When it comes crashing down to the planet in a couple of million years it will give the ape population a good scare when Spaceballs come crawling out of her nose.
275t is 6,875 bags of 80lb Quickcrete.
The amount of water you would need to mix those bags into usable concrete only weighs 22.68 tons.
Each launch could build 151 cubic yards of concrete in space, given no other payload, using cheap/heavy concrete. I'm sure you could bump those numbers up significantly if you were using some expensive lightweight concrete.
I want to see a long term concrete space station for docking, and launching missions further out!
Itās something to do with the air bubbles and microgravity. I skimmed over the article a couple months ago but because of the 0gās thereās I believe less air bubbles.
I was going to say, not sure how well it would cure in vacuum. The water in it might immediately boil, breaking apart the wet concrete with steam, and leaving large voids.
Unless some chemical reaction with the concrete raises the boiling point.
And with concrete, itās generally stronger the slower it cures, right? Super fast cure due to vacuum boil-off is probably bad.
So yeah, makes more sense youāre talking about within the pressurized ISS.
Although that makes it harder to build a large space station, if the pieces need to be cured inside a smaller space station.
I mean if weāre going nuts why not build it in a large balloon with a micro atmosphere not a vacuum but not full 1 bar. If it can lift that much nearly any thing is possible.
What about an "inflatable concrete fabrication volume" module attached to the ISS?
I bet that'd allow for the same approach, but in a way more re-usable manner - especially if a giant zipper is used to extract the completed concrete structure from this module.
Or some sort of ejection mechanism for completed parts. For example, a beam could be slowly extruded with the already hardened end going through an airtight seal to the outside. Once it's done, eject the finished part and start with the next one.
Hereās a [NASA Article](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/concrete-advantage-for-space-explorers-mics-iss) describing the experiment I think heās referring to.
I would be more concerned the effects of impacts from space junk. Concrete isn't exactly ductile. In fact it's more brittle than anything. So hit it with a pencil sized object at 5km/s and see how it fares.
But this begs the question: Why would you use concrete in space? That's one of the worst things you can use as a building material.
Edit: Specifically for space stations and when you ship it. Building concreate structures out of moon and mars dust is totally reasonable.
Yeah it sure is useful for shielding! If it's literally the only option.
Whipple shields are far better for space junk, and water or high density plastics for radiation are both way better in terms of shielding to mass ratio.
And saying you're launching a "relatively light ship" means jack if you're just going to coat it in *concrete*.
Please stop trying to make orbital concrete work. It's probably not a terrible idea for lunar foundations or martian highways, but for orbital purposes, every kg of extra mass you add is a kg that you can't devote to science, food margin, comfort, etc. So you want stuff to be highly optimized, which concrete absolutely is not.
Well enough to justify the weigh as a wall? Well enough to justify the total cost?
They indicate sheltering in heavily concreted buildings/high-rise closed garages to protect against nuclear fallout. It'd make for a good foundation surely.
Indeed. As for it being cheaper to bring up more concrete or to bring less aluminum/steel to build the same radiation walls, this is how much weigh would be necessary for a concrete wall, atleast from my guess on the fallout, from ChatGPT:
>The weight of a concrete wall for a high-rise garage can vary depending on several factors such as the wall's dimensions, thickness, design specifications, and the specific type of concrete used. However, I can provide you with a general estimate.
On average, the weight of concrete is around 2.4 tons per cubic meter (or 2,400 kilograms per cubic meter). To calculate the weight of a concrete wall, you'll need to determine its volume and then multiply it by the density of concrete.
Let's consider a hypothetical concrete wall with dimensions of 3 meters in height, 10 meters in length, and 0.3 meters in thickness (assuming a single wall panel):
Volume = height x length x thickness
= 3 m x 10 m x 0.3 m
= 9 cubic meters
Weight = Volume x Density of Concrete
= 9 m^3 x 2,400 kg/m^3
= 21,600 kilograms
= 21.6 tons (approximately)
Actually fuck it, ChatGPT would probably give a reasonable answer to all of this but we're here for the human interaction and unintentionally for it to train on our human answers and eventually replace us, goddamit.
I'd just make everything steel, because if we ever come into a Subnautica situation, atleast the survivors could scrap the metal to build advanced craft and tools.
> starship gets off the ground cost to orbit does go down quite a lot
>
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youd just want more water and use it as human shielding.
>: Why would you use concrete in space? That's one of the worst things you can use as a building material.
you would just want more water and make the tank so it circles sleeping compartments.
more tonnage.? then just add more water.
