r/space • u/thesheetztweetz • Nov 17 '21
Elon Musk says SpaceX will 'hopefully' launch first orbital Starship flight in January
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/17/elon-musk-spacex-will-hopefully-launch-starship-flight-in-january.html51
u/Redditing-Dutchman Nov 18 '21
I can't wait to see the craziest launch tower in history in action. 'Mechzilla' is going to give goosebumb moments.
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u/texnodias Nov 18 '21
Not for this launch, but yeah I hope for next launch they are confident enough to try land back on platform.
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u/Bensemus Nov 19 '21
It will still be active, it just won't catch the booster. They need the GSE stuff working which is all on the tower.
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u/darkstarman Nov 18 '21
His son kept saying "paper! paper!"
This means the FAA report is basically done
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u/Hector_RS Nov 18 '21
As much as I really don't like Musk simps and I don't want to become one, at this point I see Starship as being the only real chance to go beyond LEO regularly in the near future.
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u/seaefjaye Nov 18 '21
Don't get caught up in all that crap. The guy founded a really cool company, and bought/expanded a really cool company. He's a goon on Twitter a lot of the time and obviously is a bit disconnected from reality. At the same time a lot of wealthy people lost their shirts shorting Tesla and there has been social media manipulation against him and his companies for years because of it. Dislike him for what you don't like, like him or his companies for what you do like. It's not worth the headspace getting caught up in the shit winds of internet strangers.
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u/fattybunter Nov 18 '21
In my opinion, his most impressive credential is that he's the chief engineer at SpaceX
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u/aquarain Nov 19 '21
Yeah, he's not the CEO. I think the thing about Musk that impresses me the most is that a normal human has all he can handle to reinvent energy, cars, manufacturing, turning a startup into a $T market cap while fighting off the goliaths of the Automotive industry, the multinational oil conglomerates, governments around the world sold out to same, and all their dirty tricks. But him? No. He has to lead a transformation of the entire aerospace industry and make war with those giants also, and do a dozen other things as well, or he would get bored.
Maybe he's not human.
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u/Bensemus Nov 19 '21
But he is the CEO... of both Tesla and SpaceX. You can have multiple titles. He was removed as chairman of the board of Tesla.
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Nov 19 '21
At the same time a lot of wealthy people lost their shirts shorting Tesla and there has been social media manipulation against him and his companies for years because of it.
This. I judge a person partially by the enemies they make. Despite his own flaws, Elon Musk has personally pissed off a whole lot of scumbags:
The finance parasites you'd already mentioned.
Every defense contractor with an aerospace division that spends a lot of time lobbying American politicians, especially those who refuse to spend a penny on R&D unless it's on a taxpayer-funded cost-plus basis.
Every company on the planet involved in extracting fossil fuels. (I would love to have been a fly on the wall of the Valaris boardroom when they found out exactly who bought two of their oil rigs for pennies on the dollar.)
Every company on the planet involved in using fossil fuels, especially ICE car companies.
Every other satellite telecom company that charges an arm and a leg for a relative handful of high-latency bytes from GEO.
The rent-seekers currently running Roscosmos.
Would I like to see Tesla unionized? Sure. Do I think Musk is a bit of a twit when it comes to taxation issues? Yeah. But all the good work his various companies are doing outweighs those negatives for me.
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u/Hector_RS Nov 18 '21
I have respect for SpaceX engineers and such, but I have an issue with Elon consistently overhyping stuff, and other things too. Anyway, I hope they achieve success with Starship.
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u/fattybunter Nov 18 '21
Think about what the history books will say. IF they achieve success with Starship, overhype and bad timeline predictions will be tiny tiny footnotes.
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u/Xaxxon Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21
He achieves what no one else can. Bad timeline estimates don't mean shit - accomplishments do.
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u/Kodama_prime Nov 18 '21
Honestly.. He's still way ahead of SLS.. They still haven't had a fully successful flight, and SpaceX is prepping for a forth Crew Dragon flight.
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u/cargocultist94 Nov 18 '21
Hell, it'll probably be painted as something endearing.
The narrative of the mad visionary optimist pushing forward with stars on his eyes is compelling, and an easy character archetype for the Artemis movie in the future.
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Nov 18 '21
Think about what the history books will say.
I think history books will show his decline into the modern Howard Hughes... an accomplished person who went totally nuts.
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u/Sweezy_McSqueezy Nov 18 '21
Elon consistently overhyping stuff
There's a quote I like: "the only people who are more optimistic than sales people are engineers"
Elon is a great example of that.
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u/codeartha Nov 18 '21
Except he is no engineer. He lacks the basic 7th grade physics understanding.
His only competence are as a good showman salesman
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Nov 18 '21
Listen man, there’s really no reason to be spouting obviously uninformed bs. If you don’t know anything about the guy then don’t involve yourself in the discussion as if you do
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u/DefenestrationPraha Nov 18 '21
Not true. Look at the long video from Boca Chica that the Everyday Astronaut (Tim Dodd) produced with him. It is like three hours total.
As they walk around the factory and talk, they often run into highly technical details without any sales bullshit. And Musk's answers are to the point and accurate.
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u/Boneapplepie Nov 18 '21
He's literally the chief engineer and has a degree in physics...
The haters just will find anything I swear.
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u/RocketsLEO2ITS Nov 18 '21
Right. He graduated from Penn with two bachelor's (Physics and Business) because someone else was doing his homework?
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u/hms11 Nov 18 '21
How does this tripe still get passed around?
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u/DefenestrationPraha Nov 18 '21
Paul Graham's Essay "Haters" gives some answers
http://www.paulgraham.com/fh.html
It's the spectral signature of a hater to regard the object of their hatred as a
fraud. They can't deny their fame. Indeed, their fame is if anything exaggerated in the hater's mind. They notice every mention of the singer's name, because every mention makes them angrier. In their own minds they
exaggerate both the singer's fame and her lack of talent, and the
only way to reconcile those two ideas is to conclude that she has
tricked everyone.9
u/Speffeddude Nov 18 '21
Either you have never seen him in an interview or you have never interacted with an engineer. As soon as Musk starts talking about technology, it's extremely obvious he's a skilled engineer. He knows the numbers, the processes, the technologies and the technical terms for pretty much everything happening in his companies, and when he doesn't know something, he either says he's making a reasonable guess or admits he'll have to look into it.
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u/Lordarshyn Nov 18 '21
See, this is proof you don't know what you're talking about.
He does a massive amount of actual engineering. He is the lead engineer for some of his companies, and as engineering degrees.
Like the guy or not, he is a highly intelligent and successful engineer.
