SpaceX’s Starbase is coming alive again after a lull in Starship testing

The next Starship flight is a key precursor for more ambitious missions to come.

See full article...

 

[blackhawk887]

It absolutely is specific to the moon. HLS architecture is a horrific design for the moon. It "made sense" as a cheap hackish way to get $4B+ NASA dollars with minimal changes

HLS is a lousy lunar architecture primarily because of NASA requirements (NRHO, 100 day loiter, etc). If SpaceX is optimizing a lunar cargo version to their own requirements it will be far more efficient, and also more similar to the Mars variant.

 

[blackhawk887]

And I still doubt a whole lot that there will be any substantial and sustained business case for the Moon. This will end like Apollo: A race and then everything will fizzle out.

There was never even a notional business case for Mars. A notional but implausible business case beats none at all, I think.

The commonly cited business cases for the moon are He3 extraction (which is dubious at best) or lunar tourism (which might actually be viable, under some optimistic assumptions). Musk's "automated AI datacenter factory" is a new one, but at best seems about as plausible as He3 extraction.

But maybe we'll get some lunar tourism out of it...

 

[Statistical]

HLS is a lousy lunar architecture primarily because of NASA requirements (NRHO, 100 day loiter, etc).

Yes but all that was known. HLS as you get but most fanboys don't wasn't some optimized lunar architecture it was "how can we take our Mars architecture and modify it as cheaply as possible EVEN IF that ends up inefficient. SpaceX wasn't going to the moon thousands of times it didn't need to be optimized. In fact paying billions in R&D to get something optimized that NASA buys 2 to 5 times would be dumb. It would be easier to just brute force though that inefficiency with extra fuel if you are only doing it a couple time.

It was a compromise an intentional one. If the future is Mars and the Moon is a distraction then don't let it distract you too much.

If SpaceX is optimizing a lunar cargo version to their own requirements it will be far more efficient, and also more similar to the Mars variant.

It will be less bad but a lunar lander lifting itself to LEO is dubious. That inflates dry mass. It makes sense on Mars given mars EDL is similar to Earth EDL and Mars launch and TEI has similar deltaV as Earth launch to LEO. You can effectively reuse the same vehicle for both. Putting a Mars spacecraft inside the cargo bay of an Earth upper stage doesn't make a lot of sense given the similarities in mission profiles.

However for the moon there is no reason for that. Using starship as simply a launch vehicle which carries as cargo into LEO a completely new tug and lunar lander would optimize things. The lunar tug and lunar lander would just be cargo the way Starlink sats or probes are cargo. If you do that though the architecture looks completely different but it is what you would do if landing thousands or tens of thousands of tons on the moon.

However it doesn't really matter. SpaceX isn't going to do any of that just like they aren't going to build cities on the Mars. SpaceX will do what makes SpaceX money and as that relates to the moon whatever mission NASA pays for. NASA is not going to pay for cities on the moon anymore than they will pay for cities on Mars. Elon Musk sure as hell isn't going to pay trillions out of his own pocket to make that happen either.

 

[dmsilev]

The commonly cited business cases for the moon are He3 extraction (which is dubious at best) or lunar tourism (which might actually be viable, under some optimistic assumptions). Musk's "automated AI datacenter factory is a new one, but at best seems about as plausible as He3 extraction.

Building AI whatevers on the Moon is way way less plausible than 3He mining. Which is already, as you say, a very very dubious proposition. Thinking about what would be needed to build the infrastructure for even a 10 or 20 year out of date semiconductor fab on the Moon makes my head hurt. The fab itself would be a horror. Setting up a pipeline to go from raw materials to suitable inputs is its own infrastructure nightmare. A lot of the consumable chemicals are organics or light-element based, and would have to be imported from Earth. Etc. etc. etc.

 

[tenaku2]

The cynicism in this thread is really something else. Most people here are so eager to see the brand fail that they’re completely ignoring the actual engineering happening right in front of us.

The "taxpayer funded" talking point is factually stuck in the past. NASA contracts make up maybe 5% of SpaceX's revenue this year. The vast majority of their funding comes from Starlink and commercial launches. Those "explosions" are being paid for by their own $8 billion in annual profit, not our taxes. If you want to talk about taxpayer waste, look at the SLS. It costs $4 billion per launch and only flies once every few years. That's equivalent to $25 from every tax payer for each SLS launch.

As for the Saturn comparisons, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of modern aerospace. Saturn was a one-shot, hand-built government trophy. Starship is a mass-producible freight system. The Raptor V3 is hitting double the thrust of the original at a fraction of the cost. You don't get that kind of evolution by being "perfect" every time, you get it by testing to failure and iterating.

