Another area that humanity hasn't even gotten to the stage of considering yet would be dedicated interplanetary space transport craft. For now SpaceX is planning to just use Starships for getting out of gravity wells and getting between them. But the kind of cadence, $/kg, and sheer capacity Starship will enable also opens up the real option of permanent orbital assembly and maintenance facilities, and in turn the construction of spacecraft optimized purely for use outside of gravity wells (so much more emphasis on ISP vs thrust, no need to worry about aerodynamics, far less restriