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So I'm excited to see this tech develop but I wonder how much of a market there really is for super-heavy lifters. I can't wait to see a future version where th

• multimoon 2y ago
  There’s lots of things that are just too big and heavy and need launch vehicles like that. It might be overkill for satellites, but space stations and habitats need the payload capacity of something like this to become anything resembling economical.
  • seydor 2y ago
    how many of those things are there?
    • dotnet00 2y ago
      Well, most prominently, thousands of Starlink satellites.
    • dwaltrip 2y ago
      There'll be a lot more once it is actually possible and economical to put it in space.
    • throwthrowuknow 2y ago
      A bit like asking how many 30 story buildings are there when we first started building modern steel and concrete buildings. How many cathedrals could we possibly need?
    • ceejayoz 2y ago
      This is such an odd argument; it's like asking how many airports there were in 1904.
    • malfist 2y ago
      If you build it, they will come
    • avmich 2y ago
      > how many of those things are there? Apollo program flew once in 6 months. If we're to build a Moon base, we're going to have at least this frequency of flights - really, I'd prefer to have a great margin on top of that, because Moon is much harder than LEO, and we might need more resiliency to safely explore. Each flight to the Moon will likely need to involve 10-20 Starship flights (rough number) to LEO. So even if we're flying twice a year - and 6 month stay on the Moon right now looks like a pretty serious expedition - we need to have a Starship flight every ~10-15 days. So even for a robust Moon exploration program we need as many Starships per year as the whole world was launching rockets per year just some ~20 years ago.
      • vl 2y ago
        Mars launch window is every two years. It is very inefficient to launch at other times. As for moon, I'm surprised with the estimate you have provided. Apollo needed just one launch for each mission. Even if SpaceX will do orbital re-fueling, it's just two-three launches, why would you need more? BTW, the idea of getting heavy Starship to the moon and back is interesting, but at the end flying the vehicle optimized for re-entry far away and back is suboptimal. My prediction that they quickly will go to specialized LEO-LMO vehicles with LEO re-fueling.
        • avmich 2y ago
          > Even if SpaceX will do orbital re-fueling, it's just two-three launches, why would you need more? Wikipedia says Starship weights 120 ton empty and 1320 ton fueled, plus 100 ton payload (approximate numbers). That means fuel weights 1200 ton. So to carry fuel to LEO to fuel up a Starship you need 1200 / 100 = 12 flights. You can change this number maybe 2 times into both directions, but I doubt you'll fuel Starship with just 2 or 3 flights of tankers. Would be glad to err here.
          • vl 2y ago
            But you don’t have to fuel it fully to go to the moon and back. It’s a bit hard to compare to Apollo since Apollo dropped stages at every step of the process, but it seems they used 70 tons of fuel in the third state of Saturn V for original trans lunar injection of 45 ton Apollo. Apollo itself was 2/3 fuel. So it’s ratio of 15 tons to 90 tons. I.e. 1/6.
• mavhc 2y ago
  Has to be large to be reusable due to scaling factors. We can finally start sending useful amounts of things into space, millions of solar panels for one
  • simiones 2y ago
    How is putting solar in space more useful than putting it on Earth? You still have the problem of a capricious atmosphere between the source of the beams and the place where you need the electricity. Sure, you can slightly modulate and do a few things, but the extra energy is extraordinarily unlikely to make up the extra costs even if the transport costs were 0.
    • throwthrowuknow 2y ago
      It means you can have abundant power in space to run all kinds of hardware.
      • simiones 2y ago
        Then what is this hardware that you'd want to run in space, that needs more power than it can generate on its own?
        • throwthrowuknow 2y ago
          Anything that will fit in a 30ft diameter faring weighing less than 150 metric tonnes. I’d love to see commercial space stations that can house large numbers of people in comfortable cabins so it’s more like a cruise ship than a submarine. Gotta power all those amenities somehow without diesel generators. But you could also put things like datacenters in orbit if the cost savings on power production made it worth while. Longer term you need a lot of power for resource extraction and processing and manufacturing. Would also make light sail propulsion of probes or deep space missions possible using lasers or beamed microwave power for ion thrusters so you don’t have to sacrifice mass for nuclear and aren’t constrained by how much wattage you can produce on board.
