10 ms·

If Starship meets its reusability goals it's going to be absolutely nuts. Flying to orbit and back multiple times in a day like an airliner or something, carryi

If Starship meets its reusability goals it's going to be absolutely nuts. Flying to orbit and back multiple times in a day like an airliner or something, carrying more than the entire habitable volume of ISS every time. It's impossible to overstate how much that would change access to space, and how much of an advantage it would give SpaceX over its competitors (even other nations).

Animats 3y ago
"Flying to orbit and back multiple times in a day like an airliner." Probably not. It takes 85 days, on average, to turn a Falcon 9 around.
- maxlin 3y ago
  Starship is designed with way faster turnaround time. Falcon 9 had optional reuse, while Starship aims to be the 747 of space access. Elon said in 2020: > Starship is being designed to be relaunched an hour after landing, with zero nominal work Now while that might take some time to reach, before that the pad itself is likely going to be capable of many launches every day given there's more ships. Starships seems to be made to be way more economical to manufacture per-ship than the shuttles or Saturns so I don't see a bottleneck in that.
  - davely 3y ago
    > Elon said in 2020… To be fair, Elon has said _a lot_ of things about his various projects and not all of them are based in reality.
    - maxlin 3y ago
      Everyone knows that, but Falcon 9 is extremely successful and Starship is the main project that's been in the making doing good strides once in a while, and the whole "chopstick" lift tower has already been built, with the clear idea of ultimately landing Starships right in to it. And Starship seems to really be the main focus of Elon where he doesn't just lead but is in the weeds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY73exaVpyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY73exaVpyw
      - rbanffy 3y ago
        > And Starship seems to really be the main focus of Elon where he doesn't just lead but is in the weeds There lies the danger, considering his work leading Twitter.
        ekianjo 3y ago
        I remember ignorant folks commenting on HN a while ago that Twitter would not last 3 months after the massive layoffs. Proven wrong over and over again.
        ric2b 3y ago
        It didn't, and they had to implement very severe rate limiting just to keep it from falling over again. Now when I open a tweet without being logged in I can't even see any replies.
        kcplate 3y ago
        > Now when I open a tweet without being logged in I can't even see any replies. So…you’re upset that you can’t do something for free now?
        ric2b 3y ago
        I didn't say I'm upset, I barely use Twitter, only when someone links to some specific tweet. I was just noting a clear downgrade in feature set, made (by Elon's own words) so Twitter can better handle the traffic after having fallen over multiple times.
        maxlin 3y ago
        Twitter has never been non-free. You just need to register. Premium is nice, but not that critical. I have one account with and one without, mostly just the 280 char limit annoys without premium but that's how twitter was before anyway
    - bboygravity 3y ago
      Can you give an example of 1 thing Elon said that hasn't become a reality and cannot become a reality in the next 10 years? 1 engineering or physics related thing. Deadlines don't count. I'm waiting...
      - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
        Everything Hyperloop related is not happening.
        maxlin 3y ago
        Has Elon actually promised something concrete about this? Elon's not the first guy ever to hype the hyperloop idea. On its basis it is hard to think we won't this at some point as it promises essentially orbit-like capability on the surface, so everyone has the right to dream we'd get this sooner.
        clort 3y ago
        "Can you give an example of 1 thing Elon said" ..well known example is given.. "Has Elon actually promised something concrete about this?" you can see that those things are different.
        maxlin 3y ago
        I think the reasonable limit is when something sounds like that he argues it is possible "soon" instead of not being thought about. Like, I don't think we'll have AGI or gene-modified catgirls in 10 years but those dont count as an answer to this. Hyperloop was always being to be extremely expensive and Elon's role on it was never but just try to be a catalyst for more innovation towards it. He used terms like "open-source idea" and did that student competition to try to kind of drive other people to grab the idea. Things like FSD are instead considered concrete and produced by his companies.
        heavenlyblue 3y ago
  - cma 3y ago
    Elon and Shotwell in 2018 said that by 2028 it will have operating passenger service for between a business class ticket and coach ticket price. They claimed it again around 2020 or 2021. Competitive pricing with air travel. And he said that the Semi will be competitive with rail and could already operate in follow the leader convoy mode back in 2017: they were just waiting on regulators to give the ok! Never seen testing it but I guess they did the whole project in secret and shelved it without applying to regulators in a public way.
    - travisgriggs 3y ago
      How would this ever be possible given the volume of fuel a starship launch entails?
      - modeless 3y ago
