[HN Gopher] A SpaceX booster now trails only 4 space shuttles in...
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A SpaceX booster now trails only 4 space shuttles in flight
experience
Author : rbanffy
Score : 198 points
Date : 2021-05-11 13:07 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| delecti wrote:
| What SpaceX is accomplishing is certainly impressive, but this
| seems like a weird comparison. Isn't the ranking implied by the
| title basically a tie between nearly everything humanity has ever
| launched at "1", and the space shuttles (minus Challenger) all up
| at "dozens"? It also fails to mention that it _surpassed_
| Challenger in successful landings with its tenth, which seems
| pretty relevant in the story they 're trying to tell. And I may
| have missed it, but I don't think the article mentioned anything
| else that had ever been launched more than once.
| andrewtbham wrote:
| the odd thing to me is that the space shuttle underwent so much
| refurbishment that it doesn't seem comparable.
| btilly wrote:
| When you compare with inflation, the cost of building this
| rocket and launching it 10x is less than the cost of any
| single launch of the Space Shuttle.
|
| Also this rocket they intend to test to destruction. Nobody
| knows if it has 1, 10 or 100 more launches in it.
| [deleted]
| messe wrote:
| > It also fails to mention that it surpassed Challenger in
| successful landings with its tenth
|
| I think hailing that as an accomplishment might be in bad
| taste.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It is unpleasant to contemplate the deaths from Challenger
| and Columbia. However, we should be excited about being able
| to do more in space with vehicles and operational procedures
| that are safer and cheaper than the shuttle program.
| chrishas35 wrote:
| But that's exactly what the article did without actually
| mentioning Challenger. A very strange article. "It trails
| only these four shuttle orbiters (we're not going to mention
| the fifth)"
| jwhitlark wrote:
| I agree. The way it's worded leaves out important
| information. They could have said "It trails only four of
| the five shuttles", because the fact that it outlasted one
| of them is an important data point.
| cybrjoe wrote:
| A key piece of missing information ... Space Shuttle Discovery
| flew 39 times. So B1051 has a way to go.
| qayxc wrote:
| Not only that - it's kind of a flawed comparison anyway.
|
| None of the F9 boosters are orbital vehicles, i.e. they cannot
| even be compared to the Space Shuttle since their only
| commonality is that both are rocket-powered vehicles that
| crossed the Karman-line.
|
| There's simply no good point of comparison at the moment since
| the F9 is the first of its kind.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I was curious about the space shuttle solid rocket booster,
| so I looked it up...
|
| _Out of 270 SRBs launched over the Shuttle program, all but
| four were recovered - those from STS-4 (due to a parachute
| malfunction) and STS-51-L (Challenger disaster). Over 5,000
| parts were refurbished for reuse after each flight. The final
| set of SRBs that launched STS-135 included parts that flew on
| 59 previous missions, including STS-1. Recovery also allowed
| post-flight examination of the boosters, identification of
| anomalies, and incremental design improvements._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_Boo.
| ..
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It would have been cheaper to build SRB's from scratch
| every time than it was to rebuild them the way they did.
| NortySpock wrote:
| True.
|
| I wonder if they could have done a mid-life-cycle design
| refresh to switch to kerlox boosters to try to recover
| them on land...
|
| Politically untenable, of course, due to the Thiokol
| corporation lobbying for solid rocket boosters but...
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Once they're flying Starship, those will be orbital vehicles.
| tzfld wrote:
| Starships will not be launched on F9s
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Their crew might be, at least initially. A launch abort
| system is nice to have.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Hopefully they are. The plan right now for moon missions
| is to fly the crew on basically untested SLS/Orion which
| is crazy risky.
|
| https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/02/24/sls-is-
| cancell...
| ansible wrote:
| It is a flawed comparison in the other way as well. The
| shuttles required vast amounts of refurbishment after each
| flight. While the thermal protection system _was_ improved
| with the later shuttles, they required a lot of inspection
| and replacement of individual tiles, which was an enormous
| cost. It was also standard for the main engines (SSMEs) to be
| pulled out and swapped with ones that have been fully
| inspected. Even the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) needed to be
| towed back to port, disassembled, and completely refurbished
| for each flight.
|
| The F9 first stage, on the other hand, typically goes through
| a relatively light amount of inspection and repair after each
| flight.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Do you have specific numbers on how much inspection and
| refurbishment the space shuttle went through vs F9?
| ansible wrote:
| Per-flight costs for the shuttle was $1.6 billion USD
| (2010 dollars). A good chunk of that was refurbishment
| for the shuttle and the SRBs. I didn't find specific
| numbers in a quick Internet search.
|
| https://www.space.com/12166-space-shuttle-program-cost-
| promi...
| reddog wrote:
| Isn't that the cost of the entire space shuttle program
| (including R&D) divided by the number of launches? I
| believe the real cost of turning around a shuttle flight
| towards the end to the program was a fraction of this.
|
| I wonder what the cost of a currrent spacex flight is
| doing this same kind of accounting. I don't suppose
| anyone really knows since spacex is a private company.
| ansible wrote:
| In some sense, the Shuttle program was in continuous
| development. But to give you some idea of the work
| involved in even the later launches, consider this:
|
| Instead of inspecting 24,000 tiles _by hand_ , they
| developed a scanner to automate the process starting with
| STS-118:
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/aug/HQ_07171_Shuttl
| e_T...
|
| They had hundreds of techs, working thousands of hours
| per launch to get each orbiter ready. SpaceX is expending
| a tiny, tiny fraction of that effort to get each stage-1
| booster ready for re-flight. Part of that of course is
| that the booster is coming back at sub-orbital speeds.
