Commercial Space Station

[martinbayer]

The only long term habitat for humans is Earth. Simple as.

So you'd see projects like NASA's proposed manned Mars expedition as wholly unrealistic?

I truly, fervently hope to live to see the day when a human being sets their first foot on Mars, but there's a huge difference between exploration and long term habitation. From my childhood in the wild sixties I still remember all kinds of utopian scenarios like sprawling underwater cities and the like. For better or worse, I'm not holding my breath for any of that anymore...

 

[steelpillow]

From my childhood in the wild sixties I still remember all kings of utopian scenarios like sprawling underwater cities and the like. For better or worse, I'm not holding my breath for any of that anymore...

It was all mutants and atomic power, wasn't it. Sometimes I feel like NASA's Mars programme has never quite given up on either technology.

 

[martinbayer]

I'd think building high energy propulsive lasers is a bit beyond the scope for a fuel/exploration staging depot in Lunar orbit, which is the only feasible and realistic manned Mars mission that has any chance of succeeding, tbh.

How do you justify that truly random statement for example in light of the various approaches laid out in https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/strategies/HumanstoMars.pdf?

 

[Arjen]

I introduced propulsive lasers into this thread as a way to get around the problem of mass-of-fuel-needed-for-continuous-acceleration-generated-AG. As steelpillow concisely put it:

The mass of fuel needed to generate AG for even an hour or two is way higher than the mass of a hollow doughnut.

The laser-option, in real life, 1) would fail for not providing enough Gs to prevent muscular-/skeletal-decay, and 2) would fall at the hurdle of needing impractically big lasers at either end of the trajectory to be of any use at all as propulsors. It was just the only thing I could think of within the bounds of current technology to get around the mass-problem of constant acceleration, then deceleration. Even the currently proposed nuclear rockets would need huge amounts of reaction mass to sustain constant acceleration/deceleration on interplanetary travel.

Which leaves rotation as the only viable solution for AG for the foreseeable future. Barring a sudden breakthrough of anti-gravitics.

 

[iverson]

I'll believe in a commercial space station 10 years after I see one. Contemporary corporations will not invest in anything that does not provide a minimum 40% margin and corresponding increases in "shareholder value" (i.e. stock price) by the end of the quarter, no matter what the longer term profit might be. Something as speculative as a commercial steel plant in space will not happen. In fact, the hedge funds/vulture capital firms killed off most of the Western world's steel production 30-plus years ago, as part of the shift to either the "service" or "knowledge" economy (depending on which economist/business consultant you consulted). Mature industries like steel were merely profitable--in the 3-5% range--and thus "not responsible to the shareholders".

The only possibility for a non-government space station would be a vanity project. A zillionaire like Musk, Bezos, or Thiel, for whom even the shareholders/hedge funds do not count any more, might try it. The result might be private, but hardly commercial. The cost would be, well, astronomical.

The real future for space exploration lies in government-sponsored, non-profit, relatively low-cost, orbital telescopes and robotic, interplanetary satellites. Moon bases, manned Mars excursions, and manned space stations will simply expose human actors to the physiological consequences of low G and high radiation, while draining off such vast sums that the cheaper and more valuable scientific missions will be deemed "unaffordable".

 

[Kat Tsun]

I'd think building high energy propulsive lasers is a bit beyond the scope for a fuel/exploration staging depot in Lunar orbit, which is the only feasible and realistic manned Mars mission that has any chance of succeeding, tbh.

How do you justify that truly random statement for example in light of the various approaches laid out in https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/strategies/HumanstoMars.pdf?

Because the multiple lasers needed to propel a light sail to Mars continuously is going to be at least bulkier than a nuclear rocket, duh.

Nuclear rockets are leading the DST propulsion race because they provide the only competitive method to reach Mars within about half a dozen launches from SLS.

It'll still require deadlifting and ellipticals on the way to Mars because destroying the bodies of astronauts is how science is made, which just kind of comes with the territory. The astronauts don't seem to mind that much though, and were I in the same place, I certainly would trade 30-40 years of my skeleton to say I saw in person, or even walked on, the planet Mars, I don't think any actual astronaut would say anything less.

The alternative is that NASA suddenly finds itself with a surplus of SLS launches and they can make DST really big or something necessary to give it a rotating centrifuge. Of course, no one has ever made a centrifuge so big to provide gravity to astronauts, the ISS test rig for such a thing was deprecated due to paucity of Shuttle launches, and it's very likely such a thing will just be sleeping quarters and exercise rooms at most. Work stations will likely still be microgravity.

It is probably easier to just make a heavily weighted exercise booth, which seems to be the direction NASA is moving.

Perhaps that would make the nuclear electrical rocket more palatable though as I can't imagine a habitable centrifuge being anything but a massive electric motor. Needless to say I have my doubts that a centrifuge will be featured in the DST but there are some fanarts that show such a thing. Most of them ignore the bit where the benefit of DST is that it's using ISS components, similar to how SLS uses Shuttle components, because making new things is very hard (t. SpaceX's reinvention of the N1).

So the ultimate barrier to what DST looks like will be the lift capacity of NASA, which hinges on SLS availability, in the coming five to eight years. There are five planned SLS launches and an unknown number after that.

If Starship keeps getting delayed like it has been for the past year and a half (it'll be a two year delay for the orbital flight in June 2023), perhaps NASA will have to send a manned mission to the Moon in SLS. Admittedly that would be kinda funny, as SLS has been fairly on track while Starship has been in development both longer and delayed more often, but it would also reduce the number of payloads for the DST-Orion vehicle which will take astronauts to Mars in late '30's or early '40's. That would either reduce the size of DST or delay its voyage to Mars while another SLS or two are built.

 

[martinbayer]

I'd think building high energy propulsive lasers is a bit beyond the scope for a fuel/exploration staging depot in Lunar orbit, which is the only feasible and realistic manned Mars mission that has any chance of succeeding, tbh.