        It would carry 1000 people, so divide by 1000, and methane is cheap, plus it's going to save up to 16 hours or so on long haul routes so people may be willing to pay a reasonable premium. The much bigger issue, to me, is safety. I don't see how the Starship design could ever be anywhere near as safe as regular air travel. There are also issues with noise requiring the launch and landing to take place far away from your destination, reducing the travel time benefit. And it's unclear if the general population would be able to tolerate the G-forces and wild maneuvers required.
        bongobingo1 3y ago
        > landing to take place far away from your destination, reducing the travel time benefit. Thats where you get on your private jet to fly the last 10 miles. Simple.
    - maxlin 3y ago
      This doesn't in any way even contest the original point. Timeline maybe, but we all know Elon(r) Valve(r) time, it's the kind of time we all hope would move faster but most don't rip their game pants out of impatience. About the Semi, there's zero reason to believe anything is being shelved. The truck itself is ready and being tested in practice by Pepsico and Tesla itself. Jay Leno teste drove it and was impressed. Where does this unnecessary negativity come from? We should cheer these kind of unique projects auspicious for civilization.
  - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
    Elon also said that he will have 1 million Robotaxi by 2020
    - maxlin 3y ago
      Again, Falcon 9 wasn't dependent on reuse and was profitable as-is. As Starship has a clear design goal of quick reuse, it's being designed a different vehicle altogether. The reuse isn't only for profitability on earth, it gets a bit more important on Moon and Mars.
    - bboygravity 3y ago
      No, he never said that. He said his best guess would be 2020 after being put on the spot to come up with a date a few years in the future. Elon bad, Elon bad at planning so Elon liar. /s
      - stonogo 3y ago
        No, he didn't say it was his "best guess." He said, and I quote, “I feel very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis for Tesla next year. From our standpoint, if you fast-forward a year … maybe a year and three months, but next year for sure, we will have over a million robotaxis on the road.” "Next year for sure" is not a "best guess."
        maxlin 3y ago
        Checking the transcript, it is not unreasonable to say that "Next year we'll have 1mil robotaxis on the road, the fleet wakes up by OTA update" means "Robotaxi-capable in hardware" which is the main sell, IE that you buy car now, when the software is ready, and Tesla is closer than anyone else in having anything like that ready, your car will take the role of Robotaxi. Maybe a bit ambigious wording like when what Sean Murray implied when the reality was a shared universe in place names, not realtime multiplayer at that stage
        IshKebab 3y ago
- modeless 3y ago
  > If Starship meets its reusability goals Launching multiple times per day was never a design goal of Falcon 9 but it is explicitly a design goal of the Starship program. They're going to need fast turnaround for all the orbital refueling missions they've already sold for HLS. The entire industry said they'd never land, then they'd never be able to reuse, then they'd never reuse 10+ times. They're up to 18 reuses. Now they'll never reuse twice in the same day? There's no physical law preventing it, it's just a matter of good engineering. It's not a sure thing but I wouldn't bet against them. Also, Falcon 9 has been turned around in 21 days, with a significant chunk of that being shipping. And there's no indication that they've hit any limit, they simply don't need to go faster right now given their fleet and launch cadence.
  - QuantumGood 3y ago
    They don't need to reuse the same one each time; A can go out, B can come back, etc.
- BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
  Falcon 9 needs a brand new second stage and fairing assembly each time it flies.
  - perilunar 3y ago
    The fairings are reused.
    - BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
      Sometimes, and via what it surely a much more complicated process (after fishing them out of the sea) compared to a fairing that's built into the landed vehicle (a la Starship or Shuttle).
maxlin 3y ago
But more important first is to put headphones on seals and play sonic boom sounds to test and make sure they aren't startled by the scary rocket sounds. (Ok, stretching a little. That is what a seemingly similar survey did at Cape as a part of some similarly goofy bureaucracy thing that has been holding Starship back the last month or so. For Starship they're worried for the risk of what happens if Starship literally falls on a shark) Source: about 1:18:02 https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1722686021781835928 https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1722686021781835928
- new_user_final 3y ago
  This is why we can't have good things. A group people will cry about everything.
- mulmen 3y ago
  The Twitter mobile player displays no timestamp so seeking is pointless. Here it is on YouTube. https://youtube.com/watch?t=1h18m https://youtube.com/watch?t=1h18m. And here’s the transcript: https://lexfridman.com/elon-musk-4-transcript#chapter12_ai_regulation https://lexfridman.com/elon-musk-4-transcript#chapter12_ai_r.... I listened to the relevant section and there’s no indication that the shark question is what is blocking launch. In fact it is clear that question was already answered. > One of the things that was a bit of a challenge at one point is that they were worried about a rocket hitting a shark. > Eventually they managed to solve the internal quandary, and indeed the probability of us hitting a shark is essentially zero. It’s not clear to me that Fish and Wildlife has actually behaved unreasonably. I would expect them to ask about fish and wildlife.
  - maxlin 3y ago