|
| So it is more fair to compare the F9 stage-1 to the pair
| of SRBs used for the Shuttle. But even then, there was a
| lot of effort just to get the SRBs ready for re-flight.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| Just because all their current flights so far have burdened
| them with enough payload to not achieve orbit doesn't mean
| they aren't perfectly capable of orbital insertion and
| manuevering. Don't forget they do have to do a deceleration
| burn once they release their upper stage; because without it
| they would continue on a trajectory that could easily carry
| it 2/3s around the world before hitting atmosphere again.
|
| That being said you are kinda right in that they really can't
| be compared, considering the shuttle is more a payload with a
| really awkward engine arrangement and can't actually reach
| orbit without ditching multiple SRMs and a fuel tank larger
| than it is, but can actually do useful stuff once up there.
| dgritsko wrote:
| And there were just six orbiters total (only five of which went
| to space).
| usrusr wrote:
| So now it trails two orbiters less than while on the drawing
| board, hooray! (if we include Buran, which did make it to
| orbit but has even less in common with Falcon 9 because the
| engines of the reusable part are upper stage)
| xphos wrote:
| Yeah but think about the difference in cost the space shuttle
| alone costed almost 200 billion dollars over its 40 flights its
| still 5 billion dollars a flight. Now compare this to these
| boosted they don't include a mission module but they cost about
| 62 million in there first launch and following launches are
| only about 15 million dollars. Note to mention the pace of
| launches are much much faster than the space shuttle. These may
| not be orbital boosters but they don't have to be these costs
| demonstrate the mistake with space shuttle is trying to do to
| much. Now I cited the total cost of the space shuttle and but
| to say just because these boosters haven't reached 39 flights
| so they are a long way off is silly they did this in 2 years
| the space shuttles lifetime was like 40 yrs.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| I don't think that comparing this booster with the STS is
| particularly valid. While I don't want to downplay SpaceX's
| very real achievement here, the STS was a much more complex
| and flexible platform, it was human-rated (with all the
| engineering overhead that that entails), it was built without
| the advantage of the last forty-plus years of technical
| development, and it was _done first_. All those things cost
| money - at the time or with hindsight.
| modeless wrote:
| F9 is human-rated.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Yes you're right - since November last year. Thanks for
| the correction.
| lucideer wrote:
| Even despite the weird comparison (sub-orbital/orbital), saying
| "only 4" makes it sound like there were 100s of shuttles. There
| were 6...
| dgritsko wrote:
| SpaceX's effort to take first-stage reuse from moonshot to
| mundane is nothing short of extraordinary. It still makes me
| smile to think of how breathlessly excited we got over individual
| frames of grainy footage from the first water landing tests. The
| fact that landing and reuse now seem routine gives me a high
| degree of confidence that they will succeed in future endeavors -
| landing a Starship seemed inevitable, rather than the stuff of
| sci-fi dreams that it was only a few years ago.
| hinkley wrote:
| When they were talking about the Starship launch the other day,
| it hit home for me how much more practical knowledge you can
| learn about your device when it survives use and you can
| disassemble it to study. Especially in these days where a
| device that can analyze metal for microscopic cracks is cheap
| enough that every airline maintenance hub has one on hand.
|
| This fact essentially, and I think somewhat ironically, makes
| single use rockets harder to do design iteration on than ones
| meant to last for years.
|
| Presumably the newest rockets will have higher thrust to weight
| ratios, or lower risk of failure, so the older ones will be
| priced as the cheap seats for as long as they last and the
| opportunity costs aren't too high. Then they'll either be
| parted out or put on display - land an EOL stage at every new
| spaceport and put that out front as a billboard.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > makes single use rockets harder to do design iteration on
| than ones meant to last for years.
|
| This is why they do so many tests on components, then
| subsystems, then on real flight hardware for a very long time
| before they attempt to fly: because once it leaves the pad,
| they'll never see it again.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Agreed. I barely knew who Elon Musk was until reading his
| biography, which was written years ago. The biography ended
| with Elon's dream of colonizing Mars and doing verticle rocket
| landings, and talked about the challenges and shared some
| skepticism. So from my perspective the first of his "dreams"
| has become a common reality, and I'm left thinking that
| colonizing Mars is next.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| It can't be done.
|
| Technically you can do it but it's not practical.
|
| It is possible and practical but there's no reason to.
|
| Oh, look here we are. Well, sure anybody could have seen that
| this was where we would end up - we just didn't agree on when
| we'd be here.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| "It always seems impossible until it's done."
| kirubakaran wrote:
| "Then it seems obvious"
| DecoPerson wrote:
| If a large meteor hits Earth, the humanity organism will be
| glad it spread itself to Mars.
| guywhocodes wrote:
| Wouldn't you be happier on the moon though?
| MrZongle2 wrote:
| In the meteor situation, being on the Moon _might_ be
| preferable if you 're in a sustainable environment and
| you're not in danger of being hit by debris yourself. In
| this case, it seems to me that you're in a far better
| position to monitor the Earth and plan a return once the
| surface is habitable again.
|
| That's a possibility with Mars too, but a riskier return
| due to the distance.
| sneak wrote:
| Let's wait to answer that until we've seen babies born
| that have gestated in 1/6th gravity.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| We know that rats grow OK in orbital microgravity.
| Doesn't seem like strong gravity is required for
| mammalian morphogenesis to work.
|
| "As we reported previously (Ronca & Alberts, 2002b), pre-
| and postflight body weights of dams and the body weights
| of the offspring used in these experiments were
| comparable across treatment groups. Within 48-72 hrs
| following landing, the rat dams that contributed
| offspring to the postnatal studies gave birth to healthy
| offspring."