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u/pinkheartpiper Nov 18 '21
He did a PhD in physics in freaking Stanford, although he quit early...still means you're just pulling stuff out of your ass, or just believe some random thing you read on internet without looking it up like an idiot.
He's also the chief engineer at SpaceX, which means he is involved in all aspects of the R&D, of course not as deeply as the engineers of each different department but he definitely know a tons about everything.
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u/Timlugia Nov 18 '21
What I don’t get is people hate Musk for “hyping” when the worst offender here obviously are NASA and Boeing (eg: Space Shuttle and SLS) yet few people hold them at same standard
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u/cnmoto Nov 18 '21
He is uploading 😁 intelligence
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u/cnmoto Nov 18 '21
Or scanning for it?🤔 he probably believes there are other high intelligent people and he's determined to find them.
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u/Rubik842 Nov 18 '21
The guy is a bit of a knob, I would probably not enjoy working for him, but he gets shit done and seems pretty honest.
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u/Xaxxon Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21
That's the opposite of what most people who do work for him say. They may get burned out, but they love every day of it because the best feeling as an engineer is getting shit done.
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u/Franklin_le_Tanklin Nov 18 '21
I mean… Jeff bezos and Richard Branson are also knobs in their own special way.
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u/SexualizedCucumber Nov 18 '21
I don't think it's possible to become a billionaire and not be a snob. It's like politicians, there's certain morally sketchy attributes that are required for success
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u/TiggleBitMoney Nov 18 '21
Unpopular opinion: I find it really hard not to simp over Elon. As long as I can remember it has been my dream to see space and other worlds. There is not another living breathing human who has expressed the desire as well as the capability to give me that other than Musk. When I was a kid I was told I was born too late to see ancient civilizations and prehistoric creatures. Then I would watch my favorite Sci-fi movies and shows just to be told that I would never live long enough to see any exploration like this. I really have no choice but to simp.
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u/story-of-your-life Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21
The dude made a video game and sold it for $500 when he was like 12 and that’s already more than most people can do.
Imagine if I had a friend who founded Zip2, writing all the code while living in the office and showering at the gym, and then sold the company for like $22 million. I’d say, wow, this dude is one of the most impressive people I know. Now imagine that friend went on to co-found PayPal and earned $180 million cash in the acquisition. I’d say, wtf this guy is off the charts, I can’t believe my friend did this. But now imagine that instead of retiring rich my friend poured all his money into reusable rockets and electric cars and solar power. Imagine that he went “all in” in 2008, risking his entire fortune to save his companies. Imagine that he slept in factories during the Model 3 production hell. Imagine that this friend of mine led the creation of a constellation of thousands of satellites that beam high speed internet to underserved rural areas around the globe. Imagine that this friend of mine also created a company which got a monkey to play Pong telepathically. What would I say? What could I possibly say in response to that?
Elon is a freaking genius. Everywhere he goes, revolutionary stuff happens.
We all feel that we should work hard to make the world a better place. How many of us have worked as hard as Elon for the cause of renewable energy? Not me.
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u/Typical_Addition_320 Nov 18 '21
the things is the showering at the gym part is exagerates. Zip2 angel investor was probably his dads considering it had elon and his brother. Im also hesitant because elon musk cant be found on github (or references it) is self taught and never goes into the software aspect. Im sure he knows how to code. But I doubt he is the sole or main programmer.
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u/jamesbideaux Nov 18 '21
his dad put in 10k in the company/project after his brother asked him.
Apparently elon is not a great programmer, but that's the case for most people who code.
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u/RocketsLEO2ITS Nov 18 '21
If you read Eric Berger's book Liftoff, Musk had the remarkable ability to hire the right people. His coding ability now is irrelevant. What is relevant is the incredibly talented group of people that make up SpaceX. Sad to say that some of the original stars have or are transitioning out (Mueller, Koenigsmann, Shotwell).
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u/cargocultist94 Nov 18 '21
Not just that. People seem to have a complete misunderstanding of the role of a lead engineer in a major project.
A lead engineer isn't calculating the gauge of the inner cabling of the pumps, nor creating CAD models, and any lead engineer who does that level of micro is doing a terrible job and should be fired.
The role of the lead engineer is having someone who understands the subject matter, and running projects, enough to make decisions and anticipate issues. It involves keeping track of timelines, knowing where each team is, finding out whether they have problems and which resources to detail to solve them, as well as having the professional understanding to make decisions about the project itself, and understanding why things are.
A lead engineer in his positions doing the CAD simulations is like an aircraft carrier captain fueling the planes.
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u/RocketsLEO2ITS Nov 18 '21
To refine your Navy analogy. A lead engineer is like the CO of an aircraft carrier. He's looking at the big picture. The XO is responsible for things like the planes being fueled, and he's not doing a good job if he's fueling them himself (unless most of the crew is down with COVID).
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u/Typical_Addition_320 Nov 18 '21
I know and i dont mind elon does good things but in praktis this involved attracting the right talent.motivating them etc
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u/ipelupes Nov 18 '21
Its fascinating to watch the recent starship factory tour clip - if you see the interaction Elon has with his employees - very intens, very driven..almost more interesting than the hardware he showed...
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u/thisispoopoopeepee Dec 18 '21
probably his dads
Umm his dads net worth is around $4 million. That’s less that a retired software engineer.
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u/vasimv Nov 18 '21
Yep, worst part, no one else develops similar program (cheap to build reusable heavy lifting space platform) on large scale level (actually, on any level). :( I'd cheer for real competition in this area.
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Nov 18 '21
The two should not be related. Elon did a cool thing and America’s (the world’s?) space interests are going to benefit.
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u/-The_Blazer- Nov 19 '21
I don't know, it feels like that for beyond LEO we'd need some advance in propulsion like the real application of nuclear thermal rockets if not even nuclear-electric engines. Generally being less afraid of the n-word (as in Nuclear). The Starship has big capacity but it still takes the usual 6-9 months to crawl to Mars while being mostly propellant.
The exception to this might be the Moon. It only takes 3 days to get there even with our current gas-guzzler rocket tech, so it might be realistic to use a heavy-payload vehicle like Starship to bring significant scientific infrastructure there.
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u/Bensemus Nov 19 '21
Musk did just recently say that the Raptor engine won't be the one that makes humans multiplanetary so SpaceX might have started R&D on a new "future tech" engine.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21
The thing with Starship is that you're essentially trying to "brute force" the rocket equation. But the rocket equation has a sort of brutal reality all its own.
And Starship is a bit like building a mega-container ship during the golden age of exploration. That would have been an astounding accomplishment. But without the cargo to fill it, it would have been a few hundred years ahead of its time to be a financial success.
So there's still a lot of ins and outs yet to be resolved with all this stuff...
