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China has missed their window of opportunity, sadly. For the next big war, the US will simply not even need to air or sea to deliver weapons or supplies (see S
by a34729t 3mo ago
China has missed their window of opportunity, sadly.
For the next big war, the US will simply not even need to air or sea to deliver weapons or supplies (see SpaceX's StarFall, of which 60x4 should fit into Starship). Per my calculations, the JDAM version of this will be cheaper than flying planes (and pilots) to drop bombs or cruise missiles.
For small(er) wars, cheap drones break everything as they can destroy your backfield. Unless of course you happen to move your backfield into orbit and beyond.
- pphysch 3mo agoOpportunity for what?
- greekrich92 3mo agoNot sure if you've noticed, but none of that SpaceX stuff is going to happen
- marcusverus 3mo agoL̶a̶u̶n̶c̶h̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶n̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶v̶a̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶f̶u̶n̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶F̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶o̶s̶s̶i̶b̶l̶e̶.̶ ̶ ̶F̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶e̶c̶o̶n̶o̶m̶i̶c̶a̶l̶.̶ ̶ ̶M̶e̶g̶a̶c̶o̶n̶s̶t̶a̶l̶l̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶L̶E̶O̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶i̶p̶e̶ ̶d̶r̶e̶a̶m̶.̶ ̶ ̶S̶t̶a̶r̶s̶h̶i̶p̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶n̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶f̶l̶y̶.̶ ̶ Starfall will never happen!
- shimman 3mo agoNo serious really argued that; what they argued is that a Mars colony is impractical, interplanetary travel as a fantasy, and data centers in space as delusional.
- Robotbeat 3mo agoHaving followed SpaceX since the beginning, this is not true at all. People doubted every single step. Industry experts did.
- noosphr 3mo agoPeople doubt the timelines, not the claims. The timelines are pure fantasy and have been since the start.
- ceejayoz 3mo ago> People doubt the timelines, not the claims. People doubted the claims, too. Particularly landing and re-use. Concrete example: https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/13/ula-plans-to-introduce-new-rocket-one-piece-at-a-time/ https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/13/ula-plans-to-introduce...
- 1shooner 3mo ago>“When you talk about conventional technologies on a booster like you see other people doing, and being able to recover and reuse that booster 15 times with relatively minimial refurbishmoent costs, that’s pretty darn challenging, and maybe not the right place, in our view, to start on that problem,” Bruno said. This doesn't really sound like doubting any claim; he's talking about how his organization was approaching it given their limited resources.
- ceejayoz 3mo agoULA was openly skeptical about the viability of landing at all. Then reuse. Then the goalposts moved to this, repeated reuse.
- bumby 3mo agoI think that misremembers or misrepresents history. The DC-X was program developed in the early 1990s expressly to prove the feasibility of orbital rocket vertical landings and rapid turn-around/reuse. It never made it to the full orbital regime because it was scrapped early, but it was considered successful in proving the proof-of-concept. It was also managed by the predecessors of ULA (McDonnel Douglas, which later merged with Boeing).
- lostlogin 3mo agoThe next war is going to need the US to do something pretty spectacular if it’s going to reclaim the ground it’s lost in the Iran war. The situation there is an utter joke, and shows no sign of wrapping up any time soon.
- Robotbeat 3mo agoThat’s because there’s no political will for ground forces by the US because it’s a dumb war. If there was political will, then the area around the Hormuz strait would’ve been seized, as well as the nuclear sites secured. Carpet bombing, too, not just surgical strikes.
- elzbardico 3mo agoMost analysts doubt the US, on its present phase, has the capabilities of doing so.
- lostlogin 3mo ago> That’s because there’s no political will for ground forces by the US because it’s a dumb war. It’s all very well claiming you can win, but when you don’t that’s the result you’re stuck with.
- dredmorbius 3mo agoIt's not merely that the US has not, will not, and/or can not put boots on the ground. It's that regional bases and sea-based platforms from which the US has operated with impunity in previous conflicts, as recently as a decade ago, are no longer safe from retaliation. This puts the US, its forces, and perhaps more significantly its friends and allies in the region at risk in both the present and any future conflict(s).
- manvillej 3mo agoI just don't see how the fuel costs of getting things up to space winning out unless production is located up there. especially since rocket launches tend to be extremely static. More dangerously, I think that would inevitably lead to space being the battlefield. Since that area doesn't need any more shrapnel orbiting at 17,500 mph; it seems an idea best left to the drawing board. The cleanup required will make clearing mine fields seem like dusting the living room.
- ceejayoz 3mo ago> I just don't see how the fuel costs of getting things up to space winning out unless production is located up there. Starship's in theory targeting something like a million bucks in fuel for a launch. For a military that spends more than that on individual missiles, that's peanuts.
- tsimionescu 3mo agoStarship is also in theory targetting to reach Mars in 2022.
- ceejayoz 3mo agoThere's an unavoidable physical cap here. It's fueled with methane and oxygen, and its size is known. It can't be, say, $50m/flight in fuel for the same reason a 747's flight can't be; there's not enough space for that much fuel.
- tsimionescu 3mo agoSure, but that's true of Saturn V as well, and of Falcon 9, and Soyuz and any other rocket you want. That didn't make space deployment a viable military strategy so far, and I think we should be skeptical of any such claim about Starship. Also, fuel is just part of the cost of a rocket.
- ceejayoz 3mo ago
- throwawayqqq11 3mo agoHave you considered the cost difference of drone re-entry vs commercial container logistics? There are many options to deliver drones to a location and i dont think from orbit is the most viable one, let alone moving any production there.
- icegreentea2 3mo agoUnclear how China will react to orbital/near-orbital launches that track near/over China in a hot war situation. If I were China, I'd probably be backdoor signalling that they would consider these launches to be potential nuclear strikes to try to get them off the table.
- __turbobrew__ 3mo agoChina could also prove to the world their ASAT capabilities by shooting down military orbital payloads which overfly their territory.
- tsimionescu 3mo agoI'd bet China would like nothing more than the USA basing its future war strategy on Starship, with its long history of fictional timelines and capacities.