6 ms·

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
  What would have to happen to earth to make it less viable a place to live than mars? An asteroid rendering earth’s surface uninhabitable? Even that wouldn’t be enough - there’s still so much more on earth to sustain human life than any planet in our solar system. Apart from proof of concept I just don’t see any practical reason to colonise mars.
  - maxlin 3y ago
    I don't get your point. Having a self-sustaining colony on Mars ready when suddenly the brother of the Chicxulub impactor appears on the radar and will hit in less time than it would require to create massive underground cave systems utilizing geothermal power would take to build, will literally save the species. And that is just one apocalypse variant. Nuclear holocaust. Antimatter bombs. Possibly even a massive gamma ray burst, are all safe from Mars even if they might kill everyone on Earth. Our species took an incredible amount of time to evolve, likely long enough to not re-appear in this solar system if lost. Which is a very weird point for me feeling that I have to argue for lol
    - modeless 3y ago
      I think Earth after nuclear holocaust or reasonably likely asteroid impact is still significantly more hospitable to human life than Mars. And any gamma ray burst affecting Earth would hit Mars too. Building survival silos on Earth would be cheaper and likely more effective to save the species in these situations. Elon often talks about how exploration is exciting and inspirational and a prerequisite for future interstellar travel, and that works better as a justification to go to Mars, IMO. Also, while those disasters might not completely wipe out humans on Earth, they could reverse centuries or millennia of progress and delay further space exploration for hundreds or thousands of years if we don't do it now while we have the chance.
      - maxlin 3y ago
        You might be right about the gamma ray burst. From what I understand, for a nuke war, it is still _possible_ it will take out everyone considering the nuclear winter it will cause. In my thinking a redundant colony is worth even saving us having to play existential Russian Roulette with one loaded.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
      Which gamma ray burst would be so focussed that it would hit earth, but not mars?
  - 3y ago
pjio 3y ago
Scientists being able to do more science stuff in place where things wobble so strangely.
modeless 3y ago
IMO the biggest impact for normal people is that Starlink is going to get a whole lot better. Truly worldwide satellite broadband for unmodified cell phones. Faster speeds, lower latency (lower than fiber for intercontinental traffic), smaller/cheaper antennas, better reliability especially with limited view of the sky, and more support for areas of higher population density. More esoteric: Commercial space stations. Space vacations. Moon base. Humans on Mars, and maybe even beyond. More and better space telescopes. Maybe some space based manufacturing. Eventually asteroid mining.
- ric2b 3y ago
  None of that sounds like a big impact on the lives of most people, who are already living in areas well covered by cellphone networks and will never afford to travel to space.
  - Kim_Bruning 3y ago
    SpaceX Starship is projected to bring the price of space travel down drastically, to the point where non-1%-ers should be able to afford it.
    - ric2b 3y ago
      Still not a big improvement for most of the population, maybe a few middle-class hardcore space fans spend their life savings to make 1 trip to space instead of going to some beach resort multiple years in a row. Good for them.
    - pavon 3y ago
      I don't think it will. NASA has contracted SpaceX Dragon flights at about $70M per seat, and the OIG estimates the cost to SpaceX at $55M per seat. If we are extremely optimistic about Starship and say it will cost the same amount to launch as Falcon 9 / Dragon, and has 100 passengers instead of 4, that brings the price down to $2-3M per seat. SpaceX could probably do suborbital hops on just the StarShip second stage for less per seat than what Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin do now, but I don't know if that is a market they want to get into. They haven't shown interest in it in the past.
CrzyLngPwd 3y ago
US will be able to have military bases in space.
chrischapman 3y ago
Maybe move all data centers into geostationary orbit. They would be solar powered with direct communication between each orbiting center and transmitters/receiver stations on the planet surface. With that sort of lifting capacity, it wouldn't take too long to move most data center servers into orbit. Would it be cost effective? Maybe not. But I reckon there would be some climate change benefit by moving all that heat out into space.
- mrep 3y ago
  Definitely not. Cooling datacenters is a major cost component and that gets way harder in space as you have to radiate it away and cannot use air/water as a heat sink. Add in repairing components that break and that'll likely never happen.
  - avmich 3y ago
