SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/private-spaceflight/spacex-launches-starship-flight-10-critical-test-flight-video

by mpweiher • 11 months ago

290 301 11 months ago

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fluoridation21• 11 months ago

How much money did it cost to orbit Saturn V (including R&D of course)?

voidUpdate2• 11 months ago

According to wikipedia, the entire cost of the saturn v project was US$185 million, equivalent to US$33.6 billion today. That's from R&D to all launches

fluoridation21• 11 months ago

Yes, I also can look trivial stuff up. That would include costs after the rocket first orbited the Earth, so it doesn't answer my question.

ralfd• 11 months ago

You mis-copied the numbers for one launch. Wiki says:

Project cost US$6.417 billion (equivalent to $33.6 billion in 2023)
Cost per launch US$185 million (equivalent to $969 million in 2023)

That a manned Apollo mission would/did cost under a billion dollars (todays money) is surprisingly cheap. A single Artemis launch using the Space Launch System (SLS) costs an eye watering $4 billions.

Different metric:

[1966] NASA received its largest total budget of $4.5 billion, about 0.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States at that time.

Using that metric NASA yearly budget would with todays GDP be $150 billion dollars.

boxed5• 11 months ago

Adding to previous comment, looks like the cost per launch when the system was up and running was ~1billion USD inflation adjusted. I'm going to assume Starship will beat that easily.

loeg• 11 months ago

Looks like Starship test flights are already beating that $1 billion per-launch cost (I'm seeing estimates in the $100-500 million range), and they'd like to get the marginal cost down to ~$10 million.

staplung• 11 months ago

Maybe, but remember that getting astronauts to the moon and back took a single Saturn V launch but with Starship, it will take (at least) 10 flights for refueling, possibly as many as 20. So each launch has to be much cheaper to beat Saturn V for the full mission.

Nobody but SpaceX knows how much each Starship test costs but the estimates online range from $50 million to $200 million. Presumably, whatever the actual cost, they're more expensive right now while they're redesigning bits and doing custom, one-off work for each flight but it has a long way to go to beat Saturn V for the full mission.

thatoneguy• 11 months ago

How does that matter? It's doing a thing already done nearly 70 years ago but at its own pace.

I bet it will get to the moon cheaper, too, and the Muskonauts will use less expensive lenses than Hasselblads to take photos.

fluoridation21• 11 months ago

Starship isn't exactly the same as Saturn V. It's bigger, for one.

The reason why it matters is that efficiency matters. It's fine if it takes longer, not so much if it costs way, way more, especially if such a huge rocket has limited applications. And as I understand it the consensus is that Starship (or at least a fully-loaded Starship) will never go to the Moon. Once it's in orbit it takes like twenty refueling launches and space rendezvous to fill it up again so it can make the transfer burn. In other words, it's never happening.

moralestapia2• 11 months ago

The downvotes here are undeserved.

There is nothing wrong with this question. Zero.

Stop eroding this site's community.

andsoitis• 11 months ago

"That was absolutely incredible," SpaceX Build Reliability Engineer Amanda Lee said during live launch commentary. "A huge congrats to all the teams here."

"Great work by the SpaceX team!!!" SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X after the flight.

Amazing accomplishment. Always a thrill to watch live.

SpaceX conducted 134 launches in 2024 and is targeting a record-breaking 160-170 orbital launches in 2025.

https://www.spacex.com/launches

perihelions• 11 months ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45033563 (195 comments)

seatac76• 11 months ago

Amazing achievement. Just watching no that giant thing lift off is a great feeling.

criddell• 11 months ago

I know it's a similar size to the Saturn V, but something about the Saturn V just seems grander to me. Maybe it's the paint job?

Frankly, it kind of blows my mind what the US pulled off in the late 60's, early 70's with the technology and materials of the time.

ekianjo2• 11 months ago

They had virtually infinite budget at the time. SpaceX is much, much cheaper.

magicalhippo• 11 months ago

I too find it difficult to appreciate the scale of the thing. The lack of features doesn't help I think.

That said, I hadn't fully appreciated the size of Saturn V either until I saw it in person in the museum. Like, I had felt it was big, but it was big.

kilroy123• 11 months ago

It's pretty remarkable progress. Slowly but surely, they're getting it done. I predict they'll have a full working version by 2027. By 2028, they'll have regular reusable flights.

grapesodaaaaa2• 11 months ago

My personal estimates are similar. For anyone that followed Falcon 9 development (from the first Falcon 1 launches), it’s really similar. I remember boom after boom until one day they cracked the problem and reusable boosters became the status quo.

I got tingles when the first booster landed on the drone ship, because I knew access to space had just changed in a fundamental way.

