[HN Gopher] SpaceX will soon fire up its Super Heavy booster for...
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SpaceX will soon fire up its Super Heavy booster for the first time
Author : rbanffy
Score : 189 points
Date : 2021-07-15 14:42 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| chasd00 wrote:
| one thing to remember is it will be a static fire of three
| engines not the full thirty'ish. Now a static fire of 30 Raptor
| engines will be a sight, and sound, to behold!
| deregulateMed wrote:
| Happy to take credit for this. I might have a thankless job, but
| my taxes paid for this.
|
| It was no big deal really. Anyone could have been born here and
| done the same.
|
| Edit- why is it against the rules to spit facts?
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| A very small portion of funding for the Starship program has
| come from NASA (They won ~ 3 billion for HLS but that is spread
| over a few years).
|
| SpaceX would almost certainly have gone bankrupt early on if it
| wasn't for NASA though, so SpaceX does owe it's existence to
| the US taxpayer in that sense.
| LightG wrote:
| NASA is a large customer of Spacex. Those profits earned via
| NASA, which go towards Starship development, are paid by
| taxpayers.
|
| It is de facto tax payer funding as there isn't another
| customer like NASA for Spacex to go to (realistically).
| trothamel wrote:
| The're a large customer, but probably not the largest.
| SpaceX has a lot of commercial customers, including a fully
| private manned spaceflight (Inspiration4) later this year.
|
| When it comes to Starship, it seems like one of the main
| applications will be to launch hundreds of Starlink
| satellites at once. I don't believe that there is a
| noticable amount of NASA funding in Starlink - it's
| possible they might be using it for some reason, but it'd
| be as a customer.
| _Microft wrote:
| NASA is the largest single customer of SpaceX but does
| not make up the lion's share of SpaceX launches.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Maybe they consider Starlink to be a customer of SpaceX?
| NASA would still be the largest customer though, with 36
| launches versus Starlink's 33. That would probably change
| by the end of the year though.
| trothamel wrote:
| That is sort of of what I was thinking. It's not exactly
| right, but out of 20 launches in the first half of 2021,
| you have 13 Starlinks, 2 Transporter (SpaceX-brokered
| rideshare), 2 NASA (Crew/Commercial Resupply), 2
| Commercial, and 1 Space Corps.
|
| The second half of the year looks more NASA-Heavy, with
| CRS-23, Crew 3, and CRS-24, plus 2 science satellite. But
| that's among 17 other missions.
|
| I guess my point is that SpaceX probably won't lose NASA,
| but they're not as dependent on government business as
| ULA is.
| lizknope wrote:
| Wikipedia has a list of Falcon launches and a column with
| the customer name. NASA is on there quite a bit but there
| are plenty of other customers including other US
| government agencies, other governments, and private
| companies.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon
| _He...
| iso1631 wrote:
| If you think government subsidies spacex, you should see
| military contractors.
| kiba wrote:
| So are ULA, Lockheed, Boeing and other dinosaur OldSpace
| giants.
|
| Rather than pork going to aerospace contractors working on
| an already obsolete or soon to be obsolete SLS, I rather
| that that states get money to work on whatever made
| possible by the Starship program.
| SECProto wrote:
| SpaceX does a couple NASA launches a year, for which they
| make 100-200 million each and have to actually provide a
| service that costs them a decent fraction of that cost.
|
| They earlier this year had an investment round worth about
| a billion, which was all dedicated to R&D for Starship and
| Starlink. Total external investments are around $19 billion
| [1]
|
| So yeah, some of the NASA dollars probably provide profit
| to the company that they reinvest in R&D. But a larger
| portion comes from external investment specifically for
| R&D.
|
| [1] https://craft.co/spacex/funding-rounds
| LightG wrote:
| Fair points.
|
| But where do you think that $19billion came from?
|
| Looking forward to the downvote :-)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _where do you think that $19billion came from?_
|
| Most dollars that have been paid to a SpaceX bank
| account, by investors or customers, came from private
| parties. NASA was indisputably critical in enabling
| SpaceX. But SpaceX was not taxpayer funded if that word
| doesn't encompass virtually all economic activity in
| America.
|
| Today, SpaceX could do fine without any NASA contracts.
| Naturally, they help. But there is a _lot_ of demand for
| launch, in part due to the price competition SpaceX
| started.
| SECProto wrote:
| The 5.9 billion (19 was a typo) was investment capital.
| Per the source, investors were:
|
| Founders Fund, 137 Ventures, Scott Banister, DFJ Growth,
| Google, Rizvi Traverse Management, Fidelity Investments,
| Threshold, Rothenberg Ventures, Elon Musk, ACE & Company,
| Bill Lee, David Sacks, Valor Equity Partners, Sherpa
| Capital, Ecosystem Ventures, Baillie Gifford, Barney
| Pell, Vanedge Capital, Matthew Pritzker Company,
| Capricorn Venture Partners, Musket Research Associates,
| Tao Capital Partners, DBL Partners, Michael Cheung, Otter
| Rock Capital, NASA, Syren Capital Advisors, FoundersX
| Ventures, The K Fund, 7percent Ventures, Space Angels,
| Troy Capital Partners, M13, Seed-Resolute, Equidate,
| Microventures, Alphabet, G Squared, Peter Diamandis,
| Oakhouse Partners, Craft Ventures, Hemisphere Ventures,
| All Blue Capital, Bracket Capital, TH Capital, #adm
| VENTURES, ACE Capital, Threshold Ventures, Manhattan
| Venture Partners, Gigafund, Decacorn Capital,
| StraightPath Venture Partners, Zillow Group, Aeon Family
| of Funds, Team in Residence, ADIT Ventures, GC1 Ventures,
| Ernest H. Pomerantz, Lord Rothschild, Ontario Teachers'
| Pension Plan
|
| Most of these are non-taxpayer sources. NASA was small as
| far as I know, I don't recall seeing them listed in any
| of the recent (much larger) rounds. Unless you count the
| Ontario provincial government paying their teachers
| including their pensions, and the thus-funded pension
| fund investing in SpaceX.
| simonh wrote:
| That linked page says $5.9bn in external funding. That
| may not include initial seed capital, but I don't think
| that was as much as a billion.