How do you justify that truly random statement for example in light of the various approaches laid out in https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/strategies/HumanstoMars.pdf?

Because the multiple lasers needed to propel a light sail to Mars continuously is going to be at least bulkier than a nuclear rocket, duh.

Nuclear rockets are leading the DST propulsion race because they provide the only competitive method to reach Mars within about half a dozen launches from SLS.

It'll still require deadlifting and ellipticals on the way to Mars because destroying the bodies of astronauts is how science is made, which just kind of comes with the territory. The astronauts don't seem to mind that much though, and were I in the same place, I certainly would trade 30-40 years of my skeleton to say I saw in person, or even walked on, the planet Mars, I don't think any actual astronaut would say anything less.

The alternative is that NASA suddenly finds itself with a surplus of SLS launches and they can make DST really big or something necessary to give it a rotating centrifuge. Of course, no one has ever made a centrifuge so big to provide gravity to astronauts, the ISS test rig for such a thing was deprecated due to paucity of Shuttle launches, and it's very likely such a thing will just be sleeping quarters and exercise rooms at most. Work stations will likely still be microgravity.

It is probably easier to just make a heavily weighted exercise booth, which seems to be the direction NASA is moving.

Perhaps that would make the nuclear electrical rocket more palatable though as I can't imagine a habitable centrifuge being anything but a massive electric motor. Needless to say I have my doubts that a centrifuge will be featured in the DST but there are some fanarts that show such a thing. Most of them ignore the bit where the benefit of DST is that it's using ISS components, similar to how SLS uses Shuttle components, because making new things is very hard (t. SpaceX's reinvention of the N1).

So the ultimate barrier to what DST looks like will be the lift capacity of NASA, which hinges on SLS availability, in the coming five to eight years. There are five planned SLS launches and an unknown number after that.

If Starship keeps getting delayed like it has been for the past year and a half (it'll be a two year delay for the orbital flight in June 2023), perhaps NASA will have to send a manned mission to the Moon in SLS. Admittedly that would be kinda funny, as SLS has been fairly on track while Starship has been in development both longer and delayed more often, but it would also reduce the number of payloads for the DST-Orion vehicle which will take astronauts to Mars in late '30's or early '40's. That would either reduce the size of DST or delay its voyage to Mars while another SLS or two are built.

Thank you ever so very much for your personal genderindependent courage of openly and blindingly laying out that you are not operating on the same plane of rational argumentation and proven technology as I am, since evidently you did not even bother to peruse the reference I kindly provided to you. Have as good a day now as your clearly limited and/or poisoned intellect will allow you to.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but since the post-Artemis Gateway is the only manned Mars mission funded at the moment, it's likely the only one with a chance of succeeding. If Gateway doesn't work out, it's much more likely no one will ever visit Mars rather than an alternative method will suddenly succeed.

SpaceX has been delaying their rocket launch for a year and a half now, despite having 15 years to develop it since it was announced in 2007, while SLS has more or less gone off without much issue since 2011, so there's that. Not much a reason to think they'll be any more successful than ULA's SLS at the end of the day and a lot to think they'll be less successful (33 engines lol).

The 21st century is sort of shaping up to be a century of economic and demographic contraction if you haven't noticed. A rather brisk correction from the 19th and 20th centuries' excessive industrial-economic developments I suppose. Each year means less money available to do things (not just) in space, so things started now have a better chance of succeeding than things started in the future, and things started 10 years ago have a much better chance than things started now.

Nothing in the 20th century is relevant for Mars, especially since none of those plans actually resulted in significant hardware or industrial bases being built up, and even NERVA was a mostly pointless diversion. Now we're getting into the actual difficult part of doing a manned Mars mission and it seems quite challenging because it's not just 1980's concept artwork, and funny KSR novels, but rather actual work. Actual work is much harder than drawing a picture of a Soviet moon landing and claiming "it could totally happen" because it requires navigating bureaucracies and political funding requirements. Good thing NASA is politically bulletproof, unlike SpaceX.

The only alternative group potentially able to visit Mars is a highly dubious and somewhat opaque plan by the PRC to launch a manned mission, eventually, but they also intend to hitch their wagon to Roscosmos for a Lunar base...so yeah. I'm sure that'll work out great for them. That's assuming the PRC doesn't implode, or get involved in a major war that demolishes the two largest global economies, or some other silly thing that will probably happen in the coming 20 years I guess.

If the idea of a nuclear electric or thermal rocket from the Moon to Mars upsets you, I suggest you take it up with NASA, circa 10 years ago.

There's not really any other option that will succeed, certainly none of the meaningless things from 1980 or 1995 or whatever, which is all your monograph link talks about, because it's a historical monograph? That's not really important. It has nothing from 2018 onward, which is when Artemis began and the planning for a manned Mars mission started, so nothing actually modern or relevant, obviously. Some weird ideas an intern typed up during a lunch break on a 1997 Thinkpad, and some concept artists drew during their vacation week, are far from actually bending the metal and filing the paperwork to get the DOE to deliver LEU thermal reactor cores just so you can avoid Presidential authorization to launch a HEU engine into Lunar orbit. After all, LOFTID is far more work than went into NERVA, since LOFTID actually flew and NERVA just sat in the desert.

Those old and busted ideas are all about as divorced from reality as Von Braun's lunar rockets, or Jules Verne's space gun, were from the actual Apollo mission. No reason to think it's any different for a Mars mission. The only thing the past can inform future engineers of is extremely basic and rudimentary information, which was discerned by exploratory toe taps into the deep end of the pool, but no one actually took the plunge to try to make the trek to Mars.

If you think that's a mistake then sure, I agree, but we live in a world where people simply haven't seriously started thinking about going to Mars until the 2020's. Nothing in that monograph is particularly important or relevant since it stops in 1999. Maybe if it had been a monograph about the Artemis program from 2017 to 2020, it would have been somewhat relevant as a period piece I guess?

 

[publiusr]

What is the structural lifetime of a plastic fabric under space radiation? Even light alloys are proving a challenge. How do you provide adequate insulation? My money is on a double-wall construction.