Romario77• 11 months ago

It was a significant progress, but I won't call it "nailed it". As there was an damage or explosion on re-entry where the skirt of the starship got damaged. And we could see pretty significant damage on one of the fins.

Nailing it would be without the things above.

stetrain13• 11 months ago

Yes, although it was stated before the flight that they were intentionally flying with some heat tiles removed and with a more aggressive profile to test some outer limits.

ballenf• 11 months ago

They even removed some near fuel tanks. In the past the missing tiles were in less critical areas.

I'm surprised they didn't take less risks just to avoid a narrative of failure.

megaman8212• 11 months ago

I think this launch showed they were very robust. Engines went out on booster and ship which they can compensate for. A small explosion and a half melted fin didn't seem to affect the splashdown sequence or target.

m4rtink11• 11 months ago

I think there was just one unexpected engine out on the booster during launch. Starship engines worked without any issues on this flight AFAIK. :)

gcanyon• 11 months ago

The explosion was unexpected and (as far as I know at the moment) unexplained, but they flew the mission at the edge of the envelope, and with a variety of different materials/missing bits on purpose, to better understand where the edge is. Everything that happened (maybe even including the explosion, we'll see in the final analysis) was, as far as we know, within the plan.

The biggest can't-miss milestone was the flawless engine restart. That gives them the go-ahead to hit orbit on the next flight.

ge96• 11 months ago

The deployment system was interesting, how the last one in the layer would go back then forward before releasing.

baq4• 11 months ago

I'd say the payload door situation is a considerable success, at least as big as the relight itself.

GeekyBear2• 11 months ago

The explosion was unexpected

Is it really unexpected that an extremely hot metal pressure tank will rupture when plunged into water?

Since the ship is designed to be caught by a tower and not be plunged into water at all, it doesn't seem like this would be an issue in normal operations.

ekianjo2• 11 months ago

And we could see pretty significant damage on one of the fin

They specifically said they're testing lighter fins to see how much they would hold. Let's not invent problems when it's an experiment that was clearly stated.

gtirloni2• 11 months ago

Is it common to plan an explosion to test how something will react in these launches? Honest question, I know nothing about rockets.

In SRE, we have chaos engineering so I'm wondering if it's the same concept.

bpodgursky• 11 months ago

For Starlink deploys (or other commercial launches) re-entry isn't too critical. Starship is still an order of magnitude cheaper than other launch vehicles even without Stage 2 re-use.

They'll need a higher bar for Artemis but frankly Starship is not the only critical bottleneck there and it's not SpaceX's main financial driver.

moralestapia2• 11 months ago

This guy ... MEGA lmao.

To the contrary, I am fascinated by what SpaceX has accomplished so far. I wouldn't just say they "nailed it" they completely blew past all expectations I had.

"Why didn't just get it right on their first test", really? People can't even get a regex right the first time.

Are you aware of the size of this rocket? That it reached orbit? That it hovered over the ocean instead of just crashing into it? That it came back into a point with such precision that a buoy with a camera was already waiting for it? From orbit (that its 30,000km/h and 150km high)?

Your comment is just ridiculous.

stetrain13• 11 months ago

"Why didn't just get it right on their first test", really? People can't even get a regex right the first time.

The comment you replied to didn't say that. And this isn't the first test.

I think their comment was reasonable. It was a successful mission that met the stated objectives and demonstrated progress. But it wasn't perfect, and there is definitely more progress to be made for Starship to be a reliable operational launch system.

enraged_camel2• 11 months ago

I view it differently. The ship not only survived, but also accomplished all of its mission objectives despite those issues. What this shows is that it has remarkable resilience, which is a really important considering the types of forces it will be subject to during future missions.

762236• 11 months ago

They compromised the ship to study failures of that nature.

rubzah• 11 months ago

The damage was visible long before the explosion, during ascent (not sure if anyone has explained how it happened). Though your point still stands.

I was very surprised that that flap still held up during the stress testing on atmospheric re-entry.

stronglikedan• 11 months ago

Nah, they nailed it.

terminalshort9• 11 months ago

Fin damage isn't ideal, but even if they had to replace the fins every flight, the cost would be quite low in comparison to replacing the entire second stage, which is necessary on the Falcon 9.

m4rtink11• 11 months ago

I would say they nailed it based on achieving all the objectives they stated before the launch.

themgt• 11 months ago

SpaceX has two big things going for it: Starship/Raptor factories churning them out cheap, and themselves as a paying customer in Starlink who can dogfood a risky new launch platform.