| SECProto wrote:
| Thank you for the correction. I read 5.9 in the article
| and somehow typo'd with 19 in my comment.
| Cipater wrote:
| You mean $1.9 billion, right?
| soperj wrote:
| I bet they do this whenever they jump into someone's american
| made car, or go into a bank in the country as well.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| SpaceX is a massive vindication of NASA's approach the last 2
| decades to do public-private partnerships and commercial-
| oriented contracting (i.e. where contractors are allowed more
| latitude in _how_ they accomplish a mission, are actively
| encouraged to find other customers, and bid on a fixed-price
| basis instead of cost-plus).
|
| SpaceX is a huge vindication of careful government spending
| being used to help stimulate commercial activity while also
| accomplishing government goals more efficiently.
| [deleted]
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| If you exclude SpaceX as an outlier, how well does this
| approach work? (Actual question, I'm curious.)
| trothamel wrote:
| While it's still early days, it's reasonably to say it's
| seemingly working okay.
|
| The first Starliner mission was, basically, a failure -
| but it's a failure that Boeing, rather than NASA, is
| having to pay for, including the reflight of the Orbital
| Flight Test.
|
| Despite setbacks, the Commercial Cargo program seems to
| be going well. One note is that Orbital (now Northrup
| Grumman) had to purchase flights from a competitor to
| fulfill their contracts, which they did.
|
| The Lunar Gateway appears to be moving/have moved to this
| model, and so far so good.
|
| I'd say one of the big things to do is to compare this
| against what NASA has been able to accomplish with
| traditional contracts, recently. Since 2005, the Ares
| program launched one model rocket in 2009. (The first
| stage of Ares 1X wasn't the one intended for Ares I, and
| the second stage was boilerplate.) SLS will likely have
| it's first flight later this year or early next year, and
| then a second flight in 2023, and will probably have cost
| ~$25B by then.
|
| I think it's probably fair to say the commercial programs
| have accomplished more, especially for the money.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The only issue is where the risk pools, and the drive
| towards competitors merging to obtain scale capable of
| surviving failure.
|
| Or in other words, the US effectively produced the modern
| primes by pushing more risk onto them. No company wants
| to go out of business.
|
| And if that would be the result of a single project
| failure when your primary customer is asking you to do
| something that's never been done before?
|
| SpaceX having success is great. But had they failed, it
| would have bankrupted the company. And then we'd be back
| to Orbital, Boeing, et al.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Bankrupted companies is not necessarily bad for society
| overall. Besides SpaceX, there was also Kistler in the
| running for COTS commercial cargo. They failed and were
| replaced by Orbital.
|
| Also, you seem to be implying that cost plus contracts
| will allow much smaller companies since they won't have
| to absorb as much risk, but in reality, it's the big boys
| who win cost plus contracts. SpaceX was tiny when they
| won COTS/CRS (Elon wasn't a billionaire and Tesla was
| looking more like a dead end novelty than the most
| valuable car company in the world).
|
| Also, Iridium and Orbcomm and OneWeb all went bankrupt
| but all are still operating today. Bankruptcy doesn't
| always mean the business disappears off the face of the
| planet, and even when it does, often their assets end up
| being used productively by others (that's how SpaceX got
| their McGregor test site).
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > Despite setbacks, the Commercial Cargo program seems to
| be going well. One note is that Orbital (now Northrup
| Grumman) had to purchase flights from a competitor to
| fulfill their contracts, which they did.
|
| Also on Commercial Cargo, for phase 2 the competition
| forced Orbital to have to significantly cut their price.
| On the flip side, SpaceX raised theirs since they so
| underbid in the first round.
|
| Additionally, Dream Chaser is supposed to come online
| soon.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| As far as I can tell, this approach works very well.
| Better than the standard procurement process and better
| than the processes many private companies use.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I don't think it's reasonable to exclude outliers when
| you are de-facto angel investing. The expectation is that
| most companies, especially those pushing technological
| limits, fail. One or two wild successes is the "expected"
| outcome in a power-law, winner-take-most distribution,
| and SpaceX is one of them.
| kiba wrote:
| That's future funding for the Starship program, no? It's also
| being contested by the losers, but I doubt that SpaceX will
| lose the contract.
| mabbo wrote:
| This will be a monumental accomplishment, when it launches for
| the first time.
|
| 4-6 times the payload to LEO as the Space Shuttle, but 100%
| reusable with the aim of fast turn-around times and minimal
| refurbishment, at a fraction of the price.
|
| Detract from the eccentricity of the company's owner all you
| want, but the engineers making that rocket happen are doing
| brilliant work, in my book.
| bumby wrote:
| > _minimal refurbishment_
|
| Is there any information available on the activities they
| actually plan on doing in terms of quality checks and
| refurbishment? I'm a big fan of SpaceX but I also feel like
| people talk about this point without actually knowing what goes
| into aerospace refurbishment regarding the level of quality
| assurance typically required.
|
| I remember back when they had a Falcon 9 failure attributed to
| a faulty material spec on a strut and the response was they
| would perform quality checks on future material.[1] As someone
| who worked in the industry, my initial question was "Why
| weren't they already doing this?" as it's a commonplace within
| industry on safety critical or flight hardware.
|
| I've also been involved in rocket rebuilds and to say they need
| "minimal refurbishment" is a understatement. Even if none of
| the components actually need rebuilt, the quality inspections
| still take a lot of time and money. And there's always the
| chance you find an issue that warrants a legitimate rebuild.
|
| So, while I'm pulling for SpaceX to succeed, my worry is that
| every failure or close-call like the strut issue will layer
| additional quality checks that gradually erode that "minimal
| refurbishment" claim.
|
| [1]https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/spacex-says-
| faulty-s...
| ravedave5 wrote:
| Rocket reuse is spacex secret sauce, they don't talk about
| what they do or how much it costs AT_ALL it's kinda
| frustrating.
| rlt wrote:
| We don't have to "refurbish" airplanes after every flight.
| Are the stresses of rocket engines / getting to orbit simply
| so great there's no way to engineer away "refurbishment"? And
| will that always be the case, or could advances in materials
| change that?