    If you research this a bit more it becomes clear that the survey has been the blocker, after the direct FAA checklist was cleared. Just google around, this has been bouncing around as an annoyance for a while in the space enthusiast circles so it's assumed knowledge in the context
    - 3y ago
happytiger 3y ago
It’s bonkers. It’s absolutely bonkers. I feel like I’m witnessing the creation of the wheel. Non-space nerds don’t quite understand why it’s so exciting. But I can’t imagine how much this is going to change the world, and civilization. It’s kind of the equivalent of going from local freighters to the Seawise Giant in one iteration.
- Xenoamorphous 3y ago
  Any hints on how this is going to change civilisation, for non-space nerds?
  - maxlin 3y ago
    -Not being dependent on Earth for survival of the species as Starship in its huge capability and reasonably cheap cost, among with refuelability on Mars begins the road to believable planetary colonization -Asteroid / Moon mining -Overally, being capable of going to space with more than just miniscule science-oriented payloads. FYI, ISS has cost us over a 100 billion dollars. When Starship hauls its worth in volume in one launch with just just methane and maintenance costs, it's a whole new space age.
    - atleastoptimal 3y ago
      I feel there are 100 more scientific/engineering breakthroughs greater than Starship between where we are now and off-planet habitability/asteroid mining. Of course it's an important step but by far I imagine it won't be the most important.
      - maxlin 3y ago
        I feel Starship is going to be one of those "hey we figured out how to get 4x more processing power out of a new chip" lynchpins after which a lot of things that were infeasible and tossed early in planning / ideation, suddenly become possible if not even relatively easy.
    - enneff 3y ago
rich_sasha 3y ago
Agreed it would be absolutely seismic. How well does that look, from a cold, objective, non-Elon-hype point of view? I mean, he might happen to be 100% correct in his optimism but by now I learned to trust nothing that man says.
- modeless 3y ago
  Personally? I think it's quite likely they will get it to work. I don't know about the timeline though. Explosions at the launch/landing pads could delay them a lot. I think reliability is likely to be an issue for a long time, and I don't see commercial Earth-to-Earth passenger service happening for that and other reasons. They will have trouble getting customers who can actually use the capabilities Starship has. Seems like everyone is still designing missions for status quo. Luckily they already saw that issue and created their own launch customer in Starlink. And HLS with orbital refueling will also be key.
  - avmich 3y ago
    When George W. Bush announced "return to the Moon" program in the wake of Columbia disaster, some related companies (I remember reading about e.g. Caterpillar) started to figure out plans to participate with activities on the surface of the Moon. Maybe it's wrong information :) and maybe a lot has changed since then. But by now I'd be really surprised if some of heavy industrial manufacture companies wouldn't have some plans for equipment to supply to the possible Moon base, as the chances of that happening in some not so distant future look plausible.
- mayd 3y ago
  > I learned to trust nothing that man says. I admit I did get a little caught up in Musk's web of hype in the early days but fortunately my natural scepticism was strong enough to resist him. Eventually, I found a few detailed analyses of some of his technological fantasies which convinced me that some of what he proposes will not be happening any time soon, if ever. I am by no means an Elon Musk hater but he does speak a lot of nonsense, from time to time, and he seems to be able to persuade many to abandon their scientific scepticism. I was persuaded by what Common Sense Sceptic says about some of Elon Musk's plans: <https://www.youtube.com/@commonsenseskeptic https://www.youtube.com/@commonsenseskeptic>, even though he is clearly biased against Elon Musk. I am convinced that 1. A city-to-city Starship shuttle passenger service will never happen. 2. A self-sustaining colony on Mars will not happen in the foreseeable future. I have strong doubts about other SpaceX and Tesla claims by Elon Musk, but these two events I would actually bet on.
underseacables 3y ago
Reminds me of the scene from Gattaca, rockets taking off for space all day long.
- kcplate 3y ago
  I have gone from watching rockets take off into space a couple times a year from my back yard to watching them take off (occasionally) a couple of times a week. It would not surprise me to see that get even more frequent in my lifetime.
philistine 3y ago
The big caveat are the heat tiles. They were not a part of the very early design of what was then the BFR. They went with tiles when the liquid heat shield proved impossible, and they will probably need to be inspected after every flight. The shuttle's tiles had to be manually removed and inspected. It took months to do. I don't know if Starship can escape that requirement.
- modeless 3y ago
  I agree. I'm not an expert but the heat shield looks to me like the most uncertain thing about the project. I'm sure they can do better than the Shuttle, especially since stainless steel can go much hotter than aluminum, but I don't know if they can achieve reliable reusability without refurbishment. Heat tiles were part of ITS though, and Dragon has them, so SpaceX has been thinking about them a long time.
- oskarkk 3y ago
  Quoting Wikipedia article on shuttle, "there were about 24,300 unique tiles individually fitted on the vehicle". Starship is just a cylinder with pointy end, and tiles on most of the vehicle will be the same, so that will help.