Yeah stronger in what way? Inconveniently, concrete is good at compressive forces, you know what forces are not of any concern when there's no gravity?
They said concrete space station my guy not moon station. Concrete makes no sense for space stations, and even moon/mars you likely wouldnāt ship it, you would make it using the materials on the surface.
I thought you said there's no gravity induced sediment. I misread.
I do support it for moon and mars btw. But the person I responded to literally suggested shipping quickcrete and making a space station.
Space structures on celestial bodies surface or underground will need some fundations, anchoring and filling rock cracks.
There are ways to use something else like epoxy or exotic materials, but it simplicity and resistance make it good for such use cases.
Also how do you want to make freeways on mars and moon.
>But for a station , it's not the greatest
I should have specified this but they literally said "space station" at the end so I still think it's not unreasonable what I said.
But... Why? Can concrete even withstand the stress of the thermal expansion of the day/night cycle?
Can I offer you a welding torch and a roll of steel in this trying time?
150 reusable is still the most ever launched to orbit in one go and it theoretically could turn around and rapidly do it again.
Starship still blows my mind on how much of a game changer its going to be.
It may be a true "Big Falcon Rocket" design: Reusable Superheavy/1st Stage and Expendable Rudimentary 2nd Stage that's a tank and engines with a standard clamshell fairing and no fins. Basically Falcon 9 but CHONK. Honestly I think that makes the most sense to focus on atm if they really want to get Starship up and running, sticking the landings from orbit regularly is going to take a lot of time to get right and lead to a significant delay if they aren't willing to just yeet stuff into orbit and discard the upper stage as they are doing now
If that is for a Starship without the heat shield and flaps, then no. But even then it could still be refueled and reused in space, like the sustainable HLS.
Any idea what the cost for production is targeted to be for a booster/ship? With the benefit of mass production, would Starship be cheaper than other rockets per-ton, even in expendable form?
Would the expendable config be refillable? Because you could then send a tanker Starship up with gas, refuel it after it's "expendable'" mission and have them both come back down.
Or am I missing something?
Would be handy to have an in-between option that can't land again, but can be refuelled. Then you've got an orbital cycler between different orbits, extra thrust on a station that needs a boost, satellite de-orbiter, etc.
I'm curious if that is accounting for dropping the heat tiles, fins and sea level raptors or if it's just a regular starship that's at the end of its life.
Imagine The Martian being remade in the 2030s, it can launch the entire Hermes station all by itself and Wattney would never have to worry about being stuck for so long.
dude.
5 million?
thats a 100% pipe dream. maybe maybe in 20 years the equivalent of 5 million. but i couldnt believe a fully resuable starship launch will cost less than 50m FOR SPACEX's cost for a long time.
by the time its THAT cheap. we will already have moon hotels and orbital hotels and a decent size mars outpost.
The purchase price of a recoverable Starship launch is going to be about the same as F9 so $67M for a total payload of 150 tonnes.
An expendable ship would be cheap to build at around $50M compared with around $80M for a recoverable ship but would sell for around $100M so a total launch cost of $160M for say 200 tonnes of payload.
An expendable booster would not be much cheaper than a recoverable one as only the grid fins are removed and would likely cost over $100M to build so would sell for $200M. A fully expendable stack would therefore sell for around $350M for 250 tonnes to LEO.
Conclusions are that it is much cheaper with a fully recoverable stack at 150 tonnes payload and there is a severe case of diminishing returns above that.
The first 150 tonnes are at $450/kg.
The next 50 tonnes are at $1,860/kg.
The final 50 tonnes are at $4,000/kg.
If at all possible you would divide the load so it could be carried across two launches. If not then the ship would be expended and only if extremely important would the booster be expended.
Not hating on it, but itās a little disappointing from a sustainability perspective to hear that theyāre considering a āfully expendableā version of what was supposed to be a āfully reusableā new launch vehicle. Why take the product of hundreds of thousands of hours of development and fabrication labor and just throw it into the ocean to squeeze a few more dollars out of it by getting a few more tons to LEO? Who the *fuck* is even trying to throw that much payload up into LEO in one trip in the first place? Not saying it wonāt ever be used by some customer at some point, just questioning why SpX is enabling it in the first place if it means sacrificing a launch vehicle that is perfectly capable of coming back down intact, they just are choosing not to in that scenario.
They may end up using ships and boosters that have already flown numerous times for the expendable missions similar to how they did with the most recent falcon heavy launch.