The focus on the Moon isn't a "scam" or a pivot, it’s a literal contractual obligation for Artemis. Beyond the legal side, it makes perfect sense. You can iterate on the Moon every couple of weeks, whereas Mars launch windows only open every 26 months.

SpaceX is valued at $1.5 trillion and is prepping for a massive IPO. They’re launching more mass into orbit than the rest of the world combined. Whatever people feel about the xAI merger or the CEO’s politics, the actual company is a decade ahead of everyone else.

But the most telling part of this discussion is seeing a comment cheering on "another taxpayer funded explosion" getting 14 upvotes. In a community that’s supposed to be progressive and "pro-science" rewarding a claim that is not only factually dead wrong, but just pretty disgusting in general, just because it fits a political narrative is the definition of an echo chamber. You aren't rooting against waste, you're just rooting against progress because you don't like the guy behind it.

I'm all for progress, I just don't want fascist oligarchs trying to create a techno-feudalist state to profit from it. You cannot separate the politics from the progress in this case, when the success of the project will directly benefit the rising tide of authoritarianism the world is experiencing.

Technical achievement at the expense of freedom and dignity is not worth it. If the last decade should have taught us anything, it's that.

 

[Statistical]

s already, as you say, a very very dubious proposition. Thinking about what would be needed to build the infrastructure for even a 10 or 20 year out of date semiconductor fab on the Moon makes my head hurt. The fab itself would be a horror. Setting up a pipeline to go from raw materials to suitable inputs is its own infrastructure nightmare. A lot of the consumable chemicals are organics or light-element based, and would have to be imported from Earth. Etc. etc. e

Yeah there are levels of self sufficiency. Starting from simple stuff like resource extraction and producing food/water/energy/fuel and then moving up. Semiconductors are at the absolute tip of the supply chain.

Even the Mars "plan" (which is just grift in hindsight) was talking about self sufficiency in 40 years. Now even that is dubious centuries is more likely but he didn't specifically name semiconductors so fanboys at the time like myself said maybe he means partial self sufficiency. Like reducing the required imports to the point that Mars produces most of what it needs and just has to import a small percentage. Very complex high cost items like microprocessors, MRI machines, or high power lasers coming from Earth for decades to come.

It was all bullshit anyways but we have just jumped the shark now. Self growing cities building semiconductors on the moon in 10 years is so asininely stupid it makes every prior "musk timeline" bullshit seem downright trivial to execute. Of all things that won't happen, this won't happen the most.

 

[blackhawk887]

Yes but all that was known. HLS as you get but most fanboys don't wasn't some optimized lunar architecture it was "how can we take our Mars architecture and modify it as cheaply as possible EVEN IF that ends up inefficient. SpaceX wasn't going to the moon thousands of times it didn't need to be optimized. In fact paying billions in R&D to get something optimized that NASA buys 2 to 5 times would be dumb. It would be easier to just brute force though that inefficiency with extra fuel if you are only doing it a couple time.

It was a compromise an intentional one. If the future is Mars and the Moon is a distraction then don't let it distract you too much.




It will be less bad but a lunar lander lifting itself to LEO is dubious. That inflates dry mass. It makes sense on Mars given mars EDL is similar to Earth EDL and Mars launch and TEI has similar deltaV as Earth launch to LEO. You can effectively reuse the same vehicle for both. Putting a Mars spacecraft inside the cargo bay of an Earth upper stage doesn't make a lot of sense given the similarities in mission profiles.

However for the moon there is no reason for that. Using starship as simply a launch vehicle which carries as cargo into LEO a completely new tug and lunar lander would optimize things. The lunar tug and lunar lander would just be cargo the way Starlink sats or probes are cargo. If you do that though the architecture looks completely different but it is what you would do if landing thousands or tens of thousands of tons on the moon.

Anything that returns to Earth or to LEO pretty much needs a TPS, so Starship is a pretty good fit. It would be more efficient to have a dedicated reusable lander that never returns to Earth but just shuttles cargo from LLO or TLI to the lunar surface, and SpaceX might do that, but it still works well with Starship doing the work up to TLI or LLO.

However it doesn't really matter. SpaceX isn't going to do any of that just like they aren't going to build cities on the Mars. SpaceX will do what makes SpaceX money and as that relates to the moon whatever mission NASA pays for. NASA is not going to pay for cities on the moon anymore than they will pay for cities on Mars. Elon Musk sure as hell isn't going to pay trillions out of his own pocket to make that happen either.

