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Comment by Reubachi | Hacker News Reader

Yes, completely unbeleivable. I mainly think this because SpaceX has committed said engineers to delivering unfeasable amounts of payload to LEO/ISS, etc. Think on the order of "One succesful launch, delivery, and re-entry/recovery per day".

That is of course very very far away from reality (though, progressing to a feasable program faster than any space observers predicted.)

THat, combined with Elon signaling to investors/market that tesla no longer produces cars.....it's hard to imagine the company splitting their very, very , very over-commited engineers to a flying car. At least, they aren't commiting the point that this will be a consumer-market car, or even a halo car.

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> Think on the order of "One succesful launch, delivery, and re-entry/recovery per day".

Given that they have largely relied on reusability rather than strongly ramping up production of boosters for Falcon 9, and given that they have performed 3 launches in a single day, one launch per day is clearly achievable without any further advances, and without even using Starship.

To be clear, the stated goal for Starship is one launch per hour throughout the year, which would still be a tiny number compared to, say, airline flights, but quite impressive for orbital flight.

If space-x would ever send out one Starship per hour, that would be horrendes for our atmosphere (potentially).

It would also mean nearly 900.000 tons of resources leaving earth for ever and potentially poluting our atmosphere if they have to ever reenter.

Preparing this while our planet earth has A LOT of empty space and desserts and no breakthrough in quantumslipstream or warp core tech is ridicolous dangerous for all of us :|

The launches themselves can be made roughly neutral by producing the methane and LOX from the atmosphere using solar power. For an hourly cadence, that would require as much solar as a third of all US installed commercial solar, but the US is already adding that much every few years, and accelerating, so it doesn't seem impossible. That's best-case, of course, but given that, all the combustion products would balance out propellant generation.

Reentry of dead satellites and other debris does seem like it's eventually going to be more of an issue, so that will be something to work on.

I wouldn't count on any warp drive breakthroughs, potentially ever, but the whole solar system is still out there for living and industrial space.

Even if resources don't evaporiate in our atmosphere, you need to send up a lot of resources like metals.

We are so so so far away of mining resources on other planets/moons than earth, setting this up now is just crazy though.

And lets think crazy wild: in 20 years we send up enough stuff like machines and resources to start mining and setting things up, to do what? I love scifi but it has to reach some kind of goal.

They're averaging 2-3 Falcon 9 launches per week. That's not 'very very far away' from one per day.

Nobody else comes close, whether considering individual companies or entire nations.

True, they are clearly top of the entire planet when it comes to succesfull LEO launches.

I can go even further and say I trust they will be the company to deliver, given the decades long historical relationship between US Space Agencies and Vendors.

That said, 2.6 test falcon launches per week, is so, so many orders of magnitude away from "~150 full payload delivery and recovery missions per week".

I struggle to think how anyone with experience in the industry (and eye balls) thinks this is aligning with reality.

> SpaceX has committed said engineers to delivering unfeasable amounts of payload to LEO/ISS, etc. Think on the order of "One succesful launch, delivery, and re-entry/recovery per day". That is of course very very far away from reality

This is a mathematically silly assertion. Over the past decade, SpaceX has scaled their launch capacity from ~20 metric tons per year to ~2,300 metric tons per year. That's more than two orders of magnitude. It's not unreasonable to imagine that they could scale a further 0.3 orders of magnitude if there were customers willing to pay for this amount of lift.

I don't see the silliness, maybe you can help me.

CUrrently they're averaging, what, max 3 falcons per week, usually in test configuration?

The partnership scope calls for.....~150 launches per week, delivering payload and returning the module.

Trust me, I love space and pushing the frontier at the cost of US dollars, but that is....so significantly far away.

COnsider the boeing 737-8,9,10 MAX. That program is far, far less grandiose in it's delivery scope, has an ancient legacy OEM that is very familiar with regulated contracts w/ the gov, and they can't deliver a plane within 5 years of the expected contract completion to their premier airline partner.

I can be convinced IE; some transparent internal reporting on project lead's current understandings as the project progresses, but there just isn't any statements from SpaceX/Nasa/USGOV on what we can all see with out eyes.

Planes carry billions of passengers per year, so their design and operation needs orders of magnitude more oversight than an unmanned cargo mover. Every little detail of an airliner needs to be scrutinised for the various ways it could affect safety. Rockets don't require that level of safety assurance.

SpaceX put more mass in orbit this year than the rest of the world combined, and you’re saying they’re not doing a good job?