• creshal 2y ago
  FH had the problem that it had a comparatively small fairing compared with an upper stage that's "only" okay-ish for deep space insertions, so you can neither put really huge LEO payloads on it, nor can you give a deep space probe a really big kick stage to make up for the deficits of the upper stage. Starship solves all these issues: The upper stage is more fuel efficient, and it has more room for really big payloads and/or kickstages. > Won't someone make a fully reusable smaller launch vehicle that'll suit commercial needs? Half of the people tried went bankrupt already due to F9: It is already too big for most payloads, so it does a lot of rideshare missions that pool multiple smaller launches together. It's very hard to compete with that. So even if, for some reason, commercial customers don't really want to exploit the capabilites of Starship (ignoring the fact that multiple did already), SpaceX can again offer ride shares at a larger scale for F9-class payloads.
  • rtkwe 2y ago
    Starship might honestly have a similar payload issue with the weird door design, the way it hinges up means you need a more complex release plan than most which just pop straight off the front of the booster. During the third test flight they also tested their weird side eject design for Starlink (or other flat pack style satellites) and the video looks like the door completely ripped itself apart.
    • creshal 2y ago
      The door design isn't final yet, there's no point in whining about it. They need tankers and landers for NASA contracts short term (neither of which require payload deployment), anything else is a nice to have that can be tinkered with on the side until it works.
      • macintux 2y ago
        > The door design isn't final yet, there's no point in whining about it. Your first clause is correct, the second is unnecessarily hostile.
• TkTech 2y ago
  Yes, there won't be as many customers purchasing 150-200 tons of lift, but that's the point of "rideshares". All that really matters with space launches is the cost per kg and if it's capable of lifting multiple payloads into multiple orbits, it'll have 10-15 customers per lift, not one. The current model has a kind of pez-dispenser but for chucking out multiple payloads. There are purchasers for the full lift capacity too, like ISS modules and major telescopes.
  • cletus 2y ago
    If you think about this, it doesn't make a lot of sense because different satellites are going to sit in very different orbits. Geosynchronous satellites are an obvious case where satellites will collect into a limited number of orbits but they vary on what point of the Earth they sit over. Also getting to geostationary orbit takes a lot more fuel so the rocket has less room for payload than, say, low EArth orbit. I'm not sure one rocket can launch a geostationary satellite above the Americas and above Europe in the same mission. But you can't really launch a satellite in a polar orbit and an equatorial orbit in the same mission, for example. Likewise, how economic is it to deploy one at 150km and another at 250km? Starlink is a special case because it's a related constellation of satellites where a number of satellites are in the same orbit.
    • TkTech 2y ago
      The (unproven) target cost per kg of a re-usable starship, from even the most conservative source I could find, was under $300/kg[2]. The next cheapest, the Falcon Heavy, is around $2.3k/kg[1]. The cost difference is astronomical, and so low that it becomes viable send less payload and more orbital adjustment fuel, not to mention its (again, unproven) designed to be refueled in orbit. At that price, you could fly multiple refueling flights and still be under the cost of any other life provider. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship
    • Majromax 2y ago
      > I'm not sure one rocket can launch a geostationary satellite above the Americas and above Europe in the same mission. Easily. Moving within an orbit is a matter of fine adjustment. For example, any stationkeeping that expands the orbit slightly will cause the satellite to "fall back" over time. Geostationary satellites are the best orbit for this, since every satellite in such an orbit essentially shares it with all others, differing only in position along the orbit.
• mjh2539 2y ago
  Eventually it will get cheap enough to where people can be buried on the (shot at the) moon.
  • datameta 2y ago
    Talked about this with my partner this week. Somebody is going to yeet their ashes into the regolith some day.
    • ceejayoz 2y ago
      It has already been attempted. https://www.axios.com/2024/01/08/peregrine-moon-lander-launch-human-remains https://www.axios.com/2024/01/08/peregrine-moon-lander-launc...
      • datameta 2y ago
        And indeed has been done too! "The human remains aboard the lander won't be the first on the moon, as ashes of Gene Shoemaker, the founder of astrogeology, were buried on the moon in the late 1990s by the Lunar Prospector."
  • simiones 2y ago
    I believe that is illegal in every country, putting human remains on foreign bodies.
    • ceejayoz 2y ago
      It's not, and there've already been (failed) attempts. https://www.axios.com/2024/01/08/peregrine-moon-lander-launch-human-remains https://www.axios.com/2024/01/08/peregrine-moon-lander-launc... > In addition to the NASA science experiments on board the Peregrine lander are cremated human remains and DNA collected by two private companies, Celestis and Elysium Space. > People hoping to memorialize their loved ones or colleagues pay the companies thousands to send a few grams of cremated ashes to the moon in metal capsules.