NASA already pays for CLPS, including Starship. That could easily evolve into much larger cargo volumes, especially if they see a way to get a permanent crewed presence on the lunar surface. Combine ISS and Human Exploration money after 2030 and that could run to 5 billion a year or more available for transportation services, plus another 5 billion a year for ops.

 

[uhuznaa]

Yes but all that was known. HLS as you get but most fanboys don't wasn't some optimized lunar architecture it was "how can we take our Mars architecture and modify it as cheaply as possible EVEN IF that ends up inefficient. SpaceX wasn't going to the moon thousands of times it didn't need to be optimized. In fact paying billions in R&D to get something optimized that NASA buys 2 to 5 times would be dumb. It would be easier to just brute force though that inefficiency with extra fuel if you are only doing it a couple time.

It was a compromise an intentional one. If the future is Mars and the Moon is a distraction then don't let it distract you too much.




It will be less bad but a lunar lander lifting itself to LEO is dubious. That inflates dry mass. It makes sense on Mars given mars EDL is similar to Earth EDL and Mars launch and TEI has similar deltaV as Earth launch to LEO. You can effectively reuse the same vehicle for both. Putting a Mars spacecraft inside the cargo bay of an Earth upper stage doesn't make a lot of sense given the similarities in mission profiles.

However for the moon there is no reason for that. Using starship as simply a launch vehicle which carries as cargo into LEO a completely new tug and lunar lander would optimize things. The lunar tug and lunar lander would just be cargo the way Starlink sats or probes are cargo. If you do that though the architecture looks completely different but it is what you would do if landing thousands or tens of thousands of tons on the moon.

However it doesn't really matter. SpaceX isn't going to do any of that just like they aren't going to build cities on the Mars. SpaceX will do what makes SpaceX money and as that relates to the moon whatever mission NASA pays for. NASA is not going to pay for cities on the moon anymore than they will pay for cities on Mars. Elon Musk sure as hell isn't going to pay trillions out of his own pocket to make that happen either.

The rub is that designing and building one-off landers etc. for a handful of missions which won't be of any other use apart from that still doesn't make sense. It actually never makes sense, and you could say the same about SLS which will never be used for anything else but Artemis and as such is an absurd thing to pay tens of billions for (and it didn't came to be because it would have been such a great idea anyway).

And not only NASA won't pay for cities on the Moon, nobody will. So Mars or not, with SpaceX making Starship even if just for Starlink and other LEO launches basing HLS on Starship despite all the inefficiencies and compromises is the right way to go. At least you use mostly commodity stuff then instead of optimizing for something that will in the end be hardly more than a stunt to not be defaced by China.

Designing and building Starship as a fully reusable launcher and then filling a propellant depot in LEO with a dozen of Starship tanker flights to yeet another Starship to the Moon would be totally crazy just for that. But if they make Starship anyway for their own needs it's not crazy, it just looks crazy. It's hideously inefficient, but designing a hydrolox based Moon-only architecture that will get used just five times or so wouldn't be any more efficient.

When you're building factories and at least four launchpads and want to launch at high cadence anyway, even a dozen tanker launches is a small price to pay when you can avoid a custom architecture for a handful of Moon flights.

 

[Redwood1]

Elon Musk told employees at xAI, his artificial intelligence company, on Tuesday that the company needed a factory on the moon to build A.I. satellites and a massive catapult to launch them into space. From NYtimes- can’t wait for the Berger data centres in space article to explain factories on the moon and giant catapults!?
Also he’s posted going to build an elevator so anyone can go to the moon.
I can’t wait to invest in this genius - all humanity should be grateful he’s putting his incomparable skills to expand human consciousness and pretty much change course of humanity - well he did personally and gleefully and deliberately destroyed USAID resulting in minimum 800,000 deaths mostly children. But he did skip flying off for weekend Swedish raves for a while so it was a great sacrifice.

 

[Statistical]

When you're building factories and at least four launchpads and want to launch at high cadence anyway, even a dozen tanker launches is a small price to pay when you can avoid a custom architecture for a handful of Moon flights.

Absolutely for a handful of flights. The HLS is kinda derpy and ill suited but in that scenario it makes perfect sense. Especially with NASA paying ~$4B for 2 crewed flights and one uncrewed one. Artemis V+ would likely be another $1B or so each. This isn't like Starlink where economics drive everything there is plenty of meat in these contracts. The missions are rare but high value you don't need the perfect architecture.
So SpaceX will complete Artemis because they are paid to do that and have contractual obligations. The big question now is will they do it before or after the Chinese land on the moon.