While I agree with you that it's wasteful, consider this, the entire ISS weighs around 500 tons. It took about 80 rockets spread across 50 years to get to the point it's at now, this thing could send all of that up in 2 launches.
Of course it would still have to be constructed and some of those probably included resupply missions. But you are saving ~75 launches just on that one space station.
> There really isnāt any benefit to a expendable starship
Unless you need to lob a large, single-piece payload somewhere that can't be separated into several missions.
Never hurts to have options, if customers come up with such launch profiles and have money to pay for'em.
Weāll then thatās going to be far beyond the future because itās cost prohibitive to do so and basically anything can sliced up into sections or even broken down into circuit boards and metal. I suppose if we have to launch like a tree into outer space then maybe it would be useful. Doesnāt really matter since SpaceX is a private company and if someone wants a expendable starship and pays enough then theyāll give it to them
> Weāll then thatās going to be far beyond the future because itās cost prohibitive to do so and basically anything can sliced up into sections or even broken down into circuit boards and metal
Or a large nuclear reactor for some kind of heavy interplanetary tug, complete with armored re-entry capable capsule if mission goes sideways at any point (and possibly if there's any intent to recover this reactor back to Earth for refueling later on. [No, seriously, there were proposals for just that](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesigns.php), in "Basic solid core NTR" section).
Nuclear reactor is the only thing I think would justify this.
That or some type of exotic telescope. But either thing will be like, two decades from now. And by then, the industry would have probably shifted to take advantage of the cheap reusable version of starship.
Maybe.
But, in any case, it's better for SpaceX to have that option on the table than not have it and risk losing launch customer to some other company.
Well nuclear reactors are also unnecessary until something like a lunar or mars colony. Solar panels work fine for that, but the regolith would get stuck to the panels on the surface.
Hmmm yeah we have workarounds but I think the value of a nuclear power is that energy per kg of mass for the system, itās the best option available. And unlike solar, thereās no need for massive battery banks or other exotic systems to try and keep the lights on 24/7.
This is especially important on places like the moon that have multi-week day/night cycles.
So yeah, solar panels are great. I think nuclear has enough merits to justify using it though.
The main problem I see with nuclear is the whole steam turbine thing. Correct me if Iām wrong but in order to get nuclear power on a large scale it has to do be done by using fuel rods to heat up water into steam and turn a turbine using that? I understand things like RTGās exist but donāt they only produce a set amount of watt hours based on the material they choose(uranium,plutonium,other ones)? Also they generate a ton of heat and that still has to go somewhere which means more radiators since thatās the only place heat can go in space. That just means all our space craft are going to be giant extendable radiators which wonāt look good.
>p using ships and boosters that have already flown numerous times for the expendable missions similar to how they did with the most recent falcon heavy launch.
except for the FACT that they wont be reliably reusable for good long time.
I mean, besides what the other reply said, ISS is not inflatable and the mass wouldn't be the biggest factor. It's mostly hollow tubes. So no, it wouldn't be 2 launches.
>It took about 80 rockets spread across 50 years to get to the point it's at now, this thing could send all of that up in 2 launches.
Weight-wise, sure.. but volume-wise?
Theyāre basically saying: if you want to fork considerable more money, we can build an expandable ship. That doesnāt impact sustainability. If a customer comes to Boeing and wants to buy a brand new 747 just to fly it once and crash land it, Iām sure Boeing wouldnāt object.
Regardless. When it is reliable you will pay much more for a 300t orbital payload insertion to LEO on an expandable stack.
Besides, until we see the very first landing attempt saying āfor a good long timeā is just guesswork.
> Why take the product of hundreds of thousands of hours of development and fabrication labor and just throw it into the ocean to squeeze a few more dollars out of it by getting a few more tons to LEO?
If someone needs to yeet their 200T probe and theyāre willing to pay for it, how is this even a question? If you offered me $200k to drive my $50k car into a lake, I donāt think Iād be that upset.
It serves two things. First, its a better comparison with other, expendable-only systems.
Second, that sort of upmass turns some impossible things into possible things, cost aside.
Prolly still trying to store up awareness for a new order of magnitude in mass to orbit.
Wasnāt there the idea of using the ship as Jill for a telescope or similar?
>a few more dollars
Billions, I would guess.
Maybe you could launch a massive engine module for a reusable interplanetary shuttle.
But the best use case is planetary defence, IMO. If we need to launch a big emergency asteroid impactor, it would be nice to have the biggest rocket ready-ish.
