Author Topic: The Starship "I risk sending a thread off topic" Homeless Posts Thread 2  (Read 265199 times)

Offline jackvancouver

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A lot of people may have missed it because of the B7 move, but a meteor re-entered over Boca Chica last night:

https://twitter.com/LabPadre/status/1555968226194063360

Offline su27k

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https://twitter.com/rocketrepreneur/status/1556366878276083712

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Ugh... I love that Relativity is going after a full RLV to compete with Starship, but I wish they were going smaller, instead of larger...  someone needs to do a smaller RLV.

twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1556381932795183105

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Economics don’t work as well for smaller RLV on a per satellite basis for what the LEO constellations want to do and they need to compete with huge cost advantages of F9/starlink. Number per plane, mass each, spares, etc I think the F9 class is about the smallest that will work

https://twitter.com/rocketrepreneur/status/1556383827454398464

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Huh, ok that's bigger than I would've thought. Are their next gen satellites all planning on being a lot bigger than first gen? I would've thought that $/sat would be more a function of flight rate and total flights per hull than a function of raw rocket size.

twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1556384580554334211

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Can’t officially say but I’ve seen everyone trend that way. It’s function of doing either an entire orbital plane plus spares or a round number fraction of that (split in half, thirds, etc) and then yes flights per vehicle for reuse. But the mass and logistics of many launches…

https://twitter.com/thetimellis/status/1556384682408820736

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…still is more dominant as we’ve seen it

I hope this ends the "Starship is too BIG" argument once and for all.

BTW, it's just amazing how much SpaceX got it right with regard to reuse even though they're doing this for the first time. Their potential competitors tried different approaches such as "We'll only do RTLS, droneships are so expensive", or "We'll use a moving ship instead of stationary barge", then they all had to revert back to what SpaceX is already doing because it turns out that's optimal, at least for the use cases we have right now.

And now this, the biggest "criticism" against Starship being swiped away by no other than Relativity, darling of "anything but SpaceX" crowd, that's just the icing on the cake. If people are wondering why some of us have "irrational exuberance" about Starship's potentials, this is why.
« Last Edit: 08/08/2022 02:51 am by su27k »

Offline edzieba

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I hope this ends the "Starship is too BIG" argument once and for all.
Why would it? That discussion is solely on the lower bound of economic (rather than practical or possible) RLV size, it doesn't even mention the upper bound (if any).

Offline su27k

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I hope this ends the "Starship is too BIG" argument once and for all.
Why would it? That discussion is solely on the lower bound of economic (rather than practical or possible) RLV size, it doesn't even mention the upper bound (if any).

Well yeah, Relativity - the primary competitor of Starship - saying they need bigger RLV to compete with Starship and that constellation launch economics favor big RLV with smaller # of launches instead of smaller RLV with big # of launches is not relevant to Starship sizing discussion at all... /s

Offline edzieba

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I hope this ends the "Starship is too BIG" argument once and for all.
Why would it? That discussion is solely on the lower bound of economic (rather than practical or possible) RLV size, it doesn't even mention the upper bound (if any).

Well yeah, Relativity - the primary competitor of Starship - saying they need bigger RLV to compete with Starship and that constellation launch economics favor big RLV with smaller # of launches instead of smaller RLV with big # of launches is not relevant to Starship sizing discussion at all... /s
Since their "bigger RLV" is of similar capability as F9 (and Neutron) it doesn't say much about the economic viability of Starship beyond "at least two companies think smaller than Starship is a better option".

SpaceX's goal is "send people to Mars", optimising for maximum profit is secondary to being big enough to achieve their actual goal. Being unprofitable is not an great option (no bucks, no Buck Rogers) but given the choice between a less profitable launcher that can get them to Mars and a more profitable one that cannot, SpaceX may not make the same choice as other launch providers would even in the knowledge they are 'leaving money on the table'.

Offline su27k

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Since their "bigger RLV" is of similar capability as F9 (and Neutron) it doesn't say much about the economic viability of Starship beyond "at least two companies think smaller than Starship is a better option".

"at least two companies think smaller than Starship is a better option" for them, given they have limited development funding and experience, and they don't control their constellation customers. This doesn't mean Starship is a bad option for SpaceX, who: a. has more development funding and experience; b. can design the constellation payload to fit Starship.

Even so, you're missing the point that Relativity is upsizing their RLV because "bigger is better" so to speak. And no Terran-R is definitely not F9 sized, it's 20t fully reusable vs F9 16t partially reusable, so Terran-R has to be bigger than F9, and Tim Ellis just said they're increasing the size of Terran-R even further. Rocket Lab will have a Neutron update soon, you want to bet that they're not upsizing Neutron too?

