Whether or not they hit April specifically (some of which isn't under their control, freak weather or the like can happen) they've clearly been checking through prep at an impressive, disciplined pace and it'll be soon. And importantly once they start they've set things up to keep the iteration going and do more and more ironing things out, and then going into full production. All technical merits aside, that, mass production and cadence, will itself be amazing vs previous efforts. The first launch will simultaneously be incredibly exciting and meaningful, and yet also meaningful in that it won't be that meaningful if that makes any sense. If it operates perfectly beyond expectations great, if it blows up at Max-Q that'd still give them a fair amount and they can quickly try again. Not a multi-billion white elephant that we might only ever see a handful of launch in history, but something aimed to ultimately be as unremarkable and reliable as a commericial airline.
I'm a bit too young for Apollo, so it feels incredibly fortunate to be able to watch the next great step forward for humanity. Starship is both the first true economics focused rocket to production and after F9 the end of the beginning of a shift in mindset for space. The ripple effects of the disruption will be fascinating and exciting as well. And we'll get to watch if live, in beautiful detail.
I understand the distinction but I wonder if it’s only useful because of the weird nature of previous rocket engineering efforts. Notably, NASA contracting out different components due to the quirks of being a government entity. SpaceX is much different than that but aren’t they rather similar to, say, car companies?
I mean if SpaceX is a rocket factory company, isn’t Ford a car factory company? We just don’t include factory because it’s redundant.
The thing that made Ford revolutionary is precision mass production . You could take parts produced in factories on different continents and freely interchange them. Parts with tolerance of a thousandth of an inch.
Ford bought out Johansson just to make sure he had access to the gage blocks that were the enabling technology of the day.
There probably _is_ a similar, relevant distinction between mass-manufactured cars like Ford's and hand-built high-end cars like, I dunno, a McLaren F1, though. We don't use this exact terminology, but I think SpaceX is trying to be Ford in contrast to the legacy players, which are McLaren.
yeah i think any company that's more than just a brand name / middle man could say that their production process is their product rather than what they actually sell.
spacex does not sell any rocket factories even if that is what they spend the most money on developing so i'd consider them a rocket company because to me a company should probably be described by what brings in the income
at some level, even a middle man could say that they are a sourcing and branding company rather whatever product bears their name
"I mean if SpaceX is a rocket factory company, isn’t Ford a car factory company? We just don’t include factory because it’s redundant.
"
I think you could call any company that tries to mass produce something a "X factory company" because from a certain scale on production and supply chains are where the real knowledge is. Apple could be called a "phone factory company".
Could it? It doesn't actually make them. It hires 3rd party companies for that. Where Ford owns/operates factories that produces their products. Unless I'm confused and Ford doesn't own their factories?
Ownership doesn't seem particularly important. Apple designs the specifications, the supply chains, and the QC, leaving a few pieces of the labor supply up to partners.
Still seems like a phone factory company, even if they don't own everything soup to nuts like early auto factories tried to do.
True. When the Artemis test launches were being scrubbed it really felt like an all-or-nothing moment. Even thought it was a rocket designed to be a disposable test article, it felt like failure would have necessitated a review of the whole program.
With the upcoming starship test, it feels like even if it ends up being a 100 meter firework, the engine is still purring.
Yeah regardless of the outcome the real significance here is the SpaceX getting into an orbital launch test cadence, which with some luck should speed up after the first few once the various kinks in preparation and the bureaucratic half of the equation get smoothed out and it all becomes routine.
If they can pull this off I think we may enter an age with a clear "Before super heavy reusable launch" and "after".
It's mind boggling how much stuff a Starship will be able to chuck into space and come down and then do it again and again.
Consider this, the military is starting to explore the idea of moving heavy military equipment anywhere in the world within 90 minutes using this kind of capability. International Space Station sized habitats are a handful of launches over months, not dozens over decades. A single Starship launch could place multiple hubble-sized space observatories up in a single launch.
> International Space Station sized habitats are a handful of launches over months, not dozens over decades. A single Starship launch could place multiple hubble-sized space observatories up in a single launch.
Even if they just stacked a modified Starship designed to stay in orbit (just enough fuel to get into orbit, ability to jettison engine section, some solar panels bolted on) and shot that up, that'd get you as much or more internal pressurized volume than the ISS in a single launch.
Absolutely insane. Wonderful way to communicate it, too - makes it trivial even for people with only a passing interest to understand what a step-change this is.
>Consider this, the military is starting to explore the idea of moving heavy military equipment anywhere in the world within 90 minutes
How reliable would this really be in practice? I'm thinking of all the times a projected launch has to get scrubbed and rescheduled days later. Not exactly the type of delivery uncertainty you'd want for critical equipment.
