6 ms·

Which mission profiles does Starship not make sense for?

by zizee 2y ago

Retric 2y ago
10t to LEO in an unusual orbit. Being smaller than Starship while still huge isn’t necessarily a disadvantage.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Starship should be able to put 10t into LEO significantly cheaper than New Glenn can. Why would anybody pay more?
  - OhMeadhbh 2y ago
    I believe this is factually inaccurate. What's your source? Though admittedly, we have to depend on BO's predictions for per-kg launch costs, and those may be a lot higher for the first few missions and gradually ease off. Google's AI tells me the current costs for a Starship launch is somewhere between $100m and $2b. Wikipedia says a Falcon 9 costs about $50m and can lift about 20t to LEO. I see a blurb that says Musk says Starship launches will get down to $10m each. But... that seems like an "asperational statement." He also said Full Self Driving Mode would be available in 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2025. Not trying to take away from the absolutely cool stuff his companies have done, but it seems like it will be a while before it costs $10m to launch a Starship. This link from 2 years ago estimates a New Glenn launch costing $68m. I have no idea how accurate that number is. But if we're going to use Musk's "asperational" cost estimate for Starship launches in the distant future, we should let BO use an "asperational" figure as well. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/04/05/amazon-signs-rocket-deal-with-blue-origin-arianespace-ula-for-project-kuiper-internet-satellites.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/04/05/amazon-signs-rocket-deal...
    - OhMeadhbh 2y ago
      Dudes. You don't have to down-vote me 'cause I'm just asking for where you got your numbers. I'm not saying you're a horrible person and that SpaceX sucks. I'm saying I have numbers that don't match yours. Let's compare numbers / sources and see what the most likely values would be near-term and long-term.
    - zizee 2y ago
      Ok, so your argument for Starship not being the best choice for all mission profiles is based solely on cost. If Starship was cheaper, then you'd agree that it serves the mission profiles? An estimate of 2 billion per launch is laughable, and suggests you are not arguing in good faith. 100m is more accurate for a fully disposable launch, and SpaceX has demonstrated great progress on reusability of the booster, which will cut costs considerably.
      - Retric 2y ago
        2 billion at the high end isn’t actually unreasonable when compared to falcon 9’s costs which are sitting around 100m/launch right now largely due to inflation. There’s a have a fairly linear relationship between rocket payload and size, and for large structures going big tends to increase cost per pound so ~10x the size resulting in ~20x the cost is just mildly pessimistic. If and only if they the thing is both rapidly reusable and individual starships are actually used for hundreds of launches do those highly optimistic numbers become vaguely possible. Even just a 0.2% failure rate would represent a massive increase over their optimistic estimates.
        zizee 2y ago
        2 billion is ridiculous, and I can only imagine that number was a misunderstanding SpaceX/Musk saying that they were spending 2 billion in a full year of R&D on Starship. https://spacenews.com/spacex-investment-in-starship-approaches-5-billion/ https://spacenews.com/spacex-investment-in-starship-approach...
        Retric 2y ago
        That doesn’t justify why it’s ridiculous, it’s just a coincidence. I doubt SpaceX’s internal costs are ~100m/falcon 9 launch, but companies need a markup to be profitable. 100m - 2B is a huge range covering everything from giving up on reusability and paying back R&D over a small number of flights to significant success resulting in a 90% reduction in costs per kg to LEO. Also, having spent 5B on R&D and doing 5 test flights up to this point works out to 1 billion per flight. That’s not the actual marginal cost per flight, but when people say how expensive each shuttle flight was that’s the number they use. Nothing guarantees they continue to do Starship launches, they could fail it’s among the potential outcomes.
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      Those Starship costs you quote assume an expended booster and the New Glenn costs assume a recovered booster. We don't have to use Musk's cost figures for Starship. Starship has been built in the open and can be relatively accurately cost estimated by experts.
    - FireBeyond 2y ago
      > He also said Full Self Driving Mode would be available in 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2025. He did. He also said it'd be available in 2016, 2017, 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024. So yeah...
ternnoburn 2y ago
Smaller launch to a specific orbit. As an analogy, freight trains are one of the most efficient, cheapest ways to move freight. But moving my laundry to the laundromat is better served by another vehicle.
- zizee 2y ago
  This changes if SpaceX can get full reusability working, which they have been making very steady progress towards.
  - avmich 2y ago
    Yeah, that's the main proposition Starship has for the market. Going to analogy with laundromat, you need to include the cost of single-use laundry cart and remember that your laundromat is on another end of the same asphalted road which the truck nearby can easily drive on. Not sure at all if costs - and hassles, of course - of buying a cart are less than some change for the costs of the fuel - the truck is autonomous, of course.
OhMeadhbh 2y ago
Starship is heavy lift / heavy expense. If you want to put 1 small-sat in orbit, you don't use Starship, you use a Rocket Lab Electron. It's MUCH cheaper. Or you wait until you find 600 other small sat users who want to launch into the same / similar orbit. The talk I heard was that New Glenn was supposed to be BO's answer to Starship (or more likely Falcon Heavy) that could launch a bunch of Project Kuiper satellites into LEO so Amazon could compete with Starlink and feed Amazon's Ground Station as a Service offering. If we are to believe the published numbers, New Glenn can lift 50 imperial tons to LEO, Starship Block III will hoist 200 tons and Falcon Heavy will lift 50-60 depending on how re-usable you want your launch to be. I'm not a heavy lift sales-person, but I've been in the room when they discussed what they thought they could sell to govt / mil / commercial customers. So take this with a little bit of salt... Seems to me BO was targeting a slightly smaller launch vehicle than SpaceX was going with so they could decouple schedule with Amazon's Kuiper Project. You don't want to have that cool new rocket you developed dependent on a satellite constellation that gets delayed. So you have a rocket that would be easier to fill with a number of small to medium sized satellites to LEO or (fewer) to GEO. And like other people on the thread have commented, it seems BO is a decade behind SpaceX, so... yeah... a big rocket that competes with Starship is pretty risky for BO. And yes, I understand that BO is independent from Amazon, but from what I've seen this is just so they can execute on a schedule that isn't determined by AMZN's board of directors. They seem pretty closely related, just from talking with Kuiper, GSaaS and BO engineers. I don't work for any of the above mentioned companies and have no insider information. YMMV. Just my guesses from watching some of the personalities involved for the last 30 years.
- starik36 2y ago
  I am going out on a limb and say that Project Kuiper satellites themselves are nowhere near ready. Amazon is supposed to launch 50% of the constellation of ~6000 into orbit by July 2026 or risk losing frequencies. So you would think there would be some urgency. Amazon purchased pretty much all remaining Atlas 5 launches from ULA. This is a proven rocket and ready to fly. Why aren't the satellites being launched? The only thing I can think of is that they are not ready yet.
  - 2y ago
DrBazza 2y ago
Non-orbital. But it can do that as well. Just sacrifice the rocket and use the landing fuel for more delta-v.

