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Once they get this working, the quantity of cargo they can put in space will be ridiculous. We could actually plausibly begin planning for an offworld base.
by MagicMoonlight 3y ago
Once they get this working, the quantity of cargo they can put in space will be ridiculous. We could actually plausibly begin planning for an offworld base.
- swarnie 3y agoI do wonder with the cost reduction, weight limit increase and turnaround time reduction if we could now skip a lot of "planning". Can we get to a point where every kg doesn't need to be maliciously thought about and optimised, maybe we could just yeet any potentially useful thing in to orbit and sort it out later.
- kqr 3y agoI don't know what sort of orbits Starship is capable of but Kessler syndrome!
- hoseja 3y agoAll of the orbits. I would rather have a Kessler syndrome around Mars than not.
- inglor_cz 3y agoIn the lower orbits, everything will burn up in the atmosphere within five years or so. Orbital decay is very strong under some 400 km. Also, space is pretty big. Even with a million destroyed satellites out there, the total density of debris would be very low. Imagine spreading debris of a million destroyed cars all over the planet - including the oceans - then walking around and trying to spot a piece. How often would you even see one, much less happen to walk directly over it (=equivalent of a collision)?
- danw1979 3y agoThe thing is, in orbit you don’t really need to walk around to see the pieces of debris because they come blasting at you from all directions at 7km/s.
- inglor_cz 3y agoNevertheless, they are still in one place at one time. If anything, my comparison overstates the danger, because Earth's surface is 2D and in space, many of those pieces will fly over or under you.
- imchillyb 3y agoYour seemingly flippant attitude toward a catastrophic end does not mirror that of the world’s space agencies and leading minds. They are quite concerned about that particular outcome, Kessler wasn’t just warning us, but predicting an outcome. NASA sent China a nasty letter the last time China shot down one of its own satellites. The why is simple. There are launch windows. The more debris in orbit the smaller the windows and shorter their availability. I believe you overestimate how much orbital debris it would take to ground earthlings for centuries.
- Symmetry 3y agoI'd actually hope that it leads to fewer, larger satellites that it's practical to go up and repair. At least with a bit of regulatory oversight and some international treaties once this model suddenly becomes feasible with Starship.
- karamanolev 3y ago> maliciously You probably mean meticulously...
- librasteve 3y agoI prefer the original
- swarnie 3y agoEither/or works i think.
- lm28469 3y agoLike we "yeeted" pollutants for the better part of two centuries and are currently trying to "sort it out" right now ?
- ctoth 3y agoI think maybe it would do you some good to sit down for a moment and think about just how mindbogglingly big space is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.
- mlsu 3y ago"A sufficiently large difference in quantity is a difference in kind"
- jiggawatts 3y ago"Quantity has a quality all its own." ― Joseph Stalin
- samanator 3y agoApparently a misattribution. According to this https://klangable.com/blog/quantity-has-a-quality-all-its-own/ https://klangable.com/blog/quantity-has-a-quality-all-its-ow... It was not Stalin who said that
- samanator 3y agoWhere is this from? I've been looking for a term for this...
- lopis 3y agoRight. First thing will be bright billboards in space illuminating our night sky.
- steve1977 3y agoWill you stop giving them ideas please?
- calderknight 3y agoIf they get it working the USA might beat China to putting a woman on the Moon.
- wheelerof4te 3y agoYou mean to tell me that USA lost it's technology for putting people on thr Moon? I thought NASA already had those rockets. What's preventing them from sending astronauts and cargo now?
- notpushkin 3y agoNASA still can make those rockets, but I believe those were pretty inefficient. While it was “justified” during the Space Race, nowadays they would be deemed too costly IMO.
- literalAardvark 3y agoThe fact that they're 50 years old? It's really hard to keep stuff maintained, and manufacturing methods have completely changed. The last people who could build that particular lander are retired or dead. And they haven't made a new one. So no, NASA hasn't had a human rated lunar lander for a very long time.
- wheelerof4te 3y agoThe fact that those rockets are 50 years old makes no difference. It worked then, why wouldn't it work now? You don't see 50 years old weapon systems stop working.
- bell-cot 3y ago> You don't see 50 years old weapon systems stop working. You mean simple firearms, that were carefully cleaned, prep'ed, and packed for long-term storage? Or something at least vaguely comparable to a moon rocket in size and complexity, like a B-52? Talk to an old Air Force guy, who knows the maintenance routines for the older warbirds, and how many issues they have with "manufacturer went out of business" spare parts, etc.
