavy missions but in the meantime, blocks 3 and 4 of Falcon 9 came out and the Merlin kept getting better and better, and with block 5 the Merlin D has almost double the thrust of the Merlins on the early Falcon 9s which is kind of nuts. So many of the missions conceived for Falcon Heavy were ultimately flown on a different rocket- a more capable single stick Falcon 9.
boznz 5y ago
Asteroid mining. I really cant believe its not on Elon's mind, talk about disruptive!
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  Why? There are no minerals available in space that wouldn't be cheaper to mine on Earth. Even with Starship's vastly reduced costs. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/08/27/there-are-no-known-commodity-resources-in-space-that-could-be-sold-on-earth/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/08/27/there-are-no-k...
  - TylerE 5y ago
    I think the argument would be in conjunction with orbital factories. The cost may well be (much) higher than mining it on earth, but could still be much less than mining it on earth and then launching it to geosync.
  - freemint 5y ago
    Once you have orbital refuelling that changes the asymptotics little so it might be profitable then but that's like post moon station.
panick21_ 5y ago
> With reuse the may well be $10m per launch or even less That is a very low estimate. Most people assume more like $20m per launch. Some say $15m. You still need to manufacture a complex upper stage and complex engine. Reuse of the Merlin is not perfect. It involves a lot of transportation. It involves having a substantial navy and so on. All in all including fix cost, I would say the can't make it much cheaper. To get cheaper a next generation rocket is needed. > What people forget is that payloads are deeply coupled to their launch vehicles. The launch vehicle will dictate the maximum weight and dimensions of the payload. You can't just take a payload designed for one vehicle and put it on another. While somewhat true, its not universal. Many adopters are standards. And as long as the conditions are not so different. Like if you move between a liquid and a solid rocket, the environment is not that different. > The evidence for this is the relatively few Falcon Heavy launches we've had and are planned. There are 5 Falcon Heavy launches planned. And the thing with Falcon Heavy is that most payloads are volume constraint, and the Falcon Heavy doesn't actually increase that over Falcon 9 while being strictly more expensive. At the end of the day, the worst case is Starship is a marginally cheaper Falcon 9. > What else will it be used for? That's a bit of an open question. Certainty a problem but only once you get to the very high launch rate musk wants. If on a per launch bases its cheaper then Falcon 9, it will have a reason to exist. And from there you can hopefully increase rates over time as the industry takes it into account.

by jmyeet 5y ago

terafo 5y ago

I believe that expendable upper stage alone costs 10 million. It can't cost them less than that.

tigershark 5y ago
I think that was in the region of 5-7M. If I remember correctly a Falcon 9 launch costs around $15M, maybe something less.

trhway 5y ago

>Cheaper and larger payload capacities will ultimately change the industry ... is there sufficient demand there for this ambitious launch vehicle? What else will it be used for? extended weekend around Moon in cattle class for say $100K/person. Suborbital flight LA to Shanghai in 1 hour for $5-10K. Though it seems that the first years the SpaceX Mars program will gobble almost all the capacity (according to that recent update Elon wants to launch non-stop several times a day to get several million tons into orbit), except for the high margin and/or already contracted stuff like NASA Moon. >The real problem for Starship (IMHO) is Falcon 9. F9/Heavy are cheaper than competition, yet not that cheaper to enable new revolutionary uses. They also will never be made to the airline level of safety/robustness/operational simplicity/etc. which is one of the goals of Starship and its Raptor 2 engine. In particular - according to that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor#/media/File:Raptor_2_Full_Flow_Staged_Combustion_Cycle_Estimate.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor#/media/File:Rapt... the full flow allows them to run turbines under 600 C for fuel and under 500 C for oxygen pump on Raptor 2 - it feels like cheating :) being like steel temperatures, and they of course are using Inconel which gives them great reliability here, like in order of magnitude better than on other engines. That naturally translates into capability to perform many reuses with very frequent launches with minimal operational costs. If anything i think with Elon having blazed the path there is an opportunity to quickly start and ramp up SpaceX copycats(s) as whatever capacity the industry would produce at the Starship level low prices and high convenience the demand will still be bigger.