You're also missing the point that Tim Ellis admits constellation customers are increasing the size of constellations, which needs bigger vehicle because smaller vehicles are not competitive in these cases. This is exactly what SpaceX is doing with Starship and Starlink.
« Last Edit: 08/08/2022 01:37 pm by su27k »

Offline edzieba

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This is exactly what SpaceX is doing with Starship and Starlink.
SpaceX are increasing the size of Starlink 2 to fill the mass of Starship, because SpaceX's only launch option is Starship.
Other constellation manufacturers are instead looking at the optimum size of the entire available launch market, not wanting to be locked into one launch provider. Note also that Ellis mentioned that the metric of interest is number of launches per plane, not mass of satellites: Starship with the enlarged Starlinks is still launching a single plane per launch, and smaller satellites would be leaving empty capacity.

Multiple commercial providers are targeting medium lift vehicles (there's Stoke Space as well). Elon himself has said that Starship may be 'too big'. All signs point to Starship being 'too big' for the commercial launch market. That's not a problem for SpaceX because the commercial launch market is secondary to their actual goal (Mars), but it does man that bigger is not necessarily better for other commercial launch providers.

Offline edzieba

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As I was watching the scene where the SS is horizontal on the way down to the ocean, I suddenly heard a voice in my head saying:

“And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … own … found … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!”
“I wonder if it will be friends with me?”

Hopefully the Starship orbital test flight will co-manifest a bowl of Petunias.

Offline greybeardengineer

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All signs point to Starship being 'too big' for the commercial launch market. That's not a problem for SpaceX because the commercial launch market is secondary to their actual goal (Mars), but it does man that bigger is not necessarily better for other commercial launch providers.

Too big (vehicle size) isn't really a problem if the launch cost is competitive with smaller alternatives. The risk SpaceX is taking is building a huge manufacturing and launch infrastructure that can provide orders of magnitude more vehicles and launch demand than could be currently foreseen to be needed in the mid term future and beyond. The associated fixed costs on the ground are more worrisome than the size of the vehicle IMO. There really is a "build it and they will come" bet on boostrapping entirely new space based industries to generate new demand for launch. Mars is great but SpaceX is going to need seriously large, rich, and long term dedicated partners for that vision.

Offline su27k

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This is exactly what SpaceX is doing with Starship and Starlink.
SpaceX are increasing the size of Starlink 2 to fill the mass of Starship, because SpaceX's only launch option is Starship.
Other constellation manufacturers are instead looking at the optimum size of the entire available launch market, not wanting to be locked into one launch provider. Note also that Ellis mentioned that the metric of interest is number of launches per plane, not mass of satellites: Starship with the enlarged Starlinks is still launching a single plane per launch, and smaller satellites would be leaving empty capacity.

First of all, you don't have to do a single plane per launch, you can launch multiple planes in a single launch, which is exactly what SpaceX is doing with F9 and Gen1. You just need to wait a few months to drift some of the satellites to nearby planes.

Second, the other constellation manufacturers had to limit their satellite size because they don't want to be locked into a single launch provider is a drawback, not an advantage. Also there're other limiting factors for other constellations:
1. Sizing their constellation to be like Starlink Gen2 would be too costly in terms of launch, even if they buy reusable launches from the market, since SpaceX wouldn't give them Starship launches at cost.
2. Satellite manufacturing cost will limit the other constellation's size, since they lack Starlink's economy of scale, and without low launch price they can't just sacrifice significant number of satellites for on-orbit QA and testing.

So SpaceX being able to design Starlink to fit Starship is a big advantage, since: a. they don't need to worry about launch provider redundancy, since they know their launch provider will always support them; b. they can get the lowest launch price, much lower than the market price.



Quote
Multiple commercial providers are targeting medium lift vehicles (there's Stoke Space as well). Elon himself has said that Starship may be 'too big'. All signs point to Starship being 'too big' for the commercial launch market. That's not a problem for SpaceX because the commercial launch market is secondary to their actual goal (Mars), but it does man that bigger is not necessarily better for other commercial launch providers.

Elon said many things, he also said Raptor production issue may bankrupt SpaceX, just because he said it doesn't mean it's a likely outcome.

Starship is too big for the current commercial launch market, but it's never Starship's intention to serve the current market. In fact no reusable LV is aiming at current market, because if we take out Starlink, there's not many commercial launches left for a reusable LV. Instead every RLV is aiming for a future market where constellation is the biggest customer, and big constellation requires big RLV, this is the insight we get from this twitter exchange.