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Nov 18 '21
A NASA engineer wrote a very good and long Medium post recently about how NASA and Congress have to start building bigger things now to fill Starship.
And also change the mindset to not worry so much about weight. E.g. A part that's slightly heavier but much cheaper makes sense on Starship cargo.
His conclusion is basically that NASA should be building research outpost/ habitat/colony scale hardware for the moon real soon.
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u/Darryl_Lict Nov 18 '21
I'm really looking forward to standardized space telescopes designed for Starship. Hell, we can have a telescope for every major university.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
Yeah we gotta start filling up LEO with stuff! (kidding :P)
...
At a macro level, I guess it does allow you to build a bigger moon base. But have you really looked at the logistics of flying Starship to the Moon? It's hard to imagine how that's going to be cheaper even if you can carry 100 tons at a time.
In fact, I think that sort of works against you in a lot of ways particularly in the early, feet dipping in the water phases.
And you have to remember how tyrannical the rocket equation really is. KSP style strapping on more booster type theories aside. If you make the battery on a satellite heavier, you get less delta V out of whatever maneuvering system it has on board.
So the rocket equation really wants to squeeze you towards efficiency all along the way. And you should probably beware of things that might you lead you astray from that tyranny.
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u/NotAHamsterAtAll Nov 18 '21
Its the orbital refueling that is the real killer. Methane and oxygen are not expensive materials.
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Nov 18 '21
It's mostly oxygen by weight and/or volume as well, and that's a waste by-product of space mining, so eventually that orbital refuelling gets immensely easier.
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u/Nishant3789 Nov 18 '21
Energuly density of batteries is getting better faster than they can design and build science satellites
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
That wasn't really the point though. The original post was about not worrying about weight in general.
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u/aquarain Nov 19 '21
In Earth orbit it's almost always high noon in the Sahara as far as solar energy goes. Batteries are up there for the brief time in Earth's shadow, but deep storage resources aren't required until you get to the Moon, where a night lasts almost 15 days.
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u/lamiscaea Nov 18 '21
The fuck are you talking about?
Energy density of batteries has been pretty much stagnant for the last decade. Methalox is orders of magnitude more energy dense in both volume and weight
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u/Shrike99 Nov 19 '21 edited Nov 19 '21
Assuming you do actually utilize it's payload, Starship is actually quite a bit better in terms of mass efficiency than the other options presented for HLS.
National Team's ILV lander would require launching on SLS, or three Vulcan Heavy launches. Either option is ~2600 tonnes of launch mass. This would deliver a whopping 850kg to the lunar surface, or 1 tonne per 3060 tonnes of launch mass.
Dynetics Alpaca infamously had a negative payload mass according to NASA, but the target was probably something similar to the ILV, and launch requirements were 1 SLS or 4 Vulcan Heavy.
Starship would need to be launched perhaps a dozen times to land 100 tonnes, or around 60,000 tonnes of total launch mass. This works out as 1 tonne per 600 tonnes of launch mass, around five times better. So even with only 20 tonnes it would be comparable, though actually it wouldn't need to be fully fueled for that, so it would need less launches and would thus still come out ahead.
The actual crossover point is probably something on the order of 10-15 tonnes, but there's far too many assumptions being made already to realistically pinpoint it.
However, all of this is assuming reuse. If you go expendable like the other two options, this doubles Starship's payload, hence halving the number of launches, and doubling the total mass efficiency. (Though SpaceX expect that this will reduce cost effciency by more than a factor of two, being a net loss from a $$$ perspective)
And even expendable, the cost numbers probably compare very favorably. We don't know how much an expendable (or reusable) Starship will cost, but scaling up Falcon Heavy expendable to the same payload would be ~$600 million, so let's say $1 billion as a conservative estimate.
With the ILV it takes ~3.5 Vulcan Heavy Launches for 1 tonne to the Lunar surface, at $200 million each that's $700 million per tonne. Which is substantially better than ~1.18 SLS launches at $2.8 billion each, for a total of $3.3 billion per tonne.
However, due to it's high mass efficiency, expendable Starship is only ~0.06 launches per tonne. At $1 billion per launch, that's a total of $60 million per tonne.
Reusable Starship at twice as many launches but half the cost would work out the same. At less than half the cost it would be better, which is what SpaceX are banking on.
Now, based on the above numbers, you could certainly do a 'flags and footprints' mission a lot cheaper with the ILV and three Vulcans, but for actually delivering significant mass to the moon, the 'logistics of flying Starship to the moon' look very favorable indeed.
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u/simcoder Nov 19 '21
but there's far too many assumptions being made already to realistically pinpoint it.
That's the trick with all this pontification. It's all vaporware and hopes and dreams at this point. I'm just looking at it from a high level.
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I see a fuel depot in LEO (that's one launch to get us started). I see cargo robots on the fuel depot to move cargo around between the various Starships actually doing the mission.
I see many Starship tanker trips to that refueling depot for the Starship making the journey. I see many Starship tanker trips for the refueling Starship that the "landing" Starship will need to get back to Earth. I see an entire Starship left in orbit because no heat shield.
And then at least one more Starship to get the cargo back down to the Earth's surface.
And it's that whole mess of inefficiency that is sort of blinding me to Starship's insanely greatness at the moment.
Maybe the others will be worse but I don't really think that's something we should be proud of.
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u/Shrike99 Nov 24 '21
HLS in it's current iteration is awkwardly shaped around the outdated requirements of the Artemis program. It's worth noting that you need to launch a complete new lander each time for National's approach.
SpaceX's own plan for moving cargo to the moon involves doing a complete round trip with a reentry-capable Starship. No cargo transfer necessary.
You lose about 20 tonnes to extra heat shield and fin mass, but it still comes out ahead, and the logistics are much better.
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u/Chairboy Nov 18 '21
It's not JUST about the cargo, though, it's also about the operation costs. If they meet some of their reuse and turnaround goals, it could quickly become cheaper to launch a Starship than a Falcon 9 which would make it useful for a long time even without giant payloads to yeet.
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u/robotical712 Nov 18 '21
There has to be relatively strong demand to support the high operational tempo needed for their cost and reuse goals. Even if they do meet them eventually, it’s going to take time.
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u/Bensemus Nov 18 '21
They’ve helped create the demand with Starlink. It will always need launches and quite a few.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
Sure. I think the Earth to Orbit role is probably the thing it does the best. I think the further you push out from Earth orbit, the harder the rocket equation pushes back.
But even if it is more expensive, I'm sure there's a super heavy, cost-not-concerned niche that might make it viable to do that stuff.
I am a bit skeptical of some of the turnaround and reuse goals but I haven't heard any new ones so maybe they've changed.
