SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

kbd512 · 2023-05-05 22:11:59

SpaceNut,

Where are all the eco-terrorist lawsuits against the Lithium industry's Lithium brine pools, which are used to make Lithium-ion batteries?

The booster's "thruster fuel" is called "Methane", aka "natural gas", because it's... natural.

This is getting sillier by the day. Some people here are coming up with increasingly absurd reasons for why SpaceX shouldn't be permitted to send their giant rockets to the moon and Mars.

RobertDyck · 2023-05-06 03:11:10

What SpaceNut posted raises another question. Tom asked for water depth 20 miles off shore from Boca Chica. Is that statute miles (normal miles) or is that nautical miles? I used the ruler tool in Google Earth Pro to find a location precisely 20 miles east of the coast. I found a spot on the coast due east from the Starbase launch site at Boca Chica. The coast is north-south at that location so due east is perpendicular to the coast. However, the rule tool is calibrated in statute miles. The UK has claimed sovereignty over waters 20 nautical miles off shore, and has done so since the early 1800s, possibly earlier. The US claims sovereignty over waters 12 nautical miles off shore. In the 1980s, Canada claimed control over resources 200 nautical miles off shore in ordér to be able to control the fishery of the Grand Banks. Canada and the US came to an agreement where the border is where Canada can control the fishery. Now if you want to know water depth 20 miles off shore, is that statute miles or nautical miles? I may have to go back to Google Earth Pro to remeasure. (Shades of Mars Climate Orbiter)

RobertDyck · 2023-05-06 03:57:01

SpaceNut wrote:

The booster carries lithium batteries, thruster fuels that are Storables and possibly hydraulic fluids that become the pollutants when we destroy a ship during the launch profile.

kbd512 responded to this, but I was also confused. SpaceaNut has been a member of this forum for years so should know better. Falcon 9 rockets use RP1 fuel and liquid oxygen. Starship uses liquid methane and liquid oxygen. RP1 fuel is mostly kerosene, basically highly refined jet fuel. Both RP1 and Jet A are distilled from petroleum, so can have traces of other petroleum products. Diesel fuel is also a petroleum distillate and also mostly kerosene but not as refined as jet fuel or RP1. For rockets, RP1 must have all moisture removed because the cold of liquid oxygen will freeze moisture to ice crystals and that ice could clog the fuel pump. Both the liquid oxygen pump and fuel pump are connected to the rocket engine so the fuel pump could be chilled to the same temperature as the LOX pump. Heavy petroleum products could also freeze or turn to a jel at those temperatures so any heavy petroleum that could clog the fuel pump must also be removed.

But as kbd512 said, Starship doesn't use RP1. It uses methane. After Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD) the fuel will either burn or be spilled out. It will warm to outdoors ambient temperature very quickly. At any temperature outdoors, even in winter, the methane will boil to gas. Methane gas is produced naturally by decay of organic materials in a swamp. The area around Boca Chica is a swamp. Organic materials that decay on the ocean floor also produce methane. When a human beings farts, that fart is a combination of hydrogen gas and methane. It's natural, there is no toxicity. Starship is the cleanest, least toxic rocket ever built.

tahanson43206 · 2023-05-06 06:28:13

For RobertDyck re #127

Thank you for continuing to develop and refine the offshore launch site concept!

I picked up the 20 miles figure (standard or nautical not specified) from a post by another member, and just ran with it. The concept I picked up from the other member was that the launch facility would be located far enough off shore so that safety would be assured to folks living at Boca Chica and nearby land areas, and so that sounds produced by launching vehicles would be less obnoxious. The flight pace of Starship vehicles is going to be on the order of one per hour when space industry develops, so having an off shore facility makes perfect sense.

The vehicles can be flown from shore (manufacturing and refurbishment facilities) to the launch platform. It is no longer necessary to use barges or other ancient transport mechanisms to move Starship components from shore to the offshore facility.

For RobertDyck re your discovery of salt layers under the proposed launch site location ....

I haven't had time to investigate the suitability of a salt layer of the thickness your research showed us to serve as "bedrock" for a massive facility.