Now that they're demoed pez-dispensing v3 dummy Starlinks, I'd assume they'll start launching real ones within ~1-3 months. At that point as long as they can deliver payload to orbit and catch the booster the program is operational and they'll start switching their own Falcon 9 launches over.

The HLS timeline is definitely dicey, but whether Starship winds up being the blocker remains to be seen. Otherwise they've now succeeded enough to "lean launch" Starship with equal/better capabilities to any other existing orbital rocket, and Starlink can fund indefinite further tests/iterations on the rest of their roadmap features (which no one else has).

Ajedi322• 11 months ago

I'd assume they'll start launching real ones within ~1-3 months

I think it's still a bit early for that given that they've only had one successful flight and are still testing lots of new design changes, but I think you're right that the capabilities they've already demonstrated are probably enough to make Starship commercially viable even if literally none of the other revolutionary improvements they're working on pan out.

Falcon 9 doesn't recover the 2nd stage at all, and it's already by far the least expensive rocket out there in terms of cost/kg.

tw04• 11 months ago

The fins were intentional… they said on the live stream they were testing different types of tiles and missing tiles to see how the substructure would behave.

nomilk• 11 months ago

Given the results of test 10 (successful splash down of Starship), any ideas what test 11 will entail? Could we be looking at a chopstick catch of the Starship itself?

stetrain13• 11 months ago

I wouldn't expect that on the next flight.

One option is they can run it again with the data gained from missing tiles etc. and see if there is an improvement.

They could also do a similar flight but with an actual orbital insertion and de-orbit if they are confident in the odds of success of the de-orbit burn.

Landing the ship at the launch site means overflying land and potentially populated areas, so I think they're going to want to demonstrate successful control, re-entry, and landing from orbit a few times before attempting that.

plqbfbv• 11 months ago

That's not out of reach/plans according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starship_launches#Futu...

But I agree with you, I'd rather have test flight 11 demonstrate at least another successful reentry with no issues (they had a non-fatal explosion on ship reentry in flight 10) before attempting to catch the booster AND landing the ship.

redox992• 11 months ago

Probably the same as 10, but with SHB catch.

potato37328423• 11 months ago

They're probably gonna keep wasting ships until they've got the exact limits of their capability established.

I know it seems counterintuitive to everyone who grew up in the era of the space shuttle, but the ship is the cheap part, the giant booster is the expensive part.

The ship has a way longer cycle time so starship unit costs are going to dominate fleet construction cost despite being the cheaper unit so knowing exactly how hard you can run them is very valuable information it's worth gleaning by wasting some units early on.

senectus1• 11 months ago

given one of the flight control wings was melting on the way back in I suspect you're right.

I expect them to start catching the booster more often tho.

baq4• 11 months ago

The money is in Starlink, so maybe they'll want to make orbit having demonstrated successful relights and payload door operation?

NitpickLawyer4• 11 months ago

They only have one more shipv2 right now. The next ones are shipv3. So my guess is that a ship catch doesn't make sense, since they're changing the architecture on the next ones. Would make sense to continue with limit finding (it's a disposable launch anyway, old gear) on things that carry over (i.e. thermal protection, ablative materials, crazy angles, etc)

One interesting point is if they actually go for orbit. It would take just a few more seconds to reach something like 200+km / 100km, a place where they could deploy some v3 Starlinks and gather data from the launch (i.e. vibrations, health, dinging on the door, etc). It would be a test where they get more data that's transferable to the new architecture, and relatively low risk of getting stuck in orbit. (low perigee would mean eventual re-entry anyway, hopefully over the ocean) The sats can probably raise themselves from there.

Culonavirus3• 11 months ago

Like you said, flight 11 has the last V2 and since V3 is not compatible with the existing pad A (only the new pad B that is being finished atm), it would be a nice opportunity to try the ship catch because cratering the old pad A and/or its tower wouldn't be that much of a deal. The entire Pad A has to be replaced anyways.

enraged_camel2• 11 months ago

Incredible achievement, but what is more incredible is how many people (including almost all of my friends circle) have started rooting for SpaceX to fail due to the shenanigans of its founder.

I think as a culture we've lost the ability to compartmentalize. We should be able to criticize and even despise the head of a company, and at the same time celebrate when the intelligence and hard work of the countless smart and hard-working people at that company push the boundaries of what is possible for humanity.

nerdjon3• 11 months ago

This is something I am finding myself wrestling with a lot right now.

On the one hand I am a major space nerd and I see the value of what SpaceX is doing. Especially with it really seeming like no one is anywhere near their level. What kind of scientific advancements will be possible once this thing can be used normally and launches like this become commonplace.

