Remix.run Logo
seatac76 5 days ago

Amazing achievement. Just watching no that giant thing lift off is a great feeling.

kilroy123 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's pretty remarkable progress. Slowly but surely, they're getting it done. I predict they'll have a full working version by 2027. By 2028, they'll have regular reusable flights.

grapesodaaaaa 5 days ago | parent [-]

My personal estimates are similar. For anyone that followed Falcon 9 development (from the first Falcon 1 launches), it’s really similar. I remember boom after boom until one day they cracked the problem and reusable boosters became the status quo.

I got tingles when the first booster landed on the drone ship, because I knew access to space had just changed in a fundamental way.

jmyeet 5 days ago | parent [-]

Comparing Falcon 9 to Starship is a dangerous mistake.

First, the time frames are way off. Development of the Falcon 9 took ~5 years (2005 to 2010). The first reused booster came much later (2017?).

Second, Starship is much more expensive for each launch attempt than Falcon 9 ever was.

Third, Starship is significantly more complicated technology-wise, being methane based. There are reasons to do this but it then requires cooling both propellants (instead of just liquid oxygen and RP-1 ie kerosene with the Falcon 9(.

Fourth, Starship has to compete with somethingg Falcon 9 never did: Falcon 9. Falcon 9 is now the most succcessful and cheapest launch platform in history. It is the reliable workhorse of the industry and relatively cheap to launch. Its reuse is proven.

Fifth, the market for Starship is unproven. We can compare it to other launch systems for heavy payloads, most notably the Falcon Heavy, which I believe has only had ~12 launches in almost a decade (compared to the 100+ Falcon 9 launches every year).

You could argue SpaceX will steer customers to Starship but there'll be other competitors (to the Falcon 9) by then.

Lastly, Starship is still so far from being human-rated. So much of the needed tech (eg refuelling in orbit) hasn't even begun testing yet. I can easily see this taking another decade at least.

terminalshort 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Second, Starship is much more expensive for each launch attempt than Falcon 9 ever was

They are already reusing boosters, so it might already be cheaper than F9 before booster reuse. Once they start reusing the ships, it will be cheaper than F9 with booster reuse because F9 has to build a new second stage each launch.

> Fifth, the market for Starship is unproven

The market for Starship is proven by SpaceX itself. The Starship can add 20x the Starlink network capacity per launch as F9. There are currently around 100 Starlink launches per year, so the market couldn't be more proven.

nilstycho 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Second, Starship is much more expensive for each launch attempt than Falcon 9 ever was.

The launch cost of a Starship today is high, especially if you include development costs, but Musk's goal is a marginal launch cost of ~$1M. A Falcon 9's launch price is ~$70M; Musk claims a "best case" marginal Falcon 9 launch costs ~$15M.

baq 5 days ago | parent [-]

Yeah if those numbers are even in the correct order of magnitude Starlink will become a literal money printer. Any commercial or government launch contracts will be cherries on top. Bezos will be our only hope for affordable satellite internet.

antoniuschan99 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Just look at their launch cadence for falcon 9.

https://www.spacex.com/launches

It’s a bunch of starlink missions. With some dedicated and rideshare missions.

grapesodaaaaa 3 days ago | parent [-]

It’s worth mentioning that one of the reasons the cadence is so high for Starlink is because customers buy the boosters, and they can be re-used for many Starlink launches.

criddell 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I know it's a similar size to the Saturn V, but something about the Saturn V just seems grander to me. Maybe it's the paint job?

Frankly, it kind of blows my mind what the US pulled off in the late 60's, early 70's with the technology and materials of the time.

magicalhippo 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I too find it difficult to appreciate the scale of the thing. The lack of features doesn't help I think.

That said, I hadn't fully appreciated the size of Saturn V either until I saw it in person in the museum. Like, I had felt it was big, but it was big.

ekianjo 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

They had virtually infinite budget at the time. SpaceX is much, much cheaper.

fhd2 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Is it though? I'm not knowledgeable on this at all, but it _seems_ like Space X is blowing up a lot more expensive equipment compared to NASA back in the space race days. Genuinely curious how it compares and how true my outsider impression is.

bzzzt 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's not as expensive as it looks, Starship plus booster costs around 100 million. A Saturn V Apollo mission cost 185 million in 1969 which, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V#Cost, would now be a bit less than a billion dollars.

Also, SpaceX is not building rockets, they are building a rocket factory. If they succeed they will have lowered the cost of putting stuff into space by an order of magnitude. The potential rewards are huge.

mempko 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes but at this point the upper stage is barely a spaceship. Mostly an empty shell. And they have spent $10 billion so far on something that barely flies.

twirlip 5 days ago | parent [-]

R&D and prototyping is an up-front expense. Amortization over many units spreads out the costs to long term profitability. Does SpaceX have that kind of time, though? A prospective global depression would dry up the capital for funding Starship development.

spwa4 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Clearly this is not true. I'm not even sure what about it is not true, but there must be some reason Musk paid Trump to destroy his competition.

ajmurmann 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://orbitaltoday.com/2022/09/05/starship-vs-saturn-v-cho... claims Saturn V development cost $50 billion vs Starship at $5 billion. Not to mention the cost per mission once Starship is fully functioning and reusable.

mjamesaustin 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They can spend numerous ships testing because the cost is dramatically lower per ship.

As with any manufactured item, high volume and iterative design improves the production process and finished product.

DrBazza 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's more of a production line when building Starships, with modern mechanised tooling - much of it computerised and 100% repeatable. There's been at least 10 so far, vs only 15 Saturn V, 3 of which were ground tested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V

throwawaymaths 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

saturn v was about 30B in 2025 dollars. starship has cost on the order of 5B so far.

raptor engines are designed to be cost efficient, as is the rolled steel? that is used for the fuselage

onlyrealcuzzo 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not to mention the mountain of prior art to work off of...

It's way harder to do it the first time.

philipallstar 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

There's absolutely loads being done for the first time here. Not least of which: running this r&d off commercial contracts instead of directly off taxpayer money.

fastball 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The mountain of prior art being... one rocket that had very different requirements?

sho_hn 5 days ago | parent [-]

Apollo also invented, funded and productized a lot of modern embedded computing and computer manufacturing, to keep in our lane here. Obviously SpaceX has access to a very different tech environment that yes, Apollo helped push forward.

Manufacturing the Apollo Guidance Computer (which wasn't in the rocket per-se, but was wired up to it and could fly the rocket in certain scenarios) alone consumed around 40% of the US' entire IC production capacity at the time.

FredPret 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

SpaceX IS doing lots of important things for the first time.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Cost comparisons are strange because Starship isn't finished.

Zigurd 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

And don't nobody mention Falcon Heavy. 11 successful flights and a proven 60% of the spec payload of Starship.

DrBazza 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Whenever we talk about space flight, this movie quote comes to mind: "You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder."

Starship has considerably fewer moving parts. And googling 'evolution of raptor engines' gives you some pretty stark images on how simpler things look, in principle.