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2610337/
| reddog wrote:
| That would have to be one goddamn big meteor to make
| conditions on earth more hostile to human life than they
| already are on Mars. Much, much bigger than the one that
| wiped out the dinosaurs.
| agogdog wrote:
| Important to keep in mind that if a meteor hits Earth,
| Mars will still be more hostile to life.
|
| The Earth has lost many species of animals due to planet-
| scale events, including at least one meteor, and still
| life continues. Mars has been dead and naked to solar
| radiation for the entire duration of all known life on
| Earth.
|
| People love to romanticize things like this, but they're
| far removed from reality.
|
| I very much want people to explore Mars, but permanent
| Mars colonies are incredibly unlikely within our, or our
| children's, lifetimes. We may very well grow up and die
| during a period of time where no human sets foot on
| another body outside of Earth.
|
| The problems on Earth don't make it more appealing to
| colonize Mars, they make it harder to justify going there
| at all.
| vkou wrote:
| The humanity organism does not have feelings.
|
| People have feelings. Humanity does not.
|
| But if you're going to give it feelings, a far more
| likely outcome is that a life-ending meteor will not hit
| the earth, and that the humanity organism would be much
| happier if it didn't waste its efforts on chasing a fairy
| tale, instead of fixing problems here, on Earth.
|
| It boggles the mind that people worry about planet-
| killing meteors arriving over geological timescales, when
| the real danger - sustainability - is staring us in the
| face _today_ , and needs action _now_.
| randomsearch wrote:
| In the future, assuming humanity becomes space-faring, it
| will be mind boggling to everyone that some people
| consistently argued against the idea.
| vkou wrote:
| What I think is far more likely is that in the near
| future, assuming some part of humanity survives the
| sustainability crisis (very likely), it will be mind
| boggling to everyone how so many people consistently
| underestimated how important it was to solve the problem
| when we could.
| triceratops wrote:
| You're being shortsighted. For all you know these Mars
| colonization efforts might throw off some sort of miracle
| discovery or technology - like cheap energy or cheap
| carbon capture.
|
| The problems of sustainability or climate change are
| about political will and priorities. They aren't
| something a single billionaire can solve. Focus on
| mobilizing, organizing, and educating voters if you want
| to do something about sustainability.
| vkou wrote:
| What makes you think those political problems won't
| follow us to whatever techno-autocracy/libertarian-
| paradise/commune/??? that you are envisioning for Mars?
|
| That's the appeal of dreaming about Mars. It's all vague,
| hand-wavy, loosey-goosey. It's like a software project,
| before the first line of code is written. To buy into the
| vision, you don't need to figure out how it has to work -
| you just need to have the hope that everything will fall
| into place, the code will be perfect and defect-free, and
| it's going to be way better then the system you are re-
| writing.
|
| The only problem is that billions of people currently
| depend on the legacy system, and that the vague plan for
| the re-write calls for it to be carried out blindfolded,
| with a hand tied behind your back, and to make things
| more interesting, the language of choice is brainfuck.
| triceratops wrote:
| You're posing it as an either-or choice between going to
| Mars and fighting climate change. It's not. Fighting
| climate change is a political problem. Going to Mars is a
| scientific and engineering problem.
|
| If everyone had your attitude there would never be any
| progress. Imagine if someone told Newton "Why are you
| bothering with how things fall? Go solve the plague or
| something."
|
| I have no vision of any Martian society. We can figure
| that out if we get there. Getting there is the
| interesting part right now.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| Still a mars colony would have a better chance of
| bypassing some of the problems inherent in the legacy
| system, largely because you will have to worry about
| thousands instead of billions of people at the start.
| This is a main advantage vs a desert or arctic colony --
| those would be way too close.
| tobmlt wrote:
| Earth is a space ship and we have been mismanaging the
| resources on said ship.
|
| When we build our own spaceships, we rapidly develop in
| miniature the sustainable tech needed to really fix
| earth.
|
| We already have carbon dioxide scrubbers, we just need a
| vast clean source of energy in order to clean things up,
| and stop the pollution on net.
|
| Probably fission is a good enough stop gap.
|
| This will happen as soon as the incentive structures are
| there.
|
| Engineering progress is helping, even if indirectly. Who
| knows what more energy efficient environment cleansing
| tech will he developed for spacecraft next. Or power
| sources, batteries, etc. Technology development is
| cumulative and crosses over domains.
|
| Spacex is a spearhead rapidly innovating technology.
| Government mechanisms are a sort of discombobulated
| rising tide/ pasture of cows, or herd of scared sheep
| trying to stay on the grazing turf. Assuming gov's do not
| get very much more organized, the better the tech, the
| easier choices the sheep have to make -- win wins get
| things done. We could benefit greatly from tech advances
| such that gov gets win wins by making green choices. That
| way the incentives can tilt more favorably more quickly.
| hinkley wrote:
| The moon is rotten with metal oxides. Powdered metal
| oxides. If you can work out how to do smelting and
| metallurgy in low G, then the moon as a manufacturing base
| for a stellar civilization has its attractions. We can't
| manage a Mars Colony (like capital C colony, not camping
| trip) from Earth. But from the moon? The physics is
| certainly better, but I'm not so sure about the logistics.
|
| Does anyone know if convection is a net positive or
| negative when smelting metal? I know that one way to remove
| impurities is to cast a billet and then saw off the bottom
| and top edge, where the heavy and the light contaminants
| tend to come out of suspension. But is that a boon or just
| making the most of a bad situation?