thebigman433 5y ago
> extended weekend around Moon in cattle class for say $100K/person. But how long does this actually last? The amount of people that can afford to pay that is minimal, I dont see space tourism driving any serious markets for an extremely long time (if ever). And there is a reason point to point transfer isnt being mentioned anymore. The logistics and regulatory hurdles are going to be massive, and I seriously doubt we see that outside of maybe military tests for cargo transport.
- trhway 5y ago
  >The amount of people that can afford to pay that is minimal average American wedding is close to $30K, so i think there is a large market at the top. Plus corporations with their outings/offsite/etc. for S/E/VPs flying business class to nice places, influencers/promotions/raffles, midlife crisis and retired doctors, lawyers, execs as well as tens (if not a hundred) of thousands of young FAANG employees making $500K+/year. It is just that Virgin Galactic and Bezos unfortunately don't do justice to the coming space tourism. >The logistics and regulatory hurdles are going to be massive That really hinges on whether Starship will reach airline level of safety which is a huge undertaking and naturally at least several thousand of launches away. Those coming several thousands of launches anyway are planned for bringing into orbit those several millions of tons destined in particular for Mars. I.e. i just don't see any spare capacity from Starship. As far as i see it will be utilized 110%.
  - thebigman433 5y ago
    The logistics do not just revolve around safety (although that is a major factor), its also stuff like noise and environmental pollution. Residents werent happy with the Concorde noise, people are going to be furious with the noise of a Starship taking off. All of the launches are going to have to be done offshore essentially to avoid this, so now youre also looking at spending probably a couple hours waiting on ferries to come and go, and at that point, who even wants to deal with everything related to that kind of point to point transfer? Thats not even mentioning stuff like being uncomfortable while riding. All of this plus even if it wasnt too loud, you need countries to let you fly your rocket over their airspace constantly. We can mention the launches to put millions of tons on Mars, but personally Ill believe that when I see it. That is going to have a massive cost, and I dont see that happening particularly soon at all, even if Starship gets to be completely operational.

Victerius 5y ago

> $10 per launch You mean $10,000,000.00, not $10.00, right? $10.00 launches would be amazing.

sdenton4 5y ago
I was about to say it would be terrible because so much fuel would be burning with these cheap launches that we'd probably destroy the atmosphere in a few years... But for just $10, we can't really be using fuel in the first place.
jmyeet 5y ago
Yes I meant $10m. Sign me up for $10 launches. Interestingly there are proposed launch systems that, while not being $10, would potentially be under $1000 and transform passenger and freight movement on Earth too. I am of course talking about orbital rings [1]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E

bmcniel 5y ago

It seems like the thesis is if cost per kg fall enough then the implausible becomes plausible. F9 reduced costs to make starlink possible, what will starship make possible?

qayxc 5y ago
"The consequences for SpaceX if we can not get enough reliable Raptors made is that we then can’t fly Starship, which means we then can’t fly Starlink Satellite V2 (Falcon has neither the volume nor the mass to orbit needed for satellite V2). Satellite V1, by itself, is financially weak, while V2 is strong." Seems to me as if Starlink without Starship isn't all that great. Also, OneWeb - despite being smaller in scope - managed to do a similar thing without reusable rockets. Now that doesn't make F9 bad - it's still a great machine - it's just not the game changer many hoped it to be.
- tigershark 5y ago
  No, OneWeb didn’t do anything remotely comparable. Starlink satellites are currently more than all the human satellites ever launched. Smaller in scope is a euphemism, you are comparing a mere 650 satellites with 42k, 2 orders of magnitude more.
  - qayxc 5y ago
    There aren't 42k Starlink satellites in orbit. It's about 1,500 active satellites versus 600 + ~50 spares - quite comparable.
    - tigershark 5y ago
      The plan is for 42k satellites, currently there are still more Starlink satellites than all the other satellites ever launched.
      - qayxc 5y ago
        The "plan" also was to land a Dragon capsule on Mars by 2018 [0]. The "plan" also was to fly people around the Moon in 2018 [1]. It's pointless to base your assessment on plans if the past showed how quickly they evaporate in light of new developments. [0] http://spaceref.com/mars/spacex-will-start-going-to-mars-in-2018.html http://spaceref.com/mars/spacex-will-start-going-to-mars-in-... [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/spacex-moon-2018-elon-musk-dragon-space-science https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/spacex-mo...

inevaexisted 5y ago

They solved this problem with F9 too, with their ride share program. Starship will make it even cheaper to deliver small payloads too (you'll likely have to wait for enough payload to get lined up to make sense financially), however with the need to continuously deploy starlink satelites, they'll probably fill loads as required with them to fill starship up.

jmyeet 5y ago
You raise a good point: taking multiple payloads could help bridge this gap. But I still believe it'll take quite awhile to match the economics of an F9 launch (assuming that payload is within the launch parameters). Falcon Heavy is again evidence of this. We're not seeing ride-sharing on FH. We're seeing large (primarily military) payloads that F9 just can't do.
- ordu 5y ago
  > Falcon Heavy is again evidence of this. Not necessarily. I'm not a rocket scientist or economist, but it is possible that FH is less cost-effective per kg on LEO than F9. You need to accelerate three boosters to several thousand km/hour and then to decelerate them to 0 km/hour at ground level. And then to do all the maintaining on those boosters, which takes about a month. Does it allow for 3x payload? There are other potential issues, like a volume: a payload is not just mass, but a volume too. It needs to fit into fairing. Adding two more boosters doesn't increase available volume. > I still believe it'll take quite awhile to match the economics of an F9 launch Musk says that he relies on Starship launches to make it work reliably as expected. And yes, I believe that it will take years. Maybe it will be faster than with F9, but not an order of magnitude faster.
  - perilunar 5y ago
    > Does it allow for 3x payload? Mass to LEO (from the SpaceX site): F9: 22,800 kg; FH: 63,800 kg. So 2.8 times. Both expend the second stage, so if they recover all the boosters then FH possibly has lower cost per kg, but they're not saying.
  - 5y ago

