They can. Even during the first test, propellant load took about an hour and a half. And they’ll probably optimize that further over time.
That gets to be a pretty high capital cost. The faster the turnaround, the better you can use your billion-dollar launch pad/tower/tank farm/etc.
As for what mission–ultimately, this is being designed for a huge fleet of ships leaving for Mars during the fairly short launch window. Say, 1000 ships and 10 refuelings each.
Kinda crazy? Sure. But that’s the design goal. And if they can come anywhere close to that, less speculative missions become “easy”. Artemis will require somewhere between 5-10 refuelings. Those don’t have to be hours apart, but it works better if they’re not several days apart.
And then there’s Starlink, which will demand hundreds of launches per year in the long run. They want to increase their current satellite count by 10x, and increase the mass of each one by 4x or so.
Then, there’s also the low-Earth-orbit stuff that doesn’t seem to interest Musk much, but that he’ll happily fly to fund the Mars effort. Space hotels, maybe even stations approaching O’Neill cylinders become practical with $20/kg lift. Maybe space-based power, too.
Unfortunately, the industry is very conservative and seems to have an attitude of “builld it, and then we’ll start to think about what it might be useful for, and then a decade or two after that maybe we’ll have something”. Potential customers should be thinking now of all the kinds of things they can do with cheap lift, but proposals are farther between than I’d like. I do credit NASA for betting the farm on Starship, though. Aside from SpaceX itself, they’ve taken the biggest risk in betting on it.
I think everyone is waiting to see if Starship actually works. The day that thing makes it to orbit, a lot of minds will open. And when it comes down and successfully lands, I think you’ll see a wholesale change in the way things are done. No one leaves money on the table for no reason. New cost/benefits will be done, engineering will rapidly sccale the QA effort to the cost of launch, etc.
When satellites get cheap enough, demand will go up. The secondary market in satellite chassis and equipment will drive a certain amount of standardization which will lower costs more. And so it goes.
Look what happened with drones once we hit an ‘adjacent possible’ that enabled them. Satellites and spacecraft could do the same thing.
I agree, but I think it’s a dumb attitude. First, it’s obvious that Starship will work in a basic way. It’s obviously a vehicle that can make it to orbit. And SpaceX has demonstrated that they can land the boosters.
It is less obvious that they can hit their cost goals. $1000/kg will be easy. How about $100/kg? That requires upper stage reuse. Fine: that hasn’t been demonstrated yet. And $10/kg is aspirational and requires airline-like operational efficiency.
Anyone who isn’t planning for huge volumes and $1000/kg at least is delusional, IMO. And anyone not planning on SpaceX doing better than that is taking a huge risk–because someone (even if only SpaceX themselves) is betting on that, and if they succeed then they’ll eat everyone’s lunch. Which probably is inevitable with Starlink, really. Their competitors aren’t ambitious enough and are depending too much on conventional thinking.
'Zactly. Starship will work. Or Starship v2 will work. Or v3. Issues with insufficient structural margin here or software glitch therewill be solved. The rest isn’t rocket surgery. At least not anymore.
Given the flow of “patient impatient” capital Musk is providing and will continue to provide. It’s patient in that it’s not subject to sudden exogenous cut-off as Wall Street fashions change. It’s impatient in that Musk is a man in a hurry. A big hurry.
And even if somehow Musk died tomorrow & SpaceX folded, much as Stratolaunch lost a lot of momentum after Paul Allen died, somebody would pick up the pieces of his ideas, if not his company and this will get done eventually. Because the rewards are insanely high.
Based on the timeline for the first test flight, it seems to me one of the problems encountered was that the stages failed to separate. I assume this is why the delay and redesign?
As for the interstage piece, why does it have to separate from the first stage? Just add that shield and those vents on top of the booster. After all, to separate the interstage, now you need assorted mechanisms and/or maneuvers to push it off and ensure it doesn’t hit the first stage during separation and cause damage.
Any indication they’ve changed the launch pad so it doesn’t repeat it’s performance as a gravel quarry? Side venting?