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Electric cars and vertical rocket landings were ideas you
| could show would work eventually with a little napkin math.
| It is a good critique of humanity that so many "experts"
| neglected to do that napkin math and just declare it
| impossible.
|
| Getting starship to work reliably still involves some never
| done before procedures that remain to be proven. But SpaceX
| has a plan that might work, if it doesn't there are many
| ways to adjust the plan. With enough time and money, they
| can do it.
|
| Colonizing mars is not so easy to show as feasible.
| Certainly we can launch a bunch of cans and digging
| equipment and get a few people living there. But anything
| like a self sustaining population? Don't know, we don't
| really have a concrete plan of how to do that. People often
| say, if you think you can colonize mars, colonize the Gobi
| Desert first, as it is 10,000 times easier.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| It makes much more sence to industrialise the Moon than
| to colonise mars. Moon materials can be used to produce
| ships and space structures, satellites, propellant, etc.
| You can have a space elevator on the moon today with a
| titanium cable. It will actually be profitable.
|
| Most importantly, colonising the moon is tractable in
| terms of emergencies: if someone on the moon suffers an
| accident and needs a surgery, they could be in a hospital
| on Earth in a day or two. If their shelter is damaged, or
| supplies are needed, we can send help to the Moon and
| have it arrrive before everyone is dead.
|
| You are on mars and suddenly are suffering from liver
| disease? You are probably dead. It's going to be like the
| life of iur first Abtarctic explorers, when they get in
| trouble, there is no help. Many don't return, and noone
| stays there to live. To this day noone 'colonised'
| Antarctica.
|
| Mars settlement is only viable when we have a spaceship
| factory on the moon, nuclear engines, and we could send
| the equivant of a large marine research vessel to mars,
| so 10,000 tons usefull payload, every month.
| elihu wrote:
| Mars has a few things in its favor. It has a (mostly)
| carbon-dioxide atmosphere that can be used as an
| ingredient to make methane. It has a normal day/night
| cycle so you can use solar panels without needing to
| store two weeks worth of energy in order to last through
| the night. It has higher gravity. In general, it's just a
| more hospitable place to live even though it's a lot
| further away.
| hparadiz wrote:
| We could start on Mars by building stuff in the canyons
| first at the lowest possible elevation to increase the
| air pressure. Then you can dome sections of the canyon
| and pump up the atmosphere allowing large "outdoor" area.
|
| Would also provide radiation shielding.
| majkinetor wrote:
| Sounds like a plan. GO GO GO!
| andechs wrote:
| I think you're underestimating the value of "you can
| breathe the air" and "water is easily available via
| melting snow" when comparing it to Antartica.
| elihu wrote:
| I'm suggesting that Mars may be a more hospitable place
| than the moon, not more hospitable than Antarctica.
| Antarctica is a much easier place to survive than Mars or
| the moon, but the long-term benefits of establishing a
| permanent human presence are less. We also already have a
| lot of people living in Antarctica; according to
| wikipedia, there are about 40 year-round bases, and the
| population varies from about 4,000 in the summer to about
| 1,000 in the winter.
| maccam94 wrote:
| The moon has some additional practical hurdles compared
| to Mars:
|
| 1. No atmosphere means no weathering, so all of the moon
| dust is incredibly sharp and easily coats equipment when
| it gets kicked up. This dust quickly wears out joints and
| contact surfaces.
|
| 2. The Moon's low gravity and lack of atmosphere mean
| that you have to carry extra propellant to land.
|
| 3. Lack of easily extractable resources. It is
| comparatively easier to extract water and CO2 on Mars to
| generate methane for a return trip. A trip to the moon
| requires carrying all of the fuel for a return trip as
| well.
|
| Nuclear-powered ships built in orbit would drop transit
| times significantly but I wonder if they'd significantly
| reduce Mars <-> Earth costs (you'd still need Starships
| to shuttle payloads through the atmosphere). They are
| probably required for mining the asteroid belt though...
| robotresearcher wrote:
| 2. The Moon's low gravity and lack of atmosphere mean
| that you have to carry extra propellant to land.
|
| Lack of atmosphere I get, but how does low gravity
| require more propellant to land?
|
| (edit: maybe you meant lack of atmosphere _due to_ low
| gravity, and I got the other meaning contrary to your
| intent)
| ajnin wrote:
| You have to use the engines to slow down rather than
| aerobraking in the atmosphere.
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Mars is considered to be the hardest planet to land on in
| the entire solar system, you have to carry a heatshield
| or you will burn to a crisp, but it's so thin you still
| have to land propulsively using rockets. You definitely
| need to sacrifice less spacecraft mass to land on the
| moon
|
| Also there is some water on the moon so you can make
| rocket fuel, though how much exactly remains an open
| question
| maccam94 wrote:
| Water yes, but I haven't seen anything about CO2 so I
| think you're stuck with hydrogen-oxygen engines (which
| have different tradeoffs than methane-oxygen engines).
|
| https://everydayastronaut.com/raptor-engine/ (scroll down
| to the text immediately above the RP1/Methane/Hydrogen
| chart)
| nickik wrote:
| > You can have a space elevator on the moon today with a
| titanium cable.
|
| A space elevator makes no sense on the moon. First of all
| the orbit is unstable and you would need constant station
| keeping.
|
| Also, it turns out that if there is no atmosphere you
| don't actually need an elevator, you can just use
| electrically driven propulsion without an elevator. You
| just use a rail gun to shoot stuff into orbit.
|
| > when they get in trouble, there is no help.
|
| But there will be at least one professional doctors and
| likely a highly advanced medical facility.
|
| > Mars settlement is only viable when we have a spaceship
| factory on the moon, nuclear engines, and we could send
| the equivant of a large marine research vessel to mars,
| so 10,000 tons usefull payload, every month.
|
| You would first need to prove that building such
| infrastructure on the moon itself isn't far to un-
| practical and more expensive then going directly from
| earth.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "But there will be at least one professional doctors and
| likely a highly advanced medical facility."
|
| Common, think about this for just a minute - how many
| medical staff and how many tons of equipment are required
| to staff even a small rural hospital? An MRI scanner
| alone weighs 20 tons. Where are you going to get fresh
| blood for transfusions, skin grafts, or a kidney
| transplant? Many medical supplies are perishable and
| won;t last the trip.
|
| A _mobile_ hospital looks like USNS comfort - 70,000 tons
| displacement and over 1,000 staff. If you could take it
| apart and sent it to mars, you would need 700 starships.
