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Juno, Curiosity, Perseverance, James Webb. A trickle. But the torrent is coming, and then the flood. It will make Apollo look like kindergarten. Musk wants Sta

Juno, Curiosity, Perseverance, James Webb. A trickle. But the torrent is coming, and then the flood. It will make Apollo look like kindergarten. Musk wants Starship to have 1000 launches per year in about one decade from now. Maybe it's not going to that, but right now we are reading about 3 launches in 36 hours [1]. So, a few hundred launches per year once Starship becomes mature does not sound quite crazy. And there are lots of other rocket companies that we don't hear that much about. Ariane intends to build reusable rockets within one decade. Rocket Lab already flies a reusable rocket, although small compared with SpaceX. ISAR Aerospace plans to test their rocket Spectrum next year. Who knows, maybe one day Blue Origin will be successful too. A new space age is definitely coming. [1] https://spaceflightnow.com/2022/06/19/spacex-launches-third-falcon-9-rocket-in-less-than-two-days/ https://spaceflightnow.com/2022/06/19/spacex-launches-third-...

mattlondon 4y ago
Came here to say this - I frequently wonder when (not if) these grandiose NASA et al missions to e.g the moon etc will be overtaken by someone taking a joyride in a commercial space launch. E.g. NASA finally land their 300 squillion dollar 20-years-in-the-making moon probe, only to find a social media influencer had already had a space picnic at their landing site.
- GolfPopper 4y ago
  When mass is extremely limited, and launches are rare due to cost, it makes sense to build super-expensive probes, because you're putting all your eggs in one basket, and you want that basket to do everything it possibly can when you get there. IF Elon gets anything close to the launch rate he wants for starship, all the game theory that goes into the last fifty years of robotic exploration spacecraft design becomes obsolete over the course of a year or two. Need more mass, for fuel or ship? Tank or link-up in orbit. Worries about reliability change, because it's suddenly easier and cheaper to send a half-dozen spacecraft built for one-tenth the cost (or less) than it used to be to send a single super-expensive one. You still need to pay for the team running the instruments, navigating the spacecraft, and pointing the instruments, but with more craft that are likely more "generic", that will hopefully become a little easier (and thus cheaper), too. One overall need will (I'm guessing, this is out of my field - I'm a space exploration fan) be to upgrade the Deep Space Network to handle more traffic.
samhuk 4y ago
> Juno, Curiosity, Perseverance Were any of these as revolutionary as Voyagar, Pioneer, etc.? Perhaps i'm being a bit illogical here since anything can only be done for the first time once, of course... > James Webb Arguably designed and lead not by the >1980 generations. > A trickle Isn't that in fact it, or most of it, regarding revolutionary spacecraft? > A new space age is definitely coming. I hear the same was said just before the Space Shuttle era, and the thing after that, and about fusion reactors, and...you get the jist.

mattlondon 4y ago

Came here to say this - I frequently wonder when (not if) these grandiose NASA et al missions to e.g the moon etc will be overtaken by someone taking a joyride in a commercial space launch. E.g. NASA finally land their 300 squillion dollar 20-years-in-the-making moon probe, only to find a social media influencer had already had a space picnic at their landing site.

GolfPopper 4y ago
When mass is extremely limited, and launches are rare due to cost, it makes sense to build super-expensive probes, because you're putting all your eggs in one basket, and you want that basket to do everything it possibly can when you get there. IF Elon gets anything close to the launch rate he wants for starship, all the game theory that goes into the last fifty years of robotic exploration spacecraft design becomes obsolete over the course of a year or two. Need more mass, for fuel or ship? Tank or link-up in orbit. Worries about reliability change, because it's suddenly easier and cheaper to send a half-dozen spacecraft built for one-tenth the cost (or less) than it used to be to send a single super-expensive one. You still need to pay for the team running the instruments, navigating the spacecraft, and pointing the instruments, but with more craft that are likely more "generic", that will hopefully become a little easier (and thus cheaper), too. One overall need will (I'm guessing, this is out of my field - I'm a space exploration fan) be to upgrade the Deep Space Network to handle more traffic.

samhuk 4y ago

> Juno, Curiosity, Perseverance Were any of these as revolutionary as Voyagar, Pioneer, etc.? Perhaps i'm being a bit illogical here since anything can only be done for the first time once, of course... > James Webb Arguably designed and lead not by the >1980 generations. > A trickle Isn't that in fact it, or most of it, regarding revolutionary spacecraft? > A new space age is definitely coming. I hear the same was said just before the Space Shuttle era, and the thing after that, and about fusion reactors, and...you get the jist.