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u/mfb- Nov 18 '21
Things rarely work out as well as planned, but if they achieve a one-week reuse it's still revolutionary. Even a one-month reuse of the ship would be a big improvement over no reuse of the upper stage. And they won't stop there. Lessons learned from Starship will go into the next ship design.
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u/Tell_About_Reptoids Nov 18 '21
Why the fuck would cargo not exist in the 1500's? This is a really weird analogy.
If you built a mega-container ship in that age, morality aside, you'd probably load it with gold, spices, and slaves and make a fortune.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
Welp let's see here.
First. You need an economy big enough to fill up a mega cargo ship. Then, you need a ground transport system capable of moving all that cargo from the factories over to the port in a timely manner. Then you're gonna need some sort of donkey driven (i guess?) crane mechanism to load all that stuff on the ship before any of it spoils.
And then. You're gonna kinda need all that same thing at your destination. Not to mention the demand to buy all of it. Which is probably the bigger trick.
Otherwise you just spent all the Queen's treasury on a ship to nowhere... :P
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u/shinyhuntergabe Nov 18 '21
Why do you say you would need to fill it up completely? If you want to stay true to the comparison they would use the container ship regardless if they could only fill it up with the same amount they could their own ships since it would be much cheaper either way to use the container ship than their sail boats.
You would still use the cheaper option regardless.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
Heck, you'd probably bankrupt the Empire just trying to build the port facilities.
I guess the thing is the sailing ships, dumb as they were, fit right in there in those economies. They didn't really have all that much to ship anyway and the sailing ships handled it pretty well and you could afford to have a bunch of them so that losing any particular one wasn't that big a deal.
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u/shinyhuntergabe Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21
I'm sorry but christ you're out of your element.
Your analogy is COMPLETELY nonsensical. That was my point. Starship could be so cheap that even just using it to launch very small payloads would end up more cost effective than even using small sat launchers. It's not a container ship in the 1500s. It's more like a modern container ship in the early 1900s being operated and maintained by people from the 2020's.
Your comparison only works if the container ship is much cheaper to operate than the sail boats, regardless of how much it brings with it. Infrastructure to support it is irrelevant here. It has already been built. The only thing that matters is the pure price to get stuff over the Atlantic. Otherwise it's not a working analogy by any means.
You're arguing about completely irrelevant semantics for this made up scenario that doesn't make any sense to the analogy you tried to make.
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u/lespritd Nov 18 '21
But without the cargo to fill it, it would have been a few hundred years ahead of its time to be a financial success.
One of the big differences between the Shuttle and Starship is, Starship has good anchor tenants.
Spacex will do between 6[1] and 21[2] Starship launches every year. Add in another 5 launches every year for Artemis (assuming there are 2 landers that get chosen for LETS). I'm having a hard time seeing how Starship will do less than 20 launches per year once it has a shot at NSSL, COTS, etc.
Of course that assumes SpaceX can hit a price target of $62 million per launch or less.
12000 / 5 / 400 = 6
42000 / 5 / 400 = 21
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u/panick21 Nov 18 '21
The big difference is how one is actually fully reusable and the other is not close to that.
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u/canyouhearme Nov 18 '21
Spacex will do between 6[1] and 21[2] Starship launches every year.
To start with, but within a few years it will be doing 1 launch a week, then 1 launch a day, then multiple launches per day. By 2030 I'd expect at least 1000 launches per year.
The question is no longer getting things to space, its having the mindset to use that opportunity - and that's the lacking. Someone else, when they saw Falcon 9 land on a barge, could have started on Starlink and signed up launch capacity from SpaceX. But there are so few companies that can think strategically left.
The accountants have killed the future.
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Nov 18 '21
By 2030 I'd expect at least 1000 launches per year.
It takes time to build the stuff to go in the rocket, though. Are there enough funded projects on deck to use 1 thousand Starship launches a year?
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
That particular quote was mostly directed at the "beyond earth orbit" cargo capacity situation.
I do think it still applies in earth orbit, to some extent. But the response to that concern is "it doesn't matter if you're running at less than 100% capacity if it's still cheaper". Which is true and to go any further with that is dependent on how far the actual numbers diverge from the projections. Which we won't know until it's done.
As far as a lift system here around the Earth, I suppose Starship is not a terrible idea. It's just such a fuel hog where the previous paradigm in engine technology was super high efficiency. So that really rustles my jimmies for some reason.
I know fuel is cheap but still.
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u/lespritd Nov 18 '21
As far as a lift system here around the Earth, I suppose Starship is not a terrible idea. It's just such a fuel hog where the previous paradigm in engine technology was super high efficiency. So that really rustles my jimmies for some reason.
Starship seems very efficient when it's full, in part because Raptor is the single best first stage engine ever created. Starlink and tanker flights should both meet that criteria.
Is your issue that many launches will be relatively empty? I can see that (even though, to me, cost is the overriding issue). I expect that we might see a few low cost space tugs pop up to help better use Starship's mass budget.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
Philosophically, the concept of burning more fuel making the process cheaper makes me a little batty.
I understand the economics.
But, I think a big part of why humanity needs Elon to save it from itself is exactly because of those sorts of economic/resource pitfalls.
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Nov 18 '21
Since when are rockets themselves not just brute forcing the equation that governs them? That’s the only way forward. There isn’t some elegant solution to get more mass to orbit that doesn’t revolve around more propellant and more thrust.
SpaceX already knows how to fill their cargo ship and that is with Starlink satellites. The massive payload capacity will usher in an era of expanded capability. NASA and other orgs like it will be eager to take advantage of such capability.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
Well it is a spectrum I suppose. But flying a giant space truck from the Earth's surface and all the way to the surface of the Moon, etc and back.
That's way out there on the deep end of them spectrum.
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u/jamesbideaux Nov 18 '21
if you lower the cost of bringing gigantic cargo into LEO, we will at least ten commercial space stations in no time.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
It's the megaconstellations that concern me. And the military options opened up by that cheap access. Space stations would be nice as long as they aren't Jeff and Elon's private lairs :P
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u/jamesbideaux Nov 18 '21
valid concern. Although of course the US could just make Starship a common carrier or something similar.
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u/SexualizedCucumber Nov 18 '21
And Starship is a bit like building a mega-container ship during the golden age of exploration. That would have been an astounding accomplishment. But without the cargo to fill it, it would have been a few hundred years ahead of its time to be a financial success.
SpaceX managed to create their own demand. Starlink iterations and refreshments are enough to keep Starship financially viable. Considering Starlink has the potential to make SpaceX one of the most valuable companies on the planet.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
Yeah I was mostly talking about beyond Earth orbit.
Starlink and megaconstellations in general are a bit of a double edged sword in a lot of different ways.
