SpaceX Launches, Landings and News

[natruska]

... as far as I know this entire project is currently funded as part of the US moon mission plans. This is taxpayer money being used to try for reusable systems that are currently struggling to be worth reusing, and I don't think the contract cares about that part.
I'm kind of upset that Musk might end up in charge of a government office instead of explaining his rocket company's spending to Congress.

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Starship development started years before the HLS award and it's mostly funded privately. For all the lofty talk of planetary missions, its real raison d'etre is the satellite game. Starlink is already a very promising business thanks to Falcon 9. The mass-to-orbit revolution promised by Starship would make it an unbelievable money printer.

And that launch revolution is - like, it's real and it's inevitable. Even without upper stage reuse, hell, even without booster reuse. The napkin math seems to suggest that Starship is already price competitive with Falcon 9. The current cost estimate for a Starship stack is around 100 million dollars. The same number (internal marginal cost, not sale price) for F9 is around 20 million dollars. That's a price difference of 5:1 for a payload difference of over 10:1, 17 tonnes vs ~200 tonnes. Just by flying the thing, they're already halving the $/kg number. The F9 example would suggest that booster reuse alone will be another reduction of more than 50%.

I am a bit skeptical they'll get economical second-stage reuse anytime soon because yeah, NASA was never able to crack that with Shuttle. It is a hell of a problem. But that doesn't jeopardize the program. HLS should be fine, economically speaking. Even without full reuse, I could see it costing less than a billion per go in the near future. The worst case scenario (let's say every launch is actually 200 million dollars and you need 20 launches to get HLS to the moon) is still somewhat cheaper than SLS + Orion.

There's a reason that even people who can't stand Musk are enraptured by Starship. Mass-producing orbital rockets in the hundreds of tons range really is just an unbelievable gamechanger.

 

[E.I.G.]

On the other hand, Falcon 9 has proven to be very reliable even when reused. Its too soon to judge if SpaceX's priorities are flawed. They haven't even started trying to recover the starship yet, which they would need to do to be able to judge if the discoloration is purely cosmetic or not.

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... I thought they scrapped the reusable second stage part of Falcon 9?

I know the boosters are reused, and the Starship booster seems to be doing its job fine, it is just the second stage that I find dubious.

Starship development started years before the HLS award and it's mostly funded privately. For all the lofty talk of planetary missions, its real raison d'etre is the satellite game. Starlink is already a very promising business thanks to Falcon 9. The mass-to-orbit revolution promised by Starship would make it an unbelievable money printer.

And that launch revolution is - like, it's real and it's inevitable. Even without upper stage reuse, hell, even without booster reuse. The napkin math seems to suggest that Starship is already price competitive with Falcon 9. The current cost estimate for a Starship stack is around 100 million dollars. The same number (internal marginal cost, not sale price) for F9 is around 20 million dollars. That's a price difference of 5:1 for a payload difference of over 10:1, 17 tonnes vs ~200 tonnes. Just by flying the thing, they're already halving the $/kg number. The F9 example would suggest that booster reuse alone will be another reduction of more than 50%.

I am a bit skeptical they'll get economical second-stage reuse anytime soon because yeah, NASA was never able to crack that with Shuttle. It is a hell of a problem. But that doesn't jeopardize the program. HLS should be fine, economically speaking. Even without full reuse, I could see it costing less than a billion per go in the near future. The worst case scenario (let's say every launch is actually 200 million dollars and you need 20 launches to get HLS to the moon) is still somewhat cheaper than SLS + Orion.

There's a reason that even people who can't stand Musk are enraptured by Starship. Mass-producing orbital rockets in the hundreds of tons range really is just an unbelievable gamechanger.

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Yeah, I'm upset that they are currently in the middle of trying something I find to be a doomed endevor:
Specifically, I mean that it seems to me that trying for a reusable second stage is a waste of resources and payload capacity that could have instead been spent on reducing the costs of a disposable second stage.

 

[Estro]

Isn't the current starship LEO upmass more in the 100t range? And that's without them adding any more mass to try to keep making 2nd stage reuse viable.

 

[Tasrill]

Isn't the current starship LEO upmass more in the 100t range? And that's without them adding any more mass to try to keep making 2nd stage reuse viable.

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No it is currently between 40t and 0t according to Musk. That is why they are doing the tank stretch. The only way you get to 200t is if you do a fully expendable launch (again according to Musk).

 

[Quickshot0]

The long term plan with Block 3 version of Starship, which is a greatly lengthened version with more powerful engines, is to get to 200 tons in reusable mode. That particular version if it indeed gets made would probably be 300-400 tons in non-reusable mode.


And I guess we'll just have to see how the second stage reusability efforts go. So far they are managing to get the stage to land where they want, as one can see from it coming down near the buoy with camera. So targeting is working, and if the shuttle is any guide they can probably in time find a way to control any particular part getting to hot. Leaving the biggest question of all open, can they do it in an economic sense... we will have to see I suppose.