For someone (don't remember who) who objected that SpaceX should pay for the facility .... I am of the opinion that this should be a US asset available to all manufactures of rockets, and most definitely NOT a proprietary facility. The potential exists to create a Sovereign Fund, similar to the one created in Alaska for distribution of oil income to residents of the State. The space industry potential should yield wealth beyond human imagination. If we allow the typical capitalist system to run unchecked, all that wealth will become concentrated in a few hands, much as we see today with most resources on Earth.

We (humans and especially the US) have the opportunity to catch the flow of space industry wealth flows at the launch site, and to distribute whatever income is earned to all US citizens via the existing tax payment structure. The amounts earned will be small at first, but digital systems in existence today can handle small sums just fine, and the idea is to put in place a mechanism through which the wealth to come is distributed to all US citizens via the launch fees charged at a facility build and owned by the US. As with all property owned by the US, actual work would be done by contractors, with a few government employees keeping an eye on things.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2023-05-06 07:10:08

For all who may be interested in the (proposed) launch platform for Starships East of Boca Chica ..

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rtb … sp=sharing

With it's usual enthusiasm, ChatGPT tackled several questions about a possible launch platform in the Gulf.

I added specification for launch of a fully loaded Starship every hour on the hour, 24x7*365.

(th)

GW Johnson · 2023-05-06 09:43:08

Just to aid with the confusion, 1 statute mile = 5280 feet = 1609.3 m = 1.6093 km. 1 nautical mile = 6076.1 feet = 1852 m = 1.852 km. 1 nautical mile = 1.15078 statute mile, and 1 statute mile = 0.86898 nautical mile.

Distances at sea, such as 12 mile limits or 200 mile limits, are normally given as nautical miles.

GW

GW Johnson · 2023-05-06 09:57:14

As for the 1st launch snafu, I want SpaceX to succeed. Let there be no mistake about that.

The best way to succeed doing something quite risky and quite expensive, is to do the risk-taking right. Neither be too risk-averse, nor be too cavalier about the risks.

You mitigate those risks that you already know how to mitigate, to the best of your ability. The ones you must take, you quantify and attempt to contain the consequences of, to the best of your ability, knowing that it cannot be perfect. Since it cannot be perfect, you caution everyone to stand back a bit further still, before you light the fuse.

THAT is the way forward that is both fastest, and also with the least objections from those around you. Fail to do it that way, and then dealing with the outside objections, especially if government bureaucrats or lots of lawyers are involved, WILL slow you down catastrophically. THAT is the long-known way to kill your own project!

Yeah, they threw sand on a beach. They also threw it on some outsiders, and even on a couple of towns or settlements. Where it wasn't supposed to go, according to their public safety impact statement. Which was the basis of their license to fly.

Plus the concrete chunks went flying about 10 times further than was estimated in their public safety impact statement, a rather egregious difference. And far more serious than the sand.

Plus, they might not have downed their own rocket with flung debris, had Elon not screwed up the decision. Now the regulators are upset, and the public around them is disturbed. And some of that public opposes this, so why is anyone surprised about somebody getting sued? In this case, FAA granted the license, so FAA got sued first. My best guess is that more lawsuits will follow.

All of this could have been, and SHOULD HAVE BEEN, avoided!

I have watched a lot of CEO's make a lot of bad decisions. This one is one of the worst I have ever seen, because it would have been so easily avoided.

Low priority having a flame diverter on a big thrust stand because you "hope" the concrete would last for one shot? When all the CE's in the world could have told you it would not? And all that other large rocket experience over decades also told you you needed a diverter?

That's just plain STUPID!

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2023-05-06 10:04:28)

SpaceNut · 2023-05-06 11:11:41

Here is why it matters as SpaceX’s Starship rocket took off on April 20, it exploded, destroying the launchpad and sending pieces of metal, concrete, and particulate matter into the surrounding environment, according to a new lawsuit. The explosion also started a 3.5-acre fire on state park land in Texas. Which is being brought by Center for Biological Diversity, American Bird Conservancy, Surfrider Foundation, Save Rio Grande Valley and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas. “SpaceX activities have and will adversely affect the surrounding wildlife habitat and communities. In addition to harm from construction activities and increased vehicle traffic, rocket launches result in intense heat, noise, and light pollution,” the complaint.

RobertDyck · 2023-05-06 12:32:09

Re post #133: I scoff at "In addition to harm from construction activities and increased vehicle traffic, rocket launches result in intense heat, noise, and light pollution".

