Seems to me that orbital spaceflight as a proposition is an order of magnitude more enticing than scratching the Kármán line. And for the people who could afford it, they'd surely pay an order of magnitude more.
The biggest difference is the price and that they only sell full flights rather than individual seats.
You can't just show up in the morning an hour before launch, get some final instructions, strap in and be back home in time for lunch.
It's much more of an investment in terms of time and effort, too besides just the money. The stress on both body and mind is also significantly higher - if you do panic, you can just close your eyes for a hot minute and be safely back on the ground (in the case of Blue Origin), whereas with an orbital flight you're stuck in space for at least an hour no matter what with the worst (e.g. re-entry) yet to come.
Going to orbit on a rocket isn't the quite the carnival ride that suborbital hops are.
I don't know if it will happen in practice, or if it will be successful when they try it but it would be damn cool.
Our usage of fuel for regular jet travel is already becoming A Problem. Making it easier to burn more fuel for fewer people to travel faster is emphatically not what we need right now.
my question was more towards commercial space programs, will the tech they invent be open? if so is it worth letting it expand basically out of any regulations?
Regulations around rocket launches have been hashed out over decades of practice. We do not yet have this kind of practical experience with space tourism.
As for the tech produced by commercial space programs: I do not know how open it is going to be, but the know-how established during development will move around as people leave their employees and join others or create their own space startups. I think this might be the most important effect: massive expansion of the pool of experienced engineers.
A historical analogy: contemporary Silicon Valley was basically founded by engineers (called the Traitorous Eight) who left a mismanaged semiconductor startup owned by William Shockley.
Carbon capture is attractive because it can be used in places where energy density is a critical factor.
what is critical? for instance is food production (that will sharply decrease due to climate change) more critical than individual cars, for instance?
you also still don't answer the primary question i have as an engineer and physicist: which CC tech is gonna work/can be scaled?
I don't know how that compares with a typical airliner in terms of miles per gallon (probably not much better than Dragon). However Starship runs on methane and that should in theory be easy to produce from atmospheric CO2 and electricity from renewable sources.
In any case, I don't think many people took the idea of using Starship as a terrestrial passenger transport seriously.
SpaceX intends to develop direct atmospheric methane generation from CO2, which they have to do anyway for their Mars plans because that's the only way to do in-situ refueling there (plenty of CO2 in the atmosphere, not exactly a lot of natural gas fields). Taking into account any methane leaks and correcting for its few decades of enhance greenhouse effect before it decomposes to CO2, they certainly could make Starship carbon neutral and if they do it doesn't matter how much "energy" in the abstract it uses beyond price. Solar and wind power have plenty positive power factors.
Worth noting that in principle nothing is special about Starship here, carbon neutral RP1 could be made as well (at a further hit to conversion efficiency and thus price). In practice though green methane is more practical and will amortize better given its use elsewhere in the solar system.
It's hard to argue that a method of transport so incredibly energy inefficient will be a good thing until we're swimming in so much excess energy that we've got nothing better to do with it. Even with the massive improvements in renewables over the last few decades, we're a long, long way from that point.
putting tourists in space doesn't seems like a priority.
Absolutely wrong. It is not a zero sum game. In terms of raw money and capability, we could have gone carbon neutral in the developed world at least decades ago. We could be aiming for that universally right now, the US alone has dumped trillions and trillions into war and pandemic response over just the last 10 years. It hasn't happened because "we" collectively have not chosen to make it happen. SpaceX, or anyone else, making themselves carbon neutral when they are under no external compulsion too is pure gain. They don't need to solve all the problems on the fucking planet first. That has always been one of the most irritating fallacies in the whole AGW discussion.
>It's hard to argue that a method of transport so incredibly energy inefficient will be a good thing until we're swimming in so much excess energy that we've got nothing better to do with it.
No, it isn't. It's trivial to argue: if it's greenhouse neutral and all the externalities are built-in then if anyone wants to pay for it by definition it is a good thing. In fact at that point it'd be a BETTER thing than traditional "more efficient" methods of transport which aren't greenhouse neutral!
You're coming up with this silly subjective morality things when the only morality involved is externalized harm. If that is eliminated and people still consider the service worth it when they can see the true price then that's all that matters.
i agree they had plans to develop solar panels, but AFAIK, the company just collapsed and musk is being presently trialed for bailing out solarcity in an illegal way.
silly morality? can you further explain the morality of sending rich tourists in orbit when people are dying now out of climate change?
