[areoform]

I make efforts to add to discussions instead of subtracting with negativity. Recently, I've broken my rule quite a few times, fretting over the future of general compute. I'd vowed to not break it again, but the discussion about Starship lacks a vital perspective.

.

I don't understand the hype behind Starship. It's confusing to me. It is touching and nice; it's great to see people excited about space. However, the expectations and projections seem misaligned with reality. It seems that people are assuming that this is the vehicle itself, or at least an earlier version of it. That is likely to not be the case. This isn't anywhere close to the finished vehicle and several key technological problems remain. Yet, they've explicitly shaped it like the final version, and hyped it.

In certain ways, SpaceX seems to be leaning into the hype, leading to a gross mismatch between expectations and reality. For example, the current headline is inaccurate as the flight cannot be categorized as sub-orbital. The vehicle did not cross the Kármán line. These issues will detract from the meat of what has been achieved today.

SpaceX has achieved many milestones including demonstrating groundbreaking GNC (Guidance, Navigation and Control) capability today. Today's most impressive achievement is a high performant, stable Liquid-Methane engine. Prior investigations and projects found notable instability during ignition as well as low frequency instability. Another historical issue has been the need for a high pre-burner chamber pressure for a LCH4 engine.

These issues were mapped out via prior research. For e.g., in 2014, there was a NASA project that shares some heritage with Raptor, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Morpheus

> During the rest of March 2014 the ALHAT hardware was inserted again permitting a successful tethered test of the assembly on March 27, 2014. Tether Test 34 flight trajectory was similar to TT33 and TT29 with two hovers and a 3 m (9.8 ft) translation during a 3.25 m (10.7 ft) ascent.[97] Free Flight 10 (FF10) took place on April 2, 2014 with the ALHAT in open loop mode. The ALHAT imaged the Hazard Field and calculating navigation solutions in real time. Morpheus ascended to a maximum altitude of about 804 feet (245 m), then flew forward and downward initially at a 30-degree glideslope, then levelling out, covering a total of about 1334 feet (406.5 m) horizontally in 50 seconds while diverting to a landing site location 78 feet (23.8 m) from its initial target, before descending and landing on a dedicated landing pad at the front (south) of the ALHAT Hazard Field. The total flight time was ~96 sec, the longest flight to date.[98] Free Flight 11 on April 24, 2014 was a repeat of Free Flight 10 with some changes to the ALHAT.[99] April 30, 2014 Free Flight 12 was a repeat of FF10 but with the ALHAT choosing the landing location.[100]

The engine was designed for moon operation, and demonstrated dynamic hazard avoidance and translation to a previously unknown "safe" landing area. The technology has found its way to the Nova-C lander which is slated for 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova-C

NASA also has some fairly detailed technical reports on the subjects from earlier experimentation,

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20100034924

and a comparative analysis of LCH4 and RP-1 for reusable boosters,

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Holger_Burkhardt/public...

The key impressive element over here is a reusable, throttleable, stable LCH4/LOX engine that seems to be capable of reignition (at least in the atmosphere). This is a significant achievement and one that SpaceX should be lauded for. However, an engine does not a starship make.

A proper comparison would be the Space Transportation System, or the Shuttle. As Starship has Raptor, the Shuttle had the RS-25, a high efficiency, highly manoeuvrable and performant marvel of engineering. It is perhaps the only engine that could be re-used over a dozen times. A claim unmatched until the development of the past few blocks of Merlin engines. The STS also had superior GNC, for its time, and could autonomously land in flying brick mode all the way from orbit.

However, that wasn't enough. The real issue turned out to be the thermal protection system, operational temperature ranges and the cost of refurbishing these machines.

The STS may look like a bad bet right now, but if you were sitting in the 1970s, watching the RS-25 perform, seeing the GNC work, and watching NASA nail the first test flight with two humans on top in a single go, it would have seemed like the future.

However, much of what makes rocket science hard is in the details. And those details simply haven't been filled in yet for Starship. These hops are excellent tests, but once again, an engine and GNC do not a starship make.

In light of this, I am unable to understand the excitement for this vehicle. Several people assume that they're close to sending an orbital vehicle. Perhaps, but it wouldn't be reusable. And it would be quite mass inefficient for a one-way trip due to the construction techniques used.

Starship isn't anywhere close to the primetime. It's at least half-a-decade to a decade away from initial reusable testflights, and perhaps more given the under funding of the Artemis program. It is worth remembering that early on in SpaceX's history, Musk made a dummy rocket and took it to DC to convince politicians to help allocate COTS & CRS funding to SpaceX. His gambit succeeded. My personal perception and worry is that SpaceX is repeating the tactic at scale, creating a sense that they're further along than they are. This perception is mixed with a more dangerous one that the Starship is in a league of its own. It's not. Blue Origin's work and approach may be superior in the long run, as they're designing mission specific vehicles that are optimised to their context.