- contrarian1234 3y agoAn offworld base would need the financial backing of nation states. But from a purely business side of things, does this open up any new possibilities? I'm guessing Starlink will get less expensive to operate - but will it be to the point it'll displace cell towers? Earth observations satellites would be cheaper to put up... so maybe we'll get a few more than before. But are there any real game changers?
- vvillena 3y agoThe previous limiting factors for launching stuff off-world were weight and size. Such constraints were tackled by old innovations like assembling space stations using modules launched separately, or more recently, with inflatable modules like BEAM (sadly not in development anymore). With Starship, most of this goes away. It becomes possible to launch bigger, heavier (that is, cheaper) stuff to space. Still high-tech stuff, for sure, but engineers will be able to make more tradeoffs, because there won't be a need to optimize everything to be small and light.
- contrarian1234 3y agoOkay, I get the margins get more cushy. But one could see it being something like space launch getting 10x cheaper and that maybe translates into 3x demand for satellites. The first earth observatory was worth an astronomical amount of money, but the hundredth or thousandth is far down the tail of diminishing returns. I just really wonder how much money can they make off of all of this even in the best case scenario. There isn't an infinite demand for putting things up into space. There are demand inflection points. If it's so cheap you can go up for your birthday, or can do transatlantic flights, then it's a bit different - but nobody is talking about it ever getting THAT cheap. If Starlinks starts making all telecom providers obsolete then that'd also present something radically different and a huge amount of revenue. But I don't think they're able to do that either I feel the primary reason people stopped caring about space after Apollo is because there are simply insufficient economic incentives. The list of things you can do is short.. Telecom, Telescopes looking down, tourism, space mining Everything else is on taxpayer dollar
- jonplackett 3y agoAnd it is basically just a space station alraady. Just put it in orbit and... Done
- justapassenger 3y agoIn a same way as a paddle boat is a war ship… Yeah, it’s cool, but there’s bazillion things needed for a space station. Just a metal tube in the orbit isn’t sufficient.
- s08148692 3y agoStarship has a slightly larger internal volume than the ISS, so yeah, a single starship is directly comparable to the current largest space station we've got
- justapassenger 3y agoYeah, so big metal tube with a volume comparable to as a space station. That doesn’t make it comparable to a space station any more than arguing here makes people rocket scientist.
- simonh 3y agoOh the whole tube is way bigger. Just the pressuriseable payload space is bigger than the internal volume of the space station. Here's a view of what Starship docked to the ISS would look like. Or is it the other way around? https://www.humanmars.net/2016/10/spacex-its-spaceship-docking-with.html https://www.humanmars.net/2016/10/spacex-its-spaceship-docki... In fact Starship may make space stations obsolete, for the same reason we don't have anchored floating research stations out on the sea that we go back and forth to using little boats. We use research ships instead.
- jwells89 3y agoPlus if you wanted to, you could send up a slightly customized Starship to serve as the crew portion of the station and then send up a Starship-shaped “equipment pod” with redundant life support systems, fold-out solar panels, etc and dock it to the crew quarters. Just like that, you have a rough equivalent to the ISS in two launches. That process could be repeated N times to quickly build a station that’d dwarf the ISS.
- imtringued 3y agoDid you forget that you need four refueling launches and a depot launch and then the actual launch of the lunar vehicle (HLS I think) just to get to the moon? The SLS went to the moon in a single launch. That is a lot of launches for a rocket that doesn't work.
- loneboat 3y agoYou're not technically wrong, but that's like complaining about the bad gas mileage a semi truck gets when driving it to Starbucks for a coffee. Yes, the gas mileage would be better with your Prius. But no, that's not the real use-case for this thing.
- Robotbeat 3y agoFirst 3 Falcon launches failed. Now Falcon launches at an annualized rate of roughly 100 times per year and is the most reliable launch vehicle ever made in terms of numbers of consecutive successful launches. Let’s see how Starship’s 4th launch goes.
- twh270 3y agoThis is quite the pessimistic take. If you could wave the old magic wand, what would you do? I feel like you'd start by shutting down the Starship program completely and putting the money/effort elsewhere.