Surprised ars doesn't have an article on this. One step closer for China.
https://spacenews.com/china-tests-c...and-rocket-recovery-in-major-lunar-milestone/

Where it makes no sense is in this bullshit narrative about SpaceX landing tens of thousands likely hundreds of thousands of tons on the moon to build cities. I am confident SpaceX will not land a single gram on the moon beyond what NASA pays them to do. SpaceX spending money it doesn't have to isn't going to make Elon Musk the first trillionaire.

 

[uhuznaa]

Absolutely for a handful of flights. The HLS is kinda derpy and ill suited but in that scenario it makes perfect sense. Especially with NASA paying ~$4B for 2 crewed flights and one uncrewed one. Artemis V+ would likely be another $1B or so each. This isn't like Starlink where economics drive everything there is plenty of meat in these contracts.

Where it makes no sense is in this bullshit narrative about SpaceX landing tens of thousands of tons on the moon to build cities. SpaceX s absolutely going to complete its Artemis missions because $4B is real money. The big question now is will they do it before or after the Chinese land on the moon.

Nothing makes sense for something that doesn't make sense...

 

[Wickwick]

Absolutely for a handful of flights. The HLS is kinda derpy and ill suited but in that scenario it makes perfect sense. Especially with NASA paying ~$4B for 2 crewed flights and one uncrewed one. Artemis V+ would likely be another $1B or so each. This isn't like Starlink where economics drive everything there is plenty of meat in these contracts. The missions are rare but high value you don't need the perfect architecture.
So SpaceX will complete Artemis because they are paid to do that. The big question now is will they do it before or after the Chinese land on the moon.

Either way I seriously doubt they land a single gram on the moon beyond that. SpaceX spending money it doesn't have to isn't going to make Elon Musk the first trillionaire.

I will say that I am aware of SpaceX spending money on at least a couple of design studies for ways of getting mass off the moon. It's not real money, and it's not ever likely to amount to actual lunar capacity, but at least SpaceX is planning for it as if it's real.

Then again, so is Blue Origin, so possibly this is just Elon playing copycat rather than the reverse we saw for so long.

 

[sporkinum]

Yuuuuup. Same here.

I used to watch Space X launches on our big TV in the living room, especially the Starship reuse tests. My wife gave me some good natured shit about how this was the geek superbowl the way I was acting.

I'm still vaguely happy reuse is moving forward, in an academic sense, but the personal excitement is just gone. I just kind of note it when it happens, usually via an article here. God knows I'm not reading or posting on forums about it any more.

I never missed a launch, but that hasn't been true for quite a while. I even skip over any spaceX stuff in Scott Manley's videos. (Unless there is a big explosion of course.)

 

[Statistical]

I will say that I am aware of SpaceX spending money on at least a couple of design studies for ways of getting mass off the moon. It's not real money, and it's not ever likely to amount to actual lunar capacity, but at least SpaceX is planning for it as if it's real.

Then again, so is Blue Origin, so possibly this is just Elon playing copycat rather than the reverse we saw for so long.

In order to be competitive in NASA contracts worth billions sure. The entire reason they designed HLS in the first place when the moon was "a distraction".

Outside of contractual obligations to NASA in which NASA pays then staggering sums of money for NASA missions in cislunar space I seriously doubt SpaceX will land a single gram on the moon (or Mars). The only thing that matters is him becoming the first trillionaire and you don't become that by spending your own money for the betterment of mankind.

To be clear he is under no obligation to do that. I just wish he would shut the fuck up about all the great things HE is going to do on Mars no Moon no Mars no Asteroids no orbital habs no back to Mars. He isn't doing any of that shit, never was, and never will. He just wants his cake and eat it too. He wants to not spend any money on mars or moon colonization while still getting the adoration of fanboys about imaginary plans which will never happen.

 

[windbourne]

Did I miss this or is the hot staging ring now back to symmetrical openings?
The last couple had asymmetrical so as to use the pressure from ship's engines to push booster's top around. Seemed like a good use of wasted energy.

 

[mauricewyn]

His ego will be satisfied by being the world's first trillionaire. No Mars city needed for that. First is also absolute. No matter how many pro-fascism trillionaires follow in his footsteps he will be the first.

I know the situation is complicated and there has been a lot of bad behavior and hurt feelings... but why is it always just about the money? It can't be that simple.