It is hard to convey to the public what realistic milestones look like in rocketry, but for context Raptor has been in development since 2009. The LCH4/LOX variant since 2012. It has taken nearly a decade to near the (limited) flight readiness stage. It is likely that the other components will take longer. I am worried that this early excitement will sour as the program takes longer than anticipated. The space program is highly dependent on public funding, there would be serious repercussions if public perception sours. I am worried about a rocketry winter.

.

Edit. Re: Artemis & NASA

The Artemis program and other contracts now fund the bulk of Starship development. More broadly, NASA has poured billions into SpaceX and they're SpaceX's largest "investor" by far, except NASA doesn't take equity and treats it as "pre-funding" an eventual contract (which would also pay per launch).

Starship is (likely) to be mostly (up to 60% to 70% or so) NASA funded.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-names-companies-to-d...

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1316417597257129985

https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1316421539521327109

Re: early SpaceX history and the dummy rocket.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=903

[breckinloggins]

I'm a SpaceX fan, and I hear your arguments so let me give one aspect of the other side:

I think you and I are in a bet about whether progress for Starship is going to be roughly linear or exponential. Obviously I'm betting emotionally on the latter. Granted I could go on and on about the facts that I think back up my assessment, but in the end I think you and I both know it really comes down to hunches, doesn't it?

My hunch is that your argument is the equivalent of Steve Ballmer's famous •shrug* about the iPhone. But I could be wrong, of course.

[XorNot]

This is a lot of words to basically project a motivation onto the reporting about a thing which actually happened that isn't there.

You're getting downvoted because this reads as "concern trolling". Let everyone else manage their own feelings.

[areoform]

This scenario has played out before, with Faster, Better, Cheaper from the 90s, and kind-of/loosely with STS.

> Missions marked with an asterisk were considered failures (5 spacecraft failed in space; 1 project was canceled), putting the overall FBC success rate at a paltry 63%. This low success rate—and the fact that 4 of them occurred in one year, 1999—are what linger in the space community’s memory.

> For example, an examination of the timeline reveals an often-missed observation: the first 9 of 10 missions were successful, a 90% success rate. The FBC approach broke when proposed missions began getting more ambitious without a change in schedule and cost cap. The early successes made everyone overconfident and the missions became too aggressive for their constraints, leading to failures (Launius and McCurdy 2005):

>

> “In hindsight, it becomes apparent that [NASA’s] success in the nineties had led the review and selection committees to accept very ambitious and complex proposals with a very high science return on budgets and schedules that were quite optimistic.”

http://www.elizabethafrank.com/colliding-worlds/fbc

Pathfinder and Sojourner demonstrated new technologies and were done on a budget smaller than one of Viking's experiments. The failures soured the public memory, lead to congressional hearings, and funding cuts.

The public is a fickle master.

[XorNot]

NASA is a public institution and has been beholden to the Senate's irrational whims for it's entire life.

SpaceX is a private company. They receive public grants, sure, but they have a profitable launch business with the Falcon 9. Their requirement is that they can sustain themselves, not that they can keep their own internal project from being cancelled by directive of the US government.

On some level what the public (and really, it's space nerds like us) think doesn't really matter. The public would in fact be hard pressed to stop them getting contracts from the US government provided they can underbid Boeing at this point.

[valuearb]

What SpaceX is doing is nothing like anything NASA has ever attempted.

[valuearb]

Wow, for such an expert you sure get a lot of things wrong and wrapped up in minor issues if no consequence.

1. Project Morpheus was a mostly inconsequential project just retreading the same areas pioneered by the DC-X.

2. Other than propellant, it has nothing to do with Raptor, likely the most advanced rocket engine ever made. The Raptor is the first successful full flowed staged combustion engine ever. This test alone demonstrates how robust it is in actual use across actual restarts.

3) The RS-25 was not reusable, every single one required many months and full rebuilds between flights. SpaceX has flown the same engines to space within a month with minimal maintenance.

4) The STS could not land autonomously, which is why two Astronauts has to risk their lives on that first launch. The Soviet Buran could and did land autonomously on its first flight.

5) BO isn’t even in the space flight business, it’s never out anything into orbit or even flown a single person or paid payload in its miniature sub-orbital rocket. BO is 15 years behind SpaceX in actual accomplishments.