This is dishonest goalpost shifting. The original post by avian was engaging in forward looking discussion about future plans (which is necessary in any discussion about Starship since it isn't actually even in full operation yet, and even once it is there will be a host of Mars-related further systems to develop over the rest of the 2020s at least). The post said:
>avian: However Starship runs on methane and that should in theory be easy to produce from atmospheric CO2 and electricity from renewable sources.
You then responded with a nonsensical post on thermodynamics (and also incidentally were completely wrong about the rocket engine bit, the FFSC Raptor engines Starship uses have much better ISP then Merlin, but that isn't relevant either) which can only be read to imply that because of thermodynamic losses making methane somehow can't be green? But thermodynamics have absolutely nothing to do with it. We have non-greenhouse energy sources with highly positive power factors, and indeed there isn't any thermodynamic difference in harvesting incoming solar gain to useful ends before converting it back into heat vs... just letting it all become heat. In either case the net energy is the same and what determines the balance on Earth is how much is trapped vs how much is radiated.
>i agree they had plans to develop solar panels, but AFAIK, the company just collapsed and musk is being presently trialed for bailing out solarcity in an illegal way.
????? Are you somehow implying that it's impossible for SpaceX to just, you know, buy solar panels from one of the bajillion providers on the market? WTF does SolarCity/Tesla Energy have to do with any of this? They're entirely separate companies. And the trial is essentially a nothingburger at this point anyway. The absolute worst case for Tesla (not SpaceX) would be having to pay the couple of billion back in damages which with their stock and now income would be annoying but also trivial. But I doubt they get remotely 100% because it's very hard to argue a negative in shareholder suits. The civil court system in America operates primarily on the concept of damages, that you can be shown to have lost something. But Tesla stock is at an all time high, none of them can directly show any harm. Instead they have to argue that the lack of information was material (~85% of shareholders voted for it IIRC) and that if not for the purchase of SolarCity Tesla would be higher. But the defense will argue that Tesla Energy was indeed an important purchase strategically and for various reasons of direct value, some of which are definitely true (even diverting its workforce to work on Model 3, held up as an example of it not being worth as much, absolutely offered value to Tesla in the form of, well, faster Model 3 production). Courts don't generally like to get into positing alternate universes and operational details. The stuff that wasn't disclosed does seem potentially impactful enough that Elon/Tesla may face at least some damages, but I don't think it'd be the full purchase price.
None of which, again, has anything whatsoever to do with SpaceX.
>can you further explain the morality of sending rich tourists in orbit when people are dying now out of climate change?
LOL. Why the fuck are you here then posting on Hacker News? Why aren't you spending these precious minutes out saving the world? Working even a little bit more to earn a few extra dollars which could help starving families in Africa adapt to climate change or whatever? Have any hobbies? Ever buy any food beyond the most basic gruel necessary for continued bodily function? Etc etc.
That is all literally the 100% exact same thing: discussion about how to use one's luxury energy/mass budget. A core part of our entire effort as humans and human civilization has been to increase that, to get beyond the level of absolute subsistence and then be able to spend some of that on activities to our own goals for the future. If those activities don't cause harm to other people then it is absolutely bullshit moralizing to put your own subjective luxury goals above anyone else's. Morality should be about both making sure all costs are internalized and large scale actions to direct effort towards lifting up people, safety nets, protecting individual and group rights, dealing with extreme inequality, etc etc, just in general aiming to help every human maintain a reasonable level of life and have the opportunity to achieve some portion of their potential. And do it in a systemic fashion beyond individual choices.
Frankly you're a huge hypocrite to even bring it up, which is how these things typically go. You claimed in a previous post to have a PhD, which represents an enormous expenditure of resources that could have gone towards mitigating AGW or feeding the starving or whatever instead. You are a highly privileged person. And that's fine. You've no doubt worked very very hard even beyond your luck. But it should mean you think twice before turning right around and judging others. By world standards you are a rich person. Have you ever gone on a single vacation in your life? Why do you think the label "rich tourist" doesn't apply to you too?
It may be order-of-magnitude worse, but not 3 orders of magnitude (If you look forward to using starship for human transportation)
This IS commercialized. Jared Isaacman contacted SpaceX and expressed interest in buying a flight. SpaceX put him in touch with people and then he bought the flight. Other missions have already been bought as well and likely several more that haven't been mentioned.