Rocketry General Thread

General
1411

It’s okay. His comment reflects his present attitude, not your character.

Hey cyber, this comes across as bit rude and immature. Everyone Elon Musk meets knows more than he does himself about something. And none of us are close to Elon Musk. Hell, even homeless people know more about some things than I do: if I became homeless, I’d ask a homeless person for advice. It’s important to listen to people intently, especially people who have technical expertise in a field. It’s especially true if it’s a field that you don’t belong to.

The most successful people I know also appear to be the most humble in this regard. Instead of trying to feel the power of their accomplishments, they just put themselves in that state of inferiority so that they learn more rapidly and fully. Eventually they overtake most people because they keep that attitude and never get cocky just because they get ahead. It sucks and it’s hard work, but it pays off.

It’s a great life lesson: it helps your relationships with other people. That includes: friends so that you have close friends, family so that you don’t become estranged and instead grow closer, coworkers so that you’re well liked and get promoted, and your significant other if you plan on having one or startnig a family.

This is a great community we have here, and that’s why I’ve been a part of it for nine or ten years now. We all have something to contribute to this discussion, and we all have something to learn from others.

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1412

^^^ nah that’s just coping. if you want to learn a lot, sure. but if you want to be successful, no. most successful people are the opposite of your idealistic and naive concept of the humble learner.

elon musk surely isn’t some brilliant genius visionary, he’s a businessman who got lucky and is now trying to cope with even greater wealth and prestige with these endeavors.

1413

My evil attitude that the general population, the people should have access to space instead of a select few privileged individuals that get to go on an adventure of the lifetime?

Mars is a money sink, there are many technology issues that need to be solved, yes, they can be solved and that seems to be the primary argument here, that’s not my issue. Giving access to space travel and off-world experience to as many people possible is. The Moon is commercially viable right now, all we need is a way to get there economically.

Call me evil, rude and immature for wanting to stop the exclusivity of space.

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1414

is there’s demand, there’s supply. right now no one wants to go into space and die a horrible death. the technology and safety just isn’t there yet.

1415

It’s too expensive, something that the BFR is supposed to fix, tasking it for the Moon is :heart:.

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1416

Call me evil, rude and immature for wanting to stop the exclusivity of space.

I apologize if you took it that way, perhaps I wasn’t clear enough. My point was not that you shouldn’t have an opinion - even a strong one at that - but that you make progress on a discussion by respecting other people and listening to what they have to say, even if it makes you nervous, irritated or angry.

Also, I absolutely don’t mean to call you evil or label you as a person in some fashion. Quite the opposite: I was trying to make a criticism without ostracizing you. I’m trying to make sure you both take my critique to heart AND come back into the fold. I know how it feels to get called out, it sucks and can make you feel like you’re being alienated, but, honestly, you’re not.

To add to that, I’ll add my own admission that I’ve done the same and much worse than you probably in the thousands of times in the past.

We’re all emotional creatures.

Getting back on topic, I don’t think the point of contention is whether or not space should be accessible to as many people as possible who want to visit. I think we all would love that very much.

What I saw:

  • I suggested that specifically a lunar base would be easier than a single manned Mars mission.
  • Skyscientist mentioned that because of aerobraking, it’s less fuel to Mars, and because of in-situ fuel, it’s less fuel brought from earth to get back to earth.
  • Skyscientist then mentioned that a lot of other things make the moon easier, conceding that point to me, while I conceded the point about aerobraking.

…the people should have access to space instead of a select few privileged individuals that get to go on an adventure of the lifetime?

It’ll be available to the middle class in not too long - the financially prudent middle class at least, if this tweet means anything:

That should make everyone scratch their head and go “dafuq?!” because that pushes the cost down yet ANOTHER order of magnitude. We’re all thinking that this thing is going to cost like 350 million per unit and its looking more like it’ll cost 35 million

Launch it 100 times for 350 grand, add in some maintenance and fuel for 200 grand and 800 grand each for SIX dollars per pound. That is like completely fucked if they pull it off. It would be a 2000 dollar ticket for my body and some luggage to LEO.

It will be less accessible and more expensive at first. So, if you get your finances in order as a normal person, this will be something you can just go do.

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1417

I’m sorry, what?

I made a sarcastic remark regarding @skyentist not knowing everything and you two replied with calling me condescending, rude and immature. Those are personal attacks on my character.

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1418

Sir that is perhaps the most condescending post I have yet seen on this here respectful forum. If you intend to apologize then do in fact apologize for your action instead of weaseling this apology into a weird stealth insult. Thanks.