    I'd be more concerned about space radiation. As for cooling, in space you have a lot of space, and each computation unit may get equipped with its own radiator tailored for its heat production, and you may spread datacenters across large areas, so they have enough cooling capacity. Each solar panel produces a shade, which can be used to put a radiator into, and between the solar panel and the radiator we can put some specific amount of heat-producing computation units.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  Unlikely. Cooling is a huge challenge in space, needing crazy big radiators. Dumping excess heat into water or air is a lot more effective than black-body radiating it in a vacuum.
avmich 3y ago
My feeling is we're going to have a change similar to what aviation had in 1930-s. Before that we had everything on the ground and sea, and both land and sea transportation were quite developed. The 1930-s, roughly, had a visible birth of the industry of air transportation - more people flew because they needed to get there, not for the thrill of the novelty, and more people worked in the industry - making airplanes, airports, operating them. Similarly, here we so far have less than 1000 people - or so - who flew to space in their lifetime, over last 60+ years. We're going to see it changing in a few years, less than 10, and to see the growth of a whole new industry, which routinely builds stuff for space - be it spaceport-specific equipment, or some hardware for spacecrafts, or hardware intended to work in space. Also we're going to have more professional occupations - hardware designers and hardware manufacturers on Earth, operators of space assets, like fueling stations, orbital stations, constellations, scientific laboratories - manned and automatic - and some orbital manufacturing facilities. And also we'll see professions related closely to the Moon in a few years - since it's going to be cheaper to fly to the Moon, more people are going to go there working on exploration and resource utilization, for lunar and orbital infrastructure. So in our minds today we have "everything anybody does is of course on Earth" with some quite small exceptions for those who flies to orbital stations, or for short tourist flights above the atmosphere (so far, I believe, we never had even 25 people at the same time above 100 km) - and there are, of course, many people on Earth who work exclusively to support such space-bound activities, but it's still more of exception. We'll soon get to the state "some remarkable number of people are working in space, in many different locations and on many different projects", and on Earth a rather large industry supports their activities, just like we have industries supporting sea transportation or automotive industry. We'll get used to add this new dimension into our considerations, our plans, we'll see more opportunities pursued in this area, more attention paid to space - significantly more. Space will become another (much more) routine part of life.
- happytiger 3y ago
  Exactly. It holds the promise to shrink the earth as well, just like commercial air travel. It’s not just space that opens but space tourism and ridiculously fast terrestrial travel as well. Drop the cost like this and entirely new industries are possible and brand new never considered doors open.
somenameforme 3y ago
How much do you think it would cost to send a bottle of water to space? Even on a Falcon Heavy you're looking at spending around $700 [1] to send one 16oz bottle of water. That's a far better than past times, where it'd cost around $25,000 to send it up on the Space Shuttle. But with Starship? You're looking at that price drop to as low as $5! Because of this, trying to meaningfully predict the future is not possible. You're looking at a incomparably large revolutionary leap being made overnight. Up until now costs have made any significant scale space project a complete non-starter. If Starship succeeds, then costs will instantly become almost entirely irrelevant. Space colonization, industry, tourism, mining, and so all become completely viable - instantly. Really, everything becomes viable. Space just becomes another domain for casual exploration, exploitation, and expansion. I think this is why everybody is waiting before adapting. So many industries are simply impossible to even toy with, without Starship. And while it seems ever more imminent, there is of course still the possibility that it somehow ultimately proves unviable, or perhaps it only sends that bottle of water down to $300, which would still be a great leap forward, but probably not far enough ahead to really open the door to space, just yet. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competition#2010-2020s:_Competition_and_pricing_pressure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio...
- beambot 3y ago
  Cheaper to buy a bottle of water on the ISS than at a concert or sportsball game. Epic. A similar dynamic happened with railroads. It's hard to predict just how much change this could cause!
- happytiger 3y ago
  Beautifully, elegantly put. Thank you.
- averageRoyalty 3y ago
  That's about 480ml for anyone struggling to follow the example like I was.
SergeAx 3y ago
We will colonize the Moon.
avmich 3y ago
For space nerds, Bradbury wrote this: https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/r-is-for-rocket/ https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/r-is-for-rocket/ - one of his works, in some sense similar to the anticipation of these months.
- dsq 3y ago
  Ive read some Bradbury but not that specific story, thanks for that.

