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Starship launches tomorrow. There is a non-trivial chance that point to point suborbital flights totally disrupt the airline industry. Hong Kong to Los Angeles

by btilly 4y ago

Starship launches tomorrow. There is a non-trivial chance that point to point suborbital flights totally disrupt the airline industry. Hong Kong to Los Angeles in 30 minutes for the price of a first class ticket is pretty hard to argue with.

klipt 4y ago
Surely the fuel costs massively more?
- btilly 4y ago
  The cost per person is indeed much more. That's why he's talking about charging everyone the cost of a first class ticket rather than offering the usual economy etc prices.
- ikrenji 4y ago
  maybe not https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/02/spacex-reusable-rocket-costs-versus-airplanes.html#:~:text=NASA%20pay%20%24160%20per%20tonne,is%20%24240%2C000%20for%20full%20fueling https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/02/spacex-reusable-rocket....
kylehotchkiss 4y ago
Given the similarity of the launch and flight stages to other scary things militaries look out for (icbms), I can't see how point to point rocket flights become a geopolitical reality. Airplanes can barely fly a straight line through Europe or Asia as it is. Point to point is only really a reality over North America, oceans, and Australia.
- btilly 4y ago
  As long as the countries at the endpoints agree to the flight, it is hard for others to stop suborbital flights. Commercial airlines have to deal with going over countries that have air forces which can intercept them. Intercepting satellites is quite a bit harder. And attempting to gets everyone mad at you because of how much garbage it creates. In fact people are STILL unhappy with China because of the fallout from their attempt to TEST their capacity to do that in 2007!
throwaway2037 4y ago
This is an interesting comment. I am a bit disappointed it was so heavily downvoted. My main concern: "first class ticket" -- that is roughly 5% of the market. Way too expensive for most. If your comment (and reality) were "cattle class ticket", then yes, there is great potential for "half globe" flights. Even 2x to 4x faster would be a game changer.
- Yizahi 4y ago
  It absolutely can't be a price of first class ticket (10-20k$). Let's take for example Elon's completely fantasy figure of eventual 2 mil dollars per launch. That's 20k$ per seat, so it looks like comparison checks out? Well no. First you need to include price of the floating megaports at each destination in the world. The cost of a single such human rated platform divided by a number of physical rockets using it per year will be many orders of magnitude higher than a price of airport divided by the number of planes serviced per yer. Second you will need a lot of highly expensive maintenance crew members at each location (more expensive per person than airplane maintenance crews). Plus much much bigger staff at the dispatcher tower in each location, compared to a handful of aircraft dispatchers in an airport servicing hundreds of planes simultaneously. Third you will need a private (and thus unprofitable) public transportation lines/ships to each of the rocket starts. 4th - you will need a lot of training facilities for the prospective passengers. And staff for them. 5th - you will need low orbit rated space suits in a variety of the sizes at each location. And maintenance and repair facilities for them. Dragon low orbit suit clock at about 0.5 mil dollars today. 4 suits and that's more that entire fuel cost for the launch :) (theoretical cost, with best outcome). Even is economies of scale will help to lower costs 2-3 times (doubtful) it still doesn't scale to a global E2E operations. I'm probably missing some other significant costs but you can get the picture. It will never be a first class ticket price because it is impossible. And that's not even counting other blockers for this idea.
  - btilly 4y ago
    Well, you're consistently negative about this. First, you're doing a ton of double counting. The estimated $2 million/launch already includes necessary infrastructure, servicing, and so on. Second you're assuming a ton of totally unnecessary gold plating. For example you talk about "floating megaports". In actuality they've been taking barges (available for about $1 million) and retrofitting them. Starship needs a bigger and stronger ship, with infrastructure built on it. Suppose that it is about $10 million. (Which is roughly the cost of a basic containership.) You could put out a couple of hundred of these for the average cost of a new airport. It would only make sense to go to a megaport if the cost per passenger were less than it is now. Third, you're ignoring the possibilities of automation. For example your "army of dispatchers" is solving a problem which will certainly be solved by computers. In fact it has to be - because most of the problems will be encountered in the possibility of collisions in space. And we're having to track the entire constellation of everything up there, ranging from rockets to pieces of space junk. And fourth, you're ignoring costs that already exist for airplanes. For example airplanes have expensive pilots while rockets don't.
actionfromafar 4y ago
It might but it would still take a long time. Industry moves slowly.
- btilly 4y ago
  That's a double edged sword. If Boeing begins the design of a new plane now, they would be planning on finding customers in 10 years who expect to use the planes for the following 20. But in 5 years we should have a good sense of whether Starship is viable. If it is, then 10 years from now Boeing won't have a market. Even if you give Elon only a modest chance of success, it makes sense to stretch out the sales cycle for existing planes and delay starting new development for 5 years.
Yizahi 4y ago
E2E rocket travel is absolutely not realistic and will never happen in the next century or so. Also it will not be 30 minutes from actual city to actual city and it will not be a first class price ticket (10-20k) for that, but actually more like x10 times higher. And that IF Elon's fantasy Starship price of 2mil/launch happens. If actual launch price will be 20 mil, then this theoretical E2E ticket will be x100 times more expensive than fist class ticket. And that not even mentioning several dozen independently blocker issues to this zany idea. How come people still repeat it on the tech site?
- btilly 4y ago
  You're stating an absolute impossibility for point to point rockets, but offer no reasons for your claim. I well remember rocket experts explaining why reuse of first stage boosters couldn't work. That it had been tried a bunch of times and you wound up reusing but without being able to contribute to the payload. Then Elon made an insane sounding suicide slam burn. And he made that reuse routine. Now to your claim. Elon's "fantasy" is that a rocket launch and turnaround can be made on relatively similar economics to airplane launches. If so, the cost of launch is $1 million, not $2 million. And so charging $2 million is adding headroom for things like accidents, depreciation and profit margins. It is ambitious to be sure. But based on the materials cost, this doesn't look like a fantasy.