But at the same time it is impossible to ignore the Elon situation. And that also directly relates to Trump as well. We are in this bonkers situation where he helped get a largely anti-science administration in power and yet also runs one of the companies that will help science.

It does raise serious questions about whether or not there will be limitations on what types of science can be done. Will they have some line in the sand and say they won't launch satellites that do "X", like maybe monitor climate change.

I think maybe rooting for them to fail is a bit much, but I am sure as hell hoping that someone else can catch up. But in the mean time I will celebrate these achievements cautiously. Recognizing the amazing work that the engineers at SpaceX have put into this, because they do deserve a lot of credit for that.

bethekidyouwant• 11 months ago

“a satellite that monitors climate change” - really you think Elon Musk is not gonna fly satellites with instruments on them that point downwards?

bilsbie2• 11 months ago

What if the guy who built the world’s best rocket from scratch, who popularized EVs and brought self-driving tech to the masses, who built brain computer interfaces, dug tunnels, started OpenAI and PayPal…

What if he’s not an idiot?

What if we should actually be listening to what this guy says and considering it?

What if he has the same ability to see what nobody else can see early on in politics…

As he’s shown across the rest of his career?

bilsbie2• 11 months ago

I love the arrogance that anyone who disagrees with you is “anti-science”.

Please tell us which culture war topics he’s anti-science on.

BlackjackCF• 11 months ago

It’s honestly amazing what SpaceX has been able to accomplish despite Elon. I mean - look at what his interference has done to Tesla and Twitter. The execs at SpaceX seem like they know how to manage Elon so that their employees are actually able to deliver.

bad_haircut72• 11 months ago

[flagged]

Aeolun2• 11 months ago

If the king managed to build their palace in the clouds? Yes. That’s a pretty awesome achievement. Not the kings’s achievement, but the achievement stands.

saubeidl2• 11 months ago

Wernher von Braun had the incredible achievement of shooting the first rocket up to space - the V2.

Thanks to the intelligence and hard work of the countless smart and hard-working people he pushed the boundaries of what is possible for humanity.

Still, I find it hard to accept we should compartmentalize and not think about who those rockets were built for and with what purpose.

ls6123• 11 months ago

Still, I find it hard to accept we should compartmentalize and not think about who those rockets were built for and with what purpose.

Yet that is exactly what the US did and we got the Saturn V out of doing so.

yoz-y• 11 months ago

I mostly hope that Blue Origin will be a worthy competitor.

For me what this shows that the most important thing for a CEO to be successful is to have money, a vison (no matter how unrealistic or unnecessary) and a cult personality. Nothing else matters. Also it shows that with enough virtual money (I.e.: massively overblown Tesla stock) you can do just about anything.

Zigurd3• 11 months ago

They each have different failings. Elon is taking an absolutely bullshit approach to project management: if Starship can't meet payload specs, it can't refuel in orbit. Neither of those monumentally risky milestones are even close to being attempted.

Jeff loves measurement and control. So he replaced his experienced aerospace guy with the Alexa guy. Because the Alexa guy works the Amazon way: everything measured and tightly controlled.

0xffff22• 11 months ago

Fun trivia fact of the day: BO was founded 2 years _before_ SpaceX. 25 years later, SpaceX has revolutionized the launch industry. Meanwhile, BO has only just had their first (and only) orbital launch at the beginning of this year. It's unclear to me what, if anything BO could do to really catch up at this point.

It's clear that money isn't the defining factor at least. When BO was founded Bezos was the richest man in the world. It has floundered for so long that Musk was able to build up a cult of personality around SpaceX and parlay that into even more money than Bezos.

terminalshort9• 11 months ago

Blue Origin was founded before SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos had way more money back then. And when Elon Musk founded SpaceX few people had heard of him and he wasn't even a billionaire. Tesla didn't exist yet, so there was no "massively overblown stock." And where is the "unrealistic vision?" Looks like it turned out to be pretty realistic to me.

GMoromisato15• 11 months ago

I'm rooting for SpaceX to succeed, and there are plenty of people like me.

This is not to condemn or argue with anyone who feels differently. But I think we need to be more visible.

jaybrendansmith• 11 months ago

I am rooting for them all. I don't need to like the founder, or his politics. I understand that Gwynne Shotwell and so many others are behind much of the progress.

Sparyjerry5• 11 months ago

Shenanigans of its founder being falsely accused of doing a Nazi salute when he was just waiving and not agreeing with certain peoples politics. When someone tries to compare someone to the most evil person that has ever existed then odds are that person is lying through their teeth. On one had we have a 'wave,' literally, and on the other hand we have genocide. It's incredible to me how many people choose not to see through the lies about Elon Musk, even though they have the capability, and to this day think he is a nazi.