6) Also you clearly aren’t qualified to judge Starship construction techniques. It’s payload and performance targets have been widely discussed and vetted.

Lastly NASA funded Falcon 9 development with the COTs contract, and got massive launch saving out of it. Far better deal than their Boeing contract. NASA has contributed almost nothing to Starship development other than jumping in late with a small Artemis contract and a tiny in orbit refueling contract.

[simonh]

Great summary, but there’s also this fundamental misunderstanding of what this test was about:

> This isn't anywhere close to the finished vehicle and several key technological problems remain. Yet, they've explicitly shaped it like the final version...

One of the primary objectives of this test was to verify the aerodynamics of the vehicle. How could they test the aerodynamics if it was a different shape from the final version? Someone’s not paying attention, like at all.

Almost none of that screed was actually criticising specific aspects of the vehicle itself, it’s mostly discussion of irrelevant aspects of past vehicles as a smoke screen for actually not having much pertinent to say, and what is relevant is just plain wrong.

[areoform]

I appreciate and respect your enthusiasm. I wish more people were as passionate about spaceflight as you.

Raptor shares the pintle-type injector, which was designed for the LEM and was part of the technology transfer to SpaceX as a part of their participation in the overarching COTS/CRS programs. The engine's design was partly funded by the USAF, and is a part of a rich history of alternate engine designs that all learn/share from one another.

SpaceX in general has leveraged NASA's rich history and high open-ness to integrate this history into their work, https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/hist...

Raptor is one of the few advanced engine concepts that have gone from the test stand to near-use, and that's an amazing achievement.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Raptor wasn't the first full flowed staged combustion engine. Being the first doesn't change what Raptor has done, taken several technologies from the test-stand phase to flight testing.

Autoland was de-emphasized due to demands for greater control by the astronaut corps. There was also the incident with STS-3. However, the Shuttle was designed from the ground up with GNC that was meant for full-scale autopilot, including landing. They were hoping for long-term space habitation and to send vehicles uncrewed and then return with crews from the Moon, Mars, and perhaps beyond. It was felt that the astronauts would be rusty and weak after continued microgravity exposure so autoland was emphasized during the design process. For its time, the STS had extremely advanced GNC and displayed mission capabilities that hadn't been displayed before. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19760024058

One of the RS-25 engines was used 22 times. This was engine SN-2012. Another was used 19 times, SN-2019. They were designed to be flown and re-flown 50+ times, each. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226730434_Reusabili...

BO has performed multiple suborbital flights using the same booster, and have taken scientific payloads for these flights.

Steel is heavier than Al and most other aerospace materials. It was chosen for Starship as a part of a novel Thermal Protection System, without that mission role, it is mass inefficient.

I am happy to hear your palpable excitement. I hope this comment helps you adjust your mental model to a better picture of the industry.

[simonh]

All of these points are well known and understood. Frankly, so what? Musk has been effusive in his praise of NASA’s help at SpaceX and many times has said he couldn’t have done any of it without their help. We know that. What actual point are you trying to make, other than list mainly irrelevant facts.

Yes some Musk fans ridicule NASA for past failures or lost opportunities and that’s a shame. It’s also widely understood in the community that this is mainly due to political interference and constraints forced on the organisation. But none of that has anything to do with your ‘criticisms’.

Take the points about steel. That matters on a non reusable system because you’re wasting weight for no mission relevant purpose, but if it allows you to reuse the vehicle rather than not, is it really still an inefficient choice? What point are you even trying to make? If that even is a criticism, it’s just not relevant. If you genuinely think it’s a bad choice, just say so and say why. But you don’t actually give any explanation of why any of these points matter.

[greedo]

>I hope this comment helps you adjust your mental model to a better picture of the industry.

I hope you realize that not only are you getting downvoted for factual inaccuracies, style of writing etc, but this passive aggressive coda at the end does you no favors...

[valuearb]

I could also appreciate your enthusiasm if you could get your facts right.

1. Raptor does not use Pintle injectors (invented at Caltech), it uses coaxial swirl injectors.

2. Raptor was designed and developed completely by SpaceX for six years before the USAF gave it small contracts to develop specific versions for their potential needs.

3. Raptor is the first full-flow staged combustion rocket engine ever flown. Flying is a lot more important than the lab. And a lot harder given vibration and acceleration effects.

4. The Shuttle autoland system was incomplete when first implemented, it could not land the Shuttle. Even when “completed” NASA never trusted it or allowed its use . The Russians did land Buran with their system.

5. While it’s technically true that RS-25 engines were re-used, they were also required to be completely torn down and rebuilt between flights. At some point you’ve replaced so many parts it’s basically a new engine, and it was an extremely expensive maintenance requirement that entirely negated the value of reuse.

