Starship Point to Point Transport considerations

[Twark_Main]

Would regular flights demonstrating say 1000 landings without crashing begin to loosen the regulatory requirements to clear the ground and ocean for miles every time a starship lands?
They don’t do this for aircraft and these at least used to crash onto people and houses sometimes.

Launch noise and sonic booms are a lot worse with Starship than aircraft - less so for just the ship than a full stack, but still worse. I don't really see multiple flights per day ever being acceptable within 10 or 20 miles of any significant population. That will set the distance from most people, rather than blast danger, which is really only about 2 miles anyway, or maybe a mile for the ship alone.

Yup but you don't have to evacuate all air and sea traffic from a region.

Boca Choca is what, 5 miles from SPI?  And sure it's too noisy for a full stack, but I don't think you'll need 20 miles.

And a 10 mile low-population radius, out at sea or into the desert, is manageable in most places.

SPI is not a population center; nobody is buying a rocket ticket to travel there. A high cost, high speed travel service has to go places like New York, London, Tokyo, Shanghai, Sydney, Dubai, etc to get an appreciable volume of well-heeled travelers. And those place have a lot of people who will vociferously complain about rocket noise.

I don't think you're getting within 10 miles of any of those city centers with a rocket. 50 miles, maybe. Even 25, perhaps. Either way, I think helicopter or eVTOL will be the most common transport to the pad. The people paying $10k for a ticket don't want to take ferries or trains, and they don't care if flying to the rocketport adds 10% to the trip cost.

That's why I doubled the distance, even though Ship takes off with only about 1/4 the power.

So 10 mile radius, either into the sea, or into the desert.  It'll end up being probably 40 miles from city centers, or 20 minutes in a Tesla in a dedicated tunnel.

Really not a big deal.

20 miles offshore, according to Elon Musk.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-starship-spaceports-offshore

[mikelepage]

Launch noise and sonic booms are a lot worse with Starship than aircraft - less so for just the ship than a full stack, but still worse. I don't really see multiple flights per day ever being acceptable within 10 or 20 miles of any significant population. That will set the distance from most people, rather than blast danger, which is really only about 2 miles anyway, or maybe a mile for the ship alone.

Yes, I agree with noise considerations being a limiting factor once safety is proved out. There’s a section in my OP video dealing with how absurdly loud even nominal operations of Starship will be. Even if it’s not causing damage it will still be annoying when frequent.

It’s partly why I imagined a hub and spoke model for p2p (starship-only pads near population centers, but within a few 1000 km of ocean platforms for full stack launches).

On another note, one thing that’s nice about all the extra tanker flights is that it will fairly quickly prove out the safety margins required for “adventure sport” class p2p. In my video I was interested to learn that the fatality rate for passenger air travel in the first decade or so (1920s through early 1930s) was in the same ballpark as BASE jumping now (one fatality per 2300 jumps).

100 successful flights of starship & tankers gives you better than 95% confidence you’ve achieved at least that level of safety.

[meekGee]

That's why I doubled the distance, even though Ship takes off with only about 1/4 the power.

So 10 mile radius, either into the sea, or into the desert.  It'll end up being probably 40 miles from city centers, or 20 minutes in a Tesla in a dedicated tunnel.

Really not a big deal.

20 miles offshore, according to Elon Musk.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-starship-spaceports-offshore

Close enough...

[mikelepage]

My problem with your fish coloration was that it sounded like you were saying "real" transport (vs space tourism) was never going to happen, but hearing you talk about "near-term" it sounds like I misunderstood.

One reason I like using red herring as an expression is that nowhere in its definition is it said that the thing being called a red herring is untrue.

Red Herring (def:) 2.
a clue or piece of information that is, or is intended to be, misleading or distracting.

It’s just the big shiny thing that everyone fixates on. And in fact it’s often used as a rhetorical technique to present a fact that - while true - is only tangentially relevant to the main topic.

That’s what I’m saying the speed aspect of p2p is. Yes… eventually… it could be the reason why most people use p2p. But that will only occur once the network effect of having many spaceports and all the necessary last-mile infrastructure is in place.

And actually in the meanwhile it is counter-productive to getting things going, because then people incorrectly assume that it (p2p) only becomes useful once all that infrastructure is in place. I’m saying it can be valuable in its own right long before that.