As a former air force contracting specialist... This is completely wrong. Bases are not cheap to build, maintain or defend (Politically, physically and fiscally).
Also, no matter how much money you spend or how many bases you build, you can't get 90 minute asset delivery EVERYWHERE ON EARTH, which is every military strategists' wet dreams since alexander.
Lastly, if you haven't noticed the military doesn't really care about 'Cheap', or they wouldn't have spend ungodly numbers on the f35. They care about effective. The check book is infinite, and slight advantage is everything.
> Lastly, if you haven't noticed the military doesn't really care about 'Cheap', or they wouldn't have spend ungodly numbers on the f35.
Being cheap was the motivation for everything that led to the F-35 being expensive, so, no, this is wrong: the military cares a lot about cheap, they are just very bad at doing it.
> completely wrong. Bases are not cheap to build, maintain or defend
Nobody suggested building more bases. The proposed problem was launch reliability. A major reason for launch scrubs is weather.
AustinDev proposed staging in orbit [1]. I said it’s cheaper to have more than one launch location on the ground over more than one launch location in orbit.
also: this model is 9 meters in diameter, and will already be more robust to weather effects than the f9, the 18 meter diameter model would be a beast if ever built.
I imagine there's a lot to go into it. For example, if it's a one-of-a-kind weapon with a long lead time to develop, they probably have a pretty low risk threshold.
Clearly there remains legitimate skepticism on both fronts, but it’s pretty crazy to think that we might get “AI” (or at least, the first widespread use of something ordinary people might reasonably call “AI”) and reusable, economical heavy-lift capability all within the same calendar year.
> the military is starting to explore the idea of moving heavy military equipment
The killer app for the military is missile defense. Currently the US has about 4 dozen ground based midcourse interceptors. Each costs more than $100 million and carries one single exo-atmospheric kill vehicle capable of destroying one single incoming threat. The kill vehicle weights 64 kg.
A single starship could carry more than 1000 kill vehicles. A dozen or two starships on standby could carry enough kill vehicles to defend not only against all current intercontinental ballistic missiles, but against all that Russia, China and North Korea could conceivably build in a decade.
Yes, it's preferable to have solid propellant missiles. But that does not mean it's impossible to use liquid, and even cryogenic liquid fueled rockets for deterrence missions. The first American ICBM, Atlas, used liquid oxygen, and was used for 7 years. Its contemporaneous soviet counterpart, the R-7 Semyorka, also used liquid oxygen and was in service for 9 years.
The advantage would be pre positioned orbital interceptors could effectively reach some percentage of missiles in the boost phase rather than later on when intercept is harder.
Starship also allows for enough mass to orbit to make Star Wars legitimately viable.
I assuming they drug test because it's a requirement for govt contracts. Given that they get something like 98% of their funding from the govt, they can't exactly flippantly violate their best customers rules.
Under the Drug-free Workplace Act of 1988, workers at any company that receives a federal contract of $100,000 or more are prohibited from using or distributing drugs in the workplace, and the firm must have a drug-free workplace policy. Elon himself is subject to drug tests by the federal goverment
I'm curious how well this is actually enforced. I would imagine a lot of big tech companies have $100k government contracts: Google, Microsoft, etc. Pretty sure employees of either company are not drug tested (and a large number of them would fail a test if it were required). I'm not sure what "drug-free workplace policy" means, while I was at Google I don't recall ever hearing "don't do drugs".
On the other hand, I met a person recently who works for Lockheed and I'm pretty sure he was regularly (or randomly) tested at his workplace.
SpaceX undoubtedly does have US government agencies as some of their biggest customers, but 98% must be a gross exaggeration. The Falcon 9/Heavy have made nearly all of their launch revenues, and from just perusing the lists [1][2] of all launches, the US government can't be more than some low double digit percentage.
SpaceX does receive other funding as part of various NASA contracts, but that funding is also related to providing services to them, not just receiving money for nothing.
98% wasn't a number I pulled out of thin air. It's hard to know exact figures, but there are some people who publicly track what they can. [1]
From that source, SpaceX has about ~$5.515B in contracts. Of that, about $5.411B is from government contracts (military, NASA). That's about 98.1%.
There's probably a good chance it's higher, if they have govt contracts that aren't allowed to be public knowledge for security reasons.
Also, nobody is claiming SpaceX receives "money for nothing" from the govt. They are a contractor who, at least at these relatively early stages, need government contracts to survive. It's not necessarily a bad thing, and it's the way many nascent industries survive. But we need to call a spade a spade.