6. BO has never made an orbital flight, which is the key first step for any space travel. It’s never risked a human life in its mini rocket, nor ever flown a paid cargo. It’s still behind the 2006 version of SpaceX, which was attempting orbital flights and succeeding in 2009.

7. Without a thermal protection system your flights are one way and everything is “mass inefficient”. The inefficiency of throwing away a complete launch system every flight is the only inefficiency that matters.

SLS is designed to put 100 tons of payload in orbit. Not including development costs, each launch will cost roughly $1B, with development costs it will be over to $4B per launch. Every bit of that hardware will be destroyed every launch. It’s payload cost per pound will be over $40,000.

The Starship stack is designed to put 110+ tons of cargo in orbit, inside a 120 ton Starship. It’s launch mass will be nearly double the SLS. So on paper it’s actual payload mass percentage is about half the SLS.

But none of the Starship stack is destroyed at launch, it’s all reused. Cost of fuel for each flight is around $500K. It’s launch cost will be less than $50M, eventually maybe $5M. That means it’s payload cost per pound starts at $200/lb and could drop as low as $20/lb.

Sure, build a Starship out of aluminum or carbon fiber if you never want to be able to land it on earth again, or want to land on Mars with far smaller payloads without the massive fuel savings from Aerobraking.

NASA isn’t paying SpaceX to develop Starship. SpaceX is actually getting paid to design a lunar only version of Starship that won’t need thermal protection. Perhaps they’ll custom build NASAs versions out of lighter materials to increase their lunar landing payloads.

But they won’t do that for Starships in general because it makes them too inefficient for their planned missions. Starships efficiency cones from in-orbit refueling, which is how the same Starship can take the same 110+ ton payload to earth orbit, and on to land it on Mars.

[vardump]

"Starship isn't anywhere close to the primetime. It's at least half-a-decade to a decade away from initial reusable testflights, and perhaps more given the under funding of the Artemis program."

What would be the reason to believe it's that far from being usable? How would Artemis funding have anything to do with Starship?

"It is worth remembering that early on in SpaceX's history, Musk made a dummy rocket and took it to DC to convince politicians to help allocate COTS & CRS funding to SpaceX."

Reference for this?

[areoform]

Re: Artemis & NASA

The Artemis program and other contracts fund the bulk of Starship development. NASA has poured billions into SpaceX and they're SpaceX's largest "investor" by far, except NASA doesn't take equity and treats it as "pre-funding" an eventual contract (which would also pay per launch).

Starship is (likely) to be mostly (up to 60% to 70% or so) NASA funded.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-names-companies-to-d...

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1316417597257129985

https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1316421539521327109

Re: early SpaceX history.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=903

[valuearb]

Now you are just making things up. SpaceX definitely needed the COTS contract to build the Falcon 9, but NASA got a massive cut in launch costs out of it.

NASA has contributed very little to Starship development. The in orbit refueling experiment contract is tiny, as is their Artemis contract.

And Musk used a Falcon to promote SpaceX in Washington DC, what’s your point?

[jcims]

I agree with basically everything you said except for your assumption of what people are excited about. To be fair you lead with saying you don’t understand it if course, but where you’re landing isn’t anywhere close to what interests me about it.

For me the excitement is in the try, in the front row seat in failure and success. It’s not that it couldn’t be done, or that it hasn’t been done, but that somebody is doing it and we get to see it warts and all. The flight today is a perfect example. It was a lot of fun to watch. I’m sure there’s lots of amazing innovation happening at Blue Origin, but there’s nothing to really talk about because they don’t share it. If Bezos started some mad max bullshit and it felt like a legit race with giant explosions the whole damn world would be tuning into these things.

SpaceX has lots of new fans, but there are lots of old fans that have been around for a decade and are still excited. Elon time is what it is, two years or five it’s still progress. They nailed their first barge landing five years ago. If the first time we see the giant streak of a white hot Starship re-entering the atmosphere is 2025, it’ll still be worth the wait.

[Forge36]

Perhaps the key to success truely is "over promise under deliver"

He's picked a target of Mars! It's going to be _decades_ of failure until it happens. The current status: successful steps of key component test required for sustainable future price.

Building the hype train for a 20 year goal is hard I don't know many companies that can sell "it takes a year".

Humanity has already sent an object to Mars. The next goal is "human on Mars", and golly if we can we'll bring them back!

The secondary goal "cheaply"

At my current weight i cost 1,700,000 minimum to get into space. Getting that down to 170,000 means I could actually afford it (and written into my marriage is the understanding that if I ever get the chance to go Mars I'm willing to divorce to make that happen)

Or: It's not the ship. It's the mission. The ship is just an visible process towards that goal.