If I were in his shoes, I wouldn't just be thinking: How can I earn more money? I would be geeked by making things that, yes, obviously earn money. The money is a requirement to do the making after all, and the more money you have, the more of the making you can do. But I would be motivated by the requirements of the making first, and the money would be a necessary (but very important) secondary requirement of what and how the making happens.

Of course, if I had the successes he has had, everybody would just be saying I was trying to earn more money...

Scrooge McDuck and Mr. Crabs are cartoon characters, not real life, whole, actualized people.

 

[Statistical]

I know the situation is complicated and there has been a lot of bad behavior and hurt feelings... but why is it always just about the money? It can't be that simple.

If I were in his shoes, I wouldn't just be thinking: How can I earn more money? I would be geeked by making things that, yes, obviously earn money. The money is a requirement to do the making after all, and the more money you have, the more of the making you can do. But I would be motivated by the requirements of the making first, and the money would be a necessary (but very important) secondary requirement of what and how the making happens.

Of course, if I had the successes he has had, everybody would just be saying I was trying to earn more money...

Scrooge McDuck and Mr. Crabs are cartoon characters, not real life, whole, actualized people.

because it is a dick measuring contest for people who already have everything else. It isn't money in the sense you and I think about money. If your wealth increased 20% it would have a material impact on your life, your family life, what you can do, financial security, etc. There is not really anything he can do with $1T he can't do with $500B or $100B. Very few things he could do that he can't do with $10B.

At some point wealth just becomes a number on a scoreboard. He was/is willing to support fascism to make his score go higher faster. Building cities on Mars or the moon doesn't make the scoreboard go higher.

 

[windbourne]

HLS is a lousy lunar architecture primarily because of NASA requirements (NRHO, 100 day loiter, etc). If SpaceX is optimizing a lunar cargo version to their own requirements it will be far more efficient, and also more similar to the Mars variant.

This is a case of Physical vs Economical efficiency. SX understands about economical efficiency. NASA, CONgress, and a number of posters in social media, are still fighting that ( though a much larger number of SM posters are just haters of Musk and will simply BS against anything connected to Musk ).

To be honest, I am surprised that SX does not have the top of cargo ship open, with a folded crane that can pull items from ship and then place around the base of ship. it would also allow ship2ship transfer in space. Instead, with the current one, no easy transfer between ships and even more importantly, once on the ground, the container must be moved before the next one is unloaded. Then there is issue of containers in the ship itself. Will there be an elevator to move each container/level up/down?

For the crewed system, the side door makes sense. But, cargo? Neither physical nor economical would make sense.

 

[blackhawk887]

Did I miss this or is the hot staging ring now back to symmetrical openings?
The last couple had asymmetrical so as to use the pressure from ship's engines to push booster's top around. Seemed like a good use of wasted energy.

The booster has asymmetrical ship engine plume impingment reinforcement areas on the top dome, suggesting that they will gimbal some of the ship engines more than the others during hot staging. That will impart a known directional force to the booster, much like the closed slits did on v2.

 

[blackhawk887]

Building AI whatevers on the Moon is way way less plausible than 3He mining. Which is already, as you say, a very very dubious proposition. Thinking about what would be needed to build the infrastructure for even a 10 or 20 year out of date semiconductor fab on the Moon makes my head hurt. The fab itself would be a horror. Setting up a pipeline to go from raw materials to suitable inputs is its own infrastructure nightmare. A lot of the consumable chemicals are organics or light-element based, and would have to be imported from Earth. Etc. etc. etc.

He3 extraction has commercially viable He3 fusion as a prerequisite. That's basically sci-fi at this point. Off-world dark factory chip fabs are also sci-fi, but at least we know how to build dark factories and chip fabs here, while we have no idea how to do practical He3 fusion.

 

[windbourne]

The booster has asymmetrical ship engine plume impingment reinforcement areas on the top dome, suggesting that they will gimbal some of the ship engines more than the others during hot staging. That will impart a known directional force to the booster, much like the closed slits did on v2.

Ah, I did miss it. Thanks.

 

[windbourne]

He3 extraction has commercially viable He3 fusion as a prerequisite. That's basically sci-fi at this point. Off-world dark factory chip fabs are also sci-fi, but at least we know how to build dark factories and chip fabs here, while we have no idea how to do practical He3 fusion.

Helion energy is scaling up. They are already doing this.
Note that this is NOT a sustained fusion reaction, but a different means of obtaining electricity from the reactions.

 

[mauricewyn]

The vitriol here is amazing.

Yes, especially now... but it makes sense.

A lot of people here WANTED to believe and they are feeling betrayed. They put up with / ignored / rationalized that Elon might be a shit bag of a person, but at least the companies he started were moving things forward for the first time in decades.