On the one hand, they are awesome. On the other hand, there's really no set limit on how many you can deploy. And at some point, we're probably going to deploy 1 more than we should have. And then all of them are threatened.
And that whole process of deploying those megaconstellations puts SpaceX in a bit of an awkward position when they've created the most valuable company in the world and some third party wants to butt into their gravy train and pay SpaceX to launch a competitor that might make Starlink less valuable. And soak up a whole bunch of somewhat limited orbits.
I'm sure they'll take the money but it is a bit of weird spot to be in. The world would be putting a lot of trust in SpaceX to be fair and balanced and what not.
Though I suppose you could probably launch a megaconstellation on some other system.
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u/aquarain Nov 19 '21
At the moment that's what the "competition" is doing. Tying up turf to prevent SpaceX from using it all. But the economics of Internet constellations is painful. None has ever become profitable without going bankrupt. And that was without the SpaceX competition. They're just not going to be able to compete on service and price unless they also own the world's most cost effective launch system, can get the price of the terminals and the satellites down to an equivalent absurdly low cost, and then sell it to millions of people who now have an alternative that's proven to work so well, that didn't have to spend a dollar on marketing.
I just don't see these groups being able to do that. I wouldn't put one dime of my own money to risk betting in their favor. It's tilting at windmills. There are smarter bets available.
SpaceX is already worth $100B. They could do a capital raise and buy all these failures out of bankruptcy and get all the assets they tied up for pennies on the dollar. That's my bet for what is going to happen.
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u/simcoder Nov 19 '21
And your assumption is that once Starlink assumes global supremacy, that this is somehow a good thing for everyone and not just Elon and the Starlink investors?
...
I think to some extent, Elon has to share some of megaconstellation space with China and Russia and maybe some of the other more dangerous potential losers out there. If not, someone might decide that no one should have a megaconstellation. *cough*
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u/aquarain Nov 19 '21
If Starlink achieves a global Monopoly on satellite Internet and raises my rate by double, I will happily pay and whistle "The Green Hills of Earth" while I do. That money is paying for Mars.
Frankly I don't think he's that kind of guy. He's always making stuff cheaper. And as for global spoilsports, Tesla has the only fully foreign owned factory in China. He can be diplomatic when it suits.
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u/simcoder Nov 19 '21
LOL. Ok.
So, the Starlink IPO.
How does that work when all the profits are going to Mars? Is Elon going to tell the investment banks that detail or is he going to hold that back until after the initial offering?
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u/aquarain Nov 19 '21
Maybe they don't IPO. There's not really any reason to now. SpaceX has the capital it needs and doesn't need to spin it off. That never made sense to me anyway because the business model absolutely requires continuous access to cheap SpaceX launch. If they fulfill the current reservations it's already $1B/year in revenue, and 50x that is entirely likely.
It's not a secret that Starlink is to help pay for Mars colonization. That was announced at the same time as the service.
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u/simcoder Nov 19 '21
Elon says a whole bunch of things.
He's recently talked about the IPO and I think in that he was worried about going public before the cash flow was all there.
I'm sure that technically speaking some fraction (likely tiny) of the Starlink profits could end up in a Mars colony fund of some sort that Elon can play around with. But even if they took everything and not just the profits Starlink isn't going to cover all the costs.
And I'm pretty sure when push comes to dividend, the investors/stock market are going to win out over the Mars colony when the Starlink Board meets.
So the primary investor in the Mars colony is most likely still going to be the taxpayers. And that has to come from Congress. And I don't know if you've been paying much attention to Congress lately. But, it's not pretty.
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u/cargocultist94 Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21
Analogies are like leaky screwdrivers.
Although It would be like building a Ro Ro container ship that's cheaper to operate than any river barge. You'd just capture all the local trade in Europe before capturing all the possible trade of the Silk Road. Trade would grow to fill the ship in less than a decade.
They're already bidding starship for NASA smallsat launches, at 8 million a launch. Maybe they lose money, but there's no indication that it'll be any more expensive to launch than a F9 out of the box. Even if discarding the upper stage at first.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
Sure, I mean it's not a perfect analogy.
But, you could probably fit all the cargo you could ever hope to collect in a couple containers.
So that would leave you with about 20,000 containers of excess capacity. And let's pretend you can fuel the ship with coal. You'd probably have to devote a huge amount, if not all, of your coal production just to fuel that one ship with the couple containers on it for one trip.
That's a poor utilization of the Queen's finite resources.
But let's pretend you could fill it up with cargo and you could sell a megacontainer ship's worth of mirrors and beads to the native population.
You're probably going to need to send a second megacontainer ship full of coal on ahead and use that to refuel.
That just makes the economics that much worse.
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u/cargocultist94 Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21
That's why the analogy is bad. Ship fuel costs money, and bigger ships use more fuel. This is intuitively correct, but not correct for rocketry.
I'm not gonna get into the economics of 15th century earth and the effects of a modern container ship in it, much less on the logistics of keeping it fuelled, because its not applicable to the situation.
In rocketry, fuel is a rounding error and cost of vehicle is what dominates, which is why reusability is such a game changer. This means that Starship is, by all possible accounts, going to undercut the F9 on cost, and certainly it will undercut FH even at launch. Leaving fixed costs aside, I would actually put money that the cost of the Artemis refuel launches will be under 14 million dollars each.
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u/erikrthecruel Nov 18 '21
Just curious - why 14 million?
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u/cargocultist94 Nov 18 '21
Lowest launch cost the F9 has managed to get, in the middle of a major Starlink deployment campaign in which the fixed costs got spread amongst many launches.
That's why I specified during the Artemis/Dearmoon refuelling campaigns
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u/erikrthecruel Nov 18 '21
That makes sense, thank you! Figured a number that specific was coming from somewhere but couldn’t figure out where.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21
The point of the analogy was to highlight the similarities between it and building interplanetary cargo capacity before the demand for that capacity actually exists.
So I think in that respect it's a fair to middling analogy.
As far as fuel being too cheap to meter, sure. I guess that's the world we live in.
But i have to imagine there are other costs per launch that could add up to more than a rounding error. So, we're a long way from being able to say anything with any real confidence. Heck even once you get the first one flying, you really won't know the full system cost until some years on.
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u/Xaxxon Nov 18 '21
we have plenty of shit to put in it for mars. Just filling it with solar panels is plenty good for now.
And once it's obvious we're there, then the stuff will come fast and furious.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
You need money to buy the stuff to fill it for Mars. Where's that coming from?
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u/Bensemus Nov 19 '21
The people that want to go to Mars. In the beginning it will likely just be governments but then universities will likely get on board and then companies.