• lazysheepherd 2y ago
  Payloads are designed according to available spacecraft capabilities. When this thing flies, market will form around it in no time.
  • cletus 2y ago
    I'm skeptical because satellites, like pretty much any technology, tend to get smaller over time. I remember reading about how it was profitable for someone to buy up 4 geostationary slots and replace 4 satellites with 1 that was probably smaller than any of the 4 (because geostationary slots can be incredibly valuable). There are large bespoke payloads (eg JWST) but these are inherently so expensive anyway the launch vehicle costs almost don't matter. I'm not yet convinced there's a huge demand for super heavy payloads.
    • throwthrowuknow 2y ago
      They’re expensive (and often delayed and over budget) in part due to the ridiculous demands of fitting everything in a small faring and reducing weight e.g. needing it to fold up and using expensive high strength low weight materials. Lessen those constraints and things get cheaper and easier to build with standard methods and materials.
    • Karellen 2y ago
      > There are large bespoke payloads (eg JWST) but these are inherently so expensive anyway the launch vehicle costs almost don't matter. If launch costs are going to be $250M, you need a budget of that order of magnitude to make a mission viable. At that point, you might was well spend anywhere from $50M to $1B on the payload because that's where your budget is. Or, to put it another way, only payloads with a $50M to $1B budget can afford to exist if the launch costs are of the order of $250M. However, if launch costs are of the order of $5M, then missions with much smaller budgets suddenly become economically viable. And there are a lot more potential missions out there with $10M budgets than there are missions with $500M budgets. Satellites get smaller not only because the tech gets smaller, but because launch costs/kg are so expensive, or so limited. Currently it's worth spending $10M to reduce your mass by 10%, if doing so means you can reduce your launch costs by $25M. Or, if doing so means you can double your onboard station-keeping fuel, and double the lifespan of the satellite. If launch costs are less and available upmass is higher, your budget for engineering to reduce your payload mass is less, and so is the reason to do so.
• qsi 2y ago
  The vision is that the cost per unit of mass to orbit will come down massively with Starship, once it's launching like the Falcon. That will open up hitherto unimaginable missions and markets. And customers. It's all about the the cost!
  • simiones 2y ago
    Like? What industry really needs things floating in space that are only constrained by cost to launch? I can see lots of science mission perhaps, but even that seems somewhat limited.
    • tekla 2y ago
      Internet
    • dylan604 2y ago
      There have been tests of producing fiber optic cables (iirc) made in zeroG. There are other things as well that are way too cost prohibitive now, but might become viable opportunities with this type of capability.
    • ctoth 2y ago
      Asteroid mining.
    • bryanlarsen 2y ago
      Tourism is likely the next big market; cost is a major barrier.
    • concurrentsquar 2y ago
      Nobody has mentioned space-based solar power yet (https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/otps-sbsp-report-final-tagged-approved-1-8-24-tagged-v2.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/otps-sbsp-re...: "Launch is the largest cost driver..."), which would the cheapest (and currently only technologically feasible) route to turn humanity into a Kardashev Type 1 (or 2 if we construct a Dyson swarm) civilization (without really cheap fusion reactors).
• tjpnz 2y ago
  It will make space tourism viable for people who aren't super wealthy, an influencer or both.
• jwells89 2y ago
  For one, Starship+Superheavy will enable launching of large objects like space telescopes without forcing object in question to be engineered with expensive, delicate, failure-prone folding mechanisms (like the James Webb Space Telescope was). Just build the thing as big as it needs to be and launch it in its final form (aside from minor folding bits like solar panels). It could have similar impact on other scientific missions like rovers and probes. The ceiling for what’s possible is much higher when you’re not having to question the worth of every gram and square millimeter.
  • cletus 2y ago
    So JWST has (IIRC) a 6.5 meter mirror once deployed and yes, it was a challenge to develop that tech. Plus it added risk of failure. The Starship Super-heavy seems to have a max payload dimension of 9 meters. I imagine some buffer is required (ie it won't just allow a static 9 meter mirror) but I could be wrong. So that's larger but not that much larger. Remember the JWST was a huge step up from Hubble's 2.4 meter mirror. I expect NASA/ESA will take the opportunity to deploy even larger mirror by using the folding tech they've developed. But here's the main point: these kinds of flagship missions don't support and sustain a commercial launch system. There are only so many JWST 2.0s that you can and will build, launch and deploy. Your bread and butter is going to be commercial communications satellites and other than deploying large constellations like Starlink, I'm not sure what the market is here.