| bumby wrote:
| Aircraft are on very strict maintenance schedules and need
| to be signed off for airworthiness in order to fly. As the
| plane ages, this certification is usually signed off by an
| certified A&P mechanic. It's regulated (in most countries)
| and acts as the form of quality control. It's not like a
| car where you can just decide to continue operating at your
| own risk. (This doesn't generally apply to experimental
| aircraft, though). So in that context, airplanes are being
| continuously refurbished. That's also why it's relatively
| inexpensive to buy a plane, but extremely expensive to own
| one.
|
| Flight hardware typically has much higher quality
| standards. Sometimes they use more exotic materials that
| don't have the background testing to ensure that quality.
| If you want to use a cheaper new seal material, for
| example, there's probably not much data available for its
| compatibility with hypergolic fuels. It's not uncommon to
| use one-off components in a design, which means they may
| not have the same type of well-tried process control during
| manufacture. Then you have the costs of maintaining
| hardware pedigree (chain-of-custody, maintenance of
| material test data, lot material coupons for later testing,
| some of which may need to be maintained in a bonded,
| climate controlled room etc.).
|
| New materials and manufacturing processes will definitely
| help and I think SpaceX is doing good work here. But the
| demands of spaceflight adds constraints. Steel and titanium
| are the most common non-fatiguing materials. Steel may be
| too heavy so you might be left with only using titanium,
| which is much more expensive. And you still haven't done
| the compatibility testing etc. So while it's a trivial
| example, you can see how it can become a tough problem to
| factor in cost, quality, and speed.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I mean, they're using modern computers instead of 1970s
| computers to do the engineering. The formulas are a lot more
| turnkey now. Is it that impressive a feat when you adjust for
| the better resources?
| nwah1 wrote:
| The proper comparison is whether their competitors like ULA
| can match them or not.
| soperj wrote:
| Isn't the owner one of the engineers actually working on that
| rocket? I thought he was very involved in that piece?
| [deleted]
| gamegoblin wrote:
| The book "Liftoff" (about the early years of SpaceX) paints a
| picture of Elon as a very smart person with a mind for
| engineering, but his true value-add over any other aerospace
| company at the time was his ability to hire the right people
| and sniff out bullshit.
|
| That is, he knows _enough_ about the engineering to hire
| people who know _a lot_ about the engineering.
|
| That, combined with his relentless drive (to the point of
| overwork both on himself and his employees) seems to be the
| key to SpaceX success.
| simonh wrote:
| He very much reminds me of Steve Jobs in this regard. Steve
| was actually a competent technician, if not really an
| engineer at the time of the founding of Apple, and he
| really cared deeply about the engineering. He understood
| the language of engineers and the tradeoffs in a design and
| I think it's the same with Elon. The fact they both ran
| completely separate very successful and innovative
| companies at the same time might be a coincidence, but kind
| of clinches it for me.
| [deleted]
| soperj wrote:
| If you read any of the fokelore stuff, there seems to be
| some disagreement there. He wanted stuff to look a
| certain way, but he didn't really understand the
| engineering trade off. Like asking for a computer with no
| holes in the case for cooling.
| healthysurf wrote:
| Well the current Macbook Airs don't have holes, so it's
| not like it was impossible.
| jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote:
| He also seems to provide pretty good high level direction
| for his companies. Also, he seems to be a pretty good
| gambler, willing to take big risks that sometimes pay off
| huge, whereas others might play things more conservatively
| and not get such payoffs.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| > That is, he knows enough about the engineering to hire
| people who know a lot about the engineering.
|
| And he got really exceedingly lucky with his initial hires.
| One of the founding employees was the best living rocket
| engine designer in the world, and then later the best
| rocket salesman in the world convinced him that SpaceX
| needed proper sales/business development, even in the early
| stage, and Musk basically replied: "Okay, you're hired", to
| which she basically replied: "No, that's not what I
| meant... but okay."
| ralfd wrote:
| I want to see that movie. Are there professional
| documentaries?
| tokipin wrote:
| Here's a video from someone who observed a design review
| for Starship[1]. From the sound of it, Elon is in the thick
| of it in the R&D engineering.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1nc_chrNQk&t=380s
| geocrasher wrote:
| He's not necessarily involved in the intimate engineering of
| rockets. He's deeply involved in the engineering of a rocket
| _company_.
|
| Talent and Engineering prowess are pointless without
| direction, and Musk provides strong leadership to move the
| company in the direction he sees fit. The actual rocket
| scientists are Woz, and Musk is Jobs.
| phpnode wrote:
| That seems extremely unlikely, there's only so many hours in
| the day and while I'm sure that he has a keen eye on what's
| going on the odds of him being personally involved in the
| actual engineering are close to zero. If he's spending time
| doing that it'd actually be a huge failure on his part, there
| are more important things for him to spend his time on.
| soperj wrote:
| He's one of the richest people in the world, with a massive
| interest in space & rockets, and owns the most exciting
| piece of space technology being built today. Where else
| would you spend your time in this situation?
| phpnode wrote:
| I would probably spend my time focussed on growing and
| sustaining my companies and hiring very skilled people to
| do that engineering work for me, I'd be very interested
| in the engineering work, but I wouldn't be doing that
| work myself. Similarly I don't expect Mark Zuckerberg
| writes much code at facebook these days, there's just too
| much other stuff to do
| soperj wrote:
| If you're goal is literally just a successful company,
| then sure that makes sense. But if you actually have a
| passion for what you do (and I'm not arguing that
| Zuckerberg doesn't have a passion for spying on people),
| and the company is already a huge success, why wouldn't
| you spend your time doing something that you think is
| really really cool and hire very skilled people to do the
| other stuff?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Exactly this.
|
| If your goal is to get rich and play golf and relax, that
| is one thing. The fact that Elon is one of the wealthiest
| people in the world and also as passionate as someone
| working in their garage seems kind of like a crazy
| situation.
|
| I wonder if there is similar historical precedence in
| terms of an ultra wealthy person being interested and
| involved like he is.
| genericone wrote:
| I lightly disagree, maybe he doesn't do the calculations or
| write the tests, but he's almost certainly grilling people
| all the way down to ensure alignment on engineering. His
| passion being engineering, he's probably not asking
| 'program management 101' questions, but doing a smell-test
| on your technical work and your competence level just as a
| fellow-level senior engineer would.
