8 ms·

Starship is Still Not Understood (2021)

57 points by MichaelNolan 2y ago

BryanLegend 2y ago
Feel's like we're finally conquering the gravity well!
- amelius 2y ago
  We have been for more than half a century ...
- stavros 2y ago
  I wouldn't say well, but yeah, we're conquering it okay.
  - incognito124 2y ago
    I will interpret this as a joke
    - stavros 2y ago
      You're interpreting it okay.
kemotep 2y ago
> Starship is intended to be able to transport a million tonnes of cargo to the surface of Mars in just ten launch windows Again, this is from 2021, one of those set of launches was to be last year. And it was to be 1,000 starships bound for Mars to meet that goal. Starship is impressive but we need to be realistic about these numbers. We haven’t even technically had a launch with any payload. Additionally they claim that within 2 years of the Artemis mission we could get 1,000 people on the moon (though say this isn’t going to happen at least). Starship will make Starlink V2 feasible and dozens if not hundreds of missions that would otherwise never be possible. But getting 1 million people to Mars (or even 1,000 people to the Moon) is just fantasy. I will gladly eat crow but none of these capabilities that exist on paper have actually been demonstrated that are necessary to meet these goals. SapceX is the best there is and likely will get to Mars. Just not how Musk describes it.
- xupybd 2y ago
  He is a salesman that always over promises but still does some cool stuff.
  - DoingIsLearning 2y ago
    > still does some cool stuff. Arguably he tweets about it. For the most part the 'doing' of the cool stuff is happening due to the Engineering and Manufacturing teams who are putting in sweat equity on that vision. Judging by the erratic and deteriorating public displays in the past few years I am not even sure he does anything on the strategic level anymore.
    - signatoremo 2y ago
      Without Musk there would not be the breathtaking booster catching happening today, according to his biography: "Why don't we try to use the tower to catch it?" he [ELON] asked. He was referring to the tower that holds the rocket on the launchpad. Musk had already come up with the idea of using that tower to stack the rocket; it had a set of arms that could pick up the first-stage booster, place it on the launch mount, then pick up the second-stage spacecraft, and place it atop the booster. Now he was suggesting that these arms could also be used to catch the booster when it returned to Earth. It was a wild idea, and there was a lot of consternation in the room. "If the booster comes back down to the tower and crashes into it, you can't launch the next rocket for a long time," Bill Riley says. "But we agreed to study different ways to do it." A few weeks later, just after Christmas 2020, the team gathered to brainstorm. Most engineers argued against trying to use the tower to catch the booster. The stacking arms were already dangerously complex. After more than an hour of argument, a consensus was forming to stick with the old idea of putting landing legs on the booster. But Stephen Harlow, the vehicle engineering director, kept arguing for the more audacious approach. "We have this tower, so why not try to use it?" After another hour of debate, Musk stepped in. "Harlow, you're on board with this plan," he said. "So why don't you be in charge of it?" https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1844870018351169942/photo/1 https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1844870018351169942/phot...
    - 2y ago
lukealization 2y ago