    • lsh123 2y ago
      Since for telescope what matters is the surface size of the mirror (light collected is proportional to surface which is proportional to r^2), the 9m telescope is ~1.9x better than 6.5m one. This is a big difference. Not even counting the loses from a non perfect alignment of a folding mirror compared to a fixed one.
    • gabesullice 2y ago
      I agree that it you can fold it up, sure, go for a bigger mirror. But widening the mass constraints will also be a game changer. As for the commercial market, I think it opens up a new branch of materials science for high-end manufacturing by making zero G financially accessible. E.g. growing crystals or perfectly spherical things. If you or I already knew exactly how that would be valuable, we'd already looking for seed investment ;) Also, let's conservatively estimate its payload to be 50 tons and triple the target launch cost to $30 million. That's $6000 per 10 kgs. If there's a regularly scheduled flight to Korea/Japan, how many manufacturing and mining operations that are offline for want of a critical part would be willing to pay upwards of $6000 to take delivery of a 10 kilo part in <24 hours when they're losing a few thousand dollars per minute?
• Ajay-p 2y ago
  Ever seen the incredible classic Moonraker? Larger satellites, larger rockets, it's about more at a lower cost. Bigger trucks, bigger ships, bigger lifters.
• nialv7 2y ago
  > Won't someone make a fully reusable smaller launch vehicle that'll suit commercial needs? Rocket Lab is doing that.
  • panick21_ 2y ago
    Rocket lab is not building a fully reusable vehicle. The only company building a fully reusable vehicle are SpaceX and Stoke Space.
    • cubefox 2y ago
      And Stoke Space is pursuing a very ambitious design. I expect funding will be a major problem for them.
• jve 2y ago
  Ask yourself what is the market for a super heavy lift vehicle that may cost 2M to launch... even if it turns out 20M, thats much cheaper whatever you get today and still order of magnitude cheaper than yesterdays options.
• somenameforme 2y ago
  Here's where things get really counter-intuitive. If Starship lives up to even a fraction of its potential, it's likely Falcon 9 will be completely retired, because Starship will cost less to launch! The entire point of the Starship is complete and instantaneous reuse. The idea is to have it launching something up, landing right back into its launch pad slot, and then going again. The ridiculous cost saving potential is what makes all of this so much more revolutionary than most realize. This isn't just a new big rocket. This is the most powerful rocket ever built, with the goal of launching it for less than the cheapest rockets cost. The current goal is to aim for $10 million within a few years, and then keep pushing it lower. For contrast, a Falcon 9 currently costs about $67 million to send 18 tons to orbit. Rocket Lab's Electron micro-rocket costs $7.5 million to send 0.3 tons to orbit. Starship can deliver 150 tons to orbit, a number that is planned to increase substantially. The thing about space is that the potential is infinite, but it only becomes possible to start doing stuff once you get launch costs really low. Falcon 9 has brought launch costs down by orders of magnitude, but most people don't even realize this because unless you're a giant telecoms company or something, then $2000/kg doesn't sound that different than $50,000/kg --- wayyyyy too expensive for anything. But now imagine a world where you could launch things for $10/kg. Suddenly the entire universe opens up to expansion and exploitation, and life as we know it would basically change overnight.
  • concurrentsquar 2y ago
    Calculating the cost per kilogram for LEO with Starship gives me a new startup idea: small business (or even personal) interplanetary postal service. It only costs $150 per kg in the near future to send objects into space with Starship; so I could, for example, send a Raspberry Pi (47 grams) into LEO for ~7 dollars (as long as I also had 149 tons of other objects from other people to send). A more useful use case would sending fully automated manufacturing facilities (probably either for semiconductors (https://www.nasa.gov/general/the-benefits-of-semiconductor-manufacturing-in-low-earth-orbit-leo-for-terrestrial-use/ https://www.nasa.gov/general/the-benefits-of-semiconductor-m...) or crystals (https://uofuhealth.utah.edu/newsroom/news/2017/07/proteinxl https://uofuhealth.utah.edu/newsroom/news/2017/07/proteinxl))
  • positr0n 2y ago
• vitiral 2y ago
  Why build the transcontinental railroad when there's hardly a market for it? - dude on the internet in the early 1800s