Construction activities bring economic prosperity to the area. Construction means workers must buy more groceries, attend movie theatres and restaurants for entertainment, and generally make use of all the local town and city services. And "increase heat"? Are you serious? Only if you stand so close to the rocket that you are well inside the evacuation zone. And only during launch. "Noise, and light pollution"? Only during launches, and those events bring a lot of spectators. Those spectators will want icecream, etc. "Light pollution" is only a thing if you want to use a telescope to observe stars. At Boca Chica during a launch, spectators are there to see the launch, they aren't stargazing.

RobertDyck · 2023-05-06 12:39:37

At 20 nautical miles off the coast from Boca Chica beach, according to Google Earth Pro, water depth is 44 metres = 144 feet.

RGClark · 2023-05-06 15:12:12

In addition to the three alarming facts about the launch I discussed in post #63 there was another fact just as alarming, the lean the rocket initiated soon after launch. It was assumed this was commanded by launch control. But Elon revealed this was done by the rocket itself to compensate for the 3 shut down engines:

Elon Musk pushes for orbital goal following data gathering objectives during Starship debut
written by Chris Bergin May 3, 2023
…
“Those engines did not explode, but they were just, the system didn’t think they were healthy enough to bring them to a full thrust,” added Musk during a post-flight Twitter spaces call, adding that is why the vehicle appeared to lean away from the Tower during ascent.
It was assumed the lean could have been related to pad avoidance, but Musk quickly noted that it is undesirable due to the “blowing torch” of the Raptor 2 engines on the OLM ring.
“If you move sideways sooner, you are moving that big, cutting torch across the launch ring. So, you can think of this thing like the world’s biggest cutting torch, basically. Depending on how close the engines are, they erode that steel at a roughly — I think half an inch to an inch per second of high strength steel is eroded by the cutting torch.”
“(The lean was actually) related to the engines out, and we do not normally expect to lean. It should be aspirationally going straight up.”
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2023/05 … hip-debut/

This is extremely concerning because if this really was a fully automated compensation maneuver then if the shut down engines were on the other side the lean would have been towards the launch tower! The result would have been a catastrophic explosion.

Bob Clark

kbd512 · 2023-05-06 19:23:28

The most alarming fact at play here is people on a forum dedicated to Mars exploration and colonization inventing reasons for why we shouldn't allow SpaceX to develop the rocket technology required to send people to Mars. I'll freely admit that I'm heavily biased towards sending people to Mars. Hold that against me if you wish, but know that you have your work cut out for you if you're going to try to convince me that we shouldn't go.

Has anyone here developed and launched a rocket twice as powerful as a Saturn V?

If you have, then I'd be perfectly willing to support your rocket development program over SpaceX's program. Step up and create an alternative if you think we need one. Disparaging Elon Musk and/or SpaceX is not solving any problems.

RobertDyck · 2023-05-06 19:55:45

kbd512: I'm on your side on this one.

GW Johnson · 2023-05-07 13:32:34

I don't think there's anybody here that wants SpaceX to shut down or to not succeed. I do think there's a few of us who wish they'd "do it right the first time" where the public safety is involved. They quite clearly did not do that with the first SS/SH launch.

Actually, "doing it right the first time" would not only have benefitted public safety, it would have been better for SpaceX itself. Its critics out there somewhere would have far less of a leg to stand on. And, not being in trouble with the regulators means they get launch licenses easier and faster. Everybody wins when you "do it right". Excepting maybe the critics.

When you are dealing with fire and explosion hazards, and with massive flying things that could fall out of the sky during experimental flight test, the decisions about what risks to take, and where and when to take them, are quite heavily technical in nature. I don't think even Kbd512 could quibble with that assessment.

SpaceX has technically-trained people within its ranks who are qualified and also knowledgeable enough to make those types of decisions, as well as the basic vehicle and infrastructure design decisions. They should be the ones making them. Simple as that.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2023-05-07 13:37:20)

kbd512 · 2023-05-07 15:02:58

RobertDyck,

I wasn't aware that we were choosing sides here. I would prefer that reasonable people learn how to forgive and move on. I'm not so single-minded that I refuse to accept that mistakes were made, but I will not fixate on what is presently being addressed. Chasing after perfection is a pointless endeavor.