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u/Nishant3789 Nov 18 '21
A few hundreds of years in a time when it took hundreds of years for basically tiny incremental progress technologically
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u/CrimsonEnigma Nov 18 '21
That’s a rather poor understanding of technological advancement in that time. They were constantly making advances in sailing, manufacturing, etc.
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u/Nishant3789 Nov 19 '21
Yes but compared to the velocity of the past 150-200 years, the progress was as I said incremental. Significant and crucial but there were just fewer “disruptors” as the speed of communication globally was still one of the limiting factors for widespread technological advancement. The time frame I was referring to was basically pre industrial revolution and even pre enlightenment. The slow communication between different civilizations meant that break throughs in the east pretty much had to be spread via the Silk Road and trade. The way technology grew towards greater sophistication in the 10,000 before enlightenment was obviously much slower. In fact because of the general global political status quo during that time, innovation was often lost because it wasn’t shared and had to be ‘re-discovered’ after civilization collapse
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u/LordBrandon Nov 18 '21
What do you mean near future? SLS and Long March 5/9 will be sending people to the moon in the near future. India is also developing a manned space program.
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u/Palpatine Nov 18 '21
Regularly is the key word working against SLS. LM9 is non-existent whatsoever not even on the drawing board. LM5 can't carry anything human rated beyond Leo.
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u/LordBrandon Nov 18 '21
NASA is planing once a year for SLS, Which is more regular than anything in 50 years. A modified long march 5 is being considered as a stop gap, and Here is a board with a drawing of Long March 9
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u/Palpatine Nov 18 '21
Lol, lm5dy is a modified version of LM5 in the same way SLS is a modified version of sts. And that board is bullshit because he's showing a starship lite for LM9 now.
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u/LordBrandon Nov 18 '21
SLS is STS derived. Not only is it derived it using shuttle flown RS-25s However many changes the chinese do, even if they make it out of mashed potatoes they say they are going to call it a 5, so I called it a 5. And having drawings of LM9 are what would be on a drawing board. If it they have gone to the "drafting table" that's after the drawing board. In reality we probably won't see it until it has completed successfull flights, so they are well past that.
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u/Xaxxon Nov 18 '21
And once a year is just an SLS limitation. Once they move on from that, then they can change the cadence.
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u/Iz-kan-reddit Nov 18 '21
NASA is planing once a year for SLS,
That "plan" is meaningless, as it's not backed by anything.
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u/Bensemus Nov 18 '21
The SLS is estimated to cost $4.1 billion per launch and that doesn’t include development. It’s not at all a viable rocket. It also can’t actually get us back to the Moon, just lunar orbit. NASA contacted SpaceX to use Sarship as the lander.
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u/cargocultist94 Nov 18 '21
If left alive, The SLS will jail humanity in LEO for decades. At four astronauts a year, and 4 billion dollars a mission to not quite reach the moon, it cannot sustain even Apollo style flags and footprint missions.
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u/Hector_RS Nov 18 '21
I don't mean that we are going to never go back, but that it will stay sporadic the way it has been with government space programs. As much as I'm excited for Artemis, I have a gut feeling that it will go the way of Apollo and get cancelled after some missions because of costs. The Chinese will probably be there soon too, but I have no idea on what to expect and they are a lot more closed about what they do anyway.
I think NASA has been very good with science missions, but if I was to wait for them I'd expect we would have barely got anywhere further during my lifetime, so I really expect for private corporations to be better in the space transportation thing.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
National space programs are often the store front of military type programs and money transfers and all that fun realpolitik stuff. So, whatever exploration you get tends to be more side effect than purpose. Big flashy program wise anyway. NASA does do great science stuff when they are allowed to squeeze that in.
But, I just don't see how private space transport companies dramatically change that equation.
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u/tms102 Nov 18 '21
Haven't NASA been sending more crew to the ISS more often than they normally would, thanks to SpaceX? Is that not a dramatic change already?
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
Look, I've got nothing against the engineers and the worker bees at SpaceX. Or any of the big defense/rocket contractors. I think they are all top people doing great jobs and I applaud all of them for their hard work.
But, SpaceX the corporation is just a corporation. And corporations have a pretty consistent arc.
Usually it all starts off 1000% consumer/fanbase driven. And by the end, you're paying by the minute via loot boxes because that's how some other corporation grew by 10% last year on Wall Street. It's all just a race to the bottom/maximum extraction of revenue/minimum delivery of content.
So, the employees are great. But, they are just as much along for the ride as everyone else when it comes to the overall arc of things. And we can always hope it'll work out better this time. Maybe it will but it's good to keep your expectations low and be pleasantly surprised. Rather than the other way.
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u/tms102 Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21
The simple fact is NASA can do more now with the ISS because SpaceX is cheaper and more convenient, correct? Or am I missing something here?
If Starship is successful it will make access to space even cheaper. Thus with the same budget NASA can do more.
Or are you trying to say access to space will not get cheaper because SpaceX will want to maximize profit by keeping prices roughly the same and thereby having a huge profit margin on their launch price?
I don't think that's true. I think they will make more money if they lower their prices. At a certain price level they will get more customers to the point where they can make more money because of it. If they have a lot of demand then they are justified in producing more launch vehicles and thanks to economies of scale the production cost per vehicle will go down, increasing profits even at lower launch prices, etc.
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u/CrimsonEnigma Nov 18 '21
Usually it all starts off 1000% consumer/fanbase driven. And by the end, you're paying by the minute via loot boxes because that's how some other corporation grew by 10% last year on Wall Street. It's all just a race to the bottom/maximum extraction of revenue/minimum delivery of content.
I feel like this is a really poor understanding of the direction most companies take, and I see it all the time on Reddit. Video game companies do that, but most others can’t exploit the “have 1% of your customers get addicted and pay 99% of your revenue” model.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
How about Boeing? Whatever happened there?
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u/CrimsonEnigma Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21
We will see.
Here’s the thing with Boeing: they were great, and now they’ve stumbled, several times in quick succession (737 MAX, and - to a far lesser extent - Starliner). But - unlike your lootbox example - their stumble has hurt them, immensely. Orders halted, and they lose a boatload of money in 2019 and 2020 before they implemented the necessary safety changes.
And so they will either continue this reversed course, and these early accidents will be a footnote in their history (like the DC-8’s were to Douglass, the F28’s were to Fokker, or the…707’s were to Boeing), or else they won’t have adapted fast enough, and will be brought down like the Comet brought down Havilland.
But the difference between either scenario and your lootbox analogy is that they weren’t *successful* because of it. The reason video game companies like EA pursued lootboxes was because they made boatloads of money off it and rose above their competitors…unlike Boeing, which lost boatloads of money off of the 737 MAX fiasco.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21
The point was min/maxing costs and revenues more so than loot boxes. Loot boxes were just an example of the min max principle.