This is why I keep coming back to wet workshop. Where the saying “separate crew and cargo” became all the rage—perhaps it’s best to keep them together and separate from tankage.

Liquid hydrogen needs a lot of room, and a double wall could eliminate the foam popcorning problem:

Possibilities of New Business Growth: ET Tank Farms – The Unwanted Blog

Just build the tankage it such a way for it to lend itself to such use. SLS is cast aside at about the same altitude.

Bigelow inflates can surround the core to contain the popcorn and metal you can ground—and/or use as an interior liner.

Each time you launch—you leave more floorspace up there, instead of putting tiles on it and calling it Starship.

ISS is like Das Boat. You can’t really produce a lot there. Every moment is spoken for….it’s like a decathlon…and there is no spontaneity.

Imagine this:

Self-Deploying Space Station

Self-Deploying Space Station

www.astronautix.com

-but perhaps left on a core.

I don’t know how much will come from biotech—but fibers?

You need floorspace for industry. Now, I understand the spinning sats using magnets keep wear down…so folks in the ring operate via telepresence what goes on in the empty core..and repair is a walk…not a launch away.


This might be attached to wet cores to open them up and fit them out for greenhouse use if nothing else…antislosh structures as floors, shelves, etc:

https://m.facebook.com/SpaceXvision/posts/spacex-slss-single-launch-space-station-unofficial-concept-2-the-internal-volume/224632655777537/

Yes you could just use those…but I still see wet-spaces having value. Not either/or…but both and.

I want people in space for its own sake—in that an unhurried approach, where zero-gravity is a stroll away—-you could have breakthroughs/eureka moments that the overly regimented ISS schedule doesn’t allow for.

Let people dream

 

[steelpillow]

I'll believe in a commercial space station 10 years after I see one. Contemporary corporations will not invest in anything that does not provide a minimum 40% margin and corresponding increases in "shareholder value" (i.e. stock price) by the end of the quarter

I'd agree with you, except for Elon Musk and SpaceX. For him, his space company is just a way to get him to Mars, and profit is just a way to help his company along. If the Mars mission turns out to need a space station NASA won't pay for, he's not going to blink.

 

[iverson]

I'll believe in a commercial space station 10 years after I see one. Contemporary corporations will not invest in anything that does not provide a minimum 40% margin and corresponding increases in "shareholder value" (i.e. stock price) by the end of the quarter

I'd agree with you, except for Elon Musk and SpaceX. For him, his space company is just a way to get him to Mars, and profit is just a way to help his company along. If the Mars mission turns out to need a space station NASA won't pay for, he's not going to blink.

Well, the last I heard, Musk's plan was to get someone else to go to Mars first, on a one-way mission if needed, so that he can follow once the bugs are worked out.

I don't think that he or his team have given much serious thought to how humans will survive the trip, much less life on a planet without a breathable atmosphere and no protection from radiation. His Mars project smacks of his "rescue submarine" for the Thai cave crisis, his Twitter fiasco, and cars with a "self-driving" feature that includes auto-murder and self-decapitation. Musk is all luck, drugs, self-indulgence, arrogance, and ego, not solid engineering.

In any case, I doubt that even Musk has the money that such a mission will require or the stomach to throw it away on such a scale. He has to borrow against his stock for ready money. The more hare-brained his schemes prove to be and the more of that stock that he has to sell to service the loans, the faster the stock price falls, the more nervous his lenders get, and the more stock he has to sell. And that assumes that he does not figure out how to screw up what Tesla and SpaceX engineers have actually achieved in spite of him..

 

[Kat Tsun]

The best thing SpaceX did was poach all of TRW and Northrop-Grumman's rocket engineers after L-M/Boeing's ULA smothered any hope of their contracts being granted. Every advance they've made was started by simply copying Northrop's designs that the Space Launch Initiative was supposed to use.

Had the US not been involved in the GWOT and had NASA not fallen for the "faster (slower), better (worse), cheaper (costlier)" memes in the 1990's it's very likely that SpaceX wouldn't exist because TRW would have gotten enough contracts to build NASA's launchers, while ULA builds USAF launchers. Or more likely the other way around, as NASA doesn't care about costs per se, but the USAF is very cost averse as they have far more launches. But we don't live in the future where the TR-106 and -107 were mass produced by NorGrom Space Systems. Instead, Tom Mueller founded SpaceX, got funding from the crazy dot-com guy who made Paypal, and answered to Gwynne Shotwell, one of the finest CEOs in modern space industry today.

Elon is just the money man at the end of the day with Tom Mueller being the brains, like the Henry Ford to Charles Sorensen, and SpaceX succeeded mostly in spite of him rather than because of him.

Unfortunately, SpaceX couldn't make a very powerful engine to rival even SLS's near 40-year old reuse of the SSME, so they ended up re-inventing the notorious N1 for their Mars rocket. This would help explain how SLS has handedly beaten Starship to orbit (and the Moon) despite Starship being in development for 5 years longer than SLS.

I think without Tom Mueller the rate of advancement of SpaceX's engine design will drop precipitously, as he is one of the finest rocket engineers alive today. Which is a shame, because they developed some pretty cheap rockets by showing vertical integration is important in rocketry. I'm not sure if that makes them as bulletproof as ULA's approach, as political integration matters more at the end of the day for NASA, although vertical integration certainly makes the USAF happy.

 

[martinbayer]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but since the post-Artemis Gateway is the only manned Mars mission funded at the moment, it's likely the only one with a chance of succeeding. If Gateway doesn't work out, it's much more likely no one will ever visit Mars rather than an alternative method will suddenly succeed.

SpaceX has been delaying their rocket launch for a year and a half now, despite having 15 years to develop it since it was announced in 2007, while SLS has more or less gone off without much issue since 2011, so there's that. Not much a reason to think they'll be any more successful than ULA's SLS at the end of the day and a lot to think they'll be less successful (33 engines lol).