I want a better future for my children. I view space exploration and colonization as a critical part of that better future. I'm willing to overlook some mistakes along the way to that better future, because I don't expect perfection from imperfect people. As of right now, SpaceX appears to be the only game in town for taking humanity to where I'd like to see it go. In time, I expect other options to become available. As of right now, nobody else is even trying.

tahanson43206 · 2023-05-07 16:32:23

For RGClark .... this is a topic you created, and for which you are responsible.

Elon Musk has a work force of 9500 people, give or take.

He has accomplished what no other human being has accomplished.

He was leading that work force toward a test launch of Super Heavy. He appears to have placed too much confidence in the claims of a concrete salesperson.

He recognized the error and had set in motion steps to install a metal/flush system, but the system was not going to be ready when that 9500 person work force was at the peak of readiness for the Super Heavy test.

Elon Musk made a calculated bet that the test would accomplish a subset of the overall goals, despite the likely failure of the launch platform.

As a result of the test, defective hardware is safely at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, and the SpaceX staff have gigabytes of data to study to improve operations at the next launch.

You and other members of this forum appear to believe that holding off on the launch until the water deluge system was ready would have been worth doing.

You are CLEARLY not able to estimate the cost to SpaceX of the unneeded delay.

From my perspective, the launch was an unqualified success in every possible measure. The SpaceX team is hard at work on the next version of the Super Heavy, and my guess is that a water deluge system will be in place.

As nearly as I can tell, not ONE living creature was negatively impacted by the launch.

A man who can take a risk like that deserves to earn the billions and potentially trillions of monetary units that are "out there" to be collected.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2023-05-07 17:47:11

The ChatGPT transcript at the link below is about great leaders from human history who have taken great risks and brought everyone home.

The list is far longer than the transcript allows, and indeed, most tales of this kind are lost to later generations.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12tB … sp=sharing

I believe that our generation is witnessing both the best possible leadership and the absolute worst by human beings.

(th)

RGClark · 2023-05-11 16:41:12

Brain Teaser: Why does Falcon Heavy disprove the SpaceX justification for building the SuperHeavy/Starship?
MAJOR hint: Why did Arianespace want to move away from the Ariane 5 to the Ariane 6?

After writing that, it occurred to me there are two different answers to my riddle. Hint for 2nd answer: how many Merlin’s flew on actual operational missions on Falcon 9’s before the Falcon Heavy flew? How many times did the Raptor before the SuperHeavy/Starship?

Bob Clark

RobertDyck · 2023-05-12 05:50:11

Bob Clark,
Falcon Heavy is a useful vehicle. I posted a thread about using Falcon for a human mission to the Moon. Two launches: the first delivers a reusable lunar vehicle to lunar orbit ( no space station), the second launch carries crew in a Dragon to rendezvous with it. A new upper stage performs lunar orbit insertion (LOI), refuels the lunar lander, and de-orbits the lunar lander. The second and subsequent missions only require a single launch of Falcon Heavy because the lander will be waiting in lunar orbit.

When I did the calculations, Falcon Heavy side boosters could be recovered on drone ships; however the central core booster would have to be expended to get lift capacity sufficient. Of course Falcon upper stage and the new stage mentioned it the previous paragraph would be expended. Dragon trunk would have propellant tanks and engine installed for lunar orbit departure aka trans-Earth Insertion (TEI). And the trunk would be expended. Dragon capsule and lunar lander would be reusable.

However, look at cost of Falcon Heavy vs Starship. Starship is much more affordable. Rather than some intermediate vehicle just to test engines, he's developing the final vehicle. Development will take work. Be patient.

RGClark · 2023-05-15 06:26:11

RobertDyck wrote:

Bob Clark,
Falcon Heavy is a useful vehicle. I posted a thread about using Falcon for a human mission to the Moon. Two launches: the first delivers a reusable lunar vehicle to lunar orbit ( no space station), the second launch carries crew in a Dragon to rendezvous with it. A new upper stage performs lunar orbit insertion (LOI), refuels the lunar lander, and de-orbits the lunar lander. The second and subsequent missions only require a single launch of Falcon Heavy because the lander will be waiting in lunar orbit.
When I did the calculations, Falcon Heavy side boosters could be recovered on drone ships; however the central core booster would have to be expended to get lift capacity sufficient. Of course Falcon upper stage and the new stage mentioned it the previous paragraph would be expended. Dragon trunk would have propellant tanks and engine installed for lunar orbit departure aka trans-Earth Insertion (TEI). And the trunk would be expended. Dragon capsule and lunar lander would be reusable.
However, look at cost of Falcon Heavy vs Starship. Starship is much more affordable. Rather than some intermediate vehicle just to test engines, he's developing the final vehicle. Development will take work. Be patient.