Which mission profiles does Starship not make sense for?

by zizee 2y ago

Which mission profiles does Starship not make sense for?

Retric 2y ago

10t to LEO in an unusual orbit. Being smaller than Starship while still huge isn’t necessarily a disadvantage.

bryanlarsen 2y ago
Starship should be able to put 10t into LEO significantly cheaper than New Glenn can. Why would anybody pay more?
- OhMeadhbh 2y ago
  I believe this is factually inaccurate. What's your source? Though admittedly, we have to depend on BO's predictions for per-kg launch costs, and those may be a lot higher for the first few missions and gradually ease off. Google's AI tells me the current costs for a Starship launch is somewhere between $100m and $2b. Wikipedia says a Falcon 9 costs about $50m and can lift about 20t to LEO. I see a blurb that says Musk says Starship launches will get down to $10m each. But... that seems like an "asperational statement." He also said Full Self Driving Mode would be available in 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2025. Not trying to take away from the absolutely cool stuff his companies have done, but it seems like it will be a while before it costs $10m to launch a Starship. This link from 2 years ago estimates a New Glenn launch costing $68m. I have no idea how accurate that number is. But if we're going to use Musk's "asperational" cost estimate for Starship launches in the distant future, we should let BO use an "asperational" figure as well. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/04/05/amazon-signs-rocket-deal-with-blue-origin-arianespace-ula-for-project-kuiper-internet-satellites.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/04/05/amazon-signs-rocket-deal...
  - OhMeadhbh 2y ago
    Dudes. You don't have to down-vote me 'cause I'm just asking for where you got your numbers. I'm not saying you're a horrible person and that SpaceX sucks. I'm saying I have numbers that don't match yours. Let's compare numbers / sources and see what the most likely values would be near-term and long-term.
  - zizee 2y ago
    Ok, so your argument for Starship not being the best choice for all mission profiles is based solely on cost. If Starship was cheaper, then you'd agree that it serves the mission profiles? An estimate of 2 billion per launch is laughable, and suggests you are not arguing in good faith. 100m is more accurate for a fully disposable launch, and SpaceX has demonstrated great progress on reusability of the booster, which will cut costs considerably.
    - Retric 2y ago
      2 billion at the high end isn’t actually unreasonable when compared to falcon 9’s costs which are sitting around 100m/launch right now largely due to inflation. There’s a have a fairly linear relationship between rocket payload and size, and for large structures going big tends to increase cost per pound so ~10x the size resulting in ~20x the cost is just mildly pessimistic. If and only if they the thing is both rapidly reusable and individual starships are actually used for hundreds of launches do those highly optimistic numbers become vaguely possible. Even just a 0.2% failure rate would represent a massive increase over their optimistic estimates.
      - zizee 2y ago
        2 billion is ridiculous, and I can only imagine that number was a misunderstanding SpaceX/Musk saying that they were spending 2 billion in a full year of R&D on Starship. https://spacenews.com/spacex-investment-in-starship-approaches-5-billion/ https://spacenews.com/spacex-investment-in-starship-approach...
        Retric 2y ago
        That doesn’t justify why it’s ridiculous, it’s just a coincidence. I doubt SpaceX’s internal costs are ~100m/falcon 9 launch, but companies need a markup to be profitable. 100m - 2B is a huge range covering everything from giving up on reusability and paying back R&D over a small number of flights to significant success resulting in a 90% reduction in costs per kg to LEO. Also, having spent 5B on R&D and doing 5 test flights up to this point works out to 1 billion per flight. That’s not the actual marginal cost per flight, but when people say how expensive each shuttle flight was that’s the number they use. Nothing guarantees they continue to do Starship launches, they could fail it’s among the potential outcomes.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    Those Starship costs you quote assume an expended booster and the New Glenn costs assume a recovered booster. We don't have to use Musk's cost figures for Starship. Starship has been built in the open and can be relatively accurately cost estimated by experts.
  - FireBeyond 2y ago
    > He also said Full Self Driving Mode would be available in 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2025. He did. He also said it'd be available in 2016, 2017, 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024. So yeah...