|
| That's why, when US army deploys a forward operating
| base, or arctic explorers set up shop, they can't afford
| to bring an 'highly advanced medical facility'. They deal
| with basic injuries and stabilise the patient, and send
| him back to a proper medical facility asap. You can do
| that on the moon, but on Mars it takes 6 month to travel
| once every 2 years.
|
| If you are one of the first people on mars, and your
| spaceship is not the size of a nuclear aircraft carrier,
| any kind of non-trivial medical problem is a death
| sentence.
|
| "You would first need to prove that building such
| infrastructure on the moon itself isn't far to un-
| practical and more expensive then going directly from
| earth."
|
| Look, you can argue that cities in space are too
| difficult, but if you want to argue that a Moon city is
| impractical but a Mars city is easy - then I think the
| burden of proof is on you.
| elihu wrote:
| Going to Mars carries risks, and not all medical
| emergencies will be able to be dealt with there. Is that,
| by itself, going to stop people from wanting to go there?
| Probably not.
|
| We could reasonably expect any humans going to Mars to
| bring a lot of medical equipment, supplies, and trained
| personnel with them. If you need an emergency organ
| transplant, though, you're probably out of luck.
|
| This isn't substantially different than the risks many
| people face on Earth, including tens of millions of
| people in the United States who lack medical insurance.
| Most people wouldn't accept those kinds of risks
| voluntarily, but if someone really wants to go to Mars
| they might decide the risks are acceptable.
|
| If a Mars colony becomes well established with a
| substantial population, then the risks become less, as
| the colony would have the infrastructure and full-time
| expert staff one would expect to find in a typical
| hospital, and a larger population would mean more
| potential blood and organ donors.
| freshair wrote:
| > _" A space elevator makes no sense on the moon. First
| of all the orbit is unstable and you would need constant
| station keeping."_
|
| In a typical space elevator, the counterweight end of a
| space elevator is not in orbit. The center of mass of a
| space elevator would be above geostationary orbit, so the
| counterweight would be moving substantially faster than
| orbital speed at its altitude. A space elevator is held
| taut by centrifugal "force".
|
| For the Moon it would work a bit different; the Moon
| doesn't spin fast enough for a purely centrifugal
| elevator. Instead the elevator would pass through one of
| the Lagrange points, in effect being held taut between
| the gravitational pulls of Earth and the Moon.
|
| The Lagrange points aren't stable orbits either, but
| technically the space elevator would be going through a
| Lagrange point, not sitting inside that region in orbit.
| I am not sure how much station keeping would be required.
| You might still be right overall here.
| nickik wrote:
| The question is what the advantage is. If you are launch
| bulk materials, a railgun will be cheaper.
|
| And for human launch a SSTO reusable lander should be
| fine.
| emilecantin wrote:
| In the words of Dr. Robert Zubrin:
|
| Why Mars? 3 reasons: Mars is where the science is, where
| the challenge is, and where the future is.
|
| Give his full answer a watch, it's very interesting:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S6k2LBJhac
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| I am a much bigger fan of Mercury, though it is less
| popular (http://einstein-
| schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html previous discussion
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5734333 )
| emilecantin wrote:
| Mercury is indeed interesting from a colonization
| standpoint, but it's really less interesting than Mars
| from a science standpoint. Mars could potentially answer
| fundamental science questions around the origins of life.
| sneak wrote:
| What if the colony were 10x larger than you imagine?
|
| Each Starship is designed to carry 100 tons to mars,
| IIRC.
|
| What's stopping them from building hundreds of them?
|
| I think the plan is to send a fleet of them with supplies
| only to mars first, and then bring them back, and do the
| trip a second time. It's feasible that once the tech is
| extant and they work and can be produced quickly, that
| they build hundreds or perhaps a thousand ships.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| But that's kind of my point - once you are talking
| hundreds of spaceships, setting up a manufacturing shop
| on the moon will pay off, because you can manufacture and
| 3D print all the metal parts there.
|
| You can also actually make money from producing
| telecommunication satellites, startlink sats, etc. and
| launching them from the moon.
| sneak wrote:
| I don't think starship propellant can be made on the
| moon.
|
| I also don't think it is necessarily easier to
| manufacture space machines there given the constraints,
| even if the materials are available. If Starship is fully
| reusable 100T to orbit for just the cost of the
| propellant, there is a huge benefit to Earth-based
| manufacturing in the short to medium term.
| btilly wrote:
| _Electric cars and vertical rocket landings were ideas
| you could show would work eventually with a little napkin
| math. It is a good critique of humanity that so many
| "experts" neglected to do that napkin math and just
| declare it impossible._
|
| Oh really?
|
| _The Innovator's Dilemma_, written 20 years ago, includes
| a chapter based on an industry analysis that said that on
| current technology trends, mass electric cars would come
| viable around 2020. Guess what? Around 2020 mass electric
| cars became viable! Elon Musk figured out that high end
| electric sports cars could become viable earlier, and
| built a company around it.
|
| How about those reusable rockets?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reusable_launch_system
| documents a history of attempts at making reusable
| systems literally from the dawn of the Space Age.
| Everyone knew that in theory it should be possible. The
| problem was that in practice they didn't work well
| enough. (For example the Shuttle wound up costing more
| per "reusable launch" than an expendable rocket would
| have.) What SpaceX perfected is a vertical suicide burn.
| It is called a suicide burn because there is no margin of
| error, and any mistakes /will/ kill you. But it is also
| the most efficient way to land the rocket. Nobody did it
| before Musk because nobody was willing to trust their
| software control system that much. And even still, when
| humans take a trip on Dragon we /don't/ trust their
| skills at a suicide burn for the return. We instead
| parachute into the ocean, just like Alan Shepherd did 60
| years ago. (Elon hopes, of course, that Starship will
| change that.)
|
| So your comment critiquing humanity by critiquing all of
| the experts who failed to do back of the napkin math
| showed more about your ignorance than the ignorance of
| the experts.