by btilly 4y ago

klipt 4y ago

Surely the fuel costs massively more?

btilly 4y ago
The cost per person is indeed much more. That's why he's talking about charging everyone the cost of a first class ticket rather than offering the usual economy etc prices.
ikrenji 4y ago
maybe not https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/02/spacex-reusable-rocket-costs-versus-airplanes.html#:~:text=NASA%20pay%20%24160%20per%20tonne,is%20%24240%2C000%20for%20full%20fueling https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/02/spacex-reusable-rocket....

kylehotchkiss 4y ago

Given the similarity of the launch and flight stages to other scary things militaries look out for (icbms), I can't see how point to point rocket flights become a geopolitical reality. Airplanes can barely fly a straight line through Europe or Asia as it is. Point to point is only really a reality over North America, oceans, and Australia.

btilly 4y ago
As long as the countries at the endpoints agree to the flight, it is hard for others to stop suborbital flights. Commercial airlines have to deal with going over countries that have air forces which can intercept them. Intercepting satellites is quite a bit harder. And attempting to gets everyone mad at you because of how much garbage it creates. In fact people are STILL unhappy with China because of the fallout from their attempt to TEST their capacity to do that in 2007!

throwaway2037 4y ago

This is an interesting comment. I am a bit disappointed it was so heavily downvoted. My main concern: "first class ticket" -- that is roughly 5% of the market. Way too expensive for most. If your comment (and reality) were "cattle class ticket", then yes, there is great potential for "half globe" flights. Even 2x to 4x faster would be a game changer.

Yizahi 4y ago
It absolutely can't be a price of first class ticket (10-20k$). Let's take for example Elon's completely fantasy figure of eventual 2 mil dollars per launch. That's 20k$ per seat, so it looks like comparison checks out? Well no. First you need to include price of the floating megaports at each destination in the world. The cost of a single such human rated platform divided by a number of physical rockets using it per year will be many orders of magnitude higher than a price of airport divided by the number of planes serviced per yer. Second you will need a lot of highly expensive maintenance crew members at each location (more expensive per person than airplane maintenance crews). Plus much much bigger staff at the dispatcher tower in each location, compared to a handful of aircraft dispatchers in an airport servicing hundreds of planes simultaneously. Third you will need a private (and thus unprofitable) public transportation lines/ships to each of the rocket starts. 4th - you will need a lot of training facilities for the prospective passengers. And staff for them. 5th - you will need low orbit rated space suits in a variety of the sizes at each location. And maintenance and repair facilities for them. Dragon low orbit suit clock at about 0.5 mil dollars today. 4 suits and that's more that entire fuel cost for the launch :) (theoretical cost, with best outcome). Even is economies of scale will help to lower costs 2-3 times (doubtful) it still doesn't scale to a global E2E operations. I'm probably missing some other significant costs but you can get the picture. It will never be a first class ticket price because it is impossible. And that's not even counting other blockers for this idea.
- btilly 4y ago
  Well, you're consistently negative about this. First, you're doing a ton of double counting. The estimated $2 million/launch already includes necessary infrastructure, servicing, and so on. Second you're assuming a ton of totally unnecessary gold plating. For example you talk about "floating megaports". In actuality they've been taking barges (available for about $1 million) and retrofitting them. Starship needs a bigger and stronger ship, with infrastructure built on it. Suppose that it is about $10 million. (Which is roughly the cost of a basic containership.) You could put out a couple of hundred of these for the average cost of a new airport. It would only make sense to go to a megaport if the cost per passenger were less than it is now. Third, you're ignoring the possibilities of automation. For example your "army of dispatchers" is solving a problem which will certainly be solved by computers. In fact it has to be - because most of the problems will be encountered in the possibility of collisions in space. And we're having to track the entire constellation of everything up there, ranging from rockets to pieces of space junk. And fourth, you're ignoring costs that already exist for airplanes. For example airplanes have expensive pilots while rockets don't.

actionfromafar 4y ago

It might but it would still take a long time. Industry moves slowly.

btilly 4y ago
That's a double edged sword. If Boeing begins the design of a new plane now, they would be planning on finding customers in 10 years who expect to use the planes for the following 20. But in 5 years we should have a good sense of whether Starship is viable. If it is, then 10 years from now Boeing won't have a market. Even if you give Elon only a modest chance of success, it makes sense to stretch out the sales cycle for existing planes and delay starting new development for 5 years.

Yizahi 4y ago

E2E rocket travel is absolutely not realistic and will never happen in the next century or so. Also it will not be 30 minutes from actual city to actual city and it will not be a first class price ticket (10-20k) for that, but actually more like x10 times higher. And that IF Elon's fantasy Starship price of 2mil/launch happens. If actual launch price will be 20 mil, then this theoretical E2E ticket will be x100 times more expensive than fist class ticket. And that not even mentioning several dozen independently blocker issues to this zany idea. How come people still repeat it on the tech site?

btilly 4y ago
You're stating an absolute impossibility for point to point rockets, but offer no reasons for your claim. I well remember rocket experts explaining why reuse of first stage boosters couldn't work. That it had been tried a bunch of times and you wound up reusing but without being able to contribute to the payload. Then Elon made an insane sounding suicide slam burn. And he made that reuse routine. Now to your claim. Elon's "fantasy" is that a rocket launch and turnaround can be made on relatively similar economics to airplane launches. If so, the cost of launch is $1 million, not $2 million. And so charging $2 million is adding headroom for things like accidents, depreciation and profit margins. It is ambitious to be sure. But based on the materials cost, this doesn't look like a fantasy.