| quincunx wrote:
| For Elon Musk, Jim Keller or even Steve Jobs, their value
| isn't in manually doing the CAD / VHDL / Code, rather, it
| is being the Eye of Mordor on the critical path and
| understanding the solution top to bottom. No excuses, only
| problem solving.
|
| I feel the key insight behind both SpaceX and Tesla is that
| both the napkin engineering from first principle and then
| having the force of will to personally see it through /are/
| the most important thing. Both qualify as engineering.
|
| Happy to have my fairy tale hero's journey view of success
| corrected.
| nthj wrote:
| Anyone inclined to argue against this could maybe sink
| 1,000 hours into Factorio. The game is simple enough to
| require 1-person-engineer, but complex enough that the
| player must both solve low-level problems AND be The Eye
| of Mordor. If you don't relentlessly pursue both, you get
| stuck in the tarpit and progress stalls.
| DennisP wrote:
| A while back I saw an interview with a NASA engineer they
| loaned to SpaceX for six months. He described a meeting in
| which two engineering proposals were being debated, and at
| the end Musk said "ok we'll do it this way" and that was
| the end of it. The guy was kinda blown away, and said at
| NASA they'd have had a dozen more meetings first.
|
| Given that SpaceX lives or dies by how well their rockets
| work, I don't think there's really anything more important
| for Musk to be doing.
| jp42 wrote:
| You are talking about Dan Rasky. Link to this interview:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxIiiwD9C0E
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Elon Musk contains multitudes, including a stellar mind for
| engineering, a credible claim to be working on products that
| are good for humanity, excellent business instincts, and the
| talent to come across as an obnoxious asshole.
|
| Seriously: when you have Bond-villain levels of fame and
| fortune, I expect you to be at least as clever as Peter Thiel
| in fucking over people who crossed you. Musk just randomly
| calling people he doesn't like "pedophiles" on Twitter always
| feels... I dunno, "small"?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It's probably for the best that billionaires draw the line
| at Twitter rants, rather than... other things that money
| could buy.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Maybe there's a reason "pedo" comes to mind so easily for
| him.
|
| https://i.insider.com/5dbc6d222f364a0a9e077c03?width=2000&f
| o...
| Cipater wrote:
| He's just a very rich nerd.
| bdamm wrote:
| If you're going to quote, at least quote correctly. "pedo
| guy" was the insult.
| Niglodonicus wrote:
| Which was pretty funny framing in any case, since Musk's
| wife Grimes is about 14 years old mentally (just watch
| any of her recent viral TikTok clips floating around).
| vimacs2 wrote:
| He also hired a private investigator to target the guy.
| I'm a huge fan of his work with SpaceX but let's not
| downplay what a petty asshole he was during that whole
| thing.
| bdamm wrote:
| Absolutely. It is worth noting that Tesla was
| experiencing "production hell" at the time, so obviously
| Musk was under a ton of stress. That doesn't excuse the
| behavior, but does make it easier to understand. Frankly,
| Musk should have kept out of the whole thing, but staying
| silent isn't the style that anyone operating at that
| level is going to have.
|
| Asking his team to build a sub is inexcusable. Still love
| his product, despite the distraction.
| elif wrote:
| "a fraction of the cost" is an understatement.
|
| By using a 100% reusable vehicle and the cheapest fuel
| available the aspirational launch cost of starship is $2M.
|
| Even Apples to Oranges it will be an order of magnitude cheaper
| than the current paradigm of $35M per Falcon9 launch. When you
| further consider it has 10x the payload capacity, this
| experiment gets really exciting.
| themgt wrote:
| It's not even just that it's cheaper to launch, but the full
| reusability and planned ability to refuel in orbit really
| make it a game-changer. A fully fueled Starship in LEO can
| take a huge payload to the Moon, Mars, etc and ideally land
| itself, potentially refuel in-situ and get back to Earth.
| They can make minimally-customized modifications for tanker
| Starship / Lunar Starship / Mars Starship / etc and it's like
| a space swiss-army knife.
|
| Just look at the National Team / Dynetics HLS proposals with
| a bunch of expensive, novel custom hardware vs. Space X
| proposal which was "basically just Starship". It could
| obviate a huge amount of resources being poured into one-off
| disposable space hardware and let us instead focus on
| actually doing stuff in space.
| barbegal wrote:
| I don't understand how it can be an order of magnitude
| cheaper. There are more rocket engines to maintain, far more
| fuel, a more expensive launch structure and generally more
| expense in all the ground operations. In a world where this
| can be launched for $2M, Falcon 9 can be launched for less
| than $1M.
| crawshaw wrote:
| A falcon 9 launch expends the upper stage. Building the
| upper stage is now most of the cost of its launch.
| [deleted]
| SEJeff wrote:
| The Falcon 9 can not be launched for less than $1M. Falcon
| 9 does not reuse the second stage. Elon has said that the
| second stage is approximately 20% of the cost of a Falcon 9
| launch. A Falcon 9 needs to have some work done between
| each launch. Some of the Falcon 9 parts are not actually
| reusable (crush cores for the landing legs as an example).
| This is why they can not ever simply fill up a landed
| Falcon 9 booster, put a new second stage on it, and launch
| it again. The Starship / Superheavy combo is designed to be
| able to literally just refuel and go. The Falcon 9 booster
| is mostly made of aluminum, which is up to 60% more
| expensive than stainless steel. The Starship / Superheavy
| are stainless steel.
|
| Methane (Starship fuel) is massively cheaper than Kerosene
| (Falcon 9 fuel). Methane also has a much higher specific
| impulse, which means you can use less of it to get the same
| increase in velocity. Methane can be stored in liquid form
| in same temperature as oxygen, which means less insulation
| the two propellant tanks. Inversely, Kerosene will freeze
| at the temperatures required to get oxygen into liquid
| form.
|
| Basically, nothing you said is accurate.
| barbegal wrote:
| You raise a few good points. Falcon 9 launches could be
| 30% cheaper if fully reusable but that only reduces a
| launch cost down to $25M.