-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
What would have to happen to earth to make it less viable a place to live than mars? An asteroid rendering earth’s surface uninhabitable? Even that wouldn’t be enough - there’s still so much more on earth to sustain human life than any planet in our solar system. Apart from proof of concept I just don’t see any practical reason to colonise mars.
- maxlin 3y ago
  I don't get your point. Having a self-sustaining colony on Mars ready when suddenly the brother of the Chicxulub impactor appears on the radar and will hit in less time than it would require to create massive underground cave systems utilizing geothermal power would take to build, will literally save the species. And that is just one apocalypse variant. Nuclear holocaust. Antimatter bombs. Possibly even a massive gamma ray burst, are all safe from Mars even if they might kill everyone on Earth. Our species took an incredible amount of time to evolve, likely long enough to not re-appear in this solar system if lost. Which is a very weird point for me feeling that I have to argue for lol
  - modeless 3y ago
    I think Earth after nuclear holocaust or reasonably likely asteroid impact is still significantly more hospitable to human life than Mars. And any gamma ray burst affecting Earth would hit Mars too. Building survival silos on Earth would be cheaper and likely more effective to save the species in these situations. Elon often talks about how exploration is exciting and inspirational and a prerequisite for future interstellar travel, and that works better as a justification to go to Mars, IMO. Also, while those disasters might not completely wipe out humans on Earth, they could reverse centuries or millennia of progress and delay further space exploration for hundreds or thousands of years if we don't do it now while we have the chance.
    - maxlin 3y ago
      You might be right about the gamma ray burst. From what I understand, for a nuke war, it is still _possible_ it will take out everyone considering the nuclear winter it will cause. In my thinking a redundant colony is worth even saving us having to play existential Russian Roulette with one loaded.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
    Which gamma ray burst would be so focussed that it would hit earth, but not mars?
- 3y ago

pjio 3y ago

Scientists being able to do more science stuff in place where things wobble so strangely.

modeless 3y ago

IMO the biggest impact for normal people is that Starlink is going to get a whole lot better. Truly worldwide satellite broadband for unmodified cell phones. Faster speeds, lower latency (lower than fiber for intercontinental traffic), smaller/cheaper antennas, better reliability especially with limited view of the sky, and more support for areas of higher population density. More esoteric: Commercial space stations. Space vacations. Moon base. Humans on Mars, and maybe even beyond. More and better space telescopes. Maybe some space based manufacturing. Eventually asteroid mining.

ric2b 3y ago
None of that sounds like a big impact on the lives of most people, who are already living in areas well covered by cellphone networks and will never afford to travel to space.
- Kim_Bruning 3y ago
  SpaceX Starship is projected to bring the price of space travel down drastically, to the point where non-1%-ers should be able to afford it.
  - ric2b 3y ago
    Still not a big improvement for most of the population, maybe a few middle-class hardcore space fans spend their life savings to make 1 trip to space instead of going to some beach resort multiple years in a row. Good for them.
  - pavon 3y ago
    I don't think it will. NASA has contracted SpaceX Dragon flights at about $70M per seat, and the OIG estimates the cost to SpaceX at $55M per seat. If we are extremely optimistic about Starship and say it will cost the same amount to launch as Falcon 9 / Dragon, and has 100 passengers instead of 4, that brings the price down to $2-3M per seat. SpaceX could probably do suborbital hops on just the StarShip second stage for less per seat than what Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin do now, but I don't know if that is a market they want to get into. They haven't shown interest in it in the past.

CrzyLngPwd 3y ago

US will be able to have military bases in space.

chrischapman 3y ago

Maybe move all data centers into geostationary orbit. They would be solar powered with direct communication between each orbiting center and transmitters/receiver stations on the planet surface. With that sort of lifting capacity, it wouldn't take too long to move most data center servers into orbit. Would it be cost effective? Maybe not. But I reckon there would be some climate change benefit by moving all that heat out into space.

