I’m not saying it’s the near future, but seriously? You don’t think they could land a rocket on a pad on solid earth if they’ve done it at sea?
You point out reliability of 93%, but utterly neglect the early numbers on flight. I mean, pre-Kittyhawk we were at 0% for powered flight at all.
Also, I’m pretty sure the fuel costs for what amounts to an ICBM flight is nowhere near that of attaining LEO. I’m not saying it’ll be cheaper than taking an airliner anytime soon, but many things are not cheap at introduction. Kind of like electric cars.
That’s also assuming that they buy their fuel and don’t make it themselves using sunlight and water. After all, you can’t buy fuel on Mars, yet he’s got plans to refuel there.
I’m going to ignore the p2p hops part of this convo and focus on this. I had a spacex recruiting presentation at my uni last week and they let it slip that they sabatier reactors that they plan to use will be developed in house and the teams designing it are being formed now. This is absolutely a possibility although it still cuts down on a fraction of the total cost to orbit at this time. It only really becomes a factor when you have a completely reusable launch vehicle whose build cost can be amortized over multiple launches.
It’s disengenius to use the cost for a fuel that their planned rocket won’t even use. I don’t know if methane is cheaper or more expensive than hydrogen but point remains. You also need to consider the price for lox as well. OTOH it costs $200k to fuel up falcon 9. Again, I don’t care about p2p launches as it’s a stretch goal for half a century in the future at best.
Speaking on the re-usability of the falcon 9 launch vehicle itself it’s been stated that the first stage is roughly 60% of the cost of a new rocket if I’m remembering correctly which works out to about $20mil. If refurbishment of the first stage is less than 20 mil it is cheaper to reuse the first stage. Block 5 has yet to be launched which will likely be the final revision of falcon 9 which is designed to reused on the order of 10 times with minimal refurbishment, and up to 100 times with replacement parts. I don’t know what “replacements” are whether it’s simple things like o-rings or the complete rebuild of the Merlins.
Even if they can only reuse the block 5’s 10 times that’s reduces the build cost of a first stage to 2 million per launch. If you add the remaining ~25 million from the second stage, payload integration, and launch ops a fair estimate is that using a reused block 5 first stage costs spacex roughly 30 million which halves their current price. Whether they intend to reduce their advertised price or reap the benefits of profit to further their r&d remains to be seen.
What’s disingenuous is basing a price on speculation rather than what exists. And of course basing prices on technology that is being developed whether it is being developed by spacex or any other company. There’s no question that reusable rockets are the way to go for traveling into space; no one here that I can see is making an argument to the contrary as you seem to think. But suggesting they will replace airlines is, well, wishful thinking. Of course everyone wants to cut down travel time to a fraction of airlines, especially if it means reaching space. But people get caught up in dreaming and remove all thought of practicality. Anyway, prices and G forces are just a couple I can think of off the bat that make mass transportation via rockets prohibitive; no doubt there are undoubtedly more that even the most practical space enthusiast hasn’t considered. It’s ok to dream though, just don’t try to pull the wool over people’s eyes with PR stunts. One Chris Roberts is enough.
edited: I revise my cost of $376,389.58 to reach space to Space X’s stated $200,000. Still a massive cost compared to $24,000 dollars in fuel for a London to New York flight.
How does the Concorde compare to something like this? It was noisy and expensive too. The flight cost was in the 1000s for passengers, so initially the SpaceX rocket hops would certainly be restricted to the domain of high paying customers. Even adding on the boat ride or shuttle/train/hyperloop to your destination, it would still reduce the travel time compared to 8-12 hours for international flight.
Keep in mind that Musk stated specifically that this was a theoretical extension of the BFR’s development. It’s a convenient bonus for them if the technology is developed to a standard that makes it on par with airline safety. I don’t see what will stop it being used as a rapid long haul solution for transit and especially cargo. The G forces are a moot point because you would control the acceleration and re-entry to more comfortable levels and factor that in to the fuel required.
Perhaps the trick is not to entirely equate rockets with airlines, but to think in terms of progress.
In the last hundred years, we’ve gone from poky, prop-driven, rattly transport planes all the way to the Dreamliner (progress in range, passenger capacity, speed, comfort and efficiency).
Computer technology also, gone from rare brick-machines that could only display text, to phones in our pockets that are orders of magnitude more powerful.
There is no doubt rocket technology will follow a similar pattern, even if it takes longer than Mr Musk keeps promising (probably will). Nobody is denying the difficulties of rocket travel are limiting factors, but we can’t possibly predict what will happen to rockets and their usefulness in the next century or two.