| gopalv wrote:
| > People often say, if you think you can colonize mars,
| colonize the Gobi Desert first, as it is 10,000 times
| easier.
|
| If we're talking about population living on earth, that
| argument makes sense - from a population pressure
| standpoint , there's no argument to go to mars.
|
| But if we're talking about civilization expanding from
| more resources, with some space where you can potentially
| crash land a few asteroids while trying to pull it into
| orbit for easier mining, then Earth is out of question.
| bob33212 wrote:
| Uninhabitable parts of Arizona have been made habitable
| already.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| I think the aim would be to show you can have a self
| sustaining colony in arizona. Which, probably not too
| hard since there are aquifers.
| [deleted]
| anticristi wrote:
| It's called Terraforming. Make a big fire to release
| enough CO2 until Mars gets warm. That will melt the ice
| caps, so you have water. Finally, plant plants and let
| them oxidize the atmosphere. Estimated 500 to 5000 years.
|
| Professor Dave Explains has a nicw YouTube video about
| it. I can totally imagine that Elin's dynasty will try
| it.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| A big fire burning what? How much ice is in the ice caps?
| will that be enough water? How do you keep the atmosphere
| there, given that mars has no magnetic field and less
| gravity keeping it in? How do things live on the surface
| without a magnetic field protecting them from radiation?
|
| I have of course read/seen many pie in the sky plans for
| how to make mars habitable, but they are not concrete
| plans with even napkin math backing them up.
| hparadiz wrote:
| The atmosphere bleeds off in million year time scales.
| Humans can pump it up in hundred year time scales. Things
| growing in water will get less radiation and hopefully
| some radiation resistant crops will be bred.
| nickik wrote:
| The not having a magnetic field is a smaller problem then
| people think. The rate of reduction in the atmosphere is
| not very large.
|
| If you manged to create the atmosphere the radiation on
| the surface would already be reduced. The extra distance
| to the sun plus the atmosphere more then makes up for the
| missing magnetism.
|
| Also, medicine is advancing, if this is actually still
| the major issue in 30 years is questionable.
|
| But overall I agree, we are not there yet with plans but
| if we can build a research station there and have
| constant flights and constantly people living there,
| space technology will continue to improve and eventually
| we might reach that level.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/how-to-give-mars-an-
| atmos... A NASA proposal that seemed rather cool to
| generate an artificial magnetosphere umbrella. It doesn't
| require any superscience to do, just willingness to build
| a really enormous generator. Which might be worth doing
| if the result is a 2nd Earth?
| teachrdan wrote:
| My understanding is that Mars' gravity is much too weak
| to maintain an atmosphere -- any gas that's produced will
| literally escape into space. There's also the problem of
| radiation due to Mars' lack of a strong magnetic field.
|
| You could mitigate these problems by having humans live
| permanently underground. But that's not exactly
| terraforming. How can we overcome these significant
| hurdles to permanent human colonization of Mars?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It took Mars about a billion years to lose its
| atmosphere.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Wouldn't it be faster to crash a few of comet/icy
| moon/etc into the atmosphere? Then a decade later put big
| nuclear powered magnets in orbit to generate a
| magenetosphere so the new atmosphere won't evaporate
| after a hundred million years?
| lumost wrote:
| There are some pros of martian colonization efforts over
| comparable efforts in the Gobi desert. For one there is a
| compelling reason to colonize for at least a portion of
| the population. It would be the opportunity of a lifetime
| to study planetary geology up close, put terraforming
| theories to the test, and produce fuel/water for further
| space missions using the reduced gravity and atmospheric
| drag.
|
| On the other hand the fact that "going for a walk" will
| be extremely difficult will motivate increased focus on
| cavern excavation and other construction underground.
| These are "necessities" on mars but would be
| "interesting" in the gobi dessert.
| jsight wrote:
| Ha, that's a common pattern with Musk companies.
|
| EVs are impractical. Charging fast can't be done and the
| network won't exist until the cars get built anyway. But
| noone would buy them without the network so its impossible.
|
| Oh, you built EVs, 100KW+ chargers and the network
| yourself? Well, obviously that was inevitable if we had
| just given General Motors and Ford enough time.
|
| Its not a falsifiable position, so its interesting to think
| about too.
| m463 wrote:
| I had a friend who worked at GM around the volt time and
| it was "common knowledge" that it was all just a
| boondoggle/joke/exercise.
|
| I think a HUGE force for innovation in silicon valley was
| simply the graph of moores law.
|
| The practical and financial considerations had a "common
| knowledge" roadmap to reduce risk and people would race
| to keep up instead of plod along.
| [deleted]
| the_duke wrote:
| I can also recommend Liftoff by Eric Berger.
|
| It chronicles the early days of SpaceX, including how the
| company almost failed.
| fsloth wrote:
| Seconded. The failings are especially good - they give you
| a meaty, fleshy hands on on the sharp edges the Falcon-1
| project had. And make the eventual triumph so much more
| spectacular. And - not to denigrate the original effort in
| any way - the book also demonstrates how amazing it was
| they scaled from "run-of-the mill" light Falcon-1 booster
| to a pure sci-fi reusable Falcon-9 platform in a matter of
| few years.
| chasd00 wrote:
| there's also a recipe for Turkish Goulash in the back :)
|
| I just finished it last week, pretty amazing. Man, i feel
| for those kids stuck on Omelek tring to get Falcon1 in
| the air with Musk tearing into them on each failure. In
| my 20s I would have been naive enough to do it too
| though. Heh, thank god for youth.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Despite having Elon Musk in the subtitle it's as much about
| several other key SpaceX personnel as it is about Musk.
| It's awesome.
| m463 wrote:
| After seeing all these landings, more and more of them
| successful...
|
| I wonder if spaceships in the future will have that elongated
| football shape with 3 tail fins to land on vertically... Just
| like early scifi.