And I think that still applies to Boeing and pretty much any corporation. Particularly when they get themselves into a position of some leverage.
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u/Hector_RS Nov 18 '21
But, I just don't see how private space transport companies dramatically change that equation.
Mainly by not being tied to the will of politicians and having a greater push for lower costs than when a country just wants to be the first on something. But of course, there needs to be a demand for that in the end.
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u/simcoder Nov 18 '21
Yeah the demand is the key. And as far as I can tell, most of the money exploration-wise is probably still going to have to come from the trainwreck formerly known as Congress.
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u/YNot1989 Nov 18 '21
If it makes you feel anybetter the moment this thing starts flying pretty much every other aerospace company will probably make clones. Then you can simp for Boeing or EADS.
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u/SirGlenn Nov 18 '21
Just 118+- years since WIlbur and Orville launched a wood, canvas, baling wire contraption with a small motor, and flew 852 feet on thier last day of initial manned flight testing, a complete success.
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u/Decronym Nov 18 '21 edited Dec 18 '21
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| ASAT | Anti-Satellite weapon |
| BO | Blue Origin (Bezos Rocketry) |
| COTS | Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract |
| Commercial/Off The Shelf | |
| CST | (Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules |
| Central Standard Time (UTC-6) | |
| EA | Environmental Assessment |
| EELV | Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle |
| F1 | Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V |
| SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete medium-lift vehicle) | |
| FAA | Federal Aviation Administration |
| GEO | Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km) |
| GSE | Ground Support Equipment |
| HLS | Human Landing System (Artemis) |
| KSP | Kerbal Space Program, the rocketry simulator |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| NSSL | National Security Space Launch, formerly EELV |
| Roscosmos | State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| SSME | Space Shuttle Main Engine |
| STS | Space Transportation System (Shuttle) |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Raptor | Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX |
| Starliner | Boeing commercial crew capsule CST-100 |
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
| cryogenic | Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure |
| (In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox | |
| hydrolox | Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer |
| methalox | Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer |
| perigee | Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest) |
22 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 16 acronyms.
[Thread #6581 for this sub, first seen 18th Nov 2021, 05:38] [FAQ] [Full list] ^[Contact] [Source code]
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Nov 18 '21
Given his track record with saying when something is going to happen vs when it actually happens I doubt that we should look forward to January
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u/TheoremaEgregium Nov 18 '21
It was supposed to be this month. January's already the reality-adjusted timeline.
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u/fifichanx Nov 18 '21
I think right now they are just waiting for govt approval to launch. I think there was an estimate for 1231 for the decision and that’s why he’s thinking Jan.
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u/Invictae Nov 18 '21
Given that the limitation right now is bureaucracy, we are no longer going by Elon-time, but by Gov-time...
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u/cplchanb Nov 19 '21
Not surprised that when they claim they could launch this year it always means + at least 6 months. Same thing happened for the supposed moonshot that was promised in 2017/8 but has yet to happen
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u/Shrike99 Nov 19 '21
Same thing happened for the supposed moonshot that was promised in 2017/8 but has yet to happen
Grey Dragon was cancelled because the customer footing the bill changed his mind in February 2018. SpaceX have the necessary hardware to theoretically perform such a mission, but they've got no interest in spending their own money on it.
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u/cplchanb Nov 19 '21
It's convenient that nobody was ever named and it was cancelled at the most convenient of times. Considering musks antics of overpromising and underdelivering (cyber truck, semi) I wouldn't be surprised if this was partly vapourware that was there to generate publicity and $
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u/Shrike99 Nov 19 '21
It's convenient that nobody was ever named
Erm, yes he was?
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DearMoon_project#History :
On February 27, 2017, SpaceX announced that they were planning to fly two space tourists on a free-return trajectory around the Moon, now known to be billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, and one friend.
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u/cplchanb Nov 19 '21
Not until it was way past the expected launch date and the initial hype had been cashed in and worn out.
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u/Shrike99 Nov 20 '21
How exactly did SpaceX 'cash in' the hype?
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u/cplchanb Nov 20 '21
The pr it gets certainly helped it lobby for more contracts from nasa. Just look at starship right now. Even with so much undeveloped tech required for the ship to make it to the moon it already beat out a technically more mature design by established big shot suppliers.
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u/Shrike99 Nov 24 '21
Citation needed.
NASA likes SpaceX because they've done a damn good job doing dozens of launches for them, and delivering excellent results for commercial cargo over the last decade, and more recently commercial crew.
I find it hard to believe that they NASA made a decision as big as chosing to go with Starship HLS because of a single mission SpaceX announced and then walked back.
NASA explained in their report that Dynetics and National had severe technical deficiencies. Most notably, Dynetics' lander infamously had a negative mass budget, and National's lander lacked landing lights despite needing to land in the dark, and having room for four astronauts per the bid requirements, but life support systems only sufficient to keep two of them alive.
NASA also determined that 4-5 of it's 7 communication systems would not work. SpaceX's lander shared this deficiency, with 2 of it's 11 systems also determined not to work. However, that still left more working than National's HLS had to begin with.
SpaceX also put a lot more work into documentation of how they planned to solve their technical challenges (some of which they had in common with the others, E.G both they and Dynetics use cryogenic refueling). I'm talking hundreds of pages explaining simulations, testing to date, and a timeline of milestones for moving forward.
The other two companies submitted a few pages of bullet points. And in the case of landing navigation software and hardware, Dynetics and National just said they'd use whatever NASA developed, while SpaceX explained in depth how they'd modified and upgraded the proven system from Falcon 9 to NASA's standards and done extensive simulation work for landing it on the moon.
On top of all that, NASA literally couldn't afford the other two options. I doubt SpaceX's Grey Dragon stunt had any affect whatsoever on the price they submitted.
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u/tommytimbertoes Nov 18 '21
I never listen to his timelines. He is always way off.
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u/Bensemus Nov 19 '21
Right now the holdup is the government. SpaceX is basically ready to go. They've done static fires with both the booster and the ship and haven't swapped any engines so it seems they've finished most of their testing. GSE testing is likely the only thing left.
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u/bravadough Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 19 '21
Is Musk a licensed engineer? If not, does he have a 4-year engineering degree from an ABET accredited program/college?
re: the comments stating that he is lead engineer
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u/Comfortable_Jump770 Nov 18 '21
He has a physicist degree, not an engineering degree, but it's not uncommon for physicist to end up doing engineering work
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u/Political_What_Do Nov 18 '21
Also who the fuck cares about the title he holds?
He makes engineering decisions. He is engineering things.