Tell me why I shouldn't be concerned about thousands of starships launching from Earth and emitting multiple megatons of Carbon Dioxide in the fragile upper atmosphere? Some studies indicate emissions here are significantly more impactful, and can also damage the Ozone layer as well. Any answers shouldn't consist of "well it's a fraction of what the aviation industry emits" because _the entire point_ of Starship is to scale-up to aviation-like operations.
- MVissers 2y ago
  If needed and wanted methane can be created sustainably. But not sure about upper atmosphere issue.
- golol 2y ago
  Because you should consider the upside when you mention the downsides. 1000 Starships launching a year can mean exoplanet imaging, drilling on Europa, interstellar probes, an actual Mars colony, asteroid mining, brilliant pebbles, O'Neil cylinders, L1 solar shields, space junk removal and so on. Not all at the same but each of these is a project that is potentially feasible with enough mass in orbit. I'm not saying you have to like or care about any of them but you should consider what you actually gain for all that emitted CO2.
  - la64710 2y ago
    And turn planet earth to barren mars in the process..
    - golol 2y ago
      I replied with some guesstimations to the other comment, I would be curious to hear what you think.
      - la64710 2y ago
        Thank you. I don’t know how right or wrong your calculations are but thanks for putting the numbers together. It would be greatly reassuring to see that something similar or a proper environmental impact study has been done for a massive project like starship and shared with the public. It will also be cool to see if more efficient way of propulsion fuel could be discovered for these launches. Progress can be mindful and sustainable.
awongh 2y ago
I thought it was an interesting way to put it that: the JPL produces things at $1,000,000/kg, and that inside the engineering organization it'll be hard to reconfigure everyone's mindsets and practices to create stuff that doesn't spend so much money / is less concerned with weight. From an engineering perspective it seems like simply putting less into a finished product would be easy, but his argument is basically that the design parameters for every single thing produced are so fundamentally oriented towards weight (and size maybe?) that it's very hard to turn around. (This is not exactly the government spending / misaligned incentive argument that is made for many government projects- my read was that this is a subtly different problem.)
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > not exactly the government spending / misaligned incentive argument It sort of is. The folks selling specialised design services for optimising the third sigma of weight savings absolutely don't want NASA to use off-the-shelf components.
  - awongh 2y ago
    It definitely is also that. The whole Starliner thing is afaict totally ridiculous. Crazy how much money is being wasted, and how much would be wasted even if everything was working on schedule when compared to spacex.
h2odragon 2y ago
discussion in 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025020
BurningFrog 2y ago
The article say the cost to orbit is/was $10,000/kg. Anyone know what it is now? What it will/would be with Starship?
- tjpnz 2y ago
  Somewhere between $30 and $150/kg. Depends a lot on how reusable Starship is and that's not something which will be known for a while.
fnord77 2y ago
> aero flaps had never been demonstrated Does he mean grid fins? Because "flaps" are something else entirely. Grid fins have been around since the 1950s.