|
| I am skeptical of the claim that they will just be able
| to refuel and go. Every reusable space vehicle has had
| that goal and always cost more than expected to refurbish
| for the next launch. Yes, we may get there eventually but
| not in the next few decades, the risks of a catastrophic
| component failure are too high to do no refurbishment.
|
| The starship and super heavy are certainly cheaper to
| construct but that has more to do with fabrication
| techniques than the material cost.
|
| Methane is less dense than kerosene so needs larger tanks
| but it does have more energy per unit mass. The overheads
| of using cryogenic fuel are reduced on a larger rocket
| but the performance gain is probably only 10% or so.
|
| I am not aware of any significant insulation between
| tanks on the Falcon 9 and it certainly isn't a major cost
| factor.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| > Every reusable space vehicle has had that goal and
| always cost more than expected to refurbish for the next
| launch.
|
| There have only been 2 reusable launch vehicles ever, and
| both were only partially reusable. Shuttle and Falcon 9.
| Falcon 9 has already made massive strides in reducing any
| refurb costs between missions. there is no reason that
| you couldn't build one that requires no maintenance in
| between flights for the same reason that there's no
| reason you can't make an upper stage that can do multiple
| firings per flight without any maintenance in between.
| Upper stage reuse will be trickier, but ultimately
| there's no fundamental reason why refurb has to be done
| in between every flight.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Upper stage reuse doesn't require a landing. If you could
| refuel an upper stage in space, you could use it for deep
| space exploration.
|
| Do they deliberately deorbit the Falcon second stage?
| Would be interesting if we could keep a couple parked in
| LEO and refuel them for different missions.
| oses wrote:
| The combination of Methane and the full flow staged
| combustion cycle also means significantly reduced coking
| in the engine, so it drastically prolongs the time
| between engine refurbishments.
| ordu wrote:
| Do you know how a reduced coking works? I've read about
| the raptor engine[1] and it explains how fuel rich hot
| mixture leads to coking, it explains how USA solved this
| problem before (by using hydrogen as a fuel), but how
| Musk managed to solve it? Partially burned methane should
| produce free carbon atoms, shouldn't it? Doesn't it raise
| a coking problem?
|
| [1] https://everydayastronaut.com/raptor-engine/
| jjk166 wrote:
| In a conventional hydrocarbon fueled engine, you're using
| a fuel with hydrocarbon chains at approximately room
| temperature to cool the engine. With only a little heat
| addition, you get up to a temperature where these chains
| can shed hydrogens and convert their C-C-H bonds to C=C
| double bonds. These bonds in turn allow hydrocarbon
| chains to join together into larger molecules that can
| coagulate and stick to the walls.
|
| Methane on the other hand is starting out at a much lower
| temperature, and it's very difficult to get methane
| molecules to react with each other to form large
| molecules as you're not starting with any single C-C
| bonds. Isolated free carbon atoms (soot) aren't much of a
| problem.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| > Elon has said that the second stage is approximately
| 20% of the cost of a Falcon 9 launch.
|
| 20% of the cost of the _whole rocket_. With no reuse. Now
| that reuse has cut the cost of launch way down, the
| second stage is much more than that of the cost.
| SEJeff wrote:
| Oh very good point. The GP's $1 million number per falcon
| 9 launch was ludicrous.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I don't think it is. A medium lift vehicle that is fully
| reusable could be made to have a $1 million launch price.
| I don't know that Falcon 9 could do that, but some MLV
| could.
| SEJeff wrote:
| Ok. Why has no one done it? The economics would surely be
| there if someone could.
|
| Seemingly, SpaceX is the current best in the world and
| they couldn't do it.
| rbanffy wrote:
| In general, rockets work better the larger they get.
| Smaller rocket means more structure made per volume of
| fuel, which will translate to smaller proportional
| payload capacity. Manufacture cost is mostly a function
| of the surface while payload capacity is a function of
| the volume.
| Me1000 wrote:
| It's amusing how quickly we start taking things for
| granted.
|
| Right now SpaceX is the only company that recovers their
| orbital class booster. And that didn't happen until 2016!
| Prior to that, everyone dismissed landing rockets as
| impossible. Given the lack of competition for launch
| vehicles + the fat defense contracts being awarded, there
| wasn't much incentive for the incumbents to even try to
| bring the cost down.
|
| Designing a rocket that can land and be reflow is a
| multiyear process. As other comments have said, more
| design changes would been needed to F9 to make it more
| reusable, those changes have tradeoffs. Instead, SpaceX
| chose to invest in a new design and more capable vehicle.
|
| Other launch providers like RocketLab and Blue Origin are
| pursuing reusable vehicles.
|
| "Why has no one done it?" give it time... it will happen
| sooner than we probably expect.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| SpaceX could absolutely do it. They chose not to in order
| to focus development resources on starship. It's all
| about opportunity cost.
|
| Also, you'd have to redesign F9 somewhat. Starship has
| the fairing integrated with the upper stage, which
| reduces recovery costs. Starship's booster also does
| Return To Launch Site nominally, which means you don't
| need a separate recovery droneship (Falcon 9 does that,
| too, but to make the most out of every expended upper
| stage, it makes sense to use down-range recovery). The F9
| legs are sort of complicated logistically whereas Super
| Heavy is supposed to be recovered by the actual launch
| site, reducing turnaround time and costs. Also, using
| methane means less coking in the engines, which reduces
| turnaround costs and maintenance. Lots of things like
| that you'd need to reengineer to enable $1 million launch
| costs, but it's feasible for an MLV. Relativity is
| planning to do it.
| barbegal wrote:
| Indeed, I'm using the fact that it's ludicrous to make
| the case that a $2M starship launch is equally ludicrous.
| btilly wrote:
| No, it is not ludicrous.
|
| As Elon likes to point out, imagine how expensive it
| would be to fly if, after every flight, they threw away
| the plane. That's exactly what people traditionally did
| with rockets. The result is that the cost to fly a jet is
| mostly the cost of the fuel, while the cost to fly a
| rocket is the cost of the rocket.
|
| Consider a Falcon 9 launch. Thanks to reuse, the cost to
| relaunch is in the neighborhood of $30 million. The cost
| of the fuel is about $200,000. Over 99% the launch cost
| is depreciation, maintenance, or having to replace what
| you didn't reuse.