Animats 3y ago

"Flying to orbit and back multiple times in a day like an airliner." Probably not. It takes 85 days, on average, to turn a Falcon 9 around.

maxlin 3y ago
Starship is designed with way faster turnaround time. Falcon 9 had optional reuse, while Starship aims to be the 747 of space access. Elon said in 2020: > Starship is being designed to be relaunched an hour after landing, with zero nominal work Now while that might take some time to reach, before that the pad itself is likely going to be capable of many launches every day given there's more ships. Starships seems to be made to be way more economical to manufacture per-ship than the shuttles or Saturns so I don't see a bottleneck in that.
- davely 3y ago
  > Elon said in 2020… To be fair, Elon has said _a lot_ of things about his various projects and not all of them are based in reality.
  - maxlin 3y ago
    Everyone knows that, but Falcon 9 is extremely successful and Starship is the main project that's been in the making doing good strides once in a while, and the whole "chopstick" lift tower has already been built, with the clear idea of ultimately landing Starships right in to it. And Starship seems to really be the main focus of Elon where he doesn't just lead but is in the weeds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY73exaVpyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY73exaVpyw
    - rbanffy 3y ago
      > And Starship seems to really be the main focus of Elon where he doesn't just lead but is in the weeds There lies the danger, considering his work leading Twitter.
      - ekianjo 3y ago
        I remember ignorant folks commenting on HN a while ago that Twitter would not last 3 months after the massive layoffs. Proven wrong over and over again.
        ric2b 3y ago
        It didn't, and they had to implement very severe rate limiting just to keep it from falling over again. Now when I open a tweet without being logged in I can't even see any replies.
        kcplate 3y ago
        > Now when I open a tweet without being logged in I can't even see any replies. So…you’re upset that you can’t do something for free now?
        ric2b 3y ago
        I didn't say I'm upset, I barely use Twitter, only when someone links to some specific tweet. I was just noting a clear downgrade in feature set, made (by Elon's own words) so Twitter can better handle the traffic after having fallen over multiple times.
        maxlin 3y ago
        Twitter has never been non-free. You just need to register. Premium is nice, but not that critical. I have one account with and one without, mostly just the 280 char limit annoys without premium but that's how twitter was before anyway
  - bboygravity 3y ago
    Can you give an example of 1 thing Elon said that hasn't become a reality and cannot become a reality in the next 10 years? 1 engineering or physics related thing. Deadlines don't count. I'm waiting...
    - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
      Everything Hyperloop related is not happening.
      - maxlin 3y ago
        Has Elon actually promised something concrete about this? Elon's not the first guy ever to hype the hyperloop idea. On its basis it is hard to think we won't this at some point as it promises essentially orbit-like capability on the surface, so everyone has the right to dream we'd get this sooner.
        clort 3y ago
        "Can you give an example of 1 thing Elon said" ..well known example is given.. "Has Elon actually promised something concrete about this?" you can see that those things are different.
        maxlin 3y ago
        I think the reasonable limit is when something sounds like that he argues it is possible "soon" instead of not being thought about. Like, I don't think we'll have AGI or gene-modified catgirls in 10 years but those dont count as an answer to this. Hyperloop was always being to be extremely expensive and Elon's role on it was never but just try to be a catalyst for more innovation towards it. He used terms like "open-source idea" and did that student competition to try to kind of drive other people to grab the idea. Things like FSD are instead considered concrete and produced by his companies.
        heavenlyblue 3y ago
- cma 3y ago
  Elon and Shotwell in 2018 said that by 2028 it will have operating passenger service for between a business class ticket and coach ticket price. They claimed it again around 2020 or 2021. Competitive pricing with air travel. And he said that the Semi will be competitive with rail and could already operate in follow the leader convoy mode back in 2017: they were just waiting on regulators to give the ok! Never seen testing it but I guess they did the whole project in secret and shelved it without applying to regulators in a public way.