The 21st century is sort of shaping up to be a century of economic and demographic contraction if you haven't noticed. A rather brisk correction from the 19th and 20th centuries' excessive industrial-economic developments I suppose. Each year means less money available to do things (not just) in space, so things started now have a better chance of succeeding than things started in the future, and things started 10 years ago have a much better chance than things started now.

Nothing in the 20th century is relevant for Mars, especially since none of those plans actually resulted in significant hardware or industrial bases being built up, and even NERVA was a mostly pointless diversion. Now we're getting into the actual difficult part of doing a manned Mars mission and it seems quite challenging because it's not just 1980's concept artwork, and funny KSR novels, but rather actual work. Actual work is much harder than drawing a picture of a Soviet moon landing and claiming "it could totally happen" because it requires navigating bureaucracies and political funding requirements. Good thing NASA is politically bulletproof, unlike SpaceX.

The only alternative group potentially able to visit Mars is a highly dubious and somewhat opaque plan by the PRC to launch a manned mission, eventually, but they also intend to hitch their wagon to Roscosmos for a Lunar base...so yeah. I'm sure that'll work out great for them. That's assuming the PRC doesn't implode, or get involved in a major war that demolishes the two largest global economies, or some other silly thing that will probably happen in the coming 20 years I guess.

If the idea of a nuclear electric or thermal rocket from the Moon to Mars upsets you, I suggest you take it up with NASA, circa 10 years ago.

There's not really any other option that will succeed, certainly none of the meaningless things from 1980 or 1995 or whatever, which is all your monograph link talks about, because it's a historical monograph? That's not really important. It has nothing from 2018 onward, which is when Artemis began and the planning for a manned Mars mission started, so nothing actually modern or relevant, obviously. Some weird ideas an intern typed up during a lunch break on a 1997 Thinkpad, and some concept artists drew during their vacation week, are far from actually bending the metal and filing the paperwork to get the DOE to deliver LEU thermal reactor cores just so you can avoid Presidential authorization to launch a HEU engine into Lunar orbit. After all, LOFTID is far more work than went into NERVA, since LOFTID actually flew and NERVA just sat in the desert.

Those old and busted ideas are all about as divorced from reality as Von Braun's lunar rockets, or Jules Verne's space gun, were from the actual Apollo mission. No reason to think it's any different for a Mars mission. The only thing the past can inform future engineers of is extremely basic and rudimentary information, which was discerned by exploratory toe taps into the deep end of the pool, but no one actually took the plunge to try to make the trek to Mars.

If you think that's a mistake then sure, I agree, but we live in a world where people simply haven't seriously started thinking about going to Mars until the 2020's. Nothing in that monograph is particularly important or relevant since it stops in 1999. Maybe if it had been a monograph about the Artemis program from 2017 to 2020, it would have been somewhat relevant as a period piece I guess?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you (with an absolutely straight face, I assume) castigate Musk (who I readily concur is somewhat of an odd fellow, but one with a proved track record) for an eighteen month delay in his plans while taking NASA (who also has a proven track record, albeit of decades of viewgraph engineering) vapourware musings (and yes, Artemis is nice, but in a whole variety of metrics [engineering, economic, etc.] orders of magnitude removed from going to Mars) for granted?

 

[Kat Tsun]

Mars isn't important right now. We won't see a human manned Mars mission until the 2040's at minimum because all the details need to be worked out first? It will just be a flyby, like the proposed Venus missions, too. We won't see a human landing on Mars until decades after that. Sure, NASA has vaporware, but when NASA gets going it really gets going, because in the world of man-rated launches, slow and steady wins the race (as SLS proves).

Not sure why you're getting hung up on that though, as NASA is pretty well and truly funding development of LEU nuclear engines for the job of going to Mars, which you would know if you read the news. If they can take a decade to build a Moon rocket, they can take two decades to build a Mars rocket. Their track record is certainly better than SpaceX's in this regard. NASA works slowly but when it starts working it works out well. It just takes them a while to make up their minds about things.

Conversely, Starship has been in development in some manner since 2007, and was announced in 2005, so it's quite old as far as modern rockets go. It has yet to launch for a shakedown orbit, but has produced plenty of amusing failures on the launchpad and in "testing", which would have killed SLS if it had occurred.

Conversely, SLS has been in development since 2011, as an offshoot of the National Launch System and STS, and uses well-understood and well designed 40-year old technology. Its payload has returned from the Moon to the Earth. Certainly there's reason to question the validity of SpaceX's approach as NASA's rather rapid development has been pretty much on schedule while SpaceX has been foot-dragging.

One thinks if Gwynne Shotwell had gone for a vertically integrated rocket factory that simply mass produces boosters, much like the USSR did, she might be able to have beaten the SLS to the punch. Reusable rockets aren't very useful but they do make USAF contractors happy, although DOD and NASA are very different beasts in their space launch requirements, as anyone who has the briefest look at the history of US space programs knows.

SpaceX is simply built to provide cheap satellite launches for USAF foremost. This translates to being absolutely garbage at delivering reliable man-rated launchers for NASA. Conversely, a reliable man-rated launcher for NASA is a horrendously expensive satellite launcher. The ESA ran into similar issues with its Europa launcher which is why the non-man rated Ariane was selected instead, it was cheaper by a significant amount. No one cares if a satellite explodes on launch but if a person explodes on launch it sort of makes history.

It's sort of amazing that NASA selected the Starship as a basis for its moon landing rocket, but I guess they've gone nuts, or Blue Origin's design was actually somehow even worse.

At this rate it seems like NASA might have to redo the whole lander competition so it can fit into a SLS, probably using Dynetics' design. That will certainly push back any potential Mars mission given how important SLS is to the Mars program. Alternatively, NASA might simply not return to the Moon in the 2020's due to SpaceX's inability to produce a decent orbital rocket and further push back the Mars mission as a result, because returning to the Moon is sort of necessary for Mars in the first place, because the Moon is a good launching platform for a Mars mission (out of Earth's gravity) and close to some cool rocks.