That source only lists contracts where the price is known or can be reasonably estimated. Naturally, US government entities which have a semi-public bidding process are much easier to obtain a price estimate from. There's a large amount of foreign government contracts and private commercial contracts that are omitted from that list. Just from 2020 alone, SkySats 16-21, ANASIS-II, SXRS-1, SAOCOM 1B, GNOMES 1, Tybak-0172, SXM-7, and NROL-108.
Edit: I did unreasonably make the assumption that you were making the case the SpaceX was receiving subisidies for "nothing" and I see that you weren't now.
The other respondent brought up a good point regarding selection bias. A different way to approach the problem would be to look at total SpaceX launches by customer. This has its own problems, but might paint a better picture.
When talking about funding in general, you also have to consider that SpaceX has significant non launch Equity funding to the tune of $10B, and that contracts can include potential future Revenue instead of funds received.
Edit: If you look at their launches for 2020 onwards[1], Their number 1 customer is SpaceX (themselves), followed by US and other governments, followed by private companies.
While your borader conclusion is probably accurate regarding income, your spreadsheet only 71 of 216 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, for ~$9B total. This is roughly on par with the VC funding they have recieved.
That is nonsense. Look at their flight manifest and see how many flights are NASA or Space Force. Maybe like 3 launches in the next several months out of planned 25.
Again, this comment, like most, misses the point. I'm saying they required govt contracts early to be a viable business. You're pointing to late-game information that doesn’t speak to that point. They can both be true without the point being "nonsense".
The point is their business model is predicated on using govt contracts early, when they were an unproven commodity, because the govt is generally the only organization who can take those kinds of risks. In turn, this fosters the development of a space industry which can transition to more private revenue streams. Musk himself said they were in the 11th hour of bankruptcy before NASA "saved" them with a huge contract.
It doesn't miss the point because the OP is talking in the present tense. Not something from 10 years ago, e.g. "they get something like 98% of their funding from the govt"
I worked there for 3 years and was never asked to do a drug test. Maybe that's the case now? Or maybe it's based on job responsibilities?
The only time I was ever tested for drugs was when I started an internship at Toyota back in 2006 or so. I had to do a whole physical. At the time it seemed pretty silly. Later in my career I started a new job, and the new company's background check flagged me for being unable to verify my employment at Toyota. That also seemed pretty silly, considering the company's CTO used to be in the
same department at Toyota back in the day!
Putting a rocket into orbit requires a good understanding of science and reality. There is no actual scientific proof that occasionally using marijuana is a bad thing that would make a potential employee a bad employee.
Maybe politicians don't like that reality, but they are not the ones putting people into orbit.
The traditional explanation is that drug users can be blackmailed and security compromised by adversaries threatening to reveal federally prohibited behavior.
It seems antiquated.
Edit: as cannabis use is transitioning to decriminalized, testing specifically for that will become antiquated. Standing crimes of course will remain leverage for bad guys.
Eh, I buy that "habitually committing crimes" makes it easier for adversaries to blackmail you. Seems like evergreen logic that doesn't get antiquated.
It's an evergreen that can be easily repaired by eliminating silly categories of crime and social conventions. See e.g., the old restrictions on allowing gay people to hold security clearances, which stemmed from the fact that it was easy to blackmail gay people in a society that (foolishly) kept penalizing people for being gay. We lost Alan Turing because of stupid crap like that, god only knows what else we lost.
Why do you immediately jump to drugs as a conclusion?
Maybe they just want to commemorate the birthday of the visionary leader who recognized and funded the genius inventor that ultimately ended up being instrumental in getting the American space program of the ground?
If someone can't quit for the time it takes to get a job, then I wouldn't want them on my team. It's usually one and done at these companies, not random throughout employment, and usually purely for outside regulation purposes. A modicum of self control isn't a bad thing.
When I was in high school my desk had a graffiti carved in it of the three most important numbers: 69, 2112, and 714. 2112 was the Rush album (which I liked), and I had to ask a friend about 714: he explained that it was the number printed on Quaalude pills (as if everybody knew that).
1134 is the angel number, I think something to do with Tarot. I know there was the calculator trick: 1800-666=1134. Turn it upside down and it spells "hell".
Cool video but it sure would be nice to have the dates when the rockets launched (if they did) and if they have not yet launched. For example Sea Dragon was a 1962 study design; never built. If they are going to have that one they should do the Orion Design (the first one with the nukes).
I think it is highly unfair to compare concepts to actual built rockets, might as well just include the Enterprise from Star Trek as well at that point.
Well, the Enterprise from Star Trek is fiction, so legitimate answers would include "zero actual size" and "as big as they say it is".