Yes. Two Falcon Heavy’s would be 120 tons to LEO. This definitely would be enough for a manned lunar lander mission.

Bob Clark

RGClark · 2023-05-15 06:34:21

About my riddle, the first solution to the riddle comes out of the assumption that from its economy of size that SuperHeavy/Starship will be THE be-all, end-all for ALL of spaceflight. In point of fact, for EVERY form of transport going back to the horse-drawn era, the transport has always come in different sizes.

The point is well illustrated by the example of the jumbo jets. See the highlighted sentence in the article:

The largest jumbo jets actually make up a *tiny* proportion, less than 1%, of total air traffic.

The same is true of car traffic. The amount of traffic carried by Greyhound buses is a tiny proportion of the traffic carried by passenger cars.

Sure, the bus companies and the jumbo jet airliners would love if the majority of passengers were on their vehicles, but THATS NOT WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT.

The airline companies know this of course. The same airline companies that operate the jumbo jets also operate the smaller aircraft. If those airline companies were to only offer the jumbo jets they would rapidly go out of business.

ArianeSpace found a similar phenomenon with the Ariane 5. It was designed to carry separate satellites to orbit. But what they frequently found is that when one satellite was ready to go, ArianeSpace had to wait around for another satellite ready to go for it to be worth launching the Ariane 5. And in point of fact most satellite companies wanted their OWN DEDICATED LAUNCHER.

That is the primary reason why ArianeSpace wanted to move to the Ariane 6, so customers could affordably have their own dedicated launchers.

The Falcon Heavy gives further evidence of this. The per kilogram cost of the FH is less than the F9. If per kilogram cost was the key thing, then the Falcon Heavy would packed with separate satellites and would be launching as often as the F9. But in point of fact, FH launches have been few and far between, and have only been used when there are satellites that can’t be launched on the smaller launchers, including the F9. As before, the satellite companies want their own dedicated launchers.

SpaceX might claim their per kilogram cost will make them preferred but the example of the bus companies and the airlines make that argument extremely dubious. Their own Falcon Heavy also argues against it.

Also, I don’t agree their per kilogram cost will in fact be that much cheaper than the other New Space companies. For those other companies know SpaceX was able to cut development cost by 90% by the commercial space approach, i.e., getting private financing rather than government financing.

Then consider: when pricing their launch vehicles the largest proportion of that price is not coming from the production cost, but in fact due to the amount added on to recoup the development cost over time.

SpaceX has spent $10 billion developing the SuperHeavy/Starship with more billions yet to be spent on the development. This is in the range of 100 times higher than the development cost for the companies with smaller launchers. Then the amount to be added on to the price due to development cost, which again makes up the largest bulk of the customer price, will be radically smaller.

Note that SpaceX won’t be superior in price reduction due to reusability either since all the New Space companies also are focusing on reusability.

Robert Clark

kbd512 · 2023-05-15 11:45:19

RGClark,

The airline companies know this of course. The same airline companies that operate the jumbo jets also operate the smaller aircraft. If those airline companies were to only offer the jumbo jets they would rapidly go out of business.

They would've already gone out of business trying to ferry individual people across oceans. Your argument falls apart in the face of existing observable reality. The average person cannot begin to afford to fly across the ocean on their own dime in their own private jet, yet they do it by the tens of millions every day aboard these much larger and more expensive super jumbo airliners. Unless nobody at any of the major airline services cares about money, then maybe they know something you don't.

Regardless of rocket size, they all need to achieve orbit for their payload to either stay in space or go anywhere else in space besides LEO. This is why nobody sends people and cargo across the Atlantic or Pacific by business jet unless cost is no object, even though the smaller jet is technically capable of making the crossing with smaller numbers of people or cargo parcels. The biz jet purchase cost is less, maintenance cost is less, and the fuel bill is less, yet somehow the ticket price of flying aboard a biz jet is not even close to being cheaper than flying aboard a large jumbo jet. It's not all down to the cost of the pilot and co-pilot, either. Their salary is a minor portion of the total cost since they're paid by the flight hour until much later in their career when they become full-time salaried employees.