OTOH as it turns out direct ascent has always been bad? Truly, the mission profile rejected for Apollo as being too complex and risky is still too complex and risky, to the surprise of relatively few people. OTOH I guess having semi-functional hardware really helped Shotwell's case even if she's yet to actually launch it lol. That still leaves time for Starship to flub its launch (not likely but possible), for SpaceX to bungle orbital refueling (equally unlikely, but this is SpaceX we're talking about, second only to Boeing), and for the Starship to fail on reentry or recovery (which has happened with some other rockets) in some manner that puts it in the shop for a while getting a plaster cast on its robot legs.

Remember when people thought SLS would be delayed to 2023? Wild times.

It's unfortunate that we're only getting a sustainable Apollo program now, but Apollo was a one-shot with no real practical support system built up, because it was pure vanity. Sustainability would have missed the deadline of 1969, which is why it was scrapped at the end, and no APA programs went through. Would have been better to take the time to build up a robust space industry and land on the Moon in 1975 or something in a souped up Gemini pod, but hindsight is 20/20 they say.

 

[steelpillow]

I don't think that [Musk] or his team have given much serious thought to how humans will survive the trip, much less life on a planet without a breathable atmosphere and no protection from radiation. ... Musk is all luck, drugs, self-indulgence, arrogance, and ego, not solid engineering.

In any case, I doubt that even Musk has the money that such a mission will require or the stomach to throw it away on such a scale. He has to borrow against his stock for ready money. The more hare-brained his schemes prove to be and the more of that stock that he has to sell to service the loans, the faster the stock price falls, the more nervous his lenders get, and the more stock he has to sell. And that assumes that he does not figure out how to screw up what Tesla and SpaceX engineers have actually achieved in spite of him..

SpaceX is simply built to provide cheap satellite launches for USAF foremost. This translates to being absolutely garbage at delivering reliable man-rated launchers for NASA.

All that is quite wrong, on at least two counts.

Elon Musk has a burning ambition to go to Mars and set up a colony there, even if nobody can come back in his lifetime. SpaceX is just the first step on his ladder to Mars. Even Tesla's motivation is to develop sustainable power technologies for the Martian colony; electric cars are just the first rung on that ladder. At least one biography has been published, and it is very explicit about all of this.

Then again, currently his is the only craft capable of routinely ferrying astronauts to and from the ISS. When SLS finally comes online, it will be many times more expensive for such shuttle trips. This is very well known and widely published.

As for the achievements of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk is notorious for his technological vision, 24/7 dictatorship and micromanagement; the idea that the companies he started, and then drove to technical success, have done so "in spite of" him is so painfully ignorant I do not know where to begin.

 

[Kat Tsun]

SLS is already "online" and significantly ahead of Starship given it was in development for less time and has already orbited the Moon tbh.

SpaceX has only achieved the ability to provide cheap, cargo rated launchers. They're quite behind in terms of man-rated systems, obviously, and unsurprisingly. It's entirely possible, actually likely, that SpaceX will not do much beyond cheap satellite launchers, although Starship is an impressive cargo vehicle. Most people would consider this adequate I suppose. It's why NASA isn't that keen on relying on their unproven and perennially delayed direct ascent rocket when SLS just works as-is.

Tesla is on the downswing both in stocks, and in actual build quality is decades behind the major automakers like Honda and Ford, mostly because these actually good automakers are coming out with as-good or better-than electric vehicles. It had a head start that it more or less squandered. Much of this is down to Tesla's bizarre proprietary culture.

Solar City is a bust. Boring Company is a bust. Hyperloop is a bust. Neuralink is a bust. Soon, Twitter will be a bust.

It's quite a few misses under his belt compared to the successes (which seem to be the ones where he has the least control, curious), but capitalism is no stranger to hero-worship of failures (just look at the guys behind Lehman Brothers' collapse in 2008 nowadays), in favor of ignoring actually competent people like Gwynne Shotwell or Tom Mueller. Those two people are the only reason SpaceX is worth anything right now, after all, because Shotwell is one of the most competent CEOs in the rocketry business and Mueller is one of the most impressive engineers America has ever produced. Perhaps that is for the best. Who knows how poorly they would have performed if they were as well known as Elon Musk or Brad Pitt.

Macroeconomics doesn't really care about big dreams and Mars is perpetually uninhabitable. Venus has a better chance of supporting life.

 

[steelpillow]

SLS is already "online" and significantly ahead of Starship given it was in development for less time and has already orbited the Moon tbh.

SpaceX has only achieved the ability to provide cheap, cargo rated launchers. They're quite behind in terms of man-rated systems,

As Wikipedia puts it: "As of 2022, [SpaceX] Crew Dragon is the only U.S. human-rated orbital transport spacecraft, the only reusable orbital crewed spacecraft and the only reusable orbital cargo spacecraft currently in operation. Its primary role is to transport crews to and from the ISS under NASA's Commercial Crew Program..." They cite plenty of reliable sources.

Please do remind us of the manned missions SLS has to its credit, and where you read about them.

 

[iverson]

... as well known as Elon Musk or Brad Pitt.

Macroeconomics doesn't really care about big dreams and Mars is perpetually uninhabitable. Venus has a better chance of supporting life.

"Vision" is how press releases describe the poor decisions of very wealthy and/or very lucky individuals--until both run out.

What passes for capitalism in our day is all too prone prone to hero worship. But business success is not about great men or great leadership or "vision" (Sam Bankman-Fried has plenty of it< though now many call it something else). It is about solid financing and the talents and hard work of the many who work together in the company. The company can make money without a CEO (I have heard it said it might make more). The opposite is not true. Anyone who has met a CEO or two will not be surprised.

 

[BlackBat242]

SLS is already "online" and significantly ahead of Starship given it was in development for less time and has already orbited the Moon tbh.