Aeolun2• 11 months ago

And maybe more interesting. How much did it cost them to get this far vs the sls?

thesmart4• 11 months ago

You can't really compare them because SLS was a jobs program intended to spread out contracts across many states by reusing suppliers from shuttle programs. Cheap? No. Wasteful? also no. Most of that money went back into those economies.

marcusverus• 11 months ago

Wasteful? also no. Most of that money went back into those economies.

If the government 100B to dig a big hole and fill it up again, that money would also "go back into those economies". Does that mean it wouldn't be wasteful?

Ajedi322• 11 months ago

That's not how it works. If you pay people to dig a giant hole in the ground and then fill it back in, that money "goes back into the economy" but that doesn't mean it's not wasteful.

jjk1669• 11 months ago

The money could have gone into those economies while also securing a productive accomplishment (or more productive accomplishments depending on your opinion of SLS). Factories could have been retooled and workers could have been retrained to produce things of greater value instead of deliberately keeping them obsolete. It's still wasteful even if not completely useless.

chermi2• 11 months ago

Ahh, much like the economy has grown so much because the government gave people money and shovel to dig and refill holes. Went back into the economy, must've been a good move. Let's not bother considering what else could've been done with the money.

Zigurd3• 11 months ago

Too many things don't add up, for example: SpaceX, and friendly commentators, have framed this as a highly experimental test flight. The most visible aspect of that are the heatshield test tiles on various parts of the upper stage.

That kind of testing is understandable to a certain extent. But it doesn't make sense to ditch the rocket in the Indian Ocean once you've run those experiments, instead of catching it, and having all the parts available to study.

yakz• 11 months ago

How much would it cost them to catch it, though? Not just in money, but time. How do you know it doesn't make sense?

acd10j• 11 months ago

I don’t think they are letting go of these rockets; they are definitely being retrieved back. Otherwise, rival countries like China will end up retrieving them.

dpifke• 11 months ago

The ground equipment is the longest lead-time item for future flights. If you accidentally blow that up, it sets the program back months.

aDyslecticCrow2• 11 months ago

The tower is more expensive than the rocket. The old tower is sketchy and quite flawed, and the new tower is not complete yet.

lupusreal2• 11 months ago

It's a very cool rocket and this success is a nice change of pace from the past several failures. However, I just have to say:

Mars rocket

Very dubious. If you disregard all the SpaceX marketting talk and just go by what they're building, then it's a rocket meant for launching very large satellite constellations as cheap as possible.

NitpickLawyer4• 11 months ago

The only reason they're doing full reusability is to enable Mars missions. Had they only wanted cheap flights for satellite constellations they could have launched with what they have now (i.e. reusable booster and single use starship), and it would be cheaper than anything on the market with huge upmass capabilities.

macintux• 11 months ago

That doesn't mean they're going to achieve full reusability, although obviously it looks more and more likely.

Anon1096• 11 months ago

Something that I rarely see mentioned about SpaceX's goals and financial viability of a reusable Starship is how significant of a boost they get to their talent pool by working on the absolute bleeding edge on things that seem impossible. People go work at SpaceX because they work on crazy things like Starship instead of only working to make "cheap flights for satellite missions". SpaceX attracts the absolute cream of the crop (at below market rates even but that's besides the point) and those people work better/harder than they ever would working on more boring goals. It's the power of vision and motivation.

lupusreal2• 11 months ago

The constellations they can launch now are only a small fraction of the size they aspire to launch. Their plans for Starlink alone call for almost 10x as many satellites as they currently have. Then there are all the other constellations they might launch in addition to Starlink, including defense contracts that might call for rapid replenishment of expended/destroyed satellites.

As for Mars, Starship might be ready for that in a few years (a year ago I was saying in a year or two, but I've kicked that back). But where are the Mars customers? Who is developing Mars habitation plans and hardware that will be ready in even twenty years? Commercial demand for large satellite constellations obviously exists. Demand for Mars colonization is nonexistent, it exists only in the hopes and dreams of sci-fi junkies.

I really hope I'm wrong, because I'm a sci-fi junkie!

sidcool• 11 months ago

Amazing progress. SpaceX speed is enviable.

GMoromisato15• 11 months ago

Starship is like AI/LLMs in that success would revolutionize the world, but technological failure is very possible. And despite the confident predictions on the internets, we don't know which it's going to be.

After the Shuttle program ended in failure, work on reusable launch systems stopped for decades. A similar thing would happen if Starship fails. Space would remain the province of the military and large governments.

Today it costs ~$3,000 per kilogram to put something in orbit (on a SpaceX Falcon 9). Starship aims to lower that to $10 per kg. That's totally crazy, but even if it could get it down to $300 per kg, that would revolutionize access to space.

