4 ms·
They had done static fires at half thrust, equaling the thrust Saturn V produces without issue. Why spend hundreds of millions or in the case of Saturn V billi
by Gwypaas 3y ago
They had done static fires at half thrust, equaling the thrust Saturn V produces without issue.
Why spend hundreds of millions or in the case of Saturn V billions on a governmentally overspecced launchpad when a launch mount and a concrete pad would do just fine?
- Zigurd 3y agoManned space exploration is hard to "overspec." It is risky af under the best circumstances. This illustrates a conflict in Starship design goals: Big enough to colonize Mars but cheap enough to lunch Starlink satellites. Might not be reconcilable.
- Gwypaas 3y agoRather, it is incredibly easy to overspec. Everything is important and then you get SLS like costs. Compare to Falcon 9 which took a similar path to Starship and today works beautifully for human launches. Take the SLS crawler looking to cost $1 - $1.5B. What a waste of resources. https://spacenews.com/nasa-audit-reveals-massive-overruns-in-sls-mobile-launch-platform/ https://spacenews.com/nasa-audit-reveals-massive-overruns-in...
- Zigurd 3y agoApollo cost 2.5% of USA's entire GDP, every year, for ten years. Space exploration is insanely expensive. It is unclear if the requirements of space exploration can be met while making a rocket intended to be at least 5X cheaper per kilogram to orbit. Trying to meet wildly divergent, even contradictory goals, is a good way to build a doomed project. Now add schedule pressure to remain the sole vendor for a lunar lander and you get bad project management decisions.
- Gwypaas 3y agoSpacex have already succeeded with Falcon 9? Starship is the next magnitude in cost reduction following the same formula.
- Zigurd 3y agoI am not doubting that Falcon 9 is a great success. It took 6 years of attempts to reliably land the Falcon 9 first stage, at some cost to capacity. The second stage is not recoverable and it appears unlikely it ever will be. "...following the same formula" of rapid iteration is what they are doing. It worked well for learning how to fabricate a giant rocket out of stainless steel. That formula is bumping up against the cost of iteration. They're trying an Agile-ish approach to making the biggest ever rocket when Agile might be insufficient to, for example, make car software at VW Group.