SpaceX has only achieved the ability to provide cheap, cargo rated launchers. They're quite behind in terms of man-rated systems,

As Wikipedia puts it: "As of 2022, [SpaceX] Crew Dragon is the only U.S. human-rated orbital transport spacecraft, the only reusable orbital crewed spacecraft and the only reusable orbital cargo spacecraft currently in operation. Its primary role is to transport crews to and from the ISS under NASA's Commercial Crew Program..." They cite plenty of reliable sources.

Please do remind us of the manned missions SLS has to its credit, and where you read about them.

Space-X's Crew Dragon now has 8 successful manned flights to ISS under its belt - the 8th flight launched 5 Oct 2022, and the capsule is still attached to ISS - scheduled to return just before the Feb 2023 launch of the 9th manned Dragon flight to ISS.

There are 4 different Crew Dragon spacecraft that have made manned flights to ISS - Endeavour (3), Resiliance (2), Endurance (2, currently still in orbit), and Freedom (1).

 

[Kat Tsun]

SLS is already "online" and significantly ahead of Starship given it was in development for less time and has already orbited the Moon tbh.

SpaceX has only achieved the ability to provide cheap, cargo rated launchers. They're quite behind in terms of man-rated systems,

As Wikipedia puts it: "As of 2022, [SpaceX] Crew Dragon is the only U.S. human-rated orbital transport spacecraft, the only reusable orbital crewed spacecraft and the only reusable orbital cargo spacecraft currently in operation. Its primary role is to transport crews to and from the ISS under NASA's Commercial Crew Program..." They cite plenty of reliable sources.

Please do remind us of the manned missions SLS has to its credit, and where you read about them.

Crew Dragon only flew 5 years after Orion. Clearly SpaceX is a leader at the forefront in man-rated launch systems!

 

[BlackBat242]

SLS is already "online" and significantly ahead of Starship given it was in development for less time and has already orbited the Moon tbh.

SpaceX has only achieved the ability to provide cheap, cargo rated launchers. They're quite behind in terms of man-rated systems,

As Wikipedia puts it: "As of 2022, [SpaceX] Crew Dragon is the only U.S. human-rated orbital transport spacecraft, the only reusable orbital crewed spacecraft and the only reusable orbital cargo spacecraft currently in operation. Its primary role is to transport crews to and from the ISS under NASA's Commercial Crew Program..." They cite plenty of reliable sources.

Please do remind us of the manned missions SLS has to its credit, and where you read about them.

Crew Dragon only flew 5 years after Orion. Clearly SpaceX is a leader at the forefront in man-rated launch systems!

And yet, Orion has NO manned spaceflights to its credit... NONE!

SpaceX has EIGHT!

Your trolling really is getting pathetic!

 

[steelpillow]

SLS is already "online" and significantly ahead of Starship given it was in development for less time and has already orbited the Moon tbh.

SpaceX has only achieved the ability to provide cheap, cargo rated launchers. They're quite behind in terms of man-rated systems,

As Wikipedia puts it: "As of 2022, [SpaceX] Crew Dragon is the only U.S. human-rated orbital transport spacecraft, the only reusable orbital crewed spacecraft and the only reusable orbital cargo spacecraft currently in operation. Its primary role is to transport crews to and from the ISS under NASA's Commercial Crew Program..." They cite plenty of reliable sources.

Please do remind us of the manned missions SLS has to its credit, and where you read about them.

Crew Dragon only flew 5 years after Orion. Clearly SpaceX is a leader at the forefront in man-rated launch systems!

And yet, Orion has NO manned spaceflights to its credit... NONE!

SpaceX has EIGHT!

Note too that starting first is not actually a recommendation if somebody else comes along several years later and beats you to the first manned flight, and at a fraction of the cost to boot. Quite the reverse, it graphically highlights how badly your product development has gone.

Yes SLS is around 30-40% bigger than falcon heavy, and Orion is designed for a crew of 6 vs. Dragon's 4. In that respect SLS/Orion is better suited to a manned lunar programme. But that will not be much help if SpaceX can deliver the same total payload in a couple of launches and still be both quicker and cheaper.

 

[Grey Havoc]

On the other hand, there are plenty of storms brewing for SpaceX at the moment.

 

[steelpillow]

On the other hand, there are plenty of storms brewing for SpaceX at the moment.

Indeed. But if they do go bust, it seems likely that someone will buy up the Falcon/Dragon programme. After all, it is the only lifeline currently available to the ISS. NASA and its international partners cannot afford to let it die just yet.

 

[Archibald]

For Musk at least. SpaceX is doing well. Although I still wonder why BFR-Starship hasn't flown yet. What's wrong at Boca Chica ?

 

[uk 75]

Back in the 1950s it was still assumed that Mars and Venus would be habitable for human beings and so worth colonising much as Africa had been in the 19th Century.
We learnt pretty quickly in the 1960s that this was not true and that nowhere in our Solar System offered the possibilities of life like that on Earth.
Realism set in after the moon.landings with unmanned missions to the rest of the Solar System and orbital missions for research in Earth orbit.
It is no accident that China has attempted to re-start moon mannec missions for polirical show similar to the 1960s Space Race.
The US with much greater technical experience has decided to put them in their place with Artemis.
But this is nothing more than a live replay of that wonderful 60s movie "Those Maginficent Men in the their Flying Machines".
True space exploration will continue to be by unmanned systems like the James Webb telescope and new and more efficient Mars Rovers.
Should mining on the Moon ever become necessary we have unmanned technology to do it. Possibly a few hardy astronauts too.
I grew up with Fireball XL5 and then Star Trek. My future seemed in those shows but in reality they were the last gasp of H G Wells and Jules Verne projecting Euopean Empires into Space. It is time to grow up and focus on what we have achieved with real science. Try looking at a few Hubble photos to see what I mean.

 

[steelpillow]

For Musk at least. SpaceX is doing well. Although I still wonder why BFR-Starship hasn't flown yet. What's wrong at Boca Chica ?