Both can be true.

No contradiction between "more than everyone else combined" and "it is unfeasable to launch 36,500 metric tons per year compared to the about-2,500 tons in the last 12 months".

Especially as the working launch vehicle is getting retired and the replacement has only had one circularized orbit, and is currently behind the development pace set by the Saturn V, N1, and even the Space Shuttle.

Well I'd say they're ahead of N1 considering that N1 never made it to orbit.

Hmm.

I suppose, depending on how you count.

The N1 was cancelled after four explosions, and the fourth Starship launch was non-explody.

But the fourth N1 launch was 10 years after the N1 work was started. Starship began work under a different name in 2012, and by 2022 it had yet to launch at all, let alone reach the non-explody stage.

If you assume all the pre-2016-rebrand work was scrapped, then you can have it beating the N1; otherwise I think my point stands.

For the first few years they were just doing design work, and it's hard to say how much effort they were putting in since their focus back then was Falcon; the first Falcon 9 landing was 2015, and the first Falcon Heavy flight was 2018. For Starship they didn't even decide on stainless steel until 2019.

Comparing apples to apples, this seems to be the appropriate starting point for N1:

> Studied and designed by OKB-1 since 1959, it was the counterpart to the US Saturn V

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)

First launch was 1969. Starship's first launch was in 2023, so it took one extra year from initial concept to launch.

Starting from first launch, N1 did four launches in three years and never succeeded. Starship did 15 launches in three years, had multiple mission successes in which they achieved orbital velocity but had planned a suborbital trajectory, and then orbited on the 15th launch. Their first mission reaching orbital velocity was in 2024.

Also worth mentioning that a lot of the Starship work focuses on full reusability, a quite difficult problem which N1 did not attempt.

That is just a one OOM scaling. It's not that difficult, especially considering that Starship just delivered the 3rd largest payload ever launched and it wasn't even at capacity.

Sounds like you’re very big on the nay saying for its own sake.

I assume you’re dirty on Usain Bolt for not running faster?

If Usain bolt claimed he would run 75mph, does him being the fastest runner change the fact that he lied?

If he was the fastest runner, won a the races and had all the world records, I don’t think failing to meet his aspirational goal of 75 would be important.

Boasting you're a year or two from something that is biologically implausible makes a person's proclamations in other fields inherently untrustworthy.

That said, a few seconds of cold gas thrust is more "cybertruck" bad than "theranos" bad.

Lol, aspirational goals. What other goal posts would you like to move?

And for what?

Starlink alone is the biggest contributor to it. If i remember correctly it was 1000 tones before and because of starlink its 3000t

Starlink as is only has 10 million customers, borderline most of them people who can afford something like this.

And every other 9 billion human has to accept that the sky now has a lot more starlinks in orbit and astrophysics is disturbed.

I personally gain a lot more from astrophysicsi than from Starlink.

> I personally gain a lot more from astrophysicsi than from Starlink.

Good way to show your privilege.

Starlink is changing peoples lives around the world, previously the fastest they had was dialup, now they’re video calling doctors and family and doing school online.

I’ve seen it with my own eyes in rural Australia, arctic Canada and Tunisia.

Talk to people who really benefit from it.

I heard that on and off and its just not true.

You saw what? Rich people in other countries (a small amount of) having now fast internet?

Wow.

Now take my proper argument, stop nitpicking and compare a handful of peple on a planet with 9 Billion people.

My main argument was and is, that a lot more people are getting hurt by this than gain something. Loss of research and clear night sky and risk of atmospheric poisening vs. a handful of peple now benefitting from it...

It's a similar level of complaint to windmills spoiling the view. And if you poll people which would they rather have in the wilderness: no satellites visible at dusk and dawn, or full internet access, which would they prefer?

It is a valid critisism of windmills but there is a huge difference between having to save the planet you live on and using windmills to save co2 vs. polluting space, increasing kessler syndrome, polluting our atmosphwere for a little bit of internet.

Especially in contrast to the other option: Landlines and mobile network. Most of the planet is connected one war or the other ALREADY. Even shepards on mount everest or people in mongolia have one or the other.

No. I saw rural people (not rich) getting to access the world of medicine and education people in bigger population centres take for granted. Not to mention connecting with their families. They were very happy.

“Handful of people” benefiting from it is vastly missing the mark.

Which rural people?

Someone in a 3th world country or someone who doesn't has any real internet access, can't afford starlink.

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