|
| The aim with Starship is to make the cost of a launch as
| close to the cost of the fuel as they can get.
| simonh wrote:
| I'm not sure you understand the arguments being made
| here. $1m per launch for F9 is ludicrous because 20% of
| the rocket, by manufacturing cost, is expended on every
| launch. For Starship none of the rocket is expended per
| launch, the only costs are site operations, fuel and
| depreciation on the rocket over a hundred or more
| flights.
|
| They are aiming for daily launches of starship, so the
| site operations costs would be divided by potentially
| hundreds of launches per year instead of the one or two
| dozen a year nowadays.
|
| The cost model per flight of Starship is more like that
| of a jumbo jet than that of a Falcon 9.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Reuse follows a parallel of Amdahl's law.
|
| Long-term marginal cost is determined by the nonreusable
| component cost + minimum refurbish & refit costs per
| launch. Effectively, the benefits of reuse offer
| diminising marginal benefit per reuse. Though designing
| for long-term use (say, a personal automobile vs. a
| rocketship) can still make sense.
|
| An automobile used for daily commute with a 5 year life
| sees ~1,000 re-uses. You can vary the parameters to get
| different results. There are fuel, maintanance,
| garaging/parking, tax/registration, and insurance costs
| as well.
| slownews45 wrote:
| Fairing recovery on Felcon 9 is not perfect. Rumor was that
| alone was something like $5M per launch flushed.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| The key to the price is that Musk is projecting it will be
| able to be reused many more times than Falcon 9, as well as
| a reusable 2nd stage.
| simonh wrote:
| They expect each vehicle to cost $200m and to fly them 100
| times each. Hence $2m per launch. Falcon 9 costs a lot more
| than that because the upper stage is expended each time and
| that costs mid single-digit millions, and the first stages
| may not last much beyond a few dozen launches without
| significant re-engineering which would also make them
| heavier.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| Boy I hope they park them in orbit on the last launch and
| use them to build space habitats.
| rbanffy wrote:
| There was a plan to do that with shuttle tanks. If we
| used them, the ISS could have a humongous ring of
| habitable former tanks.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Actually, Elon once told me that they might be able to
| build Starship launch vehicles for less than Falcon 9
| (say about $80 million new):
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1094793664809689089?s
| =20
|
| 100 reuses is not the limit either. The first stage in
| particular may be made for a lot more.
| api wrote:
| "They're about to pass the great filter... fire the
| relativistic impactors!"
|
| Seriously though, this is game changing at even 100X that
| number or $200M per launch. Even if they don't get close to
| the aspirational price it's going to make a ton of stuff
| possible in space that was unaffordable before.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's already too late for anyone more than 200 ly away.
| They're better getting used to us.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > the aspirational launch cost
|
| So, it means nothing.
|
| The Space Shuttle also was supposed to be cheap and almost
| completely reusable, it turned out to be one of the most
| expensive launchers. BFR is not the space shuttle, but I will
| not make any speculation before I can actually order a
| launch.
|
| Elon Musk is known for overpromising. The tech is awesome,
| and SpaceX realizations speak for themselves, but I consider
| anything Elon Musk says "not even wrong".
|
| I mean, I love SpaceX, and I follow BFR closely, but I think
| it would be better without the sensationalism.
| _greim_ wrote:
| Dare I ask how much the space shuttle cost to launch? Another
| order of magnitude higher? Ha ha.
| acover wrote:
| 500 - 1500 million
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle
| dredmorbius wrote:
| About $1.2 billion per launch.
|
| https://www.space.com/11358-nasa-space-shuttle-program-
| cost-...
|
| There's some room for argument, but _on the order of_
| 1,000x the stated SpaceX Super Heavy booster.
|
| Even if that turns out to be vastly optimistic (not ...
| unheard of in rocket surgery), it's all but certain that
| costs will be 100x lower than the Shuttle. Even a 10x
| factor would be utterly transformational.
|
| I'm not an uncriticle Musk fan, but he's repeatedly
| delivered on promises I thought were tots redic initially
| (long-range EVs, reusable boosters, powered return
| boosters). He's had a few missed deliveries (hyperloop and
| Boring Co. both seem infeasible, and Mars colonisation
| still strikes me as a very long shot within 50 years), but
| we're indisputably closer to those possibilities than
| before he came on the scene. Credit to engineering teams,
| there's also something to be said for vision and force of
| will.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > fast turn-around times and minimal refurbishment
|
| This is the biggest risk in the program, along with how many
| times they can reuse each piece, which is related. Last I
| looked Musk was projecting using the boosters hundreds of times
| and the 2nd stage dozens, both obviously very aggressive
| projections. If the real numbers are lower then the price per
| flight rises.
|
| As far as I know we don't have any independent way of knowing
| whether these projections make sense or not. I hope he's right.
| Even if he's a little wrong and the flight cost was $20M
| instead of $2M that would be a great thing. But he could also
| be very wrong and it might not work at all.
| marcusverus wrote:
| > This is the biggest risk in the program, along with how
| many times they can reuse each piece, which is related. Last
| I looked Musk was projecting using the boosters hundreds of
| times and the 2nd stage dozens, both obviously very
| aggressive projections.
|
| The first re-flight of a booster was in 2017. The practical
| science of rocket reuse is _only four years old._ During that
| time they 've flown ~40 missions with reused cores with zero
| failures. One Falcon 9 has been reused 10 times. My point is
| that there is no reason to assume that we've reached the
| limits of reuse in such a short period of time, so it doesn't
| seem that aggressive to assume that there is room to improve
| by ~10x
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > My point is that there is no reason to assume that we've
| reached the limits of reuse in such a short period of time,
| so it doesn't seem that aggressive to assume that there is
| room to improve by ~10x
|
| There's an enormous gulf between asserting this and the
| engineering to realize it. Maybe Raptor isn't as reliable
| as they hope. Maybe 3mm steel is too delicate so they have
| to stay with 4mm which makes them overweight. Maybe the
| thermal protection system is too fragile or doesn't provide
| enough protection. Maybe their novel alloy can't meet its
| targets. Maybe the tower catch won't work so they need legs
| which will add too much weight. Etc, etc.
|
| All of those are extremely nontrivial issues, there's a lot
| of risk because of how ambitious what they are attempting
| is. I hope they succeed.
