The thing is, there is no demand to get that much stuff into space.

Falcon 9 has massively brought down the cost per orbit, and even with the whole world as a captive market, every university in every country putting up cubesats, they still don't have nearly enough payloads to make the economies of scale kick in. Hence Starlink. The majority of SpaceX payload mass has been Starlink, something nobody was even asking for. 300+ launches.

And the idea to reach the economies of scale for Starship is... Even more Starlink. How much Starlink could we possibly need? When will humanity come up with another use for this glut of payload capacity?

Even with the Artemis deadline looming large, SpaceX are still pushing this Starlink angle for Starship, it's nuts

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m4rtink 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Demand takes some time to ramp up, especially with quite expensive and complex stuff like Satellites. SpaceX is now even launching competing constellation comsats (project Kuiper), private manned space missions and there are quite a few manned space station projects under development that would be basically unthinkable without the cheaper lift Falcon 9 provides.

As for "How much Starlink could we possibly need?" I think the answer is simply "YES". Even when you possibly somehow satisfy all your Internet access customers, you can start adding other services, like mobile phone coms (already in progress) or maybe imaging or hosted payloads.

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GMoromisato 5 days ago | parent [-]

Agreed!

Even at $300/kg to LEO there are a ton of new applications that suddenly make sense. If we get to $10/kg we will literally colonize the solar system.

	▲	m4rtink 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah - while real space development will use 99% of local resources eventually, the cheaper we can get stuff to LEO the quicker we can get things going. Not to mention lifting any complex stuff & humans, that which simply not be available otherwise until much more stuff is operational in space.

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

Haven't the economies of scale already kicked in a little? Starlink is profitable. I'm not sure if spacex minus all starship costs is profitable. I'm pretty sure they're quite good at building them faster, better, and for less now. Please show me otherwise. I guess you could call that more learning curve, but that's a fuzzy line.

I guess overall I don't understand your point. What does it matter that the majority of their payload mass was their own? And nobody asking for something is certainly not the same thing as nobody wanting/needing it. See: cars, computers... Starlink now exists and I'm quite certain people love it and rely on it. Wouldn't exist without falcon 9. Starlink basically solved the last mile problem, surely you'd agree rural folks having access to Internet is a good thing?

They made their own demand for falcon 9, with that scale bringing down costs enough to raise demand for basically every research org needing satellites to contract with SpaceX.

I don't think we can definitively predict the demand either way for payload at $300/kg or whatever without first getting there, but Jevons might have some ideas.

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ls612 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Starlink is both a successful commercial service making money hand over fist and a vital strategic asset for the United States. Put simply its one of the most transformative infrastructure projects of the 21st century. SpaceX found a winner and is doubling down on it I don't blame them.

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ethbr1 5 days ago | parent [-]

Just wait until the US' low orbit sensing/networking satellite cloud is fully deployed (with radar, GMTI, AMTI).

That's the vital strategic asset, because suddenly the US will have ASAT-tolerant space sensing capability (by virtue of decentralization and numbers) while other countries will still have exquisite assets.

Starlink is interesting, but the above is a game changer at the level of when the Key Holes were launched or the GPS constellation was completed.

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ls612 4 days ago | parent [-]

The Ukraine War has already proven that Starlink as it exists today in civilian form is already a game changer. If sensor satellites could make a constellation that was over target 100% of the time and could track a ship to support a missile lock (not sure if this is possible with the constellations being built today but it sure isn’t possible with a old style system like the yaogan) then that would be transformative for a Pacific War scenario.

	▲	ethbr1 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		That's essentially the goal: weapon targeting quality tracks, across 100% of the planet, 100% of the time. (Albeit probably with limited simultaneous tracks)

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boxed 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The thing is, there is no demand to get that much stuff into space.

You mean no other company except SpaceX has such a demand. But SpaceX does in fact have such a demand and are using it to make a profit.

Small governments don't understand that they can have space science programs rivaling NASA for super cheap. That's what's holding demand back imo.

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Sparyjerry 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Demand comes at a curve, the cheaper you make it, the more demand there will be. The demand for satellites and eventually human travel is practically infinite if the cost is low enough.

If Starship cuts cost to orbit by at minimum 1/3 and at maximum 1/100th demand will skyrocket (pun intended) either way.

	▲	ethbr1 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		The key step change for space demand is probably when launch cost decreases (in terms of $/mass) and availability increases (in terms of max freq of launches) enough so as to make private industry space resource extraction and processing profitable. Once there's a usable supply chain at the top of the gravity well (or on bodies with lower gravity), a lot of other launch demand is unlocked, because you can do truly interesting things (colonization et al).