  - travisgriggs 3y ago
    How would this ever be possible given the volume of fuel a starship launch entails?
    - modeless 3y ago
      It would carry 1000 people, so divide by 1000, and methane is cheap, plus it's going to save up to 16 hours or so on long haul routes so people may be willing to pay a reasonable premium. The much bigger issue, to me, is safety. I don't see how the Starship design could ever be anywhere near as safe as regular air travel. There are also issues with noise requiring the launch and landing to take place far away from your destination, reducing the travel time benefit. And it's unclear if the general population would be able to tolerate the G-forces and wild maneuvers required.
      - bongobingo1 3y ago
        > landing to take place far away from your destination, reducing the travel time benefit. Thats where you get on your private jet to fly the last 10 miles. Simple.
  - maxlin 3y ago
    This doesn't in any way even contest the original point. Timeline maybe, but we all know Elon(r) Valve(r) time, it's the kind of time we all hope would move faster but most don't rip their game pants out of impatience. About the Semi, there's zero reason to believe anything is being shelved. The truck itself is ready and being tested in practice by Pepsico and Tesla itself. Jay Leno teste drove it and was impressed. Where does this unnecessary negativity come from? We should cheer these kind of unique projects auspicious for civilization.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
  Elon also said that he will have 1 million Robotaxi by 2020
  - maxlin 3y ago
    Again, Falcon 9 wasn't dependent on reuse and was profitable as-is. As Starship has a clear design goal of quick reuse, it's being designed a different vehicle altogether. The reuse isn't only for profitability on earth, it gets a bit more important on Moon and Mars.
  - bboygravity 3y ago
    No, he never said that. He said his best guess would be 2020 after being put on the spot to come up with a date a few years in the future. Elon bad, Elon bad at planning so Elon liar. /s
    - stonogo 3y ago
      No, he didn't say it was his "best guess." He said, and I quote, “I feel very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis for Tesla next year. From our standpoint, if you fast-forward a year … maybe a year and three months, but next year for sure, we will have over a million robotaxis on the road.” "Next year for sure" is not a "best guess."
      - maxlin 3y ago
        Checking the transcript, it is not unreasonable to say that "Next year we'll have 1mil robotaxis on the road, the fleet wakes up by OTA update" means "Robotaxi-capable in hardware" which is the main sell, IE that you buy car now, when the software is ready, and Tesla is closer than anyone else in having anything like that ready, your car will take the role of Robotaxi. Maybe a bit ambigious wording like when what Sean Murray implied when the reality was a shared universe in place names, not realtime multiplayer at that stage
        IshKebab 3y ago
modeless 3y ago
> If Starship meets its reusability goals Launching multiple times per day was never a design goal of Falcon 9 but it is explicitly a design goal of the Starship program. They're going to need fast turnaround for all the orbital refueling missions they've already sold for HLS. The entire industry said they'd never land, then they'd never be able to reuse, then they'd never reuse 10+ times. They're up to 18 reuses. Now they'll never reuse twice in the same day? There's no physical law preventing it, it's just a matter of good engineering. It's not a sure thing but I wouldn't bet against them. Also, Falcon 9 has been turned around in 21 days, with a significant chunk of that being shipping. And there's no indication that they've hit any limit, they simply don't need to go faster right now given their fleet and launch cadence.
- QuantumGood 3y ago
  They don't need to reuse the same one each time; A can go out, B can come back, etc.
BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
Falcon 9 needs a brand new second stage and fairing assembly each time it flies.
- perilunar 3y ago
  The fairings are reused.
  - BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
    Sometimes, and via what it surely a much more complicated process (after fishing them out of the sea) compared to a fairing that's built into the landed vehicle (a la Starship or Shuttle).