Data centers in space, biotech manufacturing, and maybe even asteroid mining and energy generation become practical at those prices. To say nothing of telecommunications, remote sensing, and global navigation--all become much cheaper.

And, of course, that drops the price on all the cool science/exploration goals that we always talk about: massive space telescopes, regular probes to all the planets, and crewed exploration.

We're literally at an inflexion point between two possible futures and we don't know which it's going to be. If I were younger I would absolutely try to work at SpaceX to help tilt the chances.

But as it is, all I can do is root for them.

nwah1• 11 months ago

Assuming it doesn't trigger Kessler Syndrome.

nroets• 11 months ago

With one company being so far ahead is actually a good thing: No tragedy of the Commons. Or reckless gambling on unproven technology.

indoordin0saur2• 11 months ago

Starlink satellites are so low in altitude that Kessler syndrome could not occur because their orbits would decay within weeks and reenter the atmosphere and burn up.

techterrier• 11 months ago

oh good, Wall-E levels of space polution

lordofgibbons• 11 months ago

After the Shuttle program ended in failure, work on reusable launch systems stopped for decades

Did it really stop for decades? I think SpaceX and Blue Origin were both already working on re-usable launch systems around that time

GMoromisato15• 11 months ago

After the Challenger disaster (1986) it was clear that the Space Shuttle was never going to accomplish its cost and reliability goals. The US military had bet everything on the Shuttle, so it needed a new launch vehicle. The one clear requirement of the new launch vehicle was that it had to be expendable. In fact, the name of the program was "Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle"[1]

Remember also that when SpaceX started to develop Falcon booster reuse in 2011, every major aerospace company said that reusable vehicles would never make economic sense. Even after the first Falcon 9 recovery and re-flight, most aerospace companies thought reusability was a dead-end and that belief came from the refurbishment cost that Shuttle had to go through.

I count from 1994 (start of EELV) to 2021, when NASA launched astronauts on a reused booster and Peter Beck famously fulfilled his promise to eat his hat if Rocket Lab ever worked on a re-usable launch vehicle.

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Space_Launch

jjk1669• 11 months ago

SpaceX started with the business plan of low cost, mass producible single use launchers. Falcon 9 was not designed with any level of reusability in mind. There was a major redesign to add landing hardware, but the whole reason for Starship being a totally new design was the reusability that a Falcon "super-heavy" derivative could never achieve.

ahazred8ta2• 11 months ago

In the 80s, the reusable spacecraft people got sidetracked into SSTO designs, which have horribly small payload fractions. The Delta Clipper and DC-X families were meant to be reusable, but they never scaled up to something that could deliver decent payloads to orbit.

sciencesama• 11 months ago

Even trash disposal is possible! Dispose all trash in space !!

thegrim33• 11 months ago

"Space would remain the province of the military and large governments."

Falcon 9 launches are already only ~10% government payloads, ~90% commercial payloads. They're already vastly not military/government launches.

GMoromisato15• 11 months ago

Fair point!

I should have said that the space economy would remain small.

aduffy• 11 months ago

Sure, not directly. But most of that is imaging and communications payloads, and the vast majority there is being purchased by militaries and intelligence agencies.

Government still props up this whole market.

sho_hn4• 11 months ago

After the Shuttle program ended in failure, work on reusable launch systems stopped for decades. A similar thing would happen if Starship fails. Space would remain the province of the military and large governments.

I really don't agree with this take.

It may appear as if SpaceX is the only game in town, but in reality a lot of this technology is commoditized now, and space is as diversified and vibrant as ever.

The starting point today is very different from the post-Shuttle environment. If Starship fails, it is unlikely to be for pure technology reasons and something else will take its place with perhaps better product-market fit.

SpaceX is a symptom, not the cause.

The true dangers to all of these lofty human enterprises are geopolitics, domestic political destabilization and environmental collapse.

GMoromisato15• 11 months ago

I disagree. If Starship fails, the most likely reason will be technological. Either they can never get the heat shield to be reliable, or they can't get cost down below Falcon 9 (meaning, refurbishment costs are too high).

And if it fails, who will spend billions on a new vehicle?

Stoke Space: They are working on Nova, which is designed for 2nd-stage re-use, and they've got a novel architecture. But they are not well-funded and if Starship fails, it is likely that investor sentiment will shift away from full reusability (you know how investors are). And even if they succeed, their current vehicle can only get 3 tons to orbit. That means each launch must cost less than $1 million to get to the $300/kg target. In contrast, Starship can loft 100 tons, so it can cost up to $30 million per launch and still hit the target.