>people are assuming that this is the vehicle itself

>Yet, they've explicitly shaped it like the final version, and hyped it.

It is the vehicle, it's just not finished.

There's work to be done. Let's get to it

[someperson]

> It's at least half-a-decade to a decade away from initial reusable testflights, and perhaps more given the under funding of the Artemis program

SpaceX is not dependent on Artemis funding other than lunar Starship. Yusaku Maezawa's Dear Moon also provides $500 million in Starship funding (presumably tranches get released for successful milestones including this test). SpaceX are otherwise self-funding the Starship test program so far. It might become easier as Starlink satellite internet system comes out of beta and generates large cash flow.

Elon Musk estimated the entire Starship program to cost a mere $10 billion. Taxpayer money helps (especially for moon and Mars missions), but SpaceX needs to create a next generation rocket (both stages fully-and-rapidly re-usable) to stave off future competition (though Blue Origin is very far behind).

Even without government funding for Mars and the moon, low-earth orbit provides ample incentives: commercial, government (ISS etc) and military (reconnaissance sats) for SpaceX to slowly and steadly develop Starship. A few billion for Starship development for moon missions would definitely accelerate the otherwise self-funded schedule to land unmanned payloads on Mars from 12+ years to 5 years.

Also Starship is not 5 years away from orbital flight but less than 18 months away. Super Heavy is built on exactly technologies as Starship (mass-manufacturing stainless-steel rings then rapidly stacking them): the first test articles are already being assembled using the same equipment that Starship uses. The Starship re-entry heat shield tiles are the biggest unknown at the moment, but future test flights of SN9 and beyond will figure this out.

The bulk of Starship funding is not coming from NASA. Well maybe if you consider SpaceX re-investing the profits generated from the International Space Station crew and cargo resupply contracts as "NASA funding" (but I don't). SpaceX has received some development funding for the Raptor engine ("In January 2016, the US Air Force awarded a US$33.6 million development contract to SpaceX to develop a prototype version of its methane-fueled reusable Raptor engine for use on the upper stage of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles, which required double-matching funding by SpaceX of at least US$67.3 million.").

EDIT: As far as funding goes, I believe the direct Starship funding is NASA's Human Landing System: Funding $135 million of DESIGN WORK as part of the Artemis program over (10-month period ends in Feb 2021) for the Lunar Starship variant. The Air Force did provide $40.7 million for developing the Raptor engine a few years ago though. It would appear that a significant amount of Starship investment so far as been re-invested profit, external investment and funding for the private "Dear Moon" mission.

[Tepix]

> Yusaku Maezawa's Dear Moon also provides $500 million in Starship funding

Source?

[someperson]

In September 2018 Elon Musk estimated that the total cost of Starship will be $5 billion, and no more than $10 billion but no less than $2 billion. In that same presentation Yusaku Maezawa later seems to confirm that he is paying 5% of the Starship development costs [1], but it could be something lost in translation.

5% of $5 billion is $250 million (and of $10 billion is $500 million). Maezawa’s contributions are all going directly toward [developing Starship into an operational system] [2]

Given he's taking himself and 6-8 artists plus 1-2 crew members. It's hard to believe he's paid just $250 million. That would probably make NASA very angry given they're paying $400 million per launch for Crew Dragon to carry 4 people.

I know its not a direct source, but the above analysis suggests he's paying several hundred million dollars for the Dear Moon project. $500 million is a reasonable estimate. Though I suspect that's on the low side.

[1] https://youtu.be/0q2gUWTcLRI?t=4313 [2] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/yusaku-maezawa-zozo-ceo-r...

[thatswrong0]

What is the actual point of telling people to not be excited about watching technological progress happening in front of their very eyes..? It's certainly not to temper expectations that things may take longer than people expect (because it certainly shouldn't take _that_ many words to say something so simple).. does it just make you feel smart or something?

> This perception is mixed with a more dangerous one that the Starship is in a league of its own. It's not. Blue Origin's work and approach may be superior in the long run, as they're designing mission specific vehicles that are optimised to their context.

Has Blue Origin even gotten a rocket into orbit yet?

[mlindner]

https://craft.co/spacex/funding-rounds

SpaceX is funded a lot more than by just NASA.

[CarVac]

I agree that we should be tempering our expectations, but it says "suborbital flight" and not "suborbital spaceflight" so the headline at least is correct.

My hope is that Starlink and Starship enable each other to succeed long enough for the technology to develop to the point where the flights and reuse are truly routine.