One thing I had thought of and that is who in this new space era will be providing all the personal care and hygiene products to these private space flight and earth orbit space hotels and soon enough Moon base hotels. Including: Toilet rolls, toilet roll holders, wet wipes, soap dispensers, pens paper pads, small tablets etc. Showers, and toilet cleaning products etc, for earth orbit and Moon based. All the towels and other little day to day items what will need to be specially designed to be cheap, light and compact and mass produced to high quality standards.
Yeah, I wouldnât mind getting in on the ground floor with a company set up to designs and produce all these much needed items and contracts to supply, clean and maintain etc. Its going to be big business sooner than we think once China lands humans back on the Moon. I expect that one single event will spark a new rush back to the Moon with and eye to creating staging posts for travel to Mars and the asteroid field.
Starting out with nearby companies I guess in South Wales, UK. I wonder if it could be a start up company, 3D print to a high standard some basic items any early space tourists would need to take on a short and long flights.
That was a truly inspiring presentation. Really hope they make it in 2022.
And that intercontinental rocket⌠is just terrifying. With my fear of flight I would probably never set my foot in one Unless thereâs a flawless record of thousands of flights first.
Elon has always been very overconfident and overestimates delaysâŚhowever I really want them to make the 2022 window as well and at this point itâs not impossible. The most impressive part to me is that they have ordered the tooling and plan to begin construction in 9 months. Thatâs what makes this whole thing real. On top of that, theyâve already created/tested the lightweight composite tanking structure needed to make the structural mass light enough to achieve their desired payloads. Along with 42 test fires of a subscale raptor, I spoke with a propulsion engineer last night during the presentation who said that these fires were with a subscale version at 2/3 the size of a flight engine. Theyâre almost there.
As far as the Earth to Earth stuff thatâs farthest in the future in my opinion. It canât and wonât happen for a long time mostly for political and geopolitical reasons, but also because their landing tech needs to be demonstrated and that canât happen without repeated launches and landings from Mars missions.
The only way I think any Moon missions would happen is if itâs paid for by other actors which is a possibility and the reason why it was advertised. This is an expensive venture but if even 1 extra first stage and tanker craft is paid for by someone else, it can also be re-used towards launching Martian payloads which is their ultimate goal.
My personal favorite part was their method of fuel transfer. Itâs a very elegant solution to what can easily balloons to a complicated problem.
Seems more fulfilling doesnât it? If your work is for something that you care about.
It was great talk.
He was so nervous âŚlike a human, not some actor or pop speakerâŚit was so relate-able.
I root for him. He is that underdog that made it.
Are you kidding? That would be a disaster! No money to distribute in inefficient processes for overpaid companies, no expensively distributed facilities in as many circumscriptions as possible, no expensive programs artificially kept alive way past their usefulnessâŚ
It would get cancelled in a heartbeat.
Heâs not nervous, he just doesnât speak very fluently. There are plenty of videos of him speaking in which you can see and hear heâs perfectly relaxed and comfortable but his speech is the same.
Heâs most hesitant when heâs trying to think of the words to use to express his thoughts.
Like many very intelligent people he has behaviours that are often associated with autism.
Other companies are working on both of those things (although the juryâs still out on whether those reusable rockets will save money long term when you end up spending so much more on the second stage).
Iâm talking about the ludicrous claims (for several orders of magnitude reduction in price and increase in reliability than anything built in history) made of things like hyperloop, the mars colony, and now commercial aviation.
Itâs pretty sad that the idea of a mars colony seems to be the least technically challenging of those three mentioned. That one isnât intended to be commercially viable.
*Iâm not saying Space X isnât doing some cool stuff, they are; just that you should try not to get too wrapped up in corporate marketing campaigns of completely impossible futures.
Agreed, also donât see how rockets can be affordable given rocket fuel prices. Whatâs more, doubt your average vacationer will be able to stand the kind of gâs involved in rocket transport. Unless of course passengers are tested and put through a centrifuge before flight. lol.
Look up the prices of Methane and Liquid Oxygen. They are really low. And rocket launch G-loads are surprisingly modest, nowhere near what jet fighter pilots experience during turns. Also, if you design a vehicle for tourism ( not Spacex priority, but for others ) you can set a G-load design limit and build for it. I would be much more worried about dozens or hundreds of people starting to puke at once in zero gravity. One starting would trigger more, and that would be quite a mess to contain and clean up. I expect everyone to get some medication before launch and a strict timetable of diet.
Stated travel times are bogus without reasonably high g loads (unacceptable for general air passengers).
Stated travel times are bogus as they donât include the trip to and from the rocket (by boat of all things).
The proximity to cities shown in their demonstration is bogus just on noise pollution grounds.
Rockets need far better weather than aircraft to fly, scheduling would be a nightmare.
Current rocket technology is orders of magnitude less safe than commercial aviation. SpaceX claim what, 93% reliability at the moment? Are they high?
Getting the rockets to their barges, recovery from a barges and general maintenance, connecting first and second stages⌠all far more expensive than aircraft.
Thereâs also the whole issue with turn-around times taking longer than the conventional flight youâre trying to beat. No way to possibly compete with what we already have. And everyone at SpaceX knows it. Theyâre just farting this out because it looks cool at face value.
Total non-starter, and thatâs before you even start looking at the environmental disaster this would end up being.
3 gâs is nothing to sneeze at especially for an average person; there would be so many restrictions and health requirements that it would be too prohibitive. Whatâs more, we are not talking about people taking jets and zig-zagging their way to another country so this comparison is moot. As for fuel it takes 384,071 gallons of liquid hydrogen in the external tank of the shuttle to reach low orbit, for a cost of $376,389.58. A flight from New York to London cost just over $24,000 dollars in fuel. Clearly rocket flight isnât going to happen even in the distant future. A more realistic means of transporting people is a hypersonic jet; it would be more fuel efficient, less strenuous and safer. What Musk is doing is PR - it is not realistic means of mass transportation.
Compared to rockets, yes, but unfortunately probably not likely to happen as well.
Weâve already experimented with supersonic flights, but breaking the sound barrier (and staying above) takes way too much fuel to make it commercially viable. Military jets capable of supersonic flight, for example, rarely do so just because of the fuel costs, preferring to cruise at speeds comparable to most airliners.
Unless thereâs a flawless record of thousands of flights first.