Blue Origin: They are still working on 1st stage re-use, and even assuming they get that to work next year, they are at least a decade away from testing 2nd stage re-use. And their current designs don't have any of the cost-savings in Starship (like launch-tower catch).

And that's it! There are no other companies seriously working on 2nd-stage reuse.

If Starship fails, there will not be another contender for cheap flights to orbit for decades.

m4rtink11• 11 months ago

I would actually argue that Apollo and the space race damaged reusable launcher projects more than the Space Shuttle. Before the mad scramble to the Moon there were many interesting infrastructure projects and incremental manned mission planned as well as partially or fully reusable launcher or variants of existing expendable launchers.

Then everything that was not contributing to MOON ASAP was thrown away & massive spending on space hardware essentially normalized. The end result (Apollo) was impressive and achieved the goal (first on the Moon) - but was also totally unsustainable, resulting in a big crunch and a lot of setbacks and slowdowns.

Another contributing factor has been military involvement - again, wee need that milsat on orbit and we need it now, costs be damned. ICBMs not being exactly reusable does not help. Even the Space Shuttle design being perverted into its partially reusable clunky form can be traced back to military requirements.

bookofjoe• 11 months ago

It may appear as if SpaceX is the only game in town, but in reality a lot of this technology is commoditized now, and space is as diversified and vibrant as ever.

Really?

SpaceX conducts more than half the world's rocket launches and deploys 80% of the world's satellites.

WalterBright6• 11 months ago

With the ability to lift more weight, it also means that the travel time to Mars could be shortened considerably (by using more propellant).

The minimum propellant travel times are a major barrier.

ethbr14• 11 months ago

Question for the audience, because I've always been curious.

Have there ever been any historical plans for a permanently-transiting interplanetary craft?

A large craft is built, accelerated up to speed (since time wouldn't be a factor, high Isp/low-thrust engines could be used), then left looping between Earth and X at constant high speed, with smaller (and shorter-term) craft accelerating to meet it (e.g. underway replenishment with crew and fuel transfer) or decelerating at the destination.

Heck, if you've got something optionally-crewed, you could have it continuously burning for years to build up speed.

Or do solar system astrodynamics make waiting and then burning like hell from orbital speeds during optimal transit windows more efficient?

hiddencost• 11 months ago

Why do people talk about data centers in space? Heat management is wayyy harder in space.

coolspot• 11 months ago

Common folk assume that the space is super-cold, so it must be good for hot servers.

GMoromisato15• 11 months ago

Lots of things are harder in space; maybe even everything. But it has some benefits, like abundant solar power, lots of room, and line-of-sight to large chunks of Earth.

Almost all the problems can be solved by cheaper access to space, whereas the benefits cannot be easily recreated on Earth.

Is it guaranteed to work? My point is that we don't know, despite confident assertions one way or the other. If it does work, the benefits are clear, and that's why it's worth trying.

yencabulator• 11 months ago

Simple: VC money. The only thing surprising to me about that is that the pitch wasn't "AI in space".

My take: The idea that heavy computing in LEO is better than sending data down to Earth sounds very naive. Starlink is great proof that the bandwidth is plentiful and the latency is good, once the equipment is modern. Definitely cheaper and easier than cooling a datacenter.

rozab• 11 months ago

The thing is, there is no demand to get that much stuff into space.

Falcon 9 has massively brought down the cost per orbit, and even with the whole world as a captive market, every university in every country putting up cubesats, they still don't have nearly enough payloads to make the economies of scale kick in. Hence Starlink. The majority of SpaceX payload mass has been Starlink, something nobody was even asking for. 300+ launches.

And the idea to reach the economies of scale for Starship is... Even more Starlink. How much Starlink could we possibly need? When will humanity come up with another use for this glut of payload capacity?

Even with the Artemis deadline looming large, SpaceX are still pushing this Starlink angle for Starship, it's nuts

m4rtink11• 11 months ago

Demand takes some time to ramp up, especially with quite expensive and complex stuff like Satellites. SpaceX is now even launching competing constellation comsats (project Kuiper), private manned space missions and there are quite a few manned space station projects under development that would be basically unthinkable without the cheaper lift Falcon 9 provides.

As for "How much Starlink could we possibly need?" I think the answer is simply "YES". Even when you possibly somehow satisfy all your Internet access customers, you can start adding other services, like mobile phone coms (already in progress) or maybe imaging or hosted payloads.

ls6123• 11 months ago

Starlink is both a successful commercial service making money hand over fist and a vital strategic asset for the United States. Put simply its one of the most transformative infrastructure projects of the 21st century. SpaceX found a winner and is doubling down on it I don't blame them.

chermi2• 11 months ago

Haven't the economies of scale already kicked in a little? Starlink is profitable. I'm not sure if spacex minus all starship costs is profitable. I'm pretty sure they're quite good at building them faster, better, and for less now. Please show me otherwise. I guess you could call that more learning curve, but that's a fuzzy line.