| Azrael3000 wrote:
| I still remember reading all the Readers Digest books my mom
| gave me to read in the 90s that were from the 70s. The amount
| of excitement in these articles about colonies all around the
| solar system in the early 2000s captivated me. While reality
| proofed all of these predictions wrong the current Starship
| development brings back these fond memories and the exciting
| outlook on unparalleled developments in space in the somewhat
| near future.
| mabbo wrote:
| > While reality proofed all of these predictions wrong the
| current Starship development brings back these fond memories
| and the exciting outlook on unparalleled developments in
| space in the somewhat near future
|
| Here's a fun question: how much of what Starship is doing
| would have been impossible in the 70s?
|
| In my view, the reason we don't have space colonies already
| is because we decided not to. Nothing we're doing now was
| strictly impossible then, just a little bit harder. No one
| was trying, was the problem.
|
| It reminds me a bit of Brian May. In the early 70s he was
| getting a PhD in astrophysics, studying interplanetary dust.
| He stopped because his band, Queen, was doing pretty well. In
| 2006, he realized no one else had ever picked up his
| particular avenue of research. He resumed his PhD research
| and completed it.
| maccam94 wrote:
| The main issue was cost. A lot of basic research had to be
| done, developed, and put into production on an accelerated
| timescale. Control systems and processing capabilities were
| much more primitive which hampered reusability. Materials
| and fabrication technology were less efficient so we had to
| build big to get useful payload mass fractions. CAD
| modeling and computational fluid dynamics were just
| entering use, so designing rocket engines was as much an
| art as a science. You could work around most of this by
| just throwing money at the problems, but Nixon felt it
| wasn't worth the cost.
| dale_glass wrote:
| > Here's a fun question: how much of what Starship is doing
| would have been impossible in the 70s?
|
| Probably a lot. The Raptor engine uses 3D printing, which I
| don't think was a thing in the 70s.
|
| Modern CNC machining wasn't a thing either.
|
| Nor modern design and simulation software.
|
| Or computers.
|
| I mean, maybe if you really wanted to and money was no
| object, something Starship-like would be doable, but it'd
| be more expensive, harder to design, harder to build, carry
| less weight and likely uneconomical. But the very point of
| Starship is saving money.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > more expensive, harder to design, harder to build,
| carry less weight and likely uneconomical.
|
| Compared to Starship, sure. But compared to the Shuttle?
| That's a pretty low bar that's pretty easy to beat.
|
| Starship is basically the Shuttle done right. major
| differences: Methalox instead of hydrolox & solids.
| Stainless steel. Uniform tiles. Vertical landing. No
| cross-range capability.
|
| Any or all of those changes would have made the shuttle
| better.
|
| Full-flow staged combustion might be impossible without
| modern metallurgy. The Soviets had that in the 70s but
| the Americans didn't. OTOH the Americans had the F1 in
| the 60s and a new version of that would certainly provide
| suitable thrust to weight ratios. Kerosene means more
| frequent refurbishment, but still better than the
| Shuttle.
|
| Vertical landing would be tough with 70s computing but
| certainly would be possible with 80s computing.
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| Didn't they successfully land a Starship last week?
| legutierr wrote:
| A smaller prototype, yes, although it didn't reach orbit
| first. Still impressive, to say the least.
| bryananderson wrote:
| This was not a smaller prototype. It was a full-size
| Starship. Starship is the second stage of the full system.
| The first stage, Super Heavy, has not been tested yet.
| [deleted]
| sunstone wrote:
| The first successful landing of the F9 was in December 2015 so
| we're only five years and a handful of months since then and the
| Starship has just had its first mostly successful landing. Sure
| not from orbit but they are experimenting with the hardest part
| now.
|
| SpaceX's competitors must be just crying in their beer knowing
| that launching on the Starship will eventually (sooner than you
| think) be even cheaper than the F9.
|
| Progress in rocketry has now blinked into warp drive.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Most of those guys have very profitable businesses designing
| and building satellites. SpaceX has made launching those
| satellites very cheap, so the demand for satellites is up.
|
| They're not crying.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Cheap launches means means satellite prices will go down.
| Satellites were expensive before because why bust your ass to
| shave a few million off here and there when you are paying
| $200 million to launch the damn thing?
|
| I believe this has already started happening. Of course,
| improvements in electronics technologies in general have
| played a huge role as well.
| myself248 wrote:
| And as a result of the extreme cost of launches, extreme
| care is taken to make the satellites themselves incredibly
| reliable. Which is part of why we're not in a full-on
| Kessler cascade yet.
|
| I wonder, if cheaper launches lead to downward pressure on
| satellite price and complexity, will that also involve
| downward pressure on testing and reliability? Will that
| lead to more dead satellites in orbit, more collisions, and
| a sudden end to the good old days?
|
| Does that suggest a need for regulatory requirements for
| reliability and control, which had previously been enforced
| by simple market dynamics?
| bencoder wrote:
| Space Shuttles actually went into orbit. The falcon 9 boosters
| are sub-orbital.
|
| But I'm hoping that Starship will exceed the space shuttle
| massively!
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| The Space shuttle SRBs were somewhat re-usable while the
| external tank (arguably similar to the F9 second stage, except
| that it was used for the whole flight) was expended. The
| external tank was ~30,000 kg dry mass and was expended with
| each launch. The system could deliver ~27500kg to LEO (assuming
| the SRBs are fully reused which is not entirely accurate).
|
| Falcon 9 FT Block 5 second stage has a dry mass of 4000 kg
| which is expended. It could deliver ~15,600 kg to LEO with
| first stage reuse.
|
| The systems are definitely comparable!
| [deleted]
| bombcar wrote:
| "We don't know how long they're going to last so we're going to
| launch our own dogfood until one explodes."