maxlin 3y ago

But more important first is to put headphones on seals and play sonic boom sounds to test and make sure they aren't startled by the scary rocket sounds. (Ok, stretching a little. That is what a seemingly similar survey did at Cape as a part of some similarly goofy bureaucracy thing that has been holding Starship back the last month or so. For Starship they're worried for the risk of what happens if Starship literally falls on a shark) Source: about 1:18:02 https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1722686021781835928 https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1722686021781835928

new_user_final 3y ago
This is why we can't have good things. A group people will cry about everything.
mulmen 3y ago
The Twitter mobile player displays no timestamp so seeking is pointless. Here it is on YouTube. https://youtube.com/watch?t=1h18m https://youtube.com/watch?t=1h18m. And here’s the transcript: https://lexfridman.com/elon-musk-4-transcript#chapter12_ai_regulation https://lexfridman.com/elon-musk-4-transcript#chapter12_ai_r.... I listened to the relevant section and there’s no indication that the shark question is what is blocking launch. In fact it is clear that question was already answered. > One of the things that was a bit of a challenge at one point is that they were worried about a rocket hitting a shark. > Eventually they managed to solve the internal quandary, and indeed the probability of us hitting a shark is essentially zero. It’s not clear to me that Fish and Wildlife has actually behaved unreasonably. I would expect them to ask about fish and wildlife.
- maxlin 3y ago
  If you research this a bit more it becomes clear that the survey has been the blocker, after the direct FAA checklist was cleared. Just google around, this has been bouncing around as an annoyance for a while in the space enthusiast circles so it's assumed knowledge in the context
  - 3y ago

happytiger 3y ago

It’s bonkers. It’s absolutely bonkers. I feel like I’m witnessing the creation of the wheel. Non-space nerds don’t quite understand why it’s so exciting. But I can’t imagine how much this is going to change the world, and civilization. It’s kind of the equivalent of going from local freighters to the Seawise Giant in one iteration.