ternnoburn 2y ago

Smaller launch to a specific orbit. As an analogy, freight trains are one of the most efficient, cheapest ways to move freight. But moving my laundry to the laundromat is better served by another vehicle.

zizee 2y ago
This changes if SpaceX can get full reusability working, which they have been making very steady progress towards.
- avmich 2y ago
  Yeah, that's the main proposition Starship has for the market. Going to analogy with laundromat, you need to include the cost of single-use laundry cart and remember that your laundromat is on another end of the same asphalted road which the truck nearby can easily drive on. Not sure at all if costs - and hassles, of course - of buying a cart are less than some change for the costs of the fuel - the truck is autonomous, of course.

OhMeadhbh 2y ago

Starship is heavy lift / heavy expense. If you want to put 1 small-sat in orbit, you don't use Starship, you use a Rocket Lab Electron. It's MUCH cheaper. Or you wait until you find 600 other small sat users who want to launch into the same / similar orbit. The talk I heard was that New Glenn was supposed to be BO's answer to Starship (or more likely Falcon Heavy) that could launch a bunch of Project Kuiper satellites into LEO so Amazon could compete with Starlink and feed Amazon's Ground Station as a Service offering. If we are to believe the published numbers, New Glenn can lift 50 imperial tons to LEO, Starship Block III will hoist 200 tons and Falcon Heavy will lift 50-60 depending on how re-usable you want your launch to be. I'm not a heavy lift sales-person, but I've been in the room when they discussed what they thought they could sell to govt / mil / commercial customers. So take this with a little bit of salt... Seems to me BO was targeting a slightly smaller launch vehicle than SpaceX was going with so they could decouple schedule with Amazon's Kuiper Project. You don't want to have that cool new rocket you developed dependent on a satellite constellation that gets delayed. So you have a rocket that would be easier to fill with a number of small to medium sized satellites to LEO or (fewer) to GEO. And like other people on the thread have commented, it seems BO is a decade behind SpaceX, so... yeah... a big rocket that competes with Starship is pretty risky for BO. And yes, I understand that BO is independent from Amazon, but from what I've seen this is just so they can execute on a schedule that isn't determined by AMZN's board of directors. They seem pretty closely related, just from talking with Kuiper, GSaaS and BO engineers. I don't work for any of the above mentioned companies and have no insider information. YMMV. Just my guesses from watching some of the personalities involved for the last 30 years.

starik36 2y ago
I am going out on a limb and say that Project Kuiper satellites themselves are nowhere near ready. Amazon is supposed to launch 50% of the constellation of ~6000 into orbit by July 2026 or risk losing frequencies. So you would think there would be some urgency. Amazon purchased pretty much all remaining Atlas 5 launches from ULA. This is a proven rocket and ready to fly. Why aren't the satellites being launched? The only thing I can think of is that they are not ready yet.
- 2y ago

DrBazza 2y ago

Non-orbital. But it can do that as well. Just sacrifice the rocket and use the landing fuel for more delta-v.