[Twark_Main]

That's why I doubled the distance, even though Ship takes off with only about 1/4 the power.

So 10 mile radius, either into the sea, or into the desert.  It'll end up being probably 40 miles from city centers, or 20 minutes in a Tesla in a dedicated tunnel.

Really not a big deal.

20 miles offshore, according to Elon Musk.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-starship-spaceports-offshore

Close enough...

Yes I believe 20 miles is close enough. That's the number I used to calculated "30 minutes by fast ferry," so even the (pooh-poohed as too slow) option is fast enough at 20 miles.

Next time, quadruple instead of doubling! Your estimates are (apparently) even more optimistic than you think... 

My problem with your fish coloration was that it sounded like you were saying "real" transport (vs space tourism) was never going to happen, but hearing you talk about "near-term" it sounds like I misunderstood.

One reason I like using red herring as an expression is...

...so you can give this long explanation afterward instead of being clear from the beginning? 


I don't know how much of a difference this clarification makes, due to the SpaceX DNA. Even if SpaceX doesnt need to push for speed based on the immediate space tourism requirements, nevertheless I expect SpaceX will push for speed because they still want to advance toward the dream of "real" (non-tourism) P2P.

For example I wouldn't see SpaceX making large offshore infrastructure without having some sort of plan to upgrade it to fast infrastructure (because they only plan to use it for space tourism), and then saying "oops we have to replace it" when they want fast P2P.

Space tourism might trap some companies in that "slow service" local maximum, but I don't think SpaceX will fall for it.

[meekGee]

Close enough...

Sure 20 miles is close enough (that's how I calculated my "20-30 minutes by fast ferry"), but 10 miles is too close.

Just, for next time, quadruple instead of double. Your estimates are apparently more optimistic than you think. 

A. How would it matter, 10 or 20 or 40.
B. I did "quadruple" since I'm also comparing ship-only with booster+ship.
C. My distance for transport was 40, since I also figured 20 miles from the city-side terminal to the shoreline.
C. Either way, a Tesla in a dedicated tunnel would eat it up in no time.
D. Even Musk can't give you a precise number since for every town, the population density and distance from shoreline changes.

There are several keep-off radii.
- Blast zone for takeoff
- Missed approach for landing
- Noise abatement for departures
- Noise abatement for arrivals

You'll get a different result for every spaceport, and none of these numbers would be an impediment for a p2p system, that was the point.

[Twark_Main]

Close enough...

Sure 20 miles is close enough (that's how I calculated my "20-30 minutes by fast ferry"), but 10 miles is too close.

Just, for next time, quadruple instead of double. Your estimates are apparently more optimistic than you think. 

A. How would it matter, 10 or 20 or 40.
B. I did "quadruple" since I'm also comparing ship-only with booster+ship.
C. My distance for transport was 40, since I also figured 20 miles from the city-side terminal to the shoreline.
C. Either way, a Tesla in a dedicated tunnel would eat it up in no time.
D. Even Musk can't give you a precise number since for every town, the population density and distance from shoreline changes.

There are several keep-off radii.
- Blast zone for takeoff
- Missed approach for landing
- Noise abatement for departures
- Noise abatement for arrivals

You'll get a different result for every spaceport, and none of these numbers would be an impediment for a p2p system, that was the point.

Ok, octuple.

Situations and cities vary, but apples-to-apples (ie both giving one rule-of-thumb number) the estimate was a factor of two vs the person with the best data available. I'd say that's actually pretty good!

Fermi would be proud. 

Since it's so rare we get actual ground-truth numbers for our back-of-the-envelope chicken scratchings, I presumed you still want to make the best possible use of that precious datapoint for calibration purposes. That's all. YMMV

[meekGee]

Close enough...

Sure 20 miles is close enough (that's how I calculated my "20-30 minutes by fast ferry"), but 10 miles is too close.

Just, for next time, quadruple instead of double. Your estimates are apparently more optimistic than you think. 

A. How would it matter, 10 or 20 or 40.
B. I did "quadruple" since I'm also comparing ship-only with booster+ship.
C. My distance for transport was 40, since I also figured 20 miles from the city-side terminal to the shoreline.
C. Either way, a Tesla in a dedicated tunnel would eat it up in no time.
D. Even Musk can't give you a precise number since for every town, the population density and distance from shoreline changes.