There's a minimum operating cost associated with reliably making the transit across an ocean, tied directly to the number of people and machines making the crossing. We don't see smaller airliners becoming substantially cheaper to operate than larger airliners capable of distributing the cost of a flight amongst all the passengers and air freight being delivered. Smaller jets are used when there aren't enough people or cargo, and generally long enough flight distance (since all flying machines that use aerodynamic lift have a payload-to-distance optimization), to justify using smaller numbers of larger but otherwise more economical aircraft.

For short range flights within a continent and carrying much smaller numbers of people or cargo to main hub airports that can service larger jets taking passengers and cargo to more distant destinations, it makes economic sense to use smaller aircraft, so we actually do that. The difference between a super jumbo and a biz jet / commuter jet is how much the aircraft purchase loan from the banks costs with interest included, the fuel bill, maintenance bill, and pilot / co-pilot salary bill are split amongst the passengers or cargo on the flight manifest. You obviously burn less fuel flying a biz jet / commuter jet and the jet itself costs less, sometimes a lot less, but cost per passenger is proportionally higher in all other respects. If such were not the case, then biz jets would be the most economical form of ocean-crossing air transport, but they're not and it's not even close.

And in point of fact most satellite companies wanted their OWN DEDICATED LAUNCHER.

If someone else's payload will complicate or detract from the objectives of your own payload delivery, which you spent crazy money on to shave every last pound of weight off of it, then you may be willing to pay more money for a dedicated flight, but Ariane 5 and Ariane 6 are terrible examples of affordability. The total development cost of that expendable rocket has been $4.4B with a 15.5t max payload and $177M cost per launch, yet you're asserting that $9.8B for something that will deliver 150t with full reusability and $10M per launch (5X Elon's optimistic estimate) will somehow remain unattractive to people who otherwise could never afford to fly. Let's go further and assert that Starship will cost $100M per launch, so that SpaceX can recover the entire development cost during the first 200 flights or so. You still need to spend $1.77B on 10 Ariane 6 launches vs $100M on 1 Starship launch. Even this argument is facially absurd, because the entire Starship rocket didn't cost $100M- it was $20M worth of steel and machining and assembly labor for that first test flight. Even if we only get to reuse a Starship 10X instead of 100X, Starship is radically cheaper than Ariane 6. The EU wants their own launcher and they don't care if they pay a lot more money for less capability, so long as they can afford to do it at all. Good on them, but they need a more competitive concept for today's market.

Inevitably, some bright young person will "figure out" that they can make their satellite out of the lowest cost steel money can buy as a result of the launch becoming drastically cheaper, and still save tens of millions of dollars over the cost of a specialty rocket launch, because no fancy / special / expensive "aerospace materials" are required to make a highly capable but comparatively dirt cheap satellite, after all costs are factored into their decision making process. They won't require specialized "space-rated" electronics, either, if they can put enough steel and concrete shielding around their onboard computer. A first-year engineering student will rapidly come to the conclusion that a 55 gallon steel oil barrel, filled with some concrete or plastic, with MON thrusters for station-keeping, an iPhone or iWatch serving as the flight computer since either device is ridiculously more capable than most space-rated electronics- and no contest on total cost, a couple of commodity commercial solar panels, and a cheap steel transceiver dish are the fastest and cheapest way to get their Earth Sciences project off the ground. The goal is capability provided, not spending money for sake of burning cash. All the mad money and engineering time devoted to shaving a few pounds off the entire machine will no longer be required. The design team can instead focus a lot more of their effort on whatever specialty sensors and software engineering is needed for the experiments conducting or communications service they're providing.

A customer who has to have "THEIR OWN ROCKET", can purchase one from SpaceX for about $20M, and then use it as many times as they want, so long as they pay their fuel, launch services, and vehicle maintenance bills. If their particular rocket is down for maintenance, then they can use one of the pool of shared vehicles operated by SpaceX or NASA. Space Force will inevitably operate their own rockets for military purposes since the military doesn't care if some sand is kicked up whenever their vehicle lands.