57 points by MichaelNolan 2y ago

BryanLegend 2y ago

Feel's like we're finally conquering the gravity well!

amelius 2y ago
We have been for more than half a century ...
stavros 2y ago
I wouldn't say well, but yeah, we're conquering it okay.
- incognito124 2y ago
  I will interpret this as a joke
  - stavros 2y ago
    You're interpreting it okay.

kemotep 2y ago

> Starship is intended to be able to transport a million tonnes of cargo to the surface of Mars in just ten launch windows Again, this is from 2021, one of those set of launches was to be last year. And it was to be 1,000 starships bound for Mars to meet that goal. Starship is impressive but we need to be realistic about these numbers. We haven’t even technically had a launch with any payload. Additionally they claim that within 2 years of the Artemis mission we could get 1,000 people on the moon (though say this isn’t going to happen at least). Starship will make Starlink V2 feasible and dozens if not hundreds of missions that would otherwise never be possible. But getting 1 million people to Mars (or even 1,000 people to the Moon) is just fantasy. I will gladly eat crow but none of these capabilities that exist on paper have actually been demonstrated that are necessary to meet these goals. SapceX is the best there is and likely will get to Mars. Just not how Musk describes it.

xupybd 2y ago
He is a salesman that always over promises but still does some cool stuff.
- DoingIsLearning 2y ago
  > still does some cool stuff. Arguably he tweets about it. For the most part the 'doing' of the cool stuff is happening due to the Engineering and Manufacturing teams who are putting in sweat equity on that vision. Judging by the erratic and deteriorating public displays in the past few years I am not even sure he does anything on the strategic level anymore.
  - signatoremo 2y ago
    Without Musk there would not be the breathtaking booster catching happening today, according to his biography: "Why don't we try to use the tower to catch it?" he [ELON] asked. He was referring to the tower that holds the rocket on the launchpad. Musk had already come up with the idea of using that tower to stack the rocket; it had a set of arms that could pick up the first-stage booster, place it on the launch mount, then pick up the second-stage spacecraft, and place it atop the booster. Now he was suggesting that these arms could also be used to catch the booster when it returned to Earth. It was a wild idea, and there was a lot of consternation in the room. "If the booster comes back down to the tower and crashes into it, you can't launch the next rocket for a long time," Bill Riley says. "But we agreed to study different ways to do it." A few weeks later, just after Christmas 2020, the team gathered to brainstorm. Most engineers argued against trying to use the tower to catch the booster. The stacking arms were already dangerously complex. After more than an hour of argument, a consensus was forming to stick with the old idea of putting landing legs on the booster. But Stephen Harlow, the vehicle engineering director, kept arguing for the more audacious approach. "We have this tower, so why not try to use it?" After another hour of debate, Musk stepped in. "Harlow, you're on board with this plan," he said. "So why don't you be in charge of it?" https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1844870018351169942/photo/1 https://x.com/WalterIsaacson/status/1844870018351169942/phot...
  - 2y ago

lukealization 2y ago

Tell me why I shouldn't be concerned about thousands of starships launching from Earth and emitting multiple megatons of Carbon Dioxide in the fragile upper atmosphere? Some studies indicate emissions here are significantly more impactful, and can also damage the Ozone layer as well. Any answers shouldn't consist of "well it's a fraction of what the aviation industry emits" because _the entire point_ of Starship is to scale-up to aviation-like operations.

MVissers 2y ago
If needed and wanted methane can be created sustainably. But not sure about upper atmosphere issue.
golol 2y ago
Because you should consider the upside when you mention the downsides. 1000 Starships launching a year can mean exoplanet imaging, drilling on Europa, interstellar probes, an actual Mars colony, asteroid mining, brilliant pebbles, O'Neil cylinders, L1 solar shields, space junk removal and so on. Not all at the same but each of these is a project that is potentially feasible with enough mass in orbit. I'm not saying you have to like or care about any of them but you should consider what you actually gain for all that emitted CO2.
- la64710 2y ago
  And turn planet earth to barren mars in the process..
  - golol 2y ago
    I replied with some guesstimations to the other comment, I would be curious to hear what you think.
    - la64710 2y ago
      Thank you. I don’t know how right or wrong your calculations are but thanks for putting the numbers together. It would be greatly reassuring to see that something similar or a proper environmental impact study has been done for a massive project like starship and shared with the public. It will also be cool to see if more efficient way of propulsion fuel could be discovered for these launches. Progress can be mindful and sustainable.

awongh 2y ago

I thought it was an interesting way to put it that: the JPL produces things at $1,000,000/kg, and that inside the engineering organization it'll be hard to reconfigure everyone's mindsets and practices to create stuff that doesn't spend so much money / is less concerned with weight. From an engineering perspective it seems like simply putting less into a finished product would be easy, but his argument is basically that the design parameters for every single thing produced are so fundamentally oriented towards weight (and size maybe?) that it's very hard to turn around. (This is not exactly the government spending / misaligned incentive argument that is made for many government projects- my read was that this is a subtly different problem.)

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> not exactly the government spending / misaligned incentive argument It sort of is. The folks selling specialised design services for optimising the third sigma of weight savings absolutely don't want NASA to use off-the-shelf components.
- awongh 2y ago
  It definitely is also that. The whole Starliner thing is afaict totally ridiculous. Crazy how much money is being wasted, and how much would be wasted even if everything was working on schedule when compared to spacex.

h2odragon 2y ago

discussion in 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025020

BurningFrog 2y ago

The article say the cost to orbit is/was $10,000/kg. Anyone know what it is now? What it will/would be with Starship?

tjpnz 2y ago
Somewhere between $30 and $150/kg. Depends a lot on how reusable Starship is and that's not something which will be known for a while.

fnord77 2y ago

> aero flaps had never been demonstrated Does he mean grid fins? Because "flaps" are something else entirely. Grid fins have been around since the 1950s.