Actually, no it's not, and in part for the reason you wonder about. Not only has Starlink's Ukraine coverage been making heavy losses, but the Raptor engine for the forthcoming Starship is also in deep trouble and threatening the company's future cashflow:

Elon Musk tells SpaceX employees that Starship engine crisis is creating a 'risk of bankruptcy'

Elon Musk is angry with the lack of progress SpaceX has made in developing the Raptor engines that power its Starship rocket.

www.cnbc.com

 

[Archibald]

Crap. So Raptor is in serious trouble ? Thank you for pinning down that issue. You did better than the entire NASAspaceflight answering that simple question. And Starlink V1 that rides on Falcon 9 isn't enough of a cash cow, while V2 is, but needs Starship to get full potential.
Well indeed, that seems to be a serious situation.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Raptor itself is fine. The problem is that Starship has 33 36 39 tiny engines instead thee big ones. A bit silly but it is what it is.

Starship is just N1 2, and will have a similar chance of success, which is to say a fair one, but not stupendously high. No sane space agency would be staking their sole claim on it unless they had no other choice, but luckily NASA has a variety of vendors to choose from. If all else fails, Starship will be a good way to get a lot of cubesats or Brilliant Pebbles into orbit quickly for the USSF. Eventually.

Starship's sketchy design is why SLS is still the prime lifter for manned Artemis missions, but if Starship doesn't explode too often, then it should be fine for carrying cargo loads for TLI. Otherwise it'll come down to relying on SLS Block 2, but that was the original plan anyway.

 

[aim9xray]

Crap. So Raptor is in serious trouble ? Thank you for pinning down that issue. You did better than the entire NASAspaceflight answering that simple question. And Starlink V1 that rides on Falcon 9 isn't enough of a cash cow, while V2 is, but needs Starship to get full potential.
Well indeed, that seems to be a serious situation.

Looking VERY closely, this article is from late 2021; a year ago. As far as its predictions for the future present, YMMV.

 

[Archibald]

Crap. So Raptor is in serious trouble ? Thank you for pinning down that issue. You did better than the entire NASAspaceflight answering that simple question. And Starlink V1 that rides on Falcon 9 isn't enough of a cash cow, while V2 is, but needs Starship to get full potential.
Well indeed, that seems to be a serious situation.

Looking VERY closely, this article is from late 2021; a year ago. As far as its predictions for the future present, YMMV.

Don't LECTURE me, PLEASE. I can WRITE in CAPS, TOO, TO make a POINT. And it was @steelpillow who PROVIDED the LINK.

 

[aim9xray]

Sorry then, I had to look very closely and thought that others might be as confused as I was initially.

Peace.

 

[steelpillow]

Crap. So Raptor is in serious trouble ? Thank you for pinning down that issue. You did better than the entire NASAspaceflight answering that simple question. And Starlink V1 that rides on Falcon 9 isn't enough of a cash cow, while V2 is, but needs Starship to get full potential.
Well indeed, that seems to be a serious situation.

Looking VERY closely, this article is from late 2021; a year ago. As far as its predictions for the future present, YMMV.

How about that. I disable enough javascript to keep the worst spyware at bay, and hey presto! the datestamp joins it. There's nothing like user-centric web programming, and [all together now] that page is nothing like user-centric web programming!

 

[iverson]

Back in the 1950s it was still assumed that Mars and Venus would be habitable for human beings and so worth colonising much as Africa had been in the 19th Century.
We learnt pretty quickly in the 1960s that this was not true and that nowhere in our Solar System offered the possibilities of life like that on Earth.
Realism set in after the moon.landings with unmanned missions to the rest of the Solar System and orbital missions for research in Earth orbit.
It is no accident that China has attempted to re-start moon mannec missions for polirical show similar to the 1960s Space Race.
The US with much greater technical experience has decided to put them in their place with Artemis.
But this is nothing more than a live replay of that wonderful 60s movie "Those Maginficent Men in the their Flying Machines".
True space exploration will continue to be by unmanned systems like the James Webb telescope and new and more efficient Mars Rovers.
Should mining on the Moon ever become necessary we have unmanned technology to do it. Possibly a few hardy astronauts too.
I grew up with Fireball XL5 and then Star Trek. My future seemed in those shows but in reality they were the last gasp of H G Wells and Jules Verne projecting Euopean Empires into Space. It is time to grow up and focus on what we have achieved with real science. Try looking at a few Hubble photos to see what I mean.

This sci-fi thinking is very much with us. Otherwise, no one would be seriously considering manned space missions. Unmanned missions have been vastly more productive and vastly less expensive, even for nearby destinations like the moon. Add the distances and time required to go further afield, with all the consequent debilitating effects of low-G and radiation, and manned space exploration becomes a non-starter--unless space exploration is not your real motive.

In Musk's case, it is not. Like a lot of contemporary billionaires, he subscribes to a weird "long-termist" philosophy that excuses him from worrying about clear and present dangers as long as he cares about the fate of the species in the far future.--in Musk's case, he thinks that AI killer robots will be coming for us all in the near future. So he argues that the species needs to get off the planet and start spreading. AI fears and long-termist expansionism are convenient, of course, because they distract him from having to do anything about the near-term problems that decide whether there will even be a long term.

I can only point out that we already have a much roomier space capsule with a high-capacity life-support system, food-making capability, and border collies, called Earth. We'd do better to learn to not screw up its systems before we go trying to live in metal boxes out in the vacuum.

 

[uk 75]

Sadly the political motive for human spaceflight has very much returned.
China in particular sees establishing its presence in Earth orbit and on the Moon as a political goal for the Chinese Communist Party.
The US will have to match this effort and other countries will follow.
A futile US China race to Mars is now a real possibility.