Actually I think I can make an argument for bigger is better for other commercial launch providers too, assuming all else being equal. Other providers can't just go there yet, since they lack the funding/experience, and they're limited by their customers' ambitions. I'm willing to bet some of them will go to Starship sized vehicles eventually, assuming Starship is successful, and they survives.

Online DanClemmensen

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Too big (vehicle size) isn't really a problem if the launch cost is competitive with smaller alternatives.
Exactly. If the total launch cost of a small rocket is more expensive than the total launch cost of Starship, then the small rocket has no market. Not $/kg, but $ per launch. SpaceX aims to drive down the cost per launch by rapid reuse. If the same SH can be used once a day and the same Starship can be used once a week, It's hard to see where a small rocket can compete. This does not even consider the impact of rideshare.

Offline Barley

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First of all, you don't have to do a single plane per launch, you can launch multiple planes in a single launch, which is exactly what SpaceX is doing with F9 and Gen1. You just need to wait a few months to drift some of the satellites to nearby planes.

I agree but want to add:

IMHO trying to match the size of a plane to the size of a launcher is, and always will be, pre-mature optimization.  It's going to hurt if you need to add 10kg to each satellite.  Or you need to launch southeast instead of northeast due to North Atlantic winters.  Or you need to insert into a 50km higher orbit because of sunspots or any number or things not predictable years in advance.

Also IMHO the number of planes and satellites per plane should be regarded as notional.   A large constellation will never be exactly filled.  There will always be holes and spares maneuvering to fill the holes.  They should be able to operate just fine with a couple of holes per plane.  In some ways this contradicts the above, since it allows you to adjust the satellites per plane, but livestock rather than pets.

Offline AmigaClone


First of all, you don't have to do a single plane per launch, you can launch multiple planes in a single launch, which is exactly what SpaceX is doing with F9 and Gen1. You just need to wait a few months to drift some of the satellites to nearby planes.

I agree but want to add:

IMHO trying to match the size of a plane to the size of a launcher is, and always will be, pre-mature optimization.  It's going to hurt if you need to add 10kg to each satellite.  Or you need to launch southeast instead of northeast due to North Atlantic winters.  Or you need to insert into a 50km higher orbit because of sunspots or any number or things not predictable years in advance.

Also IMHO the number of planes and satellites per plane should be regarded as notional.   A large constellation will never be exactly filled.  There will always be holes and spares maneuvering to fill the holes.  They should be able to operate just fine with a couple of holes per plane.  In some ways this contradicts the above, since it allows you to adjust the satellites per plane, but livestock rather than pets.

Looking a short video of the Starship Pez dispenser in action, it appears that Starship might be volume constrained to 54 Starlink 2.0 per launch. Not sure of the accuracy of that video though.

I also recently saw a copy of the modification to the proposed but not yet approved Starlink Gen 2, where SpaceX mentions using Starship to launch Starlink satellites. Some of the planes are proposed to have 110 or 120 satellites, which likely means two launches dedicated to a plane. The plane would be filled with a launch that would have satellites going to multiple planes.

Offline su27k

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Further proof that the market doesn't care about whether Starship is "too big", launching a 3t commsat on a LV twice the size of Saturn V? Why not, as long as the price is right...

https://www.skyperfectjsat.space/en/news/detail/sky_perfect_jsat_signed_launch_service_contract_for_superbird-9_satellite_with_spacex.html

SKY Perfect JSAT signed Launch Service Contract for Superbird-9 satellite with SpaceX

Offline Zed_Noir

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From the "NASA RFI for ISS deorbit module" thread
For 300ISP engine it will need 7.5t of fuel for 47ms DV required and engine of 3.3kn or 7klbs.

This will need to be purpose built vehicle with SpaceX or NG being my pick given their excellent record servicing ISS.

Either that, or I could imagine something derived from one of the many new space tugs, especially MEV and Photon. NG seems pretty open about collaboration, and they have a great platform to start with.

My guess for an evaluation would be:
1) Modified Cygnus
2) MEV (+ Cygnus?)
3) Cygnus + Photon
4) Obligatory SpaceX bid with varying quality depending on their mood
5) A happy mix of companies you've never heard of proposing ludicrous budgets or nonexistent spacecraft
For the 4)
A stripped down expendable Starship with 50 tonnes of hypergolic propellants and many draco thrusters. So we will have high pressure COPV tanks on a Starship.  ;D

Offline Robotbeat

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From the "NASA RFI for ISS deorbit module" thread
For 300ISP engine it will need 7.5t of fuel for 47ms DV required and engine of 3.3kn or 7klbs.