mrep 3y ago
Definitely not. Cooling datacenters is a major cost component and that gets way harder in space as you have to radiate it away and cannot use air/water as a heat sink. Add in repairing components that break and that'll likely never happen.
- avmich 3y ago
  I'd be more concerned about space radiation. As for cooling, in space you have a lot of space, and each computation unit may get equipped with its own radiator tailored for its heat production, and you may spread datacenters across large areas, so they have enough cooling capacity. Each solar panel produces a shade, which can be used to put a radiator into, and between the solar panel and the radiator we can put some specific amount of heat-producing computation units.
yencabulator 3y ago
Unlikely. Cooling is a huge challenge in space, needing crazy big radiators. Dumping excess heat into water or air is a lot more effective than black-body radiating it in a vacuum.

avmich 3y ago

My feeling is we're going to have a change similar to what aviation had in 1930-s. Before that we had everything on the ground and sea, and both land and sea transportation were quite developed. The 1930-s, roughly, had a visible birth of the industry of air transportation - more people flew because they needed to get there, not for the thrill of the novelty, and more people worked in the industry - making airplanes, airports, operating them. Similarly, here we so far have less than 1000 people - or so - who flew to space in their lifetime, over last 60+ years. We're going to see it changing in a few years, less than 10, and to see the growth of a whole new industry, which routinely builds stuff for space - be it spaceport-specific equipment, or some hardware for spacecrafts, or hardware intended to work in space. Also we're going to have more professional occupations - hardware designers and hardware manufacturers on Earth, operators of space assets, like fueling stations, orbital stations, constellations, scientific laboratories - manned and automatic - and some orbital manufacturing facilities. And also we'll see professions related closely to the Moon in a few years - since it's going to be cheaper to fly to the Moon, more people are going to go there working on exploration and resource utilization, for lunar and orbital infrastructure. So in our minds today we have "everything anybody does is of course on Earth" with some quite small exceptions for those who flies to orbital stations, or for short tourist flights above the atmosphere (so far, I believe, we never had even 25 people at the same time above 100 km) - and there are, of course, many people on Earth who work exclusively to support such space-bound activities, but it's still more of exception. We'll soon get to the state "some remarkable number of people are working in space, in many different locations and on many different projects", and on Earth a rather large industry supports their activities, just like we have industries supporting sea transportation or automotive industry. We'll get used to add this new dimension into our considerations, our plans, we'll see more opportunities pursued in this area, more attention paid to space - significantly more. Space will become another (much more) routine part of life.

happytiger 3y ago
Exactly. It holds the promise to shrink the earth as well, just like commercial air travel. It’s not just space that opens but space tourism and ridiculously fast terrestrial travel as well. Drop the cost like this and entirely new industries are possible and brand new never considered doors open.

somenameforme 3y ago

How much do you think it would cost to send a bottle of water to space? Even on a Falcon Heavy you're looking at spending around $700 [1] to send one 16oz bottle of water. That's a far better than past times, where it'd cost around $25,000 to send it up on the Space Shuttle. But with Starship? You're looking at that price drop to as low as $5! Because of this, trying to meaningfully predict the future is not possible. You're looking at a incomparably large revolutionary leap being made overnight. Up until now costs have made any significant scale space project a complete non-starter. If Starship succeeds, then costs will instantly become almost entirely irrelevant. Space colonization, industry, tourism, mining, and so all become completely viable - instantly. Really, everything becomes viable. Space just becomes another domain for casual exploration, exploitation, and expansion. I think this is why everybody is waiting before adapting. So many industries are simply impossible to even toy with, without Starship. And while it seems ever more imminent, there is of course still the possibility that it somehow ultimately proves unviable, or perhaps it only sends that bottle of water down to $300, which would still be a great leap forward, but probably not far enough ahead to really open the door to space, just yet. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competition#2010-2020s:_Competition_and_pricing_pressure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio...

beambot 3y ago
Cheaper to buy a bottle of water on the ISS than at a concert or sportsball game. Epic. A similar dynamic happened with railroads. It's hard to predict just how much change this could cause!
happytiger 3y ago
Beautifully, elegantly put. Thank you.
averageRoyalty 3y ago
That's about 480ml for anyone struggling to follow the example like I was.

SergeAx 3y ago

We will colonize the Moon.

avmich 3y ago

For space nerds, Bradbury wrote this: https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/r-is-for-rocket/ https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/r-is-for-rocket/ - one of his works, in some sense similar to the anticipation of these months.

dsq 3y ago
Ive read some Bradbury but not that specific story, thanks for that.