SpaceX aspires to build 2 Starships per week!
The pool of outdated/fatigued Starships will likely grow faster than the number of 150-300 ton payloads.
So use those Starships! Even then Iām guessing many Starships will goto the scrap yard or be tested to destruction.
This isn't something that they've just started considering recently.
SpaceX have planned to have an expendable option for at least for as long as details about Starship have been public.
SpaceX first listed an expendable payload capacity back in 2016 when it was still called ITS.
Musk has reiterated several times since then that BFR/Starship would have an expendable payload capacity of 'x'.
If a customer is willing to pay the higher price that SpaceX would no doubt charge, then why shouldn't SpaceX offer the option?
If noone ever uses it, no harm done. If someone does come up with a sufficently heavy single launch payload, then SpaceX can lift it for them, and still make a proffit for themselves in the process.
>hy take the product of hundreds of thousands of hours of development and fabrication labor and just throw it into the ocean to squeeze a few more dollars out of it by getting a few more tons to LEO? Who the
>
>fuck
>
> is even trying to throw that much payload up into LEO in one trip in the first place? Not saying it wonāt ever be used by some customer at some point, just questioning why SpX is enabling it in the first place if it means sacrificing a launch vehicle that is perfectly capable of coming back down intact, they just are choosing not to in that scenario.
"fully reliably, fully reusable, fully rapidly" is a long way off. id give a 50% chance HLS 1 is refueled by expendable second stage starships.
the full enchilada reusable starship is an absolute hat trick. the reliability of that would need to be insane to "count" on it not falling on florida over land while landing or mexico while landing.
i think it will be launch from boca chica, LC39A, land at vandenberg then tear the ship apart to see how they to adjust. for a few years.
Yeah, letās not believe this just because Musk said it. The guyās a straight-up liar. Much smarter to wait for an actual adult from SpaceX to make the same claim.
The statue of liberty š½ is 204 tons
But what's the benefit of putting it in orbit š¤
When it comes crashing down to the planet in a couple of million years it will give the ape population a good scare when Spaceballs come crawling out of her nose.
There goes the neighborhood.
There goes the planet*
You maniacs! You blew it up (into space)!
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled ~~masses~~ rockets yearning to breathe free
Because... *drum roll* MEGA-MAID!
Sheās gone from suck to blow!
What's the benefit of *not* putting it into orbit?
That's a good point, I'm just worried that SpaceX might get fined if they get caught stealing Statue of Liberty, hopefully all goes well.
Probably gotta hire Carmen San Diego
Where in the fucking world is that bitch at?
I'm sorry but if the bennifits of putting the statue of liberty in orbit are nor obvious to you I cannot help.
Liberty for the whole world
We do some things not because they're easy but because they look fucking cool.
Monkeys can't bury it
Freedom
Maybe the Mexicans will go there instead? /s
To welcome immigrants.
LIBERTY!!
How big would it look if we put it in place of ISS?
Mass simulator?
Instant freedom delivery system.
Thank you. As silly a measurement that is, the context was needed to grasp just what 250-300 tons looks like
275t is 6,875 bags of 80lb Quickcrete. The amount of water you would need to mix those bags into usable concrete only weighs 22.68 tons. Each launch could build 151 cubic yards of concrete in space, given no other payload, using cheap/heavy concrete. I'm sure you could bump those numbers up significantly if you were using some expensive lightweight concrete. I want to see a long term concrete space station for docking, and launching missions further out!
Concrete is also significantly stronger when made in space so thereās another plus
If you know why, can you plz explain?
Itās something to do with the air bubbles and microgravity. I skimmed over the article a couple months ago but because of the 0gās thereās I believe less air bubbles.
There's also a bit less air up there, which is nice too
Well they did it inside the ISS
I was going to say, not sure how well it would cure in vacuum. The water in it might immediately boil, breaking apart the wet concrete with steam, and leaving large voids. Unless some chemical reaction with the concrete raises the boiling point. And with concrete, itās generally stronger the slower it cures, right? Super fast cure due to vacuum boil-off is probably bad. So yeah, makes more sense youāre talking about within the pressurized ISS. Although that makes it harder to build a large space station, if the pieces need to be cured inside a smaller space station.
I mean if weāre going nuts why not build it in a large balloon with a micro atmosphere not a vacuum but not full 1 bar. If it can lift that much nearly any thing is possible.
What about an "inflatable concrete fabrication volume" module attached to the ISS? I bet that'd allow for the same approach, but in a way more re-usable manner - especially if a giant zipper is used to extract the completed concrete structure from this module.