inasio 5y ago

I suspect it could disrupt at least some form of earth transportation. The fuel costs are not that different than a transatlantic 787 flight, and it's likely simpler and with fewer moving parts. In similar style to Tesla's vertical approach, they could own the full stack (rocket, fuel production, launch/landing facilities).

qayxc 5y ago
There is no way in hell a huge ICBM would get international overflight rights. The logistics of such system would be hell, too - Concorde only had limited routes due to noise. A rocket of Starship's size is another thing entirely. You'd basically have to launch and land it offshore so the logistics getting to and from the launch site and into the vehicle would kill all benefits. Not to mention the simple things like weather, closing airspace, and the lack of cross-range capabilities, which would make emergency landings or evading bad conditions on the landing site pretty difficult.
- vimy 5y ago
  The Pentagon wants to use Starship for military transport. Getting troops anywhere on earth within an hour would be a huge advantage.
  - newsclues 5y ago
    I thought there was potential for medivac rockets. Land near combat and take off to America or Europe for surgery.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      That, anyway, will not happen. Once one has landed somewhere not a spaceport, it will not be launched again without a huge production. More likely the valuable engines will be removed and shipped home, the rest left as so much scrap metal.
      - 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mlindner 5y ago

> What people forget is that payloads are deeply coupled to their launch vehicles. The launch vehicle will dictate the maximum weight and dimensions of the payload. You can't just take a payload designed for one vehicle and put it on another. This is generally (but not always) false. SpaceX has been negotiating a lot of their commercial contracts in a vehicle agnostic fashion. Namely that SpaceX can pick which vehicle to launch a given payload on. This will allow them, as soon as Starship is flying reliably, to swap Falcon 9 payloads on to Starship. Also payloads that were designed for one rocket have been swaped on to Falcon 9. One example: https://spacenews.com/spacex-wins-contract-to-launch-nasa-small-astrophysics-mission/ https://spacenews.com/spacex-wins-contract-to-launch-nasa-sm... https://twitter.com/B_Garelick/status/1291029153119178754 https://twitter.com/B_Garelick/status/1291029153119178754 > It's likely Starship will launch ISS replacements but is there sufficient demand there for this ambitious launch vehicle? What else will it be used for? That's a bit of an open question. Starship is being designed with the intent that it will cannibalize all Falcon 9 launches eventually. I don't think it's an open question at all. It's been stated to be the case explicitly in fact.

jmyeet 5y ago
> This is generally (but not always) false. SpaceX has been negotiating a lot of their commercial contracts in a vehicle agnostic fashion. Here's another way of putting that: SpaceX has designed it so F9 and Starship payloads will be interchangeable. That's not quite the same thing. You can't just take an F9 payload and bolt it on top of an Ariane rocket. > Starship is being designed with the intent that it will cannibalize all Falcon 9 launches eventually. Sure but that's just going to take a long time, particularly if F9 is, say, sub-$15m per launch. There's a lot that still has to be done for Starship (eg the landing system, the crew component).
- wahern 5y ago
  > but that's just going to take a long time, particularly if F9 is, say, sub-$15m per launch. 1) SpaceX isn't a public company; among other benefits, there's substantially less pressure to maximize profits. 2) Starship launch costs don't need to compete with F9, they only need to compete with the other competition. Also, it's worth repeating that the goal of this entire endeavor is reaching Mars. The above state of affairs isn't a coincidence, but a very deliberate part of Musk's plan. (Also, luck.)

WalterBright 5y ago

What wouldn't it be useful for? 1. bigger and much more capable interplanetary probes 2. a much cheaper Webb telescope 3. build a base on the moon 4. make a mission to Mars possible