There are several keep-off radii.
- Blast zone for takeoff
- Missed approach for landing
- Noise abatement for departures
- Noise abatement for arrivals

You'll get a different result for every spaceport, and none of these numbers would be an impediment for a p2p system, that was the point.

Ok, octuple.

Situations and cities vary, but apples-to-apples (ie both giving one rule-of-thumb number) the estimate was a factor of two vs the person with the best data available. I'd say that's actually pretty good!

Fermi would be proud. 

Since it's so rare we get actual ground-truth numbers for our back-of-the-envelope chicken scratchings, I presumed you still want to make the best possible use of that precious datapoint for calibration purposes. That's all. YMMV

Factor of 4 over what?  This is so ill-defined...

I'm not dying over the number 2x because even the baseline just got transformed by a factor of 2x, and we haven't even agreed if we're talking about distance from shore or from city center and for which city...

Want 20?  Have 20.  10-40. 5-80.  It's all good.

[Twark_Main]

Close enough...

Sure 20 miles is close enough (that's how I calculated my "20-30 minutes by fast ferry"), but 10 miles is too close.

Just, for next time, quadruple instead of double. Your estimates are apparently more optimistic than you think. 

A. How would it matter, 10 or 20 or 40.
B. I did "quadruple" since I'm also comparing ship-only with booster+ship.
C. My distance for transport was 40, since I also figured 20 miles from the city-side terminal to the shoreline.
C. Either way, a Tesla in a dedicated tunnel would eat it up in no time.
D. Even Musk can't give you a precise number since for every town, the population density and distance from shoreline changes.

There are several keep-off radii.
- Blast zone for takeoff
- Missed approach for landing
- Noise abatement for departures
- Noise abatement for arrivals

You'll get a different result for every spaceport, and none of these numbers would be an impediment for a p2p system, that was the point.

Ok, octuple.

Situations and cities vary, but apples-to-apples (ie both giving one rule-of-thumb number) the estimate was a factor of two vs the person with the best data available. I'd say that's actually pretty good!

Fermi would be proud. 

Since it's so rare we get actual ground-truth numbers for our back-of-the-envelope chicken scratchings, I presumed you still want to make the best possible use of that precious datapoint for calibration purposes. That's all. YMMV

Factor of 4 over what?  This is so ill-defined...

Just take the final estimate and double it lol, it's not that hard?

Better yet, do me a favor and don't change a thing. No recalibration. I'll do it in my head and enjoy a nice information asymmetry in future discussions. 

If you don't want to take advantage of all available data that's fine, but at least someone should... 

[meekGee]

Close enough...

Sure 20 miles is close enough (that's how I calculated my "20-30 minutes by fast ferry"), but 10 miles is too close.

Just, for next time, quadruple instead of double. Your estimates are apparently more optimistic than you think. 

A. How would it matter, 10 or 20 or 40.
B. I did "quadruple" since I'm also comparing ship-only with booster+ship.
C. My distance for transport was 40, since I also figured 20 miles from the city-side terminal to the shoreline.
C. Either way, a Tesla in a dedicated tunnel would eat it up in no time.
D. Even Musk can't give you a precise number since for every town, the population density and distance from shoreline changes.

There are several keep-off radii.
- Blast zone for takeoff
- Missed approach for landing
- Noise abatement for departures
- Noise abatement for arrivals

You'll get a different result for every spaceport, and none of these numbers would be an impediment for a p2p system, that was the point.

Ok, octuple.

Situations and cities vary, but apples-to-apples (ie both giving one rule-of-thumb number) the estimate was a factor of two vs the person with the best data available. I'd say that's actually pretty good!

Fermi would be proud. 

Since it's so rare we get actual ground-truth numbers for our back-of-the-envelope chicken scratchings, I presumed you still want to make the best possible use of that precious datapoint for calibration purposes. That's all. YMMV

Factor of 4 over what?  This is so ill-defined...

Just take the final estimate and double it lol, it's not that hard?

Better yet, do me a favor and don't change a thing. No recalibration. I'll do it in my head and enjoy a nice information asymmetry in future discussions. 

If you don't want to take advantage of all available data that's fine, but at least someone should... 