- s08148692 3y agoA SLS launch costs about 2 billion dollars. A Starship launch is estimated to cost around 40 million. It'll probably end up costing more than that, but it would need to cost a whole lot more to make the SLS a better option
- tjpnz 3y agoAs a space geek I'm hopeful it will put a trip to space within reach of regular folk, not just astronauts, billionaires and influencers.
- QwertyPi 3y agoWhitey On The Moon is just as relevant now as it was in the 60s
- nemo44x 3y agoWhy should a community limit their potential and ambition because another can’t seem to figure it out? This is like the crabs in a bucket thing. There’s no need to solve every social issue before progressing to high tech things. We would do well to ignore the cynical and misanthropic who contribute nothing but complaints about how the capable people should serve their personal interests first.
- doctorwho42 3y agoWell there is one argument that, in my opinion, is a reasonable one. We should try to improve and solve some of our cultural, philosophy, and systemic problems -before- we replicate them in isolated pockets of humanity. Otherwise we might suffer a replication crisis, where cultural and societal advancements are not shared by all. For example, many dystopian media in the past few decades has focused on images of what a hyper capitalistic society could look like in space. Where you may have to pay for every breath, pay for literally existing in a space. A society where every day of your life must be profitable and servicing the corporations you have sworn fealty, a world where the only purpose for the foreseeable future is growth and commerce. Perhaps having a society that is a bit more communally focused, and less self centered. One where the purpose of society is to nurture and spread life to where complex life does not exist. A society where the primary driver isn't growth for growth's sake. The argument is that if we ignore our cultural and philosophical short comings, we could replicate them. Why is replicating them bad? Because the stakes are so much higher when you have a space fairing race. Do you know what a small crew of technically literate people could do with the tech a society building a mar colony would require? Capture and redirect an asteroid, and if they were half intelligent they would know that the best way for it to go undetected would be to play the long game and give it a long trajectory out of the solar plane where most of the solar systems mass is. Or they could just as easily purposefully seed a planet's orbit with debris to create an intentional Kessler's syndrome. And you might say that these are outlandish, but any society that lives in space or on an non-terraformed would be a society where the base competency would be vastly higher due to survival pressures. So, yes we should keep advancing tech but I think it's an obvious deficiency with our silicon valley minded leaders. We don't put any time/money/energy into the fundamental problems of our society because these newage business men have been indoctrinated into the ideology that technology is the one and only savior. It's important, but you can't build a society or a building with only one pillar.
- bilekas 3y agoI do have bigger concerns personally over the space debris issue that isn't resolved just yet. I would prefer some contingency plan so that were not stuck here because Elon decided to go fast and break things...
- tim333 3y agoI think most of Elon's stuff is low enough that it deorbits fairly rapidly due to air resistance.
- Robotbeat 3y agoI really wish people would stop making these claims with only a passing knowledge of the issue. SpaceX’s Starlink in particular has done a good job of addressing these problems because they chose to deploy their constellation at very low altitudes (400-600km) where failures (or debris from collisions, to some extent) quickly deorbit due to atmospheric drag. Their original competitor OneWeb chose a higher orbit, 1000-1200km, to get by with fewer satellites. At those altitudes, the satellites stay in orbit for centuries unless actively deorbited. Kessler Syndrome is a real risk at higher orbits like 1000km and above. But not at the lower altitudes. Kessler Syndrome is an exponential effect, so if the losses (due to atmospheric drag) are higher than the gain (debris generation due to collisions), then you do not get the exponentially growing debris problem. It’s not even possible. Although it should be pointed that even at higher orbits and even if you’re technically in the exponentially growing regime, this growth would occur very slowly, not minutes or hours. Think months or years. And it’d take something like an active war with mass deployment of anti-satellite weaponry to trigger that kind of thing. In fact, most debris problems nowadays ARE caused by debris from anti satellite tests (as well as collisions with old Russian derelict satellites or explosions of upper stages not properly deorbited). But we also have demonstration missions for deorbiting derelict satellites to prevent the production of additional debris even at these higher orbits. But sorry to say, none of these problems are due to Elon Musk.
- bilekas 3y agoOkay It sounds positive the, bit larger payloads and an orbiting base would need to be in those upper orbits? Or something more like the ISS?
- londons_explore 3y agoThe financing of an offworld base is still very much unknown. Even with a high volume and relatively low cost launch vehicle, the actual offworld base will be hugely expensive, and no commercial enterprise can realistically expect to make a return for their investors. A government needs to step up with the rationale that it will eventually form a tax-producing colony - but a huge investment will need to be put in till it gets there.