Musk has stated it never made it to stage separation, so who knows if the original plan would’ve worked. I’m betting it would. The reason for the hot staging try is to increase payload to orbit by as much as 10% compared to the flip maneuver.
The “interstage” is just the top of the booster. It will not separate. It’ll probably be replaceable though.
They are adding a dense mesh of re-bar, concrete and fondag below the launch mount. They are also installing a huge steel “sandwich” water deluge system before the next launch.
Starship,will almost certainly make orbit at some point, sure. But there are still many unkmowns that could affect its commercial viability:
How much payload margin does it actually have after its completely finished and capable of coming back from orbit and landing?
How fast is the turnaround, really? An hour? A day? A week? A month? If SpaceX can’t get turnaround in less than a day, then the idea of going past GTO starts to look iffy, as you need six refueling flights. So anything expended, any maintenance or turnaround costs get multiplied by six for refueled missions.
How many Starship and/or booster flights can be made between refurbishment or replacement? Five? Fifty? Five Hundred? No one kmows.
What happens if a Starship blows up on the pad? No more launches for a year? That’s a big risk item until they stand up multiple launch facilities. This seems like an even larger risk because they will also be landing back at the pad, where they could crash into it.
What if SpaceX runs out of money? What about regulatory issues? What if they can’t get permits for so many flights?
Even if everyone knows Starship will ‘work’, the numbers are still far from settled for how much it will cost and when it will start taking commercial, non-Starlink payloads to orbit. The cost per kg is still not kmown within an order of magnitude, so it’s hard to make decisions. Each Starship flight is clarifying.
As I recalled, the ship started tumbling about the point in the timeline where it should have separated. (and didn’t separate) But then, the first stage wasn’t running all the engines, so presumably it may have had more fuel and so more time with first stage burn.
It lost thrust vector control well before stage separation would have happened. The rocket can’t maintain stable flight at that point, let alone perform an advanced flip maneuver.
They just finished pouring something 1000 cubic meters of concrete at the launch site, and they’re in the process of pouring more (or maybe have finished; this stuff changes fast). Here’s a pic of the steel sandwich they’re installing on top:
Well, one piece of it at least (it comes in multiple wedges). As you can see, it’s pretty beefy. The top surface has small holes, so when they pump water in the sides, it sprays upward. Seems like it’ll work pretty well. Indications are that it needs about 15 bar of water pressure to overcome the thrust and keep a boundary layer of steam/water present. It may not actually need much flow, though.
Yeah, if that plate system works, it will be a very cool piece of engineering. I saw a raptor test where the water spray kept the exhaust from hitting the plate.
These questions (and the rest) are what I’d expect a competitor to say in an attempt to convince themselves that things aren’t as dire as they really are.
The downplaying and FUD and all that don’t add up to anything. The odds that Starship ends up a worse vehicle than Falcon 9 are negligible, IMO. And since Falcon 9 is eating everyone’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and has very little competition on the horizon, they should be planning for Starship to be a very capable craft.
As I said, the cost is still an open question. But we’re talking cheap vs. very cheap. If you’re trying to build a satellite constellation, and you are spending $10k to save 1 kg of payload (let alone $20k or $40k), you’re making a mistake. You don’t have to bet the farm on $100/kg, but if you aren’t seriously planning for $1k/kg, someone else will take your business.
Entrepreneur Elon Musk is well-known for talking trash about the vehicular competition… just not when it involves rockets instead of four wheels. Still, that’s what we’re facing in the wake of a BBC interview. He tells the broadcaster that the Ariane 5 rocket stands “no chance” in the face of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy systems from his own SpaceX outfit, as it’s more expensive to use – and the contrast will only get worse when a cheaper, next-generation Falcon 9 arrives, he says. Musk echoes France’s position that Ariane should skip a mid-life upgrade to its vehicle and jump directly to a less expensive Ariane 6. The executive has a point when there’s more than 40 booked SpaceX flights so early into the Falcon program’s history, although there’s something left to prove when the first scheduled Dragon capsule launch ran into a non-critical engine failure. We’ll know that Musk can walk the walk if there’s still a long line of SpaceX customers by the time Ariane 6 hits the launchpad.