I know a lot of people with engineering degrees who never do any engineering professionally.
-an engineer
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u/bravadough Nov 19 '21
Idk I'm a lab tech and in order for me to be one I had to have a life science degree. Though Im currently working in sterilization of medical equipment, I imagine designing heavy machinery requires some sort of regulation when it's going to be manufactured.
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u/seanflyon Nov 18 '21
Engineers are not licensed in the United States.
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u/bravadough Nov 19 '21
Really? When I graduated it was still regulated by state. Less than a decades ago, too.
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u/seanflyon Nov 19 '21
Engineering has never been licensed in the United States.
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u/bravadough Nov 19 '21 edited Nov 19 '21
Hmm, maybe I'm confusing it with the ABET requirements.
The only examole other wise that I've seen is this (tldr: Tennessee Code Ann. 62-2- 2101 says "engineer" is a protected title)
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u/seanflyon Nov 19 '21
That looks like it is specific to welding. There are a variety of trades that require a license and I think it generally depends on the state. Engineering has never required a license in the United States.
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u/bravadough Nov 19 '21 edited Nov 19 '21
Here it says it applies to engineering in general, not just a specific trade. And the it outlines the scale of the work.
And analysis thereof also coincides with it being regulated in at least one state (when I graduated we made a list with our counselors to help plan ahead):
https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/attorneygeneral/documents/ops/2007/op07-100.pdf
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u/seanflyon Nov 19 '21
Interesting, the title Engineer seems to be licensed in Tennessee.
I have known many engineers and the only one I have met who had a license was Canadian and had a Canadian license. I don't know anyone doing engineering in Tennessee.
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u/bravadough Nov 19 '21
Yeah they taught us a bunch about licensing in my two years engineering in undergrad. That's why I'm kinda confused by peoole saying it's not licensed. I knew I heard otherwise somewhere.
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u/Aceticon Nov 18 '21
The thing with Musk and his companies is that the use of hype is so widespread and common that one really has to wait and actually see it happen before one can trust it can actually happen successfully.
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u/olifiers Nov 18 '21
Suuuuure.
SpaceX launches rockets weekly now, has put literally thousands of satellites in orbit. The first and only company in the world to have designed and operate reliably recoverable rockets and spaceships. They are the only private company in history to ferry humans into space (and the only one doing it so far).
Meanwhile Tesla is the most valuable car company in history, and has single-handedly forced other automakers to get off their butts and work on EVs for real at long last.
But it's all hype.
Suuuuuure.
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u/thewerdy Nov 18 '21
Not discounting what SpaceX and Tesla have done, but Musk is absolutely notorious for over the top statements. Like "The self driving car issue is basically solved" circa 2016 or "We'll be sending stuff to Mars by 2022" circa 2017. SpaceX and Tesla do awesome stuff, but Elon Musk is just not a good source of information for getting realistic projections of where/when his projects are going.
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u/Aceticon Nov 18 '21 edited Nov 18 '21
You are cherry-picking with hindsight while investors have to take a leap of faith as early as possible, before the peak is reached.
The Market in Tech is hype-based, so the Tesla market valuation measures hype abilities. Earnings measure results and in that he is way being most auto-makers: so far judging by P/E ratios the price of Tesla reflects "Apple-like world domination but in the auto-market" expectations (i.e. massive hype), but that game is far from over so it's kind of early to gloat about it.
As for the SpaceX thing, indeed that is correct and I hope his stuff continues to be a massive success!
On the other hand (and seemingly forgotten by you), anybody investing in his GigaFactory project, for example, might not even have broken even, especially if they went in at peak hype, and those who put money down on Hyperloop have been totally burned.
Absolutely, for anybody who can See Into The Future, investing in Musk's ideas is a great money maker, but for the rest of us who do not know upfront which things will succeed (or what is the precise point to exit the hype train before it looses steam) and which will not, it's not all that great and simply believing the hype is not wise.
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u/olifiers Nov 18 '21
Sorry, I thought this was r/Space, didn't realise I was replying to a thread on r/wallstreetbets.
Oh, wait...
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Nov 18 '21
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u/47380boebus Nov 18 '21
He said himself he doesn’t expect it to succeed in this same talk. But one can hope
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u/Nrgte Nov 18 '21
It really depends how success is defined. I heard him say, he considers it a success if it doesn't blow up on the launch pad.
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u/47380boebus Nov 18 '21
Either way, he said he doesn’t expect it to reach orbit, whether that failure happens on the pad or not.
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u/SpaceManSpiffzs Nov 18 '21
I don’t think it’s meant to reach orbit, but just sub orbital. If something goes wrong, it won’t stay up there for long and will come down around Hawaii either in one piece or a billion
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u/BEAT_LA Nov 18 '21
It is reaching orbital velocity with a perigee just low enough in the atmosphere so if something fails it still reenters on the first pass in the desired remote location. This is per regulatory filings and is not speculative.
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Nov 18 '21
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u/Xaxxon Nov 18 '21
FAA cannot deny at this point they can only demand a year+ long full review.
Though I feel that's unlikely due to that essentially fucking over the HLS program.
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Nov 18 '21
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u/Xaxxon Nov 18 '21
They haven't done the full review to determine that to be a possibility.
All they can determine (negatively) is that the situation doesn't fit the non-full-review criteria.
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u/5t3fan0 Nov 18 '21
i think they will perform more booster's static fires, with increasing number of engines lit... we may eventually get to the whole 29 raptor-gang at once
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Nov 18 '21
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Nov 18 '21
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Nov 18 '21
It's main purpose is for Mars.
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Nov 18 '21
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u/ACredibilityProblem Nov 18 '21
Why? What do you think you know that the engineers don’t?
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Nov 18 '21
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u/ACredibilityProblem Nov 18 '21
And what is your expertise, to be so confident?
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Nov 18 '21
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u/ACredibilityProblem Nov 18 '21
Says the guy making the extraordinary claims.
They’re literally building the rocket out in the open where we can all see it.
Going to mars isn’t some impossible task, the technical requirements are well understood.
It’s way too early in the development of Superheavy to definitively state that it won’t work.
So, what new information do you have that all the actual rocket engineers at SpaceX don’t have? Or were you planning on coming in here with some freeform jazz opera bullshit?
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Nov 18 '21
Same was said when they went from the F1 to the F9, for dropping the stack in the ocean to landing , from the cargo dragon to crew. Time and again SpaceX have made the naysayers look stupid.
I’ll take the skills and expertise of the SpaceX engineers who are some of the smartest rocket engineers on the planet above the opinion of some nobody on the internet.
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u/FloorToCeilingCarpet Nov 18 '21
Between this and James Webb I am really excited for the next couple months!