| mabbo wrote:
| This is why I think the crazy ambition of the project is so
| important. If they're wrong by an order of magnitude they
| still change everything.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| After they break a bunch working out the kinks I bet hundreds
| and dozens will be realistic.
| wefarrell wrote:
| I'm currently reading "Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate
| Early Days that Launched SpaceX" and I've become convinced that
| SpaceX's biggest accomplishment is convincing their customers
| (mostly the US government) to go along with their lean/agile
| development process.
|
| At a high level everyone was aware that the way the government
| micromanaging the design/build of rockets with cost plus
| contracts wasn't sustainable, but the government bureaucracy
| that awards contracts is heavily entrenched in that mode of
| operation.
| adventured wrote:
| Liftoff is an an excellent book. Recommended for anyone
| interested in SpaceX or space in general. The writer's style
| is a bit dry, however it's a fun story regardless. The gritty
| insides of the early days of SpaceX are both what you hoped
| to read about and sort of crazy remarkable (like the
| elaborated story about the imploded Falcon 1 that was being
| transported by C17 and ultimately saved SpaceX from
| oblivion). People risked their lives to make SpaceX happen.
|
| It reminds me of a bigger company version of Masters of Doom.
| Same hacker ethos driving those early days.
| bumby wrote:
| > _to go along with their lean /agile development process._
|
| This is an accurate take, but in reality I think they
| convinced the government to _outsource_ a lean /agile
| development process.
|
| 20+ years ago, NASA went through their "better, faster,
| cheaper" phase to try their own hand at a more agile
| environment. Unfortunately, it reduced quality and whenever
| something bad happened more requirements were levied. Now
| some are beneficial but there's also some that were
| bureaucratic and process bloat just because of political risk
| and the fact nobody wanted to be on record saying the risk
| was acceptable.
|
| I think one unspoken risk is whether the government, as the
| largest SpaceX customer, will try to enforce the same quality
| and safety standards as the company matures, particularly
| with human-rated spaceflight. Or if they are comfortable with
| a hands-off approach.
| afterburner wrote:
| This is honestly the first really cool thing SpaceX is doing
| IMO.
| maccam94 wrote:
| I would say the boosters landing on drone ships and getting
| reused 8 times are pretty impressive. Also the Starship
| landing with the flip.
| afterburner wrote:
| Yeah, those were cool. But not _really_ cool.
|
| Self landing boosters is just the logical application of
| control algorithms. As with the "flip".
|
| Super Heavy Boosters, on the other hand, are an interesting
| new way to solve a problem.
| jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote:
| > logical application of control algorithms.
|
| LOL. Reusable rockets left as an exercise for the reader.
| acover wrote:
| The test hops that spacex and blue origin did are
| impressive yes, but you are missing the most impressive
| part! The booster that landed pushed something to orbital
| velocity. Getting any significant amount of payload (1-4%
| of total mass) to orbit is difficult but adding the fuel
| and equipment needed to accurately land the first stage
| is another level.
| octopoc wrote:
| SpaceX launches are the best reality TV show. I'm so glad my
| children get to watch history being made like this. My dad
| remembers seeing the moon landings when he was a kid and
| thinking, "Wow, this is HUGE!" My generation didn't get that
| experience. But I'm glad my kids do.
| solutron wrote:
| I got to see Falcon Dragon launch in Florida along the A1-A.
| People there credit SpaceX for single-handedly rekindling the
| lure and luster of space travel. They were sad when the shuttle
| program got shut down by NASA but now a whole new generation of
| space enthusiasts, optimists, and futurists get to see the
| awesome advances being made in the US. It's patriotic AF. The
| color, sparkle and glow of it was something I'll never forget.
| My only regret is I don't have any children to have shared it
| with. But there'll be more launches!
| criddell wrote:
| My parents used to let me stay home from school on days the
| space shuttle was being launched. I didn't think much of it at
| the time, but now I realize how awesome that was.
| paxys wrote:
| SpaceX's synchronized twin booster landing is one of the clips
| that will define the early 21st century. I'm still not over
| watching it live.
| wefarrell wrote:
| That was amazing because they unexpectedly succeeded on their
| first attempt. The individual falcon 9 landings were a bigger
| milestone but the success was iterative.
|
| If SpaceX can successfully land starship after the first
| suborbital flight I think it will dwarf the twin booster
| landing.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Starship and superheavy are both going to 'land' on the
| ocean after the first launch. Basically they test the
| landing process but they don't need to risk one of their
| (surprisingly expensive) ships and they don't need to
| request regulatory approval to return to land.
| wefarrell wrote:
| I knew they were doing that for the booster but thought
| they would attempt to actually land starship. It makes
| sense given such an ambitious schedule
| starlust2 wrote:
| There's so many more things that can go wrong trying to
| land from orbit that it's not worth the risk trying to
| land anywhere near people regardless of how much time you
| have to engineer it.
| SEJeff wrote:
| They're planning on dumping the first few super heavy
| boosters in the ocean. This is in the authorizations from
| the FAA.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I wonder how long stainless steel resists in the ocean.
| trothamel wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0FZIwabctw
|
| is my favorite way to watch that launch, just because of the
| way it integrate the people watching. We haven't had the
| crowds since the Space Shuttle stopped watching, and DM-2,
| Crew-1, and Crew-2 all happened during the pandemic - so this
| shows the old excitement.
| taftster wrote:
| I love that Chris Hadfield's version of Space Oddity is "up
| next" after this video.
| mabbo wrote:
| > I'm still not over watching it live
|
| I had a goal in 2020 to drive from Toronto to Florida to
| watch the next Falcon Heavy launch and dual-landings. Then
| the pandemic hit... but conveniently, they pushed back the FH
| launches by a year as well!
|
| Depending on the status of the border, the pandemic, and all
| of that, I might take a trip down if they have one this fall.
| mstade wrote:
| I've seen a rocket launch at KSC and can highly recommend
| it. (It wasn't SpaceX though.)
|
| One thing to remember though is that launches can easily
| get scrubbed due to weather, planes flying into the
| restricted zone etc., so make sure to plan to stay for most
| if not all of the planned launch window if possible. When I
| went I stayed at a hotel in Orlando, which can be fun but
| it's also a bit of a drive so might be worth finding
| lodging closer to KSC if you're not too keen on driving a
| fair bit.