Xenoamorphous 3y ago
Any hints on how this is going to change civilisation, for non-space nerds?
- maxlin 3y ago
  -Not being dependent on Earth for survival of the species as Starship in its huge capability and reasonably cheap cost, among with refuelability on Mars begins the road to believable planetary colonization -Asteroid / Moon mining -Overally, being capable of going to space with more than just miniscule science-oriented payloads. FYI, ISS has cost us over a 100 billion dollars. When Starship hauls its worth in volume in one launch with just just methane and maintenance costs, it's a whole new space age.
  - atleastoptimal 3y ago
    I feel there are 100 more scientific/engineering breakthroughs greater than Starship between where we are now and off-planet habitability/asteroid mining. Of course it's an important step but by far I imagine it won't be the most important.
    - maxlin 3y ago
      I feel Starship is going to be one of those "hey we figured out how to get 4x more processing power out of a new chip" lynchpins after which a lot of things that were infeasible and tossed early in planning / ideation, suddenly become possible if not even relatively easy.
  - enneff 3y ago

rich_sasha 3y ago

Agreed it would be absolutely seismic. How well does that look, from a cold, objective, non-Elon-hype point of view? I mean, he might happen to be 100% correct in his optimism but by now I learned to trust nothing that man says.

modeless 3y ago
Personally? I think it's quite likely they will get it to work. I don't know about the timeline though. Explosions at the launch/landing pads could delay them a lot. I think reliability is likely to be an issue for a long time, and I don't see commercial Earth-to-Earth passenger service happening for that and other reasons. They will have trouble getting customers who can actually use the capabilities Starship has. Seems like everyone is still designing missions for status quo. Luckily they already saw that issue and created their own launch customer in Starlink. And HLS with orbital refueling will also be key.
- avmich 3y ago
  When George W. Bush announced "return to the Moon" program in the wake of Columbia disaster, some related companies (I remember reading about e.g. Caterpillar) started to figure out plans to participate with activities on the surface of the Moon. Maybe it's wrong information :) and maybe a lot has changed since then. But by now I'd be really surprised if some of heavy industrial manufacture companies wouldn't have some plans for equipment to supply to the possible Moon base, as the chances of that happening in some not so distant future look plausible.
mayd 3y ago
> I learned to trust nothing that man says. I admit I did get a little caught up in Musk's web of hype in the early days but fortunately my natural scepticism was strong enough to resist him. Eventually, I found a few detailed analyses of some of his technological fantasies which convinced me that some of what he proposes will not be happening any time soon, if ever. I am by no means an Elon Musk hater but he does speak a lot of nonsense, from time to time, and he seems to be able to persuade many to abandon their scientific scepticism. I was persuaded by what Common Sense Sceptic says about some of Elon Musk's plans: <https://www.youtube.com/@commonsenseskeptic https://www.youtube.com/@commonsenseskeptic>, even though he is clearly biased against Elon Musk. I am convinced that 1. A city-to-city Starship shuttle passenger service will never happen. 2. A self-sustaining colony on Mars will not happen in the foreseeable future. I have strong doubts about other SpaceX and Tesla claims by Elon Musk, but these two events I would actually bet on.

underseacables 3y ago

Reminds me of the scene from Gattaca, rockets taking off for space all day long.

kcplate 3y ago
I have gone from watching rockets take off into space a couple times a year from my back yard to watching them take off (occasionally) a couple of times a week. It would not surprise me to see that get even more frequent in my lifetime.

philistine 3y ago

The big caveat are the heat tiles. They were not a part of the very early design of what was then the BFR. They went with tiles when the liquid heat shield proved impossible, and they will probably need to be inspected after every flight. The shuttle's tiles had to be manually removed and inspected. It took months to do. I don't know if Starship can escape that requirement.

modeless 3y ago
I agree. I'm not an expert but the heat shield looks to me like the most uncertain thing about the project. I'm sure they can do better than the Shuttle, especially since stainless steel can go much hotter than aluminum, but I don't know if they can achieve reliable reusability without refurbishment. Heat tiles were part of ITS though, and Dragon has them, so SpaceX has been thinking about them a long time.
oskarkk 3y ago
Quoting Wikipedia article on shuttle, "there were about 24,300 unique tiles individually fitted on the vehicle". Starship is just a cylinder with pointy end, and tiles on most of the vehicle will be the same, so that will help.