- brandonagr2 3y agoAt first SpaceX will privately fund it using profits from Starlink
- OkGoDoIt 3y agoIs Starlink actually that profitable?
- londons_explore 3y agoIt was recently announced that it breaks even. I expect it will be profitable in the future as it scales up. But there is probably only about 2x more scaling at the current price point (launching new countries, selling to people who aren't yet aware of it).
- jdminhbg 3y agoBesides just selling more normal Starlink subs, they also have revenue opportunities from selling their LTE cell phone product to carriers, as well as dedicated networks like the in-progress "StarShield" for the US DoD.
- Ajedi32 3y ago> eventually form a tax-producing colony Money is just a medium for the exchange of goods or services. What would the colony export in order to generate the revenue required to produce said taxes?
- reset2023 3y agoWhile this would be great to start space exploration, there is no military incentive for this, and they're always the only ones with a blank check. Not sure that tourism is the option, maybe mining.
- lettergram 3y agoA moon base would let any party who controls it have the high ground in any global conflict. Quite literally, they'll have the ability to control the globe.
- simonh 3y agoThe moon's too far away. It would take a missile a few days to get to Earth, and you need to waste energy getting off the moon in the first place. Plus putting it there. There's just no point.
- lettergram 3y agoYou can literally throw rocks to earth at 1/36 the cost to leave earth. The rocks would then naturally fall to earth. Missiles have to be launched and require much more acceleration to reach the moon and leave earths gravity. To put it into perspective, imagine the moon can catapult 5000 massive rocks at earth every day. Earth can’t make that many missiles fast enough
- simonh 3y agoAs against launching the thousands of nukes you already have right here on Earth, and hitting your targets within minutes. I suppose if you want to wipe out your opponents 100x over veeeery slowly rather than just 10x over in lunch time.
- MadnessASAP 3y agoOn the inverse though, it takes a few days for missiles to get to you and far more energy to do so. Which would make their launch far more noticeable. Hypothetically a battery of missiles on the moon could be launched without being noticed by anyone on earth. With modern radar absorbing/scattering designs their transit could also be unnoticed. By the time they arrived at Earth they would be moving far faster then any ICBM could ever hope to achieve. Which puts them well outside the envelope of any existing/soon to exist missile defense system. You would also not have nearly enough time to launch a meaningful counterattack, and any that you did launch would be much easier for our moon based overlords to spot and counter. Basically putting nukes on the moon breaks MAD pretty thoroughly for the foreseeable future. My hope would of course be that opening space up would provide humans with sufficient rocks that we would stop trying to blow ourselves up over this rock. I don't expect that will be the case, would be nice though. Small edit: Double checked the published reentry speeds of some modern ICBMs, ~8 km/s, it's a lot closer to the moon to earth reentry speed of ~10 km/s then I thought. Should point out though that the first is a ceiling and the latter is the floor. So my point still stands, it just means that the moon nazis will have to push a little harder to kill us all.
- pacija 3y agoA new life awaits us in the Off-World colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!
- wojciii 3y agoDo androids dream of electric sheep? "First there was the dream, now there is reality. Here in the untainted cradle of the heavens will be created a new super race, a race of perfect physical specimens. You have been selected as its progenitors. Like gods, your offspring will return to Earth and shape it in their image. You have all served in public capacties in my terrestrial empire. Your seed, like yourselves, will pay deference to the ultimate dynasty which I alone have created. From their first day on Earth they will be able to look up and know that there is law and order in the heavens." :)
- pacija 3y agoYou know your movie quotes, my deepest respect, Sir :) Moonraker :)
- dangerwill 3y agoI think it is much more likely that Musk is going to cause a kepler syndrome collapse with starlink well before spacex is actually going to consider creating a moon base.
- colordrops 3y agoIt's been said countless times that starlink will not cause Kepler syndrome. They are in too low an orbit and atmospheric drag would bring down any debris relatively quickly.
- 0_____0 3y agowincing Kessler.
- jjoonathan 3y agoIt looks like SpaceX says 5 years for passive deorbit in their FCC filing. If a satellite were pulverized, I would expect the small pieces to have higher A/m and deorbit even faster. https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/ekyibk/comment/fdfyge9/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/ekyibk/commen... It's not a good look to criticize an org for being careless when you haven't even put bare minimum effort into seeing if they were careful.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]