That’s what I meant when I said “factor that into the fuel required”. If you need more fuel for a 1-2 G max flight parameter, then you simply reduce cargo and passenger capacity. That is not saying it will be better or cheaper than a different form of rapid transit. But it is a form worth investigating nonetheless.
Well, interesting discussion all round. If technology is a blank cheque then Space Elevators would do the trick. You could ride up the elevator - unquestionably safer than any other mode of transportation - then transport in low gravity to the next elevator. No fuel, no pollution, no G-forces and no delayed flights owing to weather.
Or go even more rediculous and say they could dig a bunch of tunnels through the earth’s core for a gravity train for a 50 minute trip anywhere on earth… maybe slap a 2025 date on it too for laughs.
I am all for the technological progress. But why do we actually need such rapid way of transport around planet ?
Off planet sure we need that.
If it pops up as inexpensive side effect of some new propulsion sure.
But is supersonic transport around the globe really needed ? Especially when outweighed by massive resource spending …who realistically needs that ? But it sure is cool.
There are way more important things we should focus on like fast/more efficient engines for space travel, not some new fancy luxurious way of commute that can be used only by upper 1% class…but i guess it could be meant as a way to perfect the system on a “willing to pay” guinea-pigs.
SpaceX wanted to make a promotional Video that would spur Imagination. Kinda like RSI.
They allready did the: Fly to Mars with the BFR thing. It would have been virtually the same with the smaller version.
So they did a: “What else would be cool to do with this tech.” Video.
Yes I would also rather see someone “announce” something using active support. Ride train into space and back again, kind of thing.
Every time this comes up, I think “virtual reality” or “augmented reality”. Moving photons on optical channels seems eminently more practical than moving atoms on rockets. It’s broadly applicable and will only become more applicable as we figure out how to feed more of our senses than just sight and sound. And once we figure out how to make those silly AR and VR hats a bit less silly looking.
I think we should leave rockets to address problems that no other technology can.
Look man, take up whatever issues you have with SpaceX with SpaceX. I’ve already given my opinion on p2p flight and it even agrees with yours so cool your jets eh? Not everyone is out to get you. I was just saying that if you’re going to raise caution about pricing due to fuel costs, the least you could do is look at the cost of the fuel they actually use. That’s like complaining about the cost of gasoline because a gram of reactor grade plutonium costs multiple thousands of dollars.
Edit: There was a SpaceX launch this morning that went off without a hitch! Here’s the link to launch, landing, and satellite deployment…the landing looks pretty sweet in the dark combined with the fog!
I’m just happy that in the past two weeks NASA and SpaceX woke up and decided that the Moon is the next step instead of the pipe-dream of going directly to Mars. A cold beer on the Moon and a bed to sleep in for a price of a luxury holiday for anyone, sounds a hell of a lot better than terraforming Mars or having a dozen pure bred yes-men camp there for a few months.
I would purely thank NASA and the politics that be. SpaceX only advertised Moon landings because they need help funding development the largest launch to ever be developed. If you have any questions to that you only need to read their mission statement that everything they do is a step towards making humanity a multi-planetary species.
My go to question for the Moon-Mars debate is to ask what your mission objective is because that completely determines your destination. If you want to unsustainably test key mission infrastructure and build a scientific research base, then the Moon is a great destination. However, if your goal is to eventually create a sustainable base/city/colony then Mars is a better choice. The only thing left to debate is the semantics of a timeline of which should be done first, or if the willpower is there can they be done simultaneously.
Bolding done semi facetiously but they really are the important parts of distinction between two entirely separate goals.
Sidenote: My buddy just got back and uploaded his footage from the launch this morning. Holy hell stage separation @2:30 ish looks UNREAL.
You need to read that again, that’s the brainwashing that has existed since NASA made Mars their next goal some 10? years ago. What I’m saying is that I’m very happy that that precise smokescreen of logic is now going to be written off. Your bolded words in reality are the complete opposites. Give it some time, you will accept it when they slowly change the public opinion.
The two goals can exist simultaneously it’s 100% one or the other… Brainwashing? This isn’t politics there’s no need to bring in the toxicity associated with it here. I’m coming from an engineering standpoint with respect to key technologies and resources. The question is whether option B(Mars colony) can exist with or without first attempting option A(moon colony). It’s a question of timelines which I’ve already said. You say they are inclusive and I say they are exclusive.
The reasoning for this is not all of the key technologies for Martian inhabitance can be tested on the Moon. If you’re going to test everything before sending people, why not test all of it in-situ in the first place. A habitat that costs half a billion to build and launch that was meant to fail is going to fail on the Moon or Mars either way. What difference is where we send it? Why not gather as much data as possible with our limited amount of launches.