Electron is one of the most mission-optimized and fast-to-produce expendable launch vehicles available, and actually has significant launch history behind it. It still cost $7.5M per flight. Reliability is reasonably good for such a small rocket, yet now they're moving on to a much larger fully reusable rocket, because they know there is no way to compete if they don't. Buy a few of those Electron launches, though, and you may as well buy an entire Starship Super Heavy, which will require no fancy payload engineering to use in a cost effective manner. The regular customers want to launch at least once per year, typically more often than that. If smaller launchers were much cheaper, then they'd design much cheaper satellites and launch more often to ensure they always had the latest and greatest hardware overhead. The expense of satellite design alone is a major part of a telecom corporation's operational budgets, and will remain so if they opt for smaller and more expensive expendable or even fully reusable launchers. Rocket Lab's new / upcoming fully reusable Neutron rocket is expected to cost $50M per launch, so roughly double what SpaceX is charging right now for a flight-proven Falcon 9 launch. I see no indication that they're anywhere near the cost of a Falcon 9, let alone a Starship. How could they be? They're using horrifically expensive and delicate CFRP materials, all that development work costs real money (GW has stated that the money spent on development is roughly the same regardless of vehicle size, since so much of the effort towards reliability applies equally to a rocket of any size), and their standing army of engineers and launch controllers costs money, so... If you're going to ship big payloads, then it pays to go as big as the market can bear, to use cheaper materials and fuels, etc.

I think you need to come up with a more sophisticated and nuanced version of your argument, or explain why the airline industry analogy you used doesn't work the way you assert it does in the real world. Only rich people pontificating about global climate change are crossing oceans in their biz jets. Snobbery aside, their arguments are downright silly. Nobody with a budget uses private biz jets for international travel.

None of these smaller expendable launchers, which were supposed to revolutionize the industry by providing lower cost launches, have proven to be more reliable and cost-effective than much larger machines. They all actually cost significantly more money per pound / kilogram of payload than most of the larger launchers, so your argument seems to be that more money will be spent on more expensive smaller rockets, because biz jets are poised to undercut the market for super jumbo airliners / cargo freighters. There must be some reason why this hasn't already happened if such is actually true. There are vastly more biz jets than super jumbo airliners, yet the jumbos still carry vastly more people and cargo than all the biz jets combined, and at much lower per-person or per-ton-mile cost. Even the reusable small launchers are not all that small, and consequently cost even more per launch than the expendable variety.

It's clear to me that you really want to kill the Starship program. I don't know why exactly, but this particular line of argumentation is at-odds with observable reality, whereby biz jets are in no danger of ever replacing the super jumbos on cost grounds alone. It occurs to me that biz jet and super jumbo technology is also very mature. There's almost nothing we can do to either one to dramatically increase economy without dramatically affecting usability in a material way. We're already using the lightest and strongest materials, the engine efficiency has been steadily improved over the years but there are no more leaps-and-bounds efficiency improvements to be had, and the electronics in a biz jet are now very comparable to a super jumbo, yet the safety track record of super jumbos remains much better than biz jets because the crews fly more often and they have more total flight hours of experience as a result.

Incidentally, the airlines found that they can fill all the seats of a 250 to 300 passenger super jumbo on a routine basis. Any greater number of seats than that, and they can't put enough butts in seats to justify purchasing larger aircraft and flying them fewer times per day. That's why they settled on airliners of that size to cross oceans. It was pure economics and ease of use, same as more reliable and higher-thrust engines allowing twin jets to replace four engine aircraft of the same size category. Smaller orbital launchers have an uphill-all-the-way battle to prove their greater utility over much larger but nominally expensive rockets. Thus far, smaller launchers have only proven how expensive they are to design and operate to the same reliability level as the much larger varieties.

RobertDyck · 2023-05-15 19:17:10

In an interview with Business Insider, Elon Musk says he's 'highly confident' that SpaceX's Starship rocket launches will cost less than $10 million within 2-3 years. Starship is expected to be able to lift 100 to 150 metric tonnes to LEO, fully reusable, and 250 metric tonnes expendable.