This will need to be purpose built vehicle with SpaceX or NG being my pick given their excellent record servicing ISS.

Either that, or I could imagine something derived from one of the many new space tugs, especially MEV and Photon. NG seems pretty open about collaboration, and they have a great platform to start with.

My guess for an evaluation would be:
1) Modified Cygnus
2) MEV (+ Cygnus?)
3) Cygnus + Photon
4) Obligatory SpaceX bid with varying quality depending on their mood
5) A happy mix of companies you've never heard of proposing ludicrous budgets or nonexistent spacecraft
For the 4)
A stripped down expendable Starship with 50 tonnes of hypergolic propellants and many draco thrusters. So we will have high pressure COPV tanks on a Starship.  ;D
A stripped-down, filled up Starship (/slight/ stretched maybe… like basically a depot variant, ideally with long duration capability if you wanted it to do destination orbit insertion) could push ISS all the way to Mars orbit LOL.
« Last Edit: 08/20/2022 02:08 pm by Robotbeat »
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Offline Zed_Noir

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From the "NASA RFI for ISS deorbit module" thread
For 300ISP engine it will need 7.5t of fuel for 47ms DV required and engine of 3.3kn or 7klbs.

This will need to be purpose built vehicle with SpaceX or NG being my pick given their excellent record servicing ISS.

Either that, or I could imagine something derived from one of the many new space tugs, especially MEV and Photon. NG seems pretty open about collaboration, and they have a great platform to start with.

My guess for an evaluation would be:
1) Modified Cygnus
2) MEV (+ Cygnus?)
3) Cygnus + Photon
4) Obligatory SpaceX bid with varying quality depending on their mood
5) A happy mix of companies you've never heard of proposing ludicrous budgets or nonexistent spacecraft
For the 4)
A stripped down expendable Starship with 50 tonnes of hypergolic propellants and many draco thrusters. So we will have high pressure COPV tanks on a Starship.  ;D
A stripped-down, filled up Starship (/slight/ stretched maybe… like basically a depot variant, ideally with long duration capability if you wanted it to do destination orbit insertion) could push ISS all the way to Mars orbit LOL.
Was thinking of an austere refurbished Starship with no orbital refueling capability. Hence the hypergolics. The job is to de-orbit the ISS after all.

Offline Tangilinear Interjar

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From the "NASA RFI for ISS deorbit module" thread
For 300ISP engine it will need 7.5t of fuel for 47ms DV required and engine of 3.3kn or 7klbs.

This will need to be purpose built vehicle with SpaceX or NG being my pick given their excellent record servicing ISS.

Either that, or I could imagine something derived from one of the many new space tugs, especially MEV and Photon. NG seems pretty open about collaboration, and they have a great platform to start with.

My guess for an evaluation would be:
1) Modified Cygnus
2) MEV (+ Cygnus?)
3) Cygnus + Photon
4) Obligatory SpaceX bid with varying quality depending on their mood
5) A happy mix of companies you've never heard of proposing ludicrous budgets or nonexistent spacecraft
For the 4)
A stripped down expendable Starship with 50 tonnes of hypergolic propellants and many draco thrusters. So we will have high pressure COPV tanks on a Starship.  ;D
A stripped-down, filled up Starship (/slight/ stretched maybe… like basically a depot variant, ideally with long duration capability if you wanted it to do destination orbit insertion) could push ISS all the way to Mars orbit LOL.
Was thinking of an austere refurbished Starship with no orbital refueling capability. Hence the hypergolics. The job is to de-orbit the ISS after all.

How about just cutting the axels and suspension off an Airgas Argon delivery tanker, bolting on a few ion thrusters and plugging into the station solar array. Cheap and easy!

Weight wise not a problem for a Starship to deliver.

How far could 7,000 gallons of liquid Argon push the space station? 🤔

Offline Nomadd

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How about just cutting the axels and suspension off an Airgas Argon delivery tanker, bolting on a few ion thrusters and plugging into the station solar array. Cheap and easy!
Weight wise not a problem for a Starship to deliver.
How far could 7,000 gallons of liquid Argon push the space station? 🤔
Just how much thrust do you think an ion thruster has?
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Offline Redclaws

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How about just cutting the axels and suspension off an Airgas Argon delivery tanker, bolting on a few ion thrusters and plugging into the station solar array. Cheap and easy!
Weight wise not a problem for a Starship to deliver.
How far could 7,000 gallons of liquid Argon push the space station? 🤔
Just how much thrust do you think an ion thruster has?

And for how much power :/

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