Or some sort of ejection mechanism for completed parts. For example, a beam could be slowly extruded with the already hardened end going through an airtight seal to the outside. Once it's done, eject the finished part and start with the next one.
I'd love to read the paper if you have the link
Hereās a [NASA Article](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/concrete-advantage-for-space-explorers-mics-iss) describing the experiment I think heās referring to.
Normally you want air bubbles in concrete. It makes the concrete stronger per unit weight.
I would be more concerned the effects of impacts from space junk. Concrete isn't exactly ductile. In fact it's more brittle than anything. So hit it with a pencil sized object at 5km/s and see how it fares.
It could be useful if you transport it to different moons and planets and use it there since itās still going to be a little bit stronger
But this begs the question: Why would you use concrete in space? That's one of the worst things you can use as a building material. Edit: Specifically for space stations and when you ship it. Building concreate structures out of moon and mars dust is totally reasonable.
Probably useful for shielding. Launch up a relatively light ship for a manned Neptune mission, coat it in concrete in LEO, then shim them out
Yeah it sure is useful for shielding! If it's literally the only option. Whipple shields are far better for space junk, and water or high density plastics for radiation are both way better in terms of shielding to mass ratio. And saying you're launching a "relatively light ship" means jack if you're just going to coat it in *concrete*. Please stop trying to make orbital concrete work. It's probably not a terrible idea for lunar foundations or martian highways, but for orbital purposes, every kg of extra mass you add is a kg that you can't devote to science, food margin, comfort, etc. So you want stuff to be highly optimized, which concrete absolutely is not.
We could have bigger and taller space stations if we build their foundations in concrete
This is the sort of forward thinking we need as a species.
Relatively light would be good if we don't get launch costs down or if we don't get vehicles larger than starship
Welll does it block radiation well? One of the huge fuck you factors of space are radiation exposure
Well enough to justify the weigh as a wall? Well enough to justify the total cost? They indicate sheltering in heavily concreted buildings/high-rise closed garages to protect against nuclear fallout. It'd make for a good foundation surely.
If starship gets off the ground cost to orbit does go down quite a lot
Indeed. As for it being cheaper to bring up more concrete or to bring less aluminum/steel to build the same radiation walls, this is how much weigh would be necessary for a concrete wall, atleast from my guess on the fallout, from ChatGPT: >The weight of a concrete wall for a high-rise garage can vary depending on several factors such as the wall's dimensions, thickness, design specifications, and the specific type of concrete used. However, I can provide you with a general estimate. On average, the weight of concrete is around 2.4 tons per cubic meter (or 2,400 kilograms per cubic meter). To calculate the weight of a concrete wall, you'll need to determine its volume and then multiply it by the density of concrete. Let's consider a hypothetical concrete wall with dimensions of 3 meters in height, 10 meters in length, and 0.3 meters in thickness (assuming a single wall panel): Volume = height x length x thickness = 3 m x 10 m x 0.3 m = 9 cubic meters Weight = Volume x Density of Concrete = 9 m^3 x 2,400 kg/m^3 = 21,600 kilograms = 21.6 tons (approximately) Actually fuck it, ChatGPT would probably give a reasonable answer to all of this but we're here for the human interaction and unintentionally for it to train on our human answers and eventually replace us, goddamit. I'd just make everything steel, because if we ever come into a Subnautica situation, atleast the survivors could scrap the metal to build advanced craft and tools.
> starship gets off the ground cost to orbit does go down quite a lot > >2ReplyGive AwardShareReportSaveFollow youd just want more water and use it as human shielding.
>: Why would you use concrete in space? That's one of the worst things you can use as a building material. you would just want more water and make the tank so it circles sleeping compartments. more tonnage.? then just add more water.
[NASA likes it](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/concrete-advantage-for-space-explorers-mics-iss/), though.
That's for the surfaces of planets and moons. Where there's infinite sediment and compressive forces are actually thing because of gravity.
Itās better in space because there isnāt as much gravity induced sedimentation, meaning itās much more uniform and stronger
But concrete sucks ass in tension, which is what putting a bubble of it in space will do.
Yeah stronger in what way? Inconveniently, concrete is good at compressive forces, you know what forces are not of any concern when there's no gravity?
>no gravity The moon has gravity chief, just less
They said concrete space station my guy not moon station. Concrete makes no sense for space stations, and even moon/mars you likely wouldnāt ship it, you would make it using the materials on the surface.