Since you keep fixing the post:

Snark without substance is just mean.  I honestly don't know what you want.

I threw out a 10 mile off-shore safety radius, plus distance to city-center, I called it 40 total, and absolutely (in context) expecting it to be a ballpark, in that it's a distance manageable by dedicated ground transport.

Since then you've been going on about how even Elon said 20 miles on some comment, doubling, quadrupling etc.

What is your point exactly, other than the snark?

[Twark_Main]

Close enough...

Sure 20 miles is close enough (that's how I calculated my "20-30 minutes by fast ferry"), but 10 miles is too close.

Just, for next time, quadruple instead of double. Your estimates are apparently more optimistic than you think. 

A. How would it matter, 10 or 20 or 40.
B. I did "quadruple" since I'm also comparing ship-only with booster+ship.
C. My distance for transport was 40, since I also figured 20 miles from the city-side terminal to the shoreline.
C. Either way, a Tesla in a dedicated tunnel would eat it up in no time.
D. Even Musk can't give you a precise number since for every town, the population density and distance from shoreline changes.

There are several keep-off radii.
- Blast zone for takeoff
- Missed approach for landing
- Noise abatement for departures
- Noise abatement for arrivals

You'll get a different result for every spaceport, and none of these numbers would be an impediment for a p2p system, that was the point.

Ok, octuple.

Situations and cities vary, but apples-to-apples (ie both giving one rule-of-thumb number) the estimate was a factor of two vs the person with the best data available. I'd say that's actually pretty good!

Fermi would be proud. 

Since it's so rare we get actual ground-truth numbers for our back-of-the-envelope chicken scratchings, I presumed you still want to make the best possible use of that precious datapoint for calibration purposes. That's all. YMMV

Factor of 4 over what?  This is so ill-defined...

Just take the final estimate and double it lol, it's not that hard?

Better yet, do me a favor and don't change a thing. No recalibration. I'll do it in my head and enjoy a nice information asymmetry in future discussions. 

If you don't want to take advantage of all available data that's fine, but at least someone should... 

Since you keep fixing the post:

Snark without substance is just mean.  I honestly don't know what you want.

I threw out a 10 mile off-shore safety radius, plus distance to city-center, I called it 40 total, and absolutely (in context) expecting it to be a ballpark, in that it's a distance manageable by dedicated ground transport.

Since then you've been going on about how even Elon said 20 miles on some comment, doubling, quadrupling etc.

What is your point exactly, other than the snark?

My point is that "recalibrate upward by 2x" isn't some vague incomprehensible mathematical concept, like you keep pretending.

And quite to the contrary, I acknowledged that it's a pretty good Fermi estimate.

As Akin's (sadly now defunct) 10th law reminds us,

When in doubt, estimate. In an emergency, guess. But be sure to go back and clean up the mess when the real numbers come along.

The real numbers came along.

Surely this tangent has played out?

[meekGee]

When true serial production is on, it almost never pays to rework...

Almost.

Is this comment in regards to the thought of rebuilding B18 using undamaged components? Because that would not be "rework" in the normal manufacturing sense, but more of a "rebuild" after salvage.

Rework happens even in the best of times in manufacturing, though it depends on the unit cost and rework cost as to whether it is better to scrap than to rework. High priced items like aircraft are reworked as long as the basic structure is sound. I would imagine that will be the same situation with Starship when it gets into serial production.

To even have this conversation about space ships though....

A cargo version of Starship may actually have less "moving parts" than a modern airliner, and far less complicated wiring too. So I would imagine most "areas of interest" will end up being propellant and engine related - but on rockets that is a lot of the vehicle... 

Rework/rebuild/repair, as in "pay individual attention to" instead of "let the production line kick out one more"

And yes, exactly, these vehicles will be simpler (or at least comparable) to jetliners.  More engines, but simpler operations.

At the dawn of the jet age, it seemed crazy to imagine that air travel could be cheaper than making the crossing on an ocean liner. But the First Principles math (largely how quickly you can amortize the equipment) says that actually air travel can be made cheaper.

I wonder what First Principles will say tomorrow? If a Starship can make ~5x intercontinental flights per day instead of ~1x for an airplane, that alone could switch P2P from "crazy" to "inevitable." 

