[shkkmo]

Space based technology has massive impact on every day life. From GPS to weather prediction to communications, space infrastructure is critical to modern life.

Launch costs significantly reduce what we can build in space and what research we co do there. Decreasing launch costs makes our research funding more effective and reduces the capital costs and projected profit margins needed to build space based infrastructure.

SpaceX has already enabled significant economic growth and innovation with the launch cost reductions brought by the various falcon rockets and their reusability.

If Starship can accomplish it's reusability goals, an ever greater reduction of launch costs is possible. This would jump start an even bigger space industry boom than the one we are in today.

[righthand]

None of that listed technology comes from building reusable rockets.

The rest of your statement only indicates that Starship is indeed a fat pig when it comes to budget. This “boom” is all private for profit companies spending investment money. Not a “boom” in the sense that any man can get involved and benefit in the tangible future.

Pretending that everyone is going to be better off because of this space dream delusion doesn’t really answer my question.

[shkkmo]

> None of that listed technology comes from building reusable rockets.

Lower launch costs are a force multiplier for all of those technologies and more.

> This “boom” is all private for profit companies spending investment money. Not a “boom” in the sense that any man can get involved and benefit in the tangible future.

It sounds like your issue is more with capitalism than space...

But lower launch costs decrease the capital needed to particpate is space, so you point still doesn't make sense.

> Pretending that everyone is going to be better off because of this space dream delusion doesn’t really answer my question.

Everyone is already better off because of the soace dream. You don't seem to actually want an answer to your question.

[righthand]

Please explain to me how lower launch costs will help weather prediction.

Please give me the benefit of the doubt and help me understand what lower launch costs help with the average american today. I am asking an honest question to a different poster who originally indicated that the benefits were easily imaginable.

> We can easily imagine the things it will make possible.

I am trying to imagine how building reusable rockets leads to improving GPS and weather systems that decades of other fields that use those technologies couldn’t improve on already. What is this special low cost rocket sauce that enables it?

I can see the blind Marvel-movie-like fandom of “but it’s science” and “its our destiny” and “imagine all the wonderful things but don’t let me tell you ;)” but I do not see the actual details of what this will enable besides allowing Musk et al to hollow out planets for mining operations for their own gain.

Why would I want to answer my own question when I don’t understand what the original poster was suggesting?

You seem at a loss for these easily imaginable ideas.

[laverya]

> Please explain to me how lower launch costs will help weather prediction.

Cheaper launch means more weather satellites covering more spectrum from more angles than otherwise.

> What is this special low cost rocket sauce that enables it?

Everything is dependent on cost. If we had a medicine that gave an extra 10 years of healthy life to everyone but cost $100,000,000 per person, it would be utterly infeasible to give to the masses. If it cost $100,000 - now that's an easy decision.

If something is cheap you can do more of it.

> I am trying to imagine how building reusable rockets leads to improving GPS

GPS satellites are incredibly expensive because they need to be light enough to fit in existing heavy lift launchers and reliable enough to last for 20+ years. Cheaper, heavier, more frequent launch means you can dramatically reduce the cost per satellite in a constellation, and thus send up more. Having more GPS satellites reduces time to first fix, improves coverage in adverse environments (cities in particular) and improves accuracy.

[righthand]

Okay, now you want to put more satellites in the sky, for weather and gps.

Is there some evidence that what we have now is not enough or wouldn’t ever be replaced? I cannot find anything online about that.

So I still do not see how this will necessarily improve my daily life as the weather information I have now is already good.

[mpweiher]

We don't even have to do "more" satellites, though that's also good.

Putting the same satellites into orbit for $1 million instead of $100 million means we saved $99 million. Which can then be put to other uses.

Lower taxes, spending on other programs, repaying the national debt, your pick.

[shkkmo]

Weather prediction isn't just about "should I have a picnic today". Accurate weater information is important for innumerable economic activites, from farming to shipping to contruction to power generation planning. Providing better forecasts would allow us to save lives and money in these industries and this will reduce the costs you pay for goods. It might even save the life of someone you love.

There are 3 new GPS satellites being launched by the US in 2025. Satellites do regularly need to be replaced; fuel runs out, batteries die or there os damage or failure. We also are developing newer and better satellites.

Satellite based internet is currently going through a revolution that is bringing internet access and economic opportunity to isolated small communities all over the world. This is a great example of new deployment that simply wasn't economically feasible with pre-SpaceX launch prices. This technology has so many potential positive impacts that it alone should justify reusable rockets. This is another application that could save the life of someone you love (better acess to emergency services in remote locations or deadzones).

Another incredibly valuable satellite industry is satelite based imaging. Timely, high precision satellite imagery is currently very expensive. Significant drops in the price would enable a unimaginable plethora of usec ases. Better wildfire monitoring, more efficient farming and ranching, search and rescue, etc.

On top of all this, starship development is actually comparatively cheap compared to how valuable space is. Losing GPS would cost the US alone 1 billion dollars a day which is why the US is planning on spending 2 billion building a backup. Starship RnD costs are estimated to somewhere near 10 billion total spread out over a decade or two.

For further comparison, I'll also note that the 2024 US presidential election cost us more 50% more than that. The entire space industry is worth about as much as the entire semiconductors industry (~600 billion) and McKinsie estimated that to triple in the next 10 years.

Finally, I'll say that what I've listed is the merest drop in the bucket compared to the uses we haven't figured out yet because space launch was so expensive.

An second order of magnitude drop in launch costs on top of the ond SpaceX has already delivered would be a big boost the the global economy in many ways, including some that are hard to predict on advance. If SpaceX can deliver a third order of magnitude drop beyond that (which has been claimed as possible with Starship) then the results would be staggering, completely transforming how we view and use space economically and enabling completely new types of space exploration missions.

The biggest problem right now is that nobody else is keeping up with SpaceX. We need more companies doing the same thing SpaceX is.

[joshmarlow]

The most exciting answer to your question about applications is that "We don't know yet, it's a platform."

The inventors of the internal combustion engines likely didn't imaging interstate systems and long distance freight shipping - and the economic boom they allow.

The original ARPANET engineers didn't imagine everything the internet could become - from this very site to youtube to Bittorrent.

No one at Apple thought of all of the things that would be built in the iPhone App store.

When prices become cheap enough, it unlocks other peoples creativity. By providing ever cheaper access to space, Space X (and hopefully soon competitors) is providing a new arena where entrepreneurs and engineers can invite entirely new things.

> ...but I do not see the actual details of what this will enable besides allowing Musk et al to hollow out planets for mining operations for their own gain.

Resources mined are useless if they aren't used for something; if asteroid mining makes money, it's because someone else is buying those resources so Musk isn't the only person benefiting. If there is large scale mining in space, there's probably broad economic benefit to that.