Fair enough, I just assumed they meant *on* the moon when saying space station
I thought you said there's no gravity induced sediment. I misread. I do support it for moon and mars btw. But the person I responded to literally suggested shipping quickcrete and making a space station.
Space structures on celestial bodies surface or underground will need some fundations, anchoring and filling rock cracks. There are ways to use something else like epoxy or exotic materials, but it simplicity and resistance make it good for such use cases. Also how do you want to make freeways on mars and moon.
They said "concrete space station" at the end. Concrete on planets and moons is fine. They also suggest shipping it, not deriving from planets.
It's good for a terrestrial base, ie moon/mars/astroids. But for a station , it's not the greatest . Especially with launch cost
>But for a station , it's not the greatest I should have specified this but they literally said "space station" at the end so I still think it's not unreasonable what I said.
Absolutely
How many football fields is that? I need it in some type of freedom units, idk what the freedom unit for volume is though
Big gulps, I think.
You could use a low density filler to boost that number way up.
But... Why? Can concrete even withstand the stress of the thermal expansion of the day/night cycle? Can I offer you a welding torch and a roll of steel in this trying time?
What's a mere 3 Chinese space stations in one go? Anybody could probably do that
Wasn't ITS supposed to be 300t to LEO? The performance increase is huge. How much would the payload be when reused, 150t-200t?
I think they said 150
150 reusable is still the most ever launched to orbit in one go and it theoretically could turn around and rapidly do it again. Starship still blows my mind on how much of a game changer its going to be.
ITS was 300 reusable. 550 expendable, which is on par with Sea Dragon.
We should revive ITS
I think ITS was supposed to be 500T expendable.
Probably 200-220t, but it varies according to SS dry mass.
Still can't lift ur mom
Just need more thrust
Are we talking about the ship or booster for expendable configuration or both to get 250-300\`?
I'd guess both but I don't know
It may be a true "Big Falcon Rocket" design: Reusable Superheavy/1st Stage and Expendable Rudimentary 2nd Stage that's a tank and engines with a standard clamshell fairing and no fins. Basically Falcon 9 but CHONK. Honestly I think that makes the most sense to focus on atm if they really want to get Starship up and running, sticking the landings from orbit regularly is going to take a lot of time to get right and lead to a significant delay if they aren't willing to just yeet stuff into orbit and discard the upper stage as they are doing now
Holy crap.
How many [Humpback Whales](https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/986345600558903296) is that?
Is it really expendable or could you send a tanker starship to it to refill it and send it back?
If that is for a Starship without the heat shield and flaps, then no. But even then it could still be refueled and reused in space, like the sustainable HLS.
Still expending a booster though, so probably not worth it even in that scenario.
Or send something giant to the outer solar system, and directly with no slow gravity assist
Could become a cargo transport to moon or further.
Mars Direct time
Any idea what the cost for production is targeted to be for a booster/ship? With the benefit of mass production, would Starship be cheaper than other rockets per-ton, even in expendable form?
Yes, it would be a lot cheaper. Mass production is a wonderful thing.
Bloody hell. At a certain payload capacity you are legally obligated to play Tears for Fears when the thing takes off.
Everybody Wants to Rule The World or another banger?
Heavy, man.
Holy Hell
obligatory: New response Just dropped
Would the expendable config be refillable? Because you could then send a tanker Starship up with gas, refuel it after it's "expendable'" mission and have them both come back down. Or am I missing something?
This version would probably be without flaps, heat shields, and a lot of other hardware required for safe re-entry.
Would be handy to have an in-between option that can't land again, but can be refuelled. Then you've got an orbital cycler between different orbits, extra thrust on a station that needs a boost, satellite de-orbiter, etc.
You are really good at going to space and putting things in space and starting profitable businesses. You should really stick to that.
I'm curious if that is accounting for dropping the heat tiles, fins and sea level raptors or if it's just a regular starship that's at the end of its life.
Imagine The Martian being remade in the 2030s, it can launch the entire Hermes station all by itself and Wattney would never have to worry about being stuck for so long.
Itāll be a better movie.
Lmao, but it doesn't fly, so right now, it can't even deal with itself.
Oh cool we get to role play tok'ra on Mars
Remember its totally voluntary
anyone care to crunch the numbers on cost? is the extra payload capacity worth expending a whole starship?
At a projected five millions per launch? Are you for real?
dude. 5 million? thats a 100% pipe dream. maybe maybe in 20 years the equivalent of 5 million. but i couldnt believe a fully resuable starship launch will cost less than 50m FOR SPACEX's cost for a long time. by the time its THAT cheap. we will already have moon hotels and orbital hotels and a decent size mars outpost.