According to SpaceX website, Falcon 9 costs $67 million, standard payment plan, price adjusted in March 2022 for flights in 2022. And that price is for missions where the first stage is reusable; launch capacity 5.5 metric tonnes to GTO. It can lift 8.3 metric tonnes to GTO expendable, or 22.8 metric tonnes to LEO expendable. Website does not list price for expendable configuration.

kbd512 · 2023-05-16 12:36:34

United States / SpaceX Starship Super Heavy: $66.67/kg to LEO, fully reusable at $10M per launch
Or...
$666.67/kg to LEO, fully reusable, at $100M per launch

New Zealand / Rocket Lab Neutron: $2,307.69/kg to LEO, fully reusable
United States / SpaceX Falcon 9: $3,850.57/kg to LEO, partially reusable
Russia / ROSCOSMOS Soyuz 2: $4,268.29/kg to LEO, fully expendable
China / CALT Long March 3B: $4,347.83/kg to LEO, fully expendable
ESA / Ariane 6: $5,311.78/kg to LEO, fully expendable
India / ISRO Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III: $6,300/kg to LEO, fully expendable
India / ISRO Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle: $7,833.33/kg to LEO, fully expendable
India / ISRO Small Satellite Launch Vehicle: $8,800/kg to LEO, fully expendable

One of those rockets is clearly not like the others. There's a reason why China's Long March 9 looks an awful lot like Starship and Long March 10 looks an awful lot like Falcon Heavy. There are only so many ways to "get it right". If Starship costs $100M per launch, then it's multiple times less expensive per launch than the most economical smaller launch vehicles, whether fully reusable, partially reusable, or fully expendable. If Starship costs significantly less than that, then nothing in operation or in active development can touch it with a ten foot pole.

Until and unless China fully develops Long March 9 and Long March 10, Rocket Lab is SpaceX's only serious competitor. Everyone else can provide a rocket if you don't care what it costs. I think people do care, or SpaceX wouldn't have launches booked until the end of time. The market has spoken. It wants affordable launches and plentiful launch opportunities. No matter how painful it was to get to this point, economic forces won out, so the final frontier is opening up, ready or not. I would like a Western World solution to arrive first, because I'm not a communist or old-world thinker. I would be equally happy with any other American or allied country throwing the door to space wide open. SpaceX happened to get there first, because they were the most forward-thinking in their design approach. Others will follow.

We're going back to giant rockets because giant rockets get the job done the best way we know how.

RGClark · 2023-05-16 13:44:09

kbd512 wrote:

RGClark,
The airline companies know this of course. The same airline companies that operate the jumbo jets also operate the smaller aircraft. If those airline companies were to only offer the jumbo jets they would rapidly go out of business.
They would've already gone out of business trying to ferry individual people across oceans. Your argument falls apart in the face of existing observable reality. The average person cannot begin to afford to fly across the ocean on their own dime in their own private jet, yet they do it by the tens of millions every day aboard these much larger and more expensive super jumbo airliners. Unless nobody at any of the major airline services cares about money, then maybe they know something you don't.

By the largest jumbo jets I mean literally THE largest jumbo jets. That’s the most appropriate comparison to make when SpaceX is proposing to use ONLY the SuperHeavy/Starship for ALL space flight. The point I’m making is there are many smaller but still commercial aircraft making the great majority of air flights. If instead the airlines ONLY offered the LARGEST jumbo jets they would rapidly go out of business.

Robert Clark

Last edited by RGClark (2023-05-16 13:49:02)

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#126 2023-05-05 22:11:59

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#127 2023-05-06 03:11:10

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#128 2023-05-06 03:57:01

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#129 2023-05-06 06:28:13

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#130 2023-05-06 07:10:08

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#131 2023-05-06 09:43:08

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#132 2023-05-06 09:57:14

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#133 2023-05-06 11:11:41

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#134 2023-05-06 12:32:09

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#135 2023-05-06 12:39:37

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#136 2023-05-06 15:12:12

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#137 2023-05-06 19:23:28

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#138 2023-05-06 19:55:45

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#139 2023-05-07 13:32:34

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#140 2023-05-07 15:02:58

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#141 2023-05-07 16:32:23

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#142 2023-05-07 17:47:11

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#143 2023-05-11 16:41:12

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#144 2023-05-12 05:50:11

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#145 2023-05-15 06:26:11

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#146 2023-05-15 06:34:21

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#147 2023-05-15 11:45:19

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#148 2023-05-15 19:17:10

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#149 2023-05-16 12:36:34

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

#150 2023-05-16 13:44:09

Re: SuperHeavy+Starship have the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

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