A true fan would probably reply: "Which one?"
An enlightened person might point out that Star Trek fans are very online, all this info and much much more than you wanted to know is just a google away.
640m / 2000 feet, or thereabouts, is also an acceptable answer.
But the unbuilt rockets in that animation were somewhat legitimate designs, a few steps from actual working prototypes; therefor those sizes had to be somewhat buildable; whereas the Starship Enterprise is FTL fiction, with warp drives powered by antimatter handwavium.
ughft. I mean: I smoke hashish, but honestly, Musk's adolescent little references like these are really trite and demeaning to the magnitude of what his companies are hoping to achieve. S3XY, poop emoji and 'Titter'. ughft, just stop already.
I find it helpful to separate space Elon, car Elon and nut job Elon. (The man is one. But his shadows track three suns. His influence is indirect, and in that, varied myths cause varied outcomes.)
If you knew me irl, you'd know I'm very much in favour of humour and irreverency, especially where it might not be expected or even appropriate – but I'm not that much younger than Musk and honestly, I just find his particular flavour of humour childish and cringe-inducing.
13-year old me would've been gleefully receptive to it – the not-far off 50-year old me... somewhat less so.
The trouble for him here is – I'm not sure who amongst his consumer base would find it amusing.
- ed Also: I, like everyone else, saw that clip of him 'smoking' pot on Joe Rogan's thing. Unlike Clinton, he really didn't inhale... . NASA had nothing to worry about there.
I think part of Elon's charm is his cringe. He's a crazy uber-billionaire literally digging tunnels, making flame throwers and launching interplanetary rocket ships. His childish irreverence is what makes him dorky Tony Stark (Marvell superhero) rather than Hugo Drax (Bond villain).
I don't get the people who hate it to the point of complaining about it in discussions.
I mean I don't find the farting and 4/20 references funny, but I don't see a reason to be bothered. I'm happy for the people whom it makes smile.
And I think S3XY is clever. I like that it gives the models sort of a canonical order and always feel good when I see them ordered that way by someone other than Tesla.
SLS gave tons of experience, of all kinds imaginable. Like, supercomputers used to calculate aerodynamics, heat-protecting tiles, landing and pacifying procedures, to name some less known. It was definitely not money wasted, even though more than 14 people gave their lives to the program.
Except nothing in SLS was strictly new. The engines are literally re-used, the solid rocket boosters are not new and are 5 segment versions of the boosters used on Shuttle, the tank design is a load-bearing version of the Shuttle. It's all 70s/80s tech at best.
There's nothing new in using supercomputers to compute aerodynamics. It's been done for decades with ever further precision. SpaceX has even done talks that can be found on youtube on it themselves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYA0f6R5KAI
The heat protection technology is literally the exact same material as used on Apollo, except re-formed into tiles, something SpaceX has been doing with their own heat shielding technology for decades.
The landing/pacifying procedures are variants of Shuttle procedures as the same propellants are used (which are also very old). They're even the same engines and fuel used on Apollo and the Shuttle.
(Also, I do not describe "happened to die during period of employment" as people "giving their lives for the program". That's just extreme propaganda.)
So what experience was gained that was not in the form of "re-learning things that were forgotten"?
The main criteria is if SpaceX can grantee margin of safety in regards to humans. Can they grantee that even in the worst case the rocket isn't gone fly into a town.
In this case this is specially hard because the core booster flies back towards the coast.
Do you have any information on the recovery plans for the booster and ship 24?
I have been curious about this and not seen much disclosure on the topic. Would ship 24 also be the largest re-entry vehicle, and largest re-entry vehicle to make ocean landing?
Edit: I was able to find some more information on the splashdown:
>During this time, the spacecraft will hurtle sideways, generating tremendous heat before adjusting to an upright position for a "soft " rocket-powered ocean landing 62 miles north of Kauai. It will sink in the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility, according to plans for the historic flight, and join dozens of warships that have gone down over past decades during Navy "sink exercises " in waters 15, 000 feet deep.
if this works out does there become a bottleneck in the world's ability to produce space-ready, useful things (satelites, telescopes, etc).
Its incredibly costly and complex to build things like the james webb telescope and that would be a great problem to have, but are there any measures of the demand for rocket capacity at given price points?
I'm a bit too young for Apollo, so it feels incredibly fortunate to be able to watch the next great step forward for humanity. Starship is both the first true economics focused rocket to production and after F9 the end of the beginning of a shift in mindset for space. The ripple effects of the disruption will be fascinating and exciting as well. And we'll get to watch if live, in beautiful detail.