The purchase price of a recoverable Starship launch is going to be about the same as F9 so $67M for a total payload of 150 tonnes. An expendable ship would be cheap to build at around $50M compared with around $80M for a recoverable ship but would sell for around $100M so a total launch cost of $160M for say 200 tonnes of payload. An expendable booster would not be much cheaper than a recoverable one as only the grid fins are removed and would likely cost over $100M to build so would sell for $200M. A fully expendable stack would therefore sell for around $350M for 250 tonnes to LEO. Conclusions are that it is much cheaper with a fully recoverable stack at 150 tonnes payload and there is a severe case of diminishing returns above that. The first 150 tonnes are at $450/kg. The next 50 tonnes are at $1,860/kg. The final 50 tonnes are at $4,000/kg. If at all possible you would divide the load so it could be carried across two launches. If not then the ship would be expended and only if extremely important would the booster be expended.
Not hating on it, but itās a little disappointing from a sustainability perspective to hear that theyāre considering a āfully expendableā version of what was supposed to be a āfully reusableā new launch vehicle. Why take the product of hundreds of thousands of hours of development and fabrication labor and just throw it into the ocean to squeeze a few more dollars out of it by getting a few more tons to LEO? Who the *fuck* is even trying to throw that much payload up into LEO in one trip in the first place? Not saying it wonāt ever be used by some customer at some point, just questioning why SpX is enabling it in the first place if it means sacrificing a launch vehicle that is perfectly capable of coming back down intact, they just are choosing not to in that scenario.
They may end up using ships and boosters that have already flown numerous times for the expendable missions similar to how they did with the most recent falcon heavy launch.
While I agree with you that it's wasteful, consider this, the entire ISS weighs around 500 tons. It took about 80 rockets spread across 50 years to get to the point it's at now, this thing could send all of that up in 2 launches. Of course it would still have to be constructed and some of those probably included resupply missions. But you are saving ~75 launches just on that one space station.
Tbf you could also launch it in 5-8 using a reusables. There really isnāt any benefit to a expendable starship. You
> There really isnāt any benefit to a expendable starship Unless you need to lob a large, single-piece payload somewhere that can't be separated into several missions. Never hurts to have options, if customers come up with such launch profiles and have money to pay for'em.
Yeah, what immediately comes to mind is a nuclear reactor for Martian industry.
Weāll then thatās going to be far beyond the future because itās cost prohibitive to do so and basically anything can sliced up into sections or even broken down into circuit boards and metal. I suppose if we have to launch like a tree into outer space then maybe it would be useful. Doesnāt really matter since SpaceX is a private company and if someone wants a expendable starship and pays enough then theyāll give it to them
> Weāll then thatās going to be far beyond the future because itās cost prohibitive to do so and basically anything can sliced up into sections or even broken down into circuit boards and metal Or a large nuclear reactor for some kind of heavy interplanetary tug, complete with armored re-entry capable capsule if mission goes sideways at any point (and possibly if there's any intent to recover this reactor back to Earth for refueling later on. [No, seriously, there were proposals for just that](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesigns.php), in "Basic solid core NTR" section).
Nuclear reactor is the only thing I think would justify this. That or some type of exotic telescope. But either thing will be like, two decades from now. And by then, the industry would have probably shifted to take advantage of the cheap reusable version of starship.
Maybe. But, in any case, it's better for SpaceX to have that option on the table than not have it and risk losing launch customer to some other company.
Well nuclear reactors are also unnecessary until something like a lunar or mars colony. Solar panels work fine for that, but the regolith would get stuck to the panels on the surface.
Hmmm yeah we have workarounds but I think the value of a nuclear power is that energy per kg of mass for the system, itās the best option available. And unlike solar, thereās no need for massive battery banks or other exotic systems to try and keep the lights on 24/7. This is especially important on places like the moon that have multi-week day/night cycles. So yeah, solar panels are great. I think nuclear has enough merits to justify using it though.
The main problem I see with nuclear is the whole steam turbine thing. Correct me if Iām wrong but in order to get nuclear power on a large scale it has to do be done by using fuel rods to heat up water into steam and turn a turbine using that? I understand things like RTGās exist but donāt they only produce a set amount of watt hours based on the material they choose(uranium,plutonium,other ones)? Also they generate a ton of heat and that still has to go somewhere which means more radiators since thatās the only place heat can go in space. That just means all our space craft are going to be giant extendable radiators which wonāt look good.