 

[martinbayer]

Back in the 1950s it was still assumed that Mars and Venus would be habitable for human beings and so worth colonising much as Africa had been in the 19th Century.
We learnt pretty quickly in the 1960s that this was not true and that nowhere in our Solar System offered the possibilities of life like that on Earth.
Realism set in after the moon.landings with unmanned missions to the rest of the Solar System and orbital missions for research in Earth orbit.
It is no accident that China has attempted to re-start moon mannec missions for polirical show similar to the 1960s Space Race.
The US with much greater technical experience has decided to put them in their place with Artemis.
But this is nothing more than a live replay of that wonderful 60s movie "Those Maginficent Men in the their Flying Machines".
True space exploration will continue to be by unmanned systems like the James Webb telescope and new and more efficient Mars Rovers.
Should mining on the Moon ever become necessary we have unmanned technology to do it. Possibly a few hardy astronauts too.
I grew up with Fireball XL5 and then Star Trek. My future seemed in those shows but in reality they were the last gasp of H G Wells and Jules Verne projecting Euopean Empires into Space. It is time to grow up and focus on what we have achieved with real science. Try looking at a few Hubble photos to see what I mean.

This sci-fi thinking is very much with us. Otherwise, no one would be seriously considering manned space missions. Unmanned missions have been vastly more productive and vastly less expensive, even for nearby destinations like the moon. Add the distances and time required to go further afield, with all the consequent debilitating effects of low-G and radiation, and manned space exploration becomes a non-starter--unless space exploration is not your real motive.

In Musk's case, it is not. Like a lot of contemporary billionaires, he subscribes to a weird "long-termist" philosophy that excuses him from worrying about clear and present dangers as long as he cares about the fate of the species in the far future.--in Musk's case, he thinks that AI killer robots will be coming for us all in the near future. So he argues that the species needs to get off the planet and start spreading. AI fears and long-termist expansionism are convenient, of course, because they distract him from having to do anything about the near-term problems that decide whether there will even be a long term.

I can only point out that we already have a much roomier space capsule with a high-capacity life-support system, food-making capability, and border collies, called Earth. We'd do better to learn to not screw up its systems before we go trying to live in metal boxes out in the vacuum.

The strictly cost based postulated superiority of uncrewed space exploration missions is to date overwhelmingly limited to passive "look and feel" activities, rather than actively physically examining samples in situ or back on earth. Sure, there have been a precious few automated sample returns and on site (sometimes inconclusive) analyses, but humans on the ground will quite literally be able to cover a lot more ground much more effectively. For example, compare the distances/time (aka speed, velocity, swiftness, alacrity, rapidity of motion, etc.) covered by the crewed Apollo LRVs vs. contraptions like Lunokhod or various uncrewed Mars rovers. With respect to communication delays, humans in any space environment will drive independently of terrestrial ground crew inputs as opposed to earth controlled rovers. Humans simply are able to get to and through anywhere much more efficiently and effectively with current technology that any remotely controlled dinky toys.

 

[publiusr]

Crap. So Raptor is in serious trouble ? Thank you for pinning down that issue. You did better than the entire NASAspaceflight answering that simple question.

Doesn’t surprise me one bit:

SpaceX Rocket Engine Explodes In a Green Blast

A SpaceX Raptor rocket engine exploded during a recent test, joining a long line of fellow Elon Musk-manufactured spacecrafts that have blown up.

futurism.com

The new spacers put down the RS-25 tests, of course. Hydrogen engines can run cooler…see the remarks on the cool gas generator exhaust:

Aerojet M-1 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

—and while the Musketeers talk about methalox being the future—it’s really because their Salvage Two dirt pile team doesn’t have the chops to run hydrogen.

Glushko hated hydrogen—yet the RD-0120s (Energiya’s SSMEs as it were) were untroubled compared to RD-170s which gave him fits.

Hydrogen belongs in rockets.

Methane belongs in the outhouse.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Sadly the political motive for human spaceflight has very much returned.
China in particular sees establishing its presence in Earth orbit and on the Moon as a political goal for the Chinese Communist Party.
The US will have to match this effort and other countries will follow.
A futile US China race to Mars is now a real possibility.

It's not sad, it's fine. A peaceful space race is better than a weaponized space race, but we're likely to get both in the coming decades.

Going to Mars to plant a flag is a stupendous achievement comparable to going to the North Pole or climbing Mount Everest. It's a significant goal that is laudable in of itself for purposes of showing and demonstrating technical and scientific understanding, and much good data are there to be gathered. This is true both by doing things which robots struggle with, such as certain wide area experiments or multiple types of different experiments, as humans are quite flexible in movement and payload use, and physiological data which are certain to be numerous, and potentially important if we are to find more helium or something. Even a robotic mining vehicle and mass driver would still need maintenance from a on-site technician.

For purposes of scientific and aesthetic achievement I can hardly think of anything more substantial than going to another world. That alone makes it useful in a moral-cultural sense, because even if it isn't for any intrinsic economic gain it's still quite nice to think about, and thinking of scientific exploration in terms of economics simply means all space exploration missions are a waste of money anyway. There's no actual economic reasons to go past GEO, if not MEO, at the moment.

It's just that any sane person recognizes that the number of people who see Mars in the flesh, much less walk on it, are potentially going to be countable on your hands and toes, and that we are at least two, perhaps more, decades away from getting there.

 

[uk 75]

I understand and agree with all your points.
Despite my strong reservations about human spaceflight it will continue to happen much as people climb Everest or walk to a Pole. Simply because they are there.
If it were not for the need of the Chinese Communist Party to cling on to power the relationship of the US and China would be much like the one the US has with Europe and Japan. Strong economic and even cultural rivalry but a shared interest in peace.
There are sometimes reasons why politics is unavoidable on this site, the clash between countries willing to tolerate dissent and debate and those that cannot is too fundamental to gloss over.

 

[uk 75]

The comparison between human and robot exploration made above by martinbayer and others is accurate.
I think I would also add that humans whether for the challenge (Everest et al) or economic gain (The North Sea in Winter) will risk the highest dangers and worst conditions.
I suspect, however, as programmable responses or even AI produce more efficient exploration and exploitation vehicles these will be used wherever possible.
It is likely there will never be a shortage of humans willing indeed seeking actively to go in harms' way.