That was from Nov 2012. Since then, the Ariane 5 has flown 50 times in total, with just one more flight before retirement. Ariane 6 has not flown at all. In contrast, Falcon 9 flew 60 times… in 2022 alone.
There were plenty of hiccups and setbacks and delays and other things during that time, and plenty of people in the industry pointed to them as being evidence that SpaceX is still not a real contender. But they all added up to nothing in the long run.
I’m pretty sure it’s just a lawyer thing, and that they’re effectively required to respond that way. It’s just funny to see 100+ lines that say “SpaceX denies the allegations in Paragraph N” or “SpaceX admits Y, but denies everything else in Paragraph N”.
I give SpaceX a >50% shot that the lawsuit is immediately dismissed on something straightforward like standing. SpaceX went through the designated process and got permission from the FAA, and IMO it’ll take some very strong objections for a judge to take their complaint seriously. I don’t see that here.
The reality is that there wasn’t any significant adverse effect on the environment or people. Third parties like Dr. Phil Metzger (NASA expert on launchpad physics) has been doing analysis on material sent in from various locations, and it’s what was expected: some chunks of concrete that didn’t go very far, and normal dust/dirt that got carried on the wind and is indistinguishable from any other dirt. No contamination or anything else (as expected, since Starship’s exhaust doesn’t contain any toxic materials).
So if it does make it to court, and SpaceX has to demonstrate that the launch fell within the expected bounds for their launch license (which accounted for a failure right on the launch pad–much more damaging than what happened), I expect that to go easily.
As to whether the plaintiffs can find some narrow grounds for continuing the lawsuit, or using delaying tactics of some sort–no idea, I’m not a lawyer. But the basic facts of the case are well in favor of SpaceX at this point.
I should add: the original lawsuit was the Center for Biological Diversity et al vs. the FAA. SpaceX was not directly involved, but they filed to be included on the grounds that they could be adversely affected by the decision, and that filing was granted. The new filing is SpaceX’s response to the original one.
Yes, that’s it exactly! I wonder when poop emojis will be allowed in court filings. I hear they’re already letting ChatGPT come up with legal briefs these days.
Look, I agree with you. But I’m trying to explain why people have yet to start revamping all their satellite plans.
If I’m a satellite developer, I still don’t know things like vibration of the final rocket, ‘g’ forces, how integration will be done, what services will be provided to the satellite, what the physical limits will be, and what the cost will be within a couple orders of magnitude.
Or you choose early, design for what you think the price will be, and get it wrong. And your competitors who waited get to make better decisions.
I’m just saying that there’s a big difference between an experimental rocket that has yet to go into space, and a working, demonstrating vehicle that has demonstrated orbital flight followed by landing and reuse. The minute that happens, the inevitable will be staring everyone in the face. Right now there are still executives out there in aerospace refusing to believe what’s coming.
I know, but it’s easier to speak as if you believe the arguments you’re making .
The problem is that they’re still way outside the likely range. I’m not saying they should assume $10/kg lift. But I think they’re delusional if they think it’ll end up >>$1000/kg.
Consider electric thruster propellant. SpaceX seems to be the only one pushing for low-cost gases. First krypton, now argon. These come with a performance loss compared to xenon, but it’s not much, and there’s a threshold where it makes sense to go with the cheaper one. SpaceX clearly considers that threshold passed even with current Falcon 9 costs. Others should be doing the same. Especially as xenon is in pretty limited supply and set to get way more expensive as more megaconstellations are deployed, and rules are set up requiring all satellites to have maneuvering capability.
Well, that’s just it. And it’s basically the same argument as every failed industry has made. We’ll pursue online selling the minute that we think we can make money on the service. We’ll build EVs the minute that customers start demanding them. We’ll build sleek smartphones the minute they’re shown to be workable. Someone else made the bet earlier and then ate everyone else’s lunch.
It’s not unexpected. Still, one would think established industries would break with this line of thinking once in a while.
I read something about the lawyer who got disciplined for letting ChatGTP write a brief for his case. Apparently it looked very professional, Chat wrote a very cogent argument and included a number of case cites - which apparently were simply “made up” to fit the narrative, with no relation to real cases.
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