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1419

Then you’re reading way too much into it man. Drink a beer, relax and we can just get back to talking about rockets?

Sir that is perhaps the most condescending post I have yet seen on this here respectful forum. If you intend to apologize then do in fact apologize for your action instead of weaseling this apology into a weird stealth insult. Thanks.

Well, PM me about it, I’d love to hear your input because I’m honestly taken aback by this reply.

Anyways… Back to rockets? Please? I posted about a path to build Starship+Super Heavy from an Elon Musk tweet costing less to build than Falcon 9, I think that’s a pretty big tweet if you have any interest in this at all.

1420

Well this thread stopped being interesting…

I like the idea of using Mars as a long term destination, and the Moon as our proving ground. With the hundreds of new companies developing small sat rocket systems, and dozens of larger companies developing the supporting technologies, everybody wins.

I say why not both, we should build a system that can do more than get us to a single destination.

Moon and Mars for me :slight_smile:

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1421

I can’t agree with this enough. The first 20 years of spaceflight was a fluke due to the cold war. The real space age started about 15 years ago after the slump in commercial launches during the 90s. This time it’s here to stay with all of the benefits and problems it will cause. It’s super exciting personally. Even if humans don’t go anywhere but Earth, the space landscape in 10 years is going to be wildly different than today and will be the necessary prep work to enable sustainable offworld missions.

It’s a very exciting time to be watching or be apart of the industry.

4 Likes
1422

Some light-hearted relief…

A Realistic Look At The Gateway Foundation & Von Braun Station - with Scott Manley

1423

My largest personal interest is space-based assemblies.

I think now that we’re seeing Elon Musk’s price point of Starship+Super Heavy at less than Falcon 9’s cost, you might actually see a pretty substantial revenue stream from space tourism.

If you can manufacture inflatable modules that go right up against the volume and payload limitations of BFR, and if you can do it at a price efficiency similar to SpaceX, you’re talking a major potential return on investment.

Lets pick a ticket price of 45,000 dollars.

You could probably get get 0.05% of Asia at that price, ~2 million people out of 4.463 billion. Europe + North America is about 1.060 billion people. You could probably get a quarter of a percent of the population at that price, another 2 million. Add up the rest of the world for another couple million people per year for 6 million per year. Lets just use 5 million since it’s such a rough estimate.

That rakes in 225 billion a year in revenue. So, lets do some financial math. Say 5,200 people per hotel stay in it per year (100 at a time per week, getting rotated in and out). That’s 234 million per year in revenue. Lets say its operational cost is 100 million per year in repairs, upgrades, cargo, salaries, etc per unit. That’s a gross profit of 134 million. So, we’re going to value a 134 million dollar per year annuity of a single spacecraft, and use that to value the R&D to develop the hotel.

If you use present value formula and use a fairly standard discount rate of 6% and say this thing gets used for 10 years at that price point, you get a present valuation per unit of about a billion dollars.

So, if you serve 10% of the space tourist market per year, 500k people at 5000 people per unit, that’s 100 units, times 800 million, which gives you an 80 billion dollar valuation but with a research budget of more like a quarter of that, so like 20 billion dollars.

That’s many years down the line for that kind of low price point. Likely it’ll be catering to the ultra wealthy, who will fund such development more directly which will more immediately drive venture capital.

Seriously though, the price per launch given that the BFR/Starship/Superheavy whatever you want to call it will end up closer to the Falcon 9 per unit means that things will start to dramatically change.

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1424

Space Updates from Scott Manley - Crew Demo, Spaceship Two, Elon Memes

1425

Hey Fellas,

Just a reminder that the Commercial Crew demo launch is tonight at 2:49 PM EST, 11:49 PM PST, and 07:49 UTC.

The stream can watched on youtube and a link is here.

There may also be a NASA link due to this being a NASA launch where you can hear everything that happens pre T-20 minutes as well. I believe the NASA stream is de to go up about an hour before launch but I don’t have the link for that.

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1426

Really excited to see this if / when it comes overseas

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1427

Crew dragon took off on its test flight to the ISS!

1428

Elon Musk & Team Discuss SpaceX Dragon 2 Launch Success - and the future.

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1429

Lots of moon hype at that conference.

Super exciting to hear that NASA is getting more funding and momentum for space exploration in general is picking up steam.

It’s going to be a world apart with Starship.

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1430

space exploration is ultimately cope. attractive guys are having sex with attractive girls, unattractive nerds have to cope with space exploration. the irony being that once it becomes a possibility, the ones selected for space exploration are still going to be the genetic elite. the unattractive loser nerds will still be the grunts of the world. lol