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| The big thing about the space shuttles is that all those missions
| were manned.
|
| When you have a mission with multiple humans on board, the stakes
| are much higher.
| UseStrict wrote:
| They're already launching humans on reused rockets, as of the
| Crew-2 Mission that launched a couple of weeks ago.
| ansible wrote:
| They have re-flown the booster and Dragon2 capsule for the ISS
| Crew-2 mission.
| rozab wrote:
| Falcon 9 has lost 2 payloads over ~120 flights. One was lost on
| the pad prior to dress rehearsal, so doesn't really count.
|
| There were 135 shuttle flights, with 2 crews lost (1 on the way
| up).
|
| I would much prefer the odds of flying on Falcon 9, especially
| since it actually has a viable launch escape system.
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| Both Falcon9 first stage and the Dragon capsule are rated for
| multiple flights with humans on-board.
| rwmj wrote:
| Pretty impressive. Do they replace any of the engines after each
| flight? Or is the whole tank/engine assembly given a once-over
| and put straight back into service?
| maccam94 wrote:
| There are no expendable engines in the first stage. Engine
| swaps do happen if anomalies are found in testing or during the
| refurb process, but I don't have stats on how frequent that is.
| r/spacex might track engine history.
| maga wrote:
| Looking at how Falcon changed the industry and our outlook on
| space in general, I cannot imagine what Starship is going to do
| once fully functional.
| no1youknowz wrote:
| While I am totally excited about Starship and version 2 (that
| blows my mind, btw).
|
| I cannot wait to see Starship dock (in orbit) with a frame that
| houses either nuclear or ion propulsion and then goes to Mars
| in 90 days or less. I envisage such infrastructure to allow for
| interplanetary crossing, while chemical rockets are used to
| escape gravity wells.
|
| That will change everything again. Hopefully in my lifetime
| I'll see similar infrastructure parked near planets and moons
| to allow hopping through the solar system.
|
| Edit: clarification and thanks to codeulike for linking to
| version 2.
| zardo wrote:
| Pretty fast transfers, 90-120 days, should be do-able if they
| top the tank up. Provided the heat shield can take it when it
| arrives.
| oseityphelysiol wrote:
| Are you referring to V2 as to the German WW2 rocket? What's
| exciting about it nowadays?
| freshair wrote:
| The 'V' in that V2 stood for 'Vergeltungswaffen' (something
| like 'retaliation weapon'.)
| hackeraccount wrote:
| Gonna go out on a limb and guess the that O.P. was
| referring to a future Starship iteration. Alternately they
| could be a history buff.
| codeulike wrote:
| I think V2 referrs to what will come after starship -
| something much bigger
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1166856662336102401
| meepmorp wrote:
| 18m diameter is a big f'n rocket.
| [deleted]
| GhostVII wrote:
| Pretty absurd how much of a step up the Falcon 9 is from previous
| launch vehicles. Landing a booster seems far harder than just
| doing a regular launch and dumping it in the ocean, and SpaceX
| can land 3 of them at once with the Falcon heavy. And they did
| all of that without relying on government funding. Blows my mind.
| Maybe I'm overestimating the difficulty of landing a rocket on a
| floating platform though.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| I mean the Falcon 9 is fantastic and all, but considering the
| amount of NASA money they get I don't think it's right to say
| they didn't rely on government funding. Rather, they probably
| have the advantage of not being under the direct thumbs of
| government accountants (No offense to any accountants, you're
| the real heros).
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Exactly, SpaceX is a testament to what competition and
| ambition can bring about and how the government can use their
| funds more efficiently than siphoning money to senators home
| states.
|
| Competition is good, government is good, corruption is bad.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| I think SpaceX's secret sauce was they disrupted all the
| old, big, heavily corrupted aerospace contractors like
| Lockheed and Boeing by being agile, relatively cheap, and
| innovative because they had to be.
|
| My worry is that _nothing_ except perhaps their own
| engineering culture prevents them from going that same
| route eventually. Once upon a time, the big names were the
| innovative, nimble players.
| [deleted]
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| That and hopefully competition from the rest of the world
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Elon Musk has stated that SpaceX would not have survived
| without its first NASA contract.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I think the accomplishment is impressive but the headline is a
| bit disingenuous. Starship, being fully re-usable will be, for
| me, a more impressive milestone.
|
| But what I find really interesting is the evolution. At the
| beginning everything was thrown away after one use, all boost
| stages and the spacecraft they launched. Then the shuttle came
| along and reused the spacecraft but still threw the boosters
| away. Then SpaceX where one of the boosters is re-used, and the
| Dragon/Crew Dragon spacecraft (can be) re-used. And then Starship
| where all boosters and spacecraft are reused. That is an
| interesting road.
|
| I also think it is fascinating the the governments of China and
| Russia are now working to re-create what a private company in the
| US did (Falcon 9). Not since Buran has the Russian space program
| been tasked with duplicating something the US could do that they
| could not.
|
| And then there is the private Crew-Dragon mission that SpaceX is
| planning. It may suck all the demand out of Blue Origin's and
| Virgin Galactic's "edge of space" experience if you can pay a bit
| more and spend several hours in space. (potentially days if you
| had somewhere to go).
|
| These really are amazing times.
| loneranger_11x wrote:
| Impressive achievement and more power to them. But does anyone
| else find the use of the word "showstopper" peculiar here. In
| management-speak, showstopper usually means - "There are issues.
| But we will live with them today. Hopefully fix them tomorrow
| before anyone notices"
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| It originally referred to a performance that was so _good_ that
| the show had to be stopped while they waited for overwhelming
| applause to die out. It can be used in a positive sense.
| defphysics wrote:
| Actually, what you're describing sounds like something you'd
| refer to as "not a showstopper". To me, a "showstopper" is
| something that stops the show: that can't be ignored or "fixed
| later".
| hamburglar wrote:
| Yes. "We were planning to launch tomorrow but someone found a
| showstopper so we are on a day-for-day slip" is how I'd use
| it in a sentence.
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