|
| If you're viewing the launch from KSC your ticket won't be
| refunded either, and they'll only open up tickets for the
| next attempt _after_ the launch is scrubbed so you can 't
| prebook for all attempts either.
|
| When I went the first attempt was scrubbed, but they
| launched the next night. This actually worked out better
| for me, since then I could score tickets to the viewing
| gantry which was closer to the actual rocket, and an
| amazing experience.
|
| Pro tip: if you're spending multiple days at KSC just buy a
| year pass - it's worth it.
|
| Also pro tip: don't forget to visit the nearby warbird
| museum as well, they've got an amazing collection of
| airplanes and very knowledgeable volunteers on staff!
| SEJeff wrote:
| If you're referring to the Falcon Heavy side booster
| landings, I got to see the first one live at Kennedy Space
| Center. It was one of the only things in my entire life I'd
| describe as pure magic. It was amazing and so beautiful to
| see.
| healthysurf wrote:
| Definitely on my bucket list to see a live launch
| irrational wrote:
| My generation had the space shuttles (I still remember watching
| the challenger explosion at school that day). Your post is the
| first one to point out to me that in between the end of the
| space shuttles and space x we had an entire generation with
| nothing.
| [deleted]
| foobarian wrote:
| > "a fully orbital version of Super Heavy will have 33 of the
| methane-fueled Raptors."
|
| This both boggles my mind and makes me giddy with excitement.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Historically, large quantity of engines has been considered
| problematic - it brings to mind the USSR N1 rocket and the
| difficulties with its 30 engines, which have been attributed as
| a (the?) reason for failure of the USSR Moon program.
| ravedave5 wrote:
| 30 engines that fired for the first time at launch on a
| prototype vehicle. The falcon heavy launches with 27, with 0
| failures so far.
| bmcahren wrote:
| Falcon Heavy runs Merlin engines (Falcon heavy is three
| falcon 9's strapped together). Starship and Super Heavy
| booster are running Raptor methalox engines which by fuel
| choice alone has never been done before on an orbital
| rocket. The Raptor engines have failed to re-start during
| the landing sequence but I'm not sure we've seen enough of
| them to attest to any failure rate yet. The issue with
| restarting had to do with liquid methane sloshing in the
| nose cone.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > is three falcon 9's strapped together
|
| Now i just imagined the Ultraheavy, which should be 3
| Superheavies strapped together.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The USSR tried the "tons of little boosters" approach.
|
| It's taken ~60yr for the manufacturing and control systems to
| get to the point of being reliable enough to chain together
| enough boosters to put really big stuff into orbit.
| _Microft wrote:
| If you are curious about the trajectory that the first orbital
| launch might follow, have a look at this article:
|
| https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/05/13/spacex-outlines-plans-...
|
| They are aiming to fly Starship over the Straits of Florida (i.e.
| between Florida and Cuba) which means it will be low inclination.
| I assume that this is to avoid overflying inhabited area 'early'
| into the flight and especially not for too long, a trajectory bit
| further to the south would e.g. mean that they had to fly over
| the full length of Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I
| would expect them to be "out of the woods" already at this point
| in the flight though. The next critical part would be reentry
| north-west of Hawaii.
| jcims wrote:
| The filing linked from the article is at the FCC b/c they plan
| to use Starlink terminals on the second stage to maintain
| telemetry connectivity during the flight (particulary reentry
| where RF on the windward side is blocked due to plasma effects)
| _ph_ wrote:
| I have tried to draw a circle around the globe based on the
| images in the article and there is actually a circle which
| basically misses everything in the Caribean that just goes
| south of the Caicos islands, crosses southern Africa, skips
| barely west of Australia and ends slightly west of Hawaii.
| LeanderK wrote:
| So this will run on Methane and Liquid Oxygen, right? Is it
| possible to source this CO2 neutral? Maybe it's not economical
| right now, but I wonder whether it's realistic to use renewables
| to produce the fuel in the near future. The massive cost
| reduction will probably result in far more flights, so I wonder
| about the environmental impact.
|
| Edit: And would this even be the solution? Methane is a
| greenhouse-gas after all...
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| They need to build these refineries[0] for fuel creation on
| Mars, so it's very likely they will build and use them at
| Starbase on Earth to test and gain long-term maintenance
| experience.
|
| The happy consequence is relatively low net-carbon emissions.
|
| [0] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/30/no-you-dont-have-to-
| wor...
| mabbo wrote:
| Methane is a greenhouse gas, until you burn it. Then it's water
| and CO2.
|
| The wikipedia article on methane says something like "There is
| little incentive to produce methane industrially". Basically,
| we have too much of it already, from fracking, from livestock,
| from all sorts of places.
|
| Giving it to SpaceX to burn as rocket fuel makes it a less
| potent greenhouse gas.
| adrianN wrote:
| Yes, it's not terribly difficult to make Methane from CO2 and
| water using some electrolysis and the Sabatier reaction. You
| can also do that on Mars.
| LeanderK wrote:
| Do you know what happens when the engine burns the fuel? What
| gets released into the atmosphere? I know methane is a
| greenhouse gas but when it's getting burned it doesn't get
| released raw.
| adrianN wrote:
| Methane burns with oxygen to carbon dioxide and water.
| CH4+2O2->CO2 + H2O
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| Very basically this is the bi-directional formula:
|
| Methane + O2 <=> CO2 + H2O + energy
| lizknope wrote:
| methane + oxygen = carbon dioxide + water
|
| https://www.middleschoolchemistry.com/multimedia/chapter6/l
| e...
| Me1000 wrote:
| Musk has stated it's SpaceX intention to create methane from
| the CO2 in the air, powered by solar panels. (Basically the
| same technology they want to use on Mars to produce the return
| trip propellant)
|
| Burning the methane will of course release CO2 back into the
| atmosphere, but if they indeed make the methane by pulling CO2
| from the air, it would effectively make Starship (the fuel
| anyway) carbon neutral.
|
| (I guess actually it's a bit carbon negative because some of
| the engine burn will happen in space).
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