qayxc 5y ago
> 1. bigger and much more capable interplanetary probes The limitation there is capable RTGs, not launch vehicles. > 2. a much cheaper Webb telescope Webb couldn't have fit into a Starship fairing either. > 3. build a base on the moon For whom? Launching stuff is one thing, but you'd need to design, build, maintain, and supply such station. If you think the ISS was expensive, a Moon base would dwarf the ISS costs. Even if launches would be cheaper, there's still a lot of logistics and support behind such station, which is one of the reasons no one did it yet. > 4. make a mission to Mars possible That could be done without Starship - as much as I think Zubrin has drifted into the nut job corner over the past decade, he still has a point: crewed Mars missions would've been possible since the 1980s.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  A lot of people wondered why Boeing was blowing all this money developing the 747. Who needed an airplane that big? It turned out to be the biggest moneymaker ever for Boeing - and the people who bought them.
  - qayxc 5y ago
    And look what happened - the A380, an even bigger plane - was discontinued because it turned out smaller planes are more economical.
    - dingaling 5y ago
      > because it turned out smaller planes are more economical Per seat the A380 is still the cheapest way of moving a person by air. The 777X should beat it, but it's not in service yet. The problems with the A380 were (1) it wasn't aerodynamically radical enough to maintain that advantage beyond one generation of airliners and (2) you need to fill it to compensate for (1)

qayxc 5y ago

While I don't agree that reuse will bring the price down further, I can 100% get behind the other points. Even the argument that demand isn't there because launch costs are high doesn't hold - the bigger the sat, the more expensive it is and the trend goes towards smaller and cheaper sats. Building commercial space stations (plural!) could be done using all-up launches and that would be like what - one launch every couple of years? It's still early days, but it's not as if 100t to LEO is novel or anything - the Energia rocket could do that 35 years ago. The Soviets and later Roskosmos abandoned the vehicle, because they couldn't find a use for it either (after Buran was axed).

panick21_ 5y ago
> While I don't agree that reuse will bring the price down further Why? If you have to spend almost 10M$~ on an expensive high tech upper stage you your just gone throw in the ocean its clearly give you a price lower bound. > it's not as if 100t to LEO is novel or anything Starship does 150t in its early version while being fully reusable. > The Soviets and later Roskosmos abandoned the vehicle, because they couldn't find a use for it either The Soviet union collapsed and they didn't have the money for it.

throwawaylinux 5y ago

I thought the cost per launch for Starship was going to be even less than the non-heavy F9 because it's more reusable. > The evidence for this is the relatively few Falcon Heavy launches we've had and are planned. I don't think that's very good evidence. The first Falcon Heavy flight was only 4 years ago and there have been 3 launches until now. Presumably people design their missions around what's available and proven reliable so I would expect it to ramp up. Looks like there are 5/6 Falcon Heavy launches on the cards for this year.

nycdotnet 5y ago

Falcon Heavy was specified relatively early in the Falcon 9’s development cycle. They were originally going to do more Falcon Heavy missions but in the meantime, blocks 3 and 4 of Falcon 9 came out and the Merlin kept getting better and better, and with block 5 the Merlin D has almost double the thrust of the Merlins on the early Falcon 9s which is kind of nuts. So many of the missions conceived for Falcon Heavy were ultimately flown on a different rocket- a more capable single stick Falcon 9.

boznz 5y ago

Asteroid mining. I really cant believe its not on Elon's mind, talk about disruptive!

bryanlarsen 5y ago
Why? There are no minerals available in space that wouldn't be cheaper to mine on Earth. Even with Starship's vastly reduced costs. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/08/27/there-are-no-known-commodity-resources-in-space-that-could-be-sold-on-earth/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/08/27/there-are-no-k...
- TylerE 5y ago
  I think the argument would be in conjunction with orbital factories. The cost may well be (much) higher than mining it on earth, but could still be much less than mining it on earth and then launching it to geosync.
- freemint 5y ago
  Once you have orbital refuelling that changes the asymptotics little so it might be profitable then but that's like post moon station.

panick21_ 5y ago

> With reuse the may well be $10m per launch or even less That is a very low estimate. Most people assume more like $20m per launch. Some say $15m. You still need to manufacture a complex upper stage and complex engine. Reuse of the Merlin is not perfect. It involves a lot of transportation. It involves having a substantial navy and so on. All in all including fix cost, I would say the can't make it much cheaper. To get cheaper a next generation rocket is needed. > What people forget is that payloads are deeply coupled to their launch vehicles. The launch vehicle will dictate the maximum weight and dimensions of the payload. You can't just take a payload designed for one vehicle and put it on another. While somewhat true, its not universal. Many adopters are standards. And as long as the conditions are not so different. Like if you move between a liquid and a solid rocket, the environment is not that different. > The evidence for this is the relatively few Falcon Heavy launches we've had and are planned. There are 5 Falcon Heavy launches planned. And the thing with Falcon Heavy is that most payloads are volume constraint, and the Falcon Heavy doesn't actually increase that over Falcon 9 while being strictly more expensive. At the end of the day, the worst case is Starship is a marginally cheaper Falcon 9. > What else will it be used for? That's a bit of an open question. Certainty a problem but only once you get to the very high launch rate musk wants. If on a per launch bases its cheaper then Falcon 9, it will have a reason to exist. And from there you can hopefully increase rates over time as the industry takes it into account.