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Awesome achievement. Watched it with my sister at home and brought back memories from the 60s in front of the B&W TV watching some of the early amazing flights

Awesome achievement. Watched it with my sister at home and brought back memories from the 60s in front of the B&W TV watching some of the early amazing flights and landings. Question for hackers: How does this reorient space programs world-wide? If I were a politician or technocrat in China, Russia, or the EU this would feel like an inverse and intense Sputnik moment — “holy sh—- we have to up our game!”

carabiner 2y ago
In Europe, ESA has been pretty open about trying to copy and play catch-up to SpaceX: > Q: Callisto looks very much like Grasshopper, the SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage reuse prototype. > A: Callisto is Grasshopper. The Chinese are also building a similar prototype, I have no problem saying we didn’t invent anything. https://satelliteobservation.net/2018/06/02/cnes-director-of-launchers-talks-reusable-rockets/ https://satelliteobservation.net/2018/06/02/cnes-director-of...
creer 2y ago
Eventually it convinces everybody that "quantity in space" is possible. Moving to projects where you don't have to count every ounce. It opens the path to wild schemes, in amount of weight that could be moved. And why "eventually"? SpaceX should have already convinced people of that. Yeah it's not yet in production, but the momentum and progress have been amazing to witness. (The previous one was convincing everyone that there was lots of space for tech improvement. Wake up call achieved just a few years ago also by SpaceX.) See also this blog post: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-still-not-understood/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-st...
- creer 2y ago
  An interesting question (because all the others will probably be too slow) is what does that change for SpaceX itself (which can be fast)? It gets to complete and upgrade Starlink. Sure. And that keeps it busy for what? Two years? At most. Sure. Done. Just kidding, that provides some background launches as a guaranteed customer going forward. But nowhere near enough to make a dent in what will be the new SpaceX launch capabiity. So what else can it do, that exploits its own launch capability? Going to Mars is not an obvious commercial venture - not at first - not until some government somewhere convinces itself to fund that. So what else? What can SpaceX do on its own with this launch capability?
  - creer 2y ago
    One answer might be "infrastructure". Infrastructure in space will become big if space becomes big (beyond launching telecom, observation and science - which are small for now, compared to their launch potential.) SpaceX will need infrastructure itself - like refueling, landing stuff in exotic places, cargo delivery to other spacecraft, de-orbiting stuff, spacecraft to spacecraft networking, bringing cargo back to earth, carrying / delivering crew around, spacecraft repair, emergency access, etc. A bit like Amazon then: if SpaceX needs some capability in their grand plan to Mars or whatever, they could try and package that as a commercial service after using the bare bones version for themselves.
  - 93po 2y ago
    thankfully elon has hundreds of billions of dollars and presumably will spend most of that sending shit to mars, either before he dies or as part of a trust. most of what we need to send there isn't expensive - electronics and steel and composite materials. the limiting factor isn't going to be the cost of stuff we send there, it's only going to be how many starships we can get flying and how often they fly
  - cubefox 2y ago
    > So what else? What can SpaceX do on its own with this launch capability? Apart from Starlink, not much I believe. The main thing will be the Artemis contract with NASA, which requires two figures worth of Starship flights to LEO to refill the Starship tanker to get the HLS Starship to land a few people on the moon. So I do think Starship will mostly generate money through NASA contracts, Starlink, and commercial launches. Though there aren't that many commercial launches currently. Perhaps there will be more once the launch prices drop due to reusability, though that remains to be seen. Developing a satellite is already more expensive than launching it.
    - creer 2y ago
      We saw that solar power venture unveil their idea. With lower cost/kg, there might be quite a few flights just to deliver piles of hardware in various new orbits. And these might require refueling launches as part of that process. Some delivered all in one place, some in separate locations.
asadotzler 2y ago
It doesn't. It makes one or two mega-constellations cheaper for their operators and therefor more profitable, but no one except telecom and sensor platforms really want orbit. It's useless for most things, far worse than working on the planet's surface where all the labor and materials already are.

carabiner 2y ago

In Europe, ESA has been pretty open about trying to copy and play catch-up to SpaceX: > Q: Callisto looks very much like Grasshopper, the SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage reuse prototype. > A: Callisto is Grasshopper. The Chinese are also building a similar prototype, I have no problem saying we didn’t invent anything. https://satelliteobservation.net/2018/06/02/cnes-director-of-launchers-talks-reusable-rockets/ https://satelliteobservation.net/2018/06/02/cnes-director-of...

creer 2y ago

Eventually it convinces everybody that "quantity in space" is possible. Moving to projects where you don't have to count every ounce. It opens the path to wild schemes, in amount of weight that could be moved. And why "eventually"? SpaceX should have already convinced people of that. Yeah it's not yet in production, but the momentum and progress have been amazing to witness. (The previous one was convincing everyone that there was lots of space for tech improvement. Wake up call achieved just a few years ago also by SpaceX.) See also this blog post: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-still-not-understood/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/starship-is-st...

creer 2y ago
An interesting question (because all the others will probably be too slow) is what does that change for SpaceX itself (which can be fast)? It gets to complete and upgrade Starlink. Sure. And that keeps it busy for what? Two years? At most. Sure. Done. Just kidding, that provides some background launches as a guaranteed customer going forward. But nowhere near enough to make a dent in what will be the new SpaceX launch capabiity. So what else can it do, that exploits its own launch capability? Going to Mars is not an obvious commercial venture - not at first - not until some government somewhere convinces itself to fund that. So what else? What can SpaceX do on its own with this launch capability?
- creer 2y ago
  One answer might be "infrastructure". Infrastructure in space will become big if space becomes big (beyond launching telecom, observation and science - which are small for now, compared to their launch potential.) SpaceX will need infrastructure itself - like refueling, landing stuff in exotic places, cargo delivery to other spacecraft, de-orbiting stuff, spacecraft to spacecraft networking, bringing cargo back to earth, carrying / delivering crew around, spacecraft repair, emergency access, etc. A bit like Amazon then: if SpaceX needs some capability in their grand plan to Mars or whatever, they could try and package that as a commercial service after using the bare bones version for themselves.
- 93po 2y ago
  thankfully elon has hundreds of billions of dollars and presumably will spend most of that sending shit to mars, either before he dies or as part of a trust. most of what we need to send there isn't expensive - electronics and steel and composite materials. the limiting factor isn't going to be the cost of stuff we send there, it's only going to be how many starships we can get flying and how often they fly
- cubefox 2y ago
  > So what else? What can SpaceX do on its own with this launch capability? Apart from Starlink, not much I believe. The main thing will be the Artemis contract with NASA, which requires two figures worth of Starship flights to LEO to refill the Starship tanker to get the HLS Starship to land a few people on the moon. So I do think Starship will mostly generate money through NASA contracts, Starlink, and commercial launches. Though there aren't that many commercial launches currently. Perhaps there will be more once the launch prices drop due to reusability, though that remains to be seen. Developing a satellite is already more expensive than launching it.
  - creer 2y ago
    We saw that solar power venture unveil their idea. With lower cost/kg, there might be quite a few flights just to deliver piles of hardware in various new orbits. And these might require refueling launches as part of that process. Some delivered all in one place, some in separate locations.

asadotzler 2y ago

It doesn't. It makes one or two mega-constellations cheaper for their operators and therefor more profitable, but no one except telecom and sensor platforms really want orbit. It's useless for most things, far worse than working on the planet's surface where all the labor and materials already are.