I guess overall I don't understand your point. What does it matter that the majority of their payload mass was their own? And nobody asking for something is certainly not the same thing as nobody wanting/needing it. See: cars, computers... Starlink now exists and I'm quite certain people love it and rely on it. Wouldn't exist without falcon 9. Starlink basically solved the last mile problem, surely you'd agree rural folks having access to Internet is a good thing?

They made their own demand for falcon 9, with that scale bringing down costs enough to raise demand for basically every research org needing satellites to contract with SpaceX.

I don't think we can definitively predict the demand either way for payload at $300/kg or whatever without first getting there, but Jevons might have some ideas.

Sparyjerry5• 11 months ago

Demand comes at a curve, the cheaper you make it, the more demand there will be. The demand for satellites and eventually human travel is practically infinite if the cost is low enough.

If Starship cuts cost to orbit by at minimum 1/3 and at maximum 1/100th demand will skyrocket (pun intended) either way.

boxed5• 11 months ago

The thing is, there is no demand to get that much stuff into space.

You mean no other company except SpaceX has such a demand. But SpaceX does in fact have such a demand and are using it to make a profit.

Small governments don't understand that they can have space science programs rivaling NASA for super cheap. That's what's holding demand back imo.

indoordin0saur2• 11 months ago

Starlink, at scale would be able to replace the telecoms and broadband internet providers with a superior product globally. So that total addressable market is in the trillions.

smcnally• 11 months ago

After the Shuttle program ended in failure, work on reusable launch systems stopped for decades.

“ended in failure” sounds harsh in this context. Or is that just me whistling past the sunk cost fallacies?

mchusma• 11 months ago

Love it, great job SpaceX!

I watched the Martian again the other day and I marveled about how much has changed. With Starship progress, almost none of the plot really makes sense (bespoke vehicles and payloads etc). The first mars expeditions will probably be stocked with a thousand tons of gear, enough to easily last a guy 5 years. And if some dude were stranded on Mars, SpaceX could start lobbing things in his direction within maybe 30 days?

The Martian is a vision for a 2035 mission from 2011. We seem likely to beat that!

FireBeyond3• 11 months ago

The first mars expeditions will probably be stocked with a thousand tons of gear, enough to easily last a guy 5 years.
The Martian is a vision for a 2035 mission from 2011. We seem likely to beat that!

What, exactly, is that guy doing for those five years? We don't know how to terraform Mars, and it's questionable what having someone on the surface will add to the knowledge we have of surface composition. And then what? That equipment is still on earth - after it's built.

Oh, and how's he planning to get off Mars?

I would comfortably make a $100 bet that there is no chance that we have sent a manned mission to even orbit Mars by 2035, let alone are "settling" it.

sho_hn4• 11 months ago

https://idlewords.com/2025/02/the_shape_of_a_mars_mission.ht...

WalterBright6• 11 months ago

At a minimum, it would be a major test of the habitat's ability to support human life for 5 years.

A major activity for the Martian would be exploring the location and prospecting for necessary raw materials, like digging for water.

jjk1669• 11 months ago

What, exactly, is that guy doing for those five years?

Waiting to be rescued. We're not talking about sending one guy to mars for funsies, we're talking about one person left after an emergency. In the book he gets off mars by going to the launcher staged for the next mission, which again is a case of prepositioning extra hardware before sending someone to the planet.

If you assume a team of 5 people with an intended stay of 6 months, 5 years of supplies is a factor of safety of 2. If you send enough supplies to keep the whole team alive till the next launch window, that would keep a single person alive for about 2 decades (ignoring potential storage lifetimes).

patall• 11 months ago

SpaceX could start lobbing things in his direction within maybe 30 days?

If Earth and Mars are on opposite ends of the sun, nobody is going anywhere within 30 days. I do not see how anything will change from the one transfer window per ~2 years for the foreseeable future

Teever3• 11 months ago

While this doesn't apply in the scenario that the person you're responding to has given there are ways to get many more transfer windows between Mars and Earth using Aldrin Cyclers.

ashishuthama• 11 months ago

'lobbing things' i.e launching things, OP didnt mean it would reach there in 30 days.

gwbennett• 11 months ago

I watched every minute of it. It was awesome. Bravo Zulu SpaceX.

SpaceX's giant Starship Mars rocket nails critical 10th test flight

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