The thing is, virtually anybody who gains power and influence is almost always a shit bag of a person. That is how they gain the power and influence. Elon isn't really special, but the feelings of betrayal are still just as real.

 

[mauricewyn]

For Artemis the concern is not cost as well the whole thing is expensive. The concern is the reliability and high cadence required due to it being a piss poor architecture for the moon that requires 10 to 20 launches.

So what you're saying is that Starship might really turn out to be like the N1... just not for the obvious reason everybody thought?

 

[barich]

If it helps, it looks like the xAI thing isn't a merger as such. It will be a wholly-owned subsidiary. This insulates SpaceX from the debts and liabilities of xAI.

The corporate veil can be pierced in certain cases. Like, say, fraud. But I'm sure there won't be any of that.

 

[Statistical]

So what you're saying is that Starship might really turn out to be like the N1... just not for the obvious reason everybody thought?

Hopefully not that bad but like uhuznaa suggests SpaceX may just need to use expendable tankers for Artemis 3 (both uncrewed test and crewed one). That removes one big unknown of perfecting starship recovery and reuse in the timeline. Also by stripping all the mass needed for reusability they can likely get 150t+ of prop per flight so the number of flights goes down. He estimated 8 expendable tanker flights but depending on just how light HLS and depot are it could be as low as five (plus HLS and depot).

Less flights and higher odds on each. It is still a lot of back to back flights for a relatively new launch vehicle but stacks the deck as much as you can. Build six expendable tankers and hope you get 5 out of 6 wins. Still a lot that could go wrong. Boiloff rate higher than expected, delays between launches, issues getting all (or any) of propellant to transfer, and potential for a mission ender like tanker damages the depot. Still I think 7 launches total has a lot lower pucker factor than 16 to 20.

 

[Wickwick]

Starship isn't good for any Deep Space mission. Fitst the design is terrible for landing on another world like the Moon or Mars. It's just too damn tall, and there will be restrictive limits on how large (size and mass) a payload can be delivered through a door cut into the side of a Starship and lowered to the surface by a crane. But that's only the minor problem. The big problem is that Starship is whiffing on its payload to orbit capability. This will require far too many tanker flights to fill up a propellant depot to support ONE HLS mission. It could take SpaceX half a decade of starts and stops trying to get Orbital Refueling working with enough reliability to support 20 to 30 or even 40 rendezvous, docking, and propellant transfer operations. And if there is an orbital catastrophe (explosion) it would create a debris field that would imperil all space flight for decades to come. And it would probably bring an instant end to using Starship for Deep Space missions. A RUD in orbit, would not be funny, it would likely create an instant geo-political crisis for the United States.

Starship is miserable for deep space missions - except the ones that might want to bring 100 tonnes of cargo / scientific equipment along. If NASA is happy to pay SpaceX billions to use on-orbit prop transfer for lunar HSF missions, they'll be happy to use that same capability to send probes to Jupiter, etc. for hundreds of millions.

And an on-orbit explosion would clean itself in very short order. By necessity, Starship is filling in low- or highly-elliptical orbits with a very low perigee. It can do this because it's dense as fuck. Debris, however, is not so dense and will have very nearly the same perigee. As such, anything that spews out during a RUD will rapidly decay.

Regardless of the shift from Mars to the moon or orbital datacenters, I'm confident that the economics of Starlink justify achieving most of the goals that SpaceX has set for Starship. And NASA is going to be more than welcome to buy such capacity.

 

[archtop]

The vitriol here is amazing. It runs about neck and neck with most Reddit posts and replies and reminds me of the old saying "all heat and NO light". Most people seem to chalk it up to politics, especially the current politics of the Left. I think it's simpler than that. It's envy. Here's a man, and his company (companies) who took huge risks and accomplished amazing things that more than once the experts dismissed as not possible. If you're a person whose worldview hasn't worked out, who hasn't accomplished much of anything, seeing somebody else succeed is just galling. It leaves you with two choices... go out, take risks, and try to accomplish something yourself, or spend your time in places like this, complaining bitterly about people who did. I'm reminded of the Russian story of the two poor neighbors... one was gifted a milk cow, which made his family's life much improved... The other neighbor was so angry at his neighbor's good fortune, he went over and killed the cow, because in his sad worldview, EVERYBODY must be just a miserable as he is. I see a lot of that here. Cheers.

Envy? Not for me. For me it's just a great disappointment that this man who I thought was so cool to have created something as amazing as SpaceX turned out to be so personally repulsive. No Ayn Randian figure there, just a loony, amoral man-child.