Yup, discussed upthread:

- Lower amortization cost
- Comparable fuel (not counting oxygen)
- No flight crew
- Minimal cabin crew
- No passenger amenities (food, entertainment, etc)

And the absolute benefit to the passenger of doing in an hour what would take a half a day.

Clearly logistics around the flight will have to catch up, but there's nothing fundamental about those.

[Twark_Main]

Thanks for the move over to the correct thread meekGee.

Yes, it's strange how the mainstream discourse seems to have settled on "Surely you're joking, Mrs. Shotwell," when AFAICT nothing has really changed about the above math.

[Vultur]

I think it's because people think rockets = unreliable and explode a lot. Also the idea that Concorde showed there's really no market for faster air travel.

IMO it will be the logistics and regulatory setup that determine whether it's viable or not, if sufficiently reliable rockets are developed (which I do think is entirely possible).

[meekGee]

I think it's because people think rockets = unreliable and explode a lot. Also the idea that Concorde showed there's really no market for faster air travel.

IMO it will be the logistics and regulatory setup that determine whether it's viable or not, if sufficiently reliable rockets are developed (which I do think is entirely possible).

(ur welcome TM, didn't want you in trouble with catdlr)

I think Concorde suffered from the "not enough" syndrome.

Still took many hours, tons of maintenance, didn't scale, still required all the fanfare around the passenger, didn't justify fixing logistics, then the US banned overflight, and that was it.

P2P might be big enough of a step to reset many of these parameters.

[Vultur]

Yeah. And I think if supersonic overflights had been allowed we'd probably still have supersonic passenger jets today. I would argue that Concorde possibly had bad timing, arriving in an era where US federal regulation was greatly expanding. If it had been a regulatory decision made in 1961 or 1986, I think the outcome might have been the opposite.

[Twark_Main]

I think it's because people think rockets = unreliable and explode a lot. Also the idea that Concorde showed there's really no market for faster air travel.

IMO it will be the logistics and regulatory setup that determine whether it's viable or not, if sufficiently reliable rockets are developed (which I do think is entirely possible).

(ur welcome TM, didn't want you in trouble with catdlr)

I think Concorde suffered from the "not enough" syndrome.

Still took many hours, tons of maintenance, didn't scale, still required all the fanfare around the passenger, didn't justify fixing logistics, then the US banned overflight, and that was it.

P2P might be big enough of a step to reset many of these parameters.

Yep, I see one of those physics-economics connections and I get overexcited. "Oh, power density = cheaper scaling works beyond the jet engine..."   

Yes, SST was always supposed to be a steppingstone to high altitude hypersonic vehicles, but it's the wrong part of the Mach curve, vs modern jets which fly in the "sweet spot" just below transonic.

Maybe they had the wrong model. They imagined the hypersonic skimming vehicle as "an airplane with a rocket inside," so building an SST as a learning vehicle sorta makes sense.

If the Starship Hypothesis is correct, the "best" implementation might actually more closely resemble a rocket with aerosurfaces and TPS bolted on, ie Starship.


TL;DR when making a hypersonic lifting rocket vehicle m, deviating from the "ideal" rocket is more costly than deviating from the "ideal" hypersonic lifting vehicle.

[Oersted]

I have travelled twice to Réunion island, in 2016 and 2018 : because stepfamily  (France overseas territory : down under near Madagascar, corner of no and where in the Indian ocean). 10 hours flights, from Paris only, night only. First time,  my kid was 2.5 years old.

It was hell on Earth. Gotta hate  cramped airliners.

What, didn't you have internet service?

Let's maybe reserve "hell on Earth" for those unfortunate souls who shipwrecked on the way to Réunion in the 1600s...

[CraigLieb]

If I am going to Space, I want a window and the ability to float about the cabin a bit. Particularly if this trip is once in a lifetime. The cost might be $50k or more for a 1-way ticket.

No boxed shipping container seating …

[Vultur]

If I am going to Space, I want a window and the ability to float about the cabin a bit. Particularly if this trip is once in a lifetime. The cost might be $50k or more for a 1-way ticket.

No boxed shipping container seating …

I think the idea is that if the vehicle can be made to handle a very large number of flights with minimal maintenance, there's no fundamental reason why the cost needs to be much more than a regular airplane flight. The fuel cost isn't that huge ...