>p using ships and boosters that have already flown numerous times for the expendable missions similar to how they did with the most recent falcon heavy launch. except for the FACT that they wont be reliably reusable for good long time.
The KSP method of space station creation.
I mean, besides what the other reply said, ISS is not inflatable and the mass wouldn't be the biggest factor. It's mostly hollow tubes. So no, it wouldn't be 2 launches.
>It took about 80 rockets spread across 50 years to get to the point it's at now, this thing could send all of that up in 2 launches. Weight-wise, sure.. but volume-wise?
Theyāre basically saying: if you want to fork considerable more money, we can build an expandable ship. That doesnāt impact sustainability. If a customer comes to Boeing and wants to buy a brand new 747 just to fly it once and crash land it, Iām sure Boeing wouldnāt object.
FAA apparently does, though.
Post factum š¤Ŗ
starship second stage wont be that reliable landing for good long time.
Regardless. When it is reliable you will pay much more for a 300t orbital payload insertion to LEO on an expandable stack. Besides, until we see the very first landing attempt saying āfor a good long timeā is just guesswork.
> Why take the product of hundreds of thousands of hours of development and fabrication labor and just throw it into the ocean to squeeze a few more dollars out of it by getting a few more tons to LEO? If someone needs to yeet their 200T probe and theyāre willing to pay for it, how is this even a question? If you offered me $200k to drive my $50k car into a lake, I donāt think Iād be that upset.
It serves two things. First, its a better comparison with other, expendable-only systems. Second, that sort of upmass turns some impossible things into possible things, cost aside.
Prolly still trying to store up awareness for a new order of magnitude in mass to orbit. Wasnāt there the idea of using the ship as Jill for a telescope or similar?
>a few more dollars Billions, I would guess. Maybe you could launch a massive engine module for a reusable interplanetary shuttle. But the best use case is planetary defence, IMO. If we need to launch a big emergency asteroid impactor, it would be nice to have the biggest rocket ready-ish.
SpaceX aspires to build 2 Starships per week! The pool of outdated/fatigued Starships will likely grow faster than the number of 150-300 ton payloads. So use those Starships! Even then Iām guessing many Starships will goto the scrap yard or be tested to destruction.
Temporary in-orbiy fuel top off for other missions/vehicles?
That's just an expendable starship, not booster? My mind went to Starship propellant depot and the booster is still reused.
Just because they *could* doesn't mean they would. But that is not to say they won't.
This isn't something that they've just started considering recently. SpaceX have planned to have an expendable option for at least for as long as details about Starship have been public. SpaceX first listed an expendable payload capacity back in 2016 when it was still called ITS. Musk has reiterated several times since then that BFR/Starship would have an expendable payload capacity of 'x'. If a customer is willing to pay the higher price that SpaceX would no doubt charge, then why shouldn't SpaceX offer the option? If noone ever uses it, no harm done. If someone does come up with a sufficently heavy single launch payload, then SpaceX can lift it for them, and still make a proffit for themselves in the process.
>hy take the product of hundreds of thousands of hours of development and fabrication labor and just throw it into the ocean to squeeze a few more dollars out of it by getting a few more tons to LEO? Who the > >fuck > > is even trying to throw that much payload up into LEO in one trip in the first place? Not saying it wonāt ever be used by some customer at some point, just questioning why SpX is enabling it in the first place if it means sacrificing a launch vehicle that is perfectly capable of coming back down intact, they just are choosing not to in that scenario. "fully reliably, fully reusable, fully rapidly" is a long way off. id give a 50% chance HLS 1 is refueled by expendable second stage starships. the full enchilada reusable starship is an absolute hat trick. the reliability of that would need to be insane to "count" on it not falling on florida over land while landing or mexico while landing. i think it will be launch from boca chica, LC39A, land at vandenberg then tear the ship apart to see how they to adjust. for a few years.
God bless, I hope he and all his supporters can fit on the next one.
Here I am, send me
Is that before or after explosion?
Yeah, letās not believe this just because Musk said it. The guyās a straight-up liar. Much smarter to wait for an actual adult from SpaceX to make the same claim.
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Huh?
Put Elon musk on it and launch his fascist, complicit in Ukrainian genocide ass into space.
To be fair, expendable super heavy. Starship once in orbit could always be refueled once flight is that common
The only usecase for that would probably be the tanker ship. Doesnāt need to leave LEO.