 

[Cargan Ricman]

Yes, especially now... but it makes sense.

A lot of people here WANTED to believe and they are feeling betrayed. They put up with / ignored / rationalized that Elon might be a shit bag of a person, but at least the companies he started were moving things forward for the first time in decades.

The thing is, virtually anybody who gains power and influence is almost always a shit bag of a person. That is how they gain the power and influence. Elon isn't really special, but the feelings of betrayal are still just as real.

I get the feeling of betrayal—it’s like finding out the guy who designed your favorite pair of shoes is also the guy who steps on everyone’s toes.

But honestly, what a jerk, amirite?

How dare he drop the cost of space flight by 90% while being annoying on the internet. How dare his company make the most popular car in the world while having the social skills of a 14-year-old on a Call of Duty server. And now, merging SpaceX with xAI just to build orbital supercomputers? Truly, the audacity!

It’s the ultimate trade-off: you can have a CEO who is a polite, well-adjusted saint who delivers 2% growth and zero innovation, or you can have the guy who builds the future while making you want to delete your account every other Tuesday.

At some point, you just have to decide if you're here for the pilot's personality or the destination of the flight.

 

[blackhawk887]

The big problem is that Starship is whiffing on its payload to orbit capability.

Orbital vehicle payload capability is extremely sensitive to small changes in performance. The performance increase from Starship v1 to v2 was less than 0.4%, but that nearly tripled the payload. If v3 has only a 1% performance improvement over v2 it will reach the 100+ t mark.

Even if they can't get that full 1% improvement immediately, it's not unrealistic to get there incrementally over then next 5 or 10 or 20 flights, since SpaceX does continuously work to improve their vehicles. I don't think it's reasonable to assume that v2 level performance will continue with future vehicles. In fact, performance will almost certainly immediately jump quite significantly with even the first v3, as it's a much more significant upgrade than v1>v2 was.

 

[Ianal]

The vitriol here is amazing. It runs about neck and neck with most Reddit posts and replies and reminds me of the old saying "all heat and NO light". Most people seem to chalk it up to politics, especially the current politics of the Left. I think it's simpler than that. It's envy. Here's a man, and his company (companies) who took huge risks and accomplished amazing things that more than once the experts dismissed as not possible. If you're a person whose worldview hasn't worked out, who hasn't accomplished much of anything, seeing somebody else succeed is just galling. It leaves you with two choices... go out, take risks, and try to accomplish something yourself, or spend your time in places like this, complaining bitterly about people who did. I'm reminded of the Russian story of the two poor neighbors... one was gifted a milk cow, which made his family's life much improved... The other neighbor was so angry at his neighbor's good fortune, he went over and killed the cow, because in his sad worldview, EVERYBODY must be just a miserable as he is. I see a lot of that here. Cheers.

Nope. Watching somebody have ever-increasing amounts of money thrown at them, for ever-increasing amounts of bullshit, and still being lauded as the biggest bestest genius entrepreneur since whoever invented sliced bread - that's galling.

Watching a grown man throw a hissy fit and stamp his feet until he gets his trillion dollar remuneration package approved whilst overseeing record losses for the company awarding him said remuneration package - that's galling.

Watching the fucker spew his bile over the internet and sticking his far right shit-stirring nose into everybody else's business and have people take him seriously because golly gosh he's so rich and therefore whatever he says must be really super duper important - that's galling.

Watching a brighter future of cleaner electric transport, clean energy and yes, space exploration, be pissed away in favour of trillion dollar next-word bullshit machines - my apologies, the technology that will let us make "a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars", whatever that load of happy horseshit is supposed to mean - that's galling.

Watching the smug bastard continue to not succeed and still get showered with ever increasing amounts of wealth?

You guessed it - galling.

Doesn't help that the man is an attention-seeking, hypocritical (free speech but only if it comports with my worldview), fascist (MechaHitler), CSAM peddling troll either. Who, incidentally, is entirely happy to dismiss anything or anyone that disagrees with him or tries to rein him in, as being politically motivated, so you can shove your bleating about 'the current politics of the Left' straight up your ass.

SpaceX has done some genuinely amazing things, but Musk's reputation has been coasting on that for way too damn long.

 

[VelvetRemedy]

I get the feeling of betrayal—it’s like finding out the guy who designed your favorite pair of shoes is also the guy who steps on everyone’s toes.

But honestly, what a jerk, amirite?

How dare he drop the cost of space flight by 90% while being annoying on the internet. How dare his company make the most popular car in the world while having the social skills of a 14-year-old on a Call of Duty server. And now, merging SpaceX with xAI just to build orbital supercomputers? Truly, the audacity!

It’s the ultimate trade-off: you can have a CEO who is a polite, well-adjusted saint who delivers 2% growth and zero innovation, or you can have the guy who builds the future while making you want to delete your account every other Tuesday.

At some point, you just have to decide if you're here for the pilot's personality or the destination of the flight.

"I don't care if he eats kittens as long as he makes giant phallic symbols fly into the sky" is truly the intellectual peak of SpaceX defenders.

If spaceflight is truly some kind of crucial imperative for the future, then it's important enough to need a more moral champion than Musk. If it isn't some kind of crucial imperative for the future, it isn't a reason to defend Musk.

 

[Cargan Ricman]

Envy? Not for me. For me it's just a great disappointment that this man who I thought was so cool to have created something as amazing as SpaceX turned out to be so personally repulsive. No Ayn Randian figure there, just a loony, amoral man-child.

Calling Musk amoral is like calling a hurricane 'rude'.

That 'loony man-child' is accomplishing things that many / most said were impossible. I’ll take the 'loony' results over polite stagnation any day.

Think about it,,, if you're drowning and a guy pulls you into a boat, do you complain that he didn't say 'please' when he grabbed your arm? Musk is essentially trying to pull the whole human species into a boat, while it sounds like you guys are just busy complaining about his personality.

 

[eyesoars]

Helion energy is scaling up. They are already doing this.
Note that this is NOT a sustained fusion reaction, but a different means of obtaining electricity from the reactions.

Is anyone working on fusion actually anywhere near actual, as opposed to theoretical, breakeven? Getting fusion reactions happening is not terribly difficult; getting actual useful electric power out of it, to my understanding, isn't anywhere near happening, even with all the recent improvements in understanding plasma turbulence and containment.

As in, you can get hydrogen fusion reactions going with a few thousand dollars and a vacuum pump. Or you can get actual energy out of an H-bomb. But getting net positive electricity out of a plasma reactor or implosion reactor is still at least "five years" away.

 

[Stuart Frasier]

Think about it,,, if you're drowning and a guy pulls you into a boat, do you complain that he didn't say 'please' when he grabbed your arm? Musk is essentially trying to pull the whole human species into a boat, while it sounds like you guys are just busy complaining about his personality.

The fuck he is. He's enriching himself while working towards fascism for the rest of us.

 

[dmsilev]

Calling Musk amoral is like calling a hurricane 'rude'.

That 'loony man-child' is accomplishing things that many / most said were impossible. I’ll take the 'loony' results over polite stagnation any day.

Think about it,,, if you're drowning and a guy pulls you into a boat, do you complain that he didn't say 'please' when he grabbed your arm? Musk is essentially trying to pull the whole human species into a boat, while it sounds like you guys are just busy complaining about his personality.

Tell it to the several hundred thousand people that Musk gleefully cut off from life-saving food and medicine. Or is it only the chosen few who get to ride in that boat?

 

[shoe]

No it isn't. Methalox is a turd if you want to make fuel on the moon. If you don't then HLS has all the wrong mass fractions. It is why it takes a staggering 10 to 20 tanker launches to send a single HLS to the moon and back. NASA is now say more like 16 to 20. If Starship doesn't meet its optimistic payload to LEO numbers NASA says as a contigency it may require 20 to 40 tanker launches per HLS. In comparison depending on the transfer window a launch to Mars requires 6 to 8.

I mean it works in a square peg into a round hole kinda way. It is using a Mars spacecraft for a few NASA missions because it is cheaper than building a lunar architecture from the ground up. It is inefficient but who cares if it is only a missions for NASA every 2-3 years.

If Mars isn't the primary goal then it makes no damn sense. Without fueling on the moon and due to no aerobraking you would want a lander with smaller tanks and a seperate transport/tug vehicle to reduce propellant mass requirements and not require 16-20 launches of fuel for every landing. Using a tug/transporter is effectively gaining additional staging which reduces propellant mass fractions. If you want to evolve from bring fuel to making fuel eventually you really want hydrolox.

Of course if "cities on the moon" is pure bullshit then it doesn't really matter. Charge $2.8B a mission to NASA and brute force it. Saying "Starship is perfect for crewed lunar landings" is pure retcon. We have always been at war with EastAsia.

4 to 1 give or take is the ratio of oxygen to methane. Sourcing the oxygen on the moon isn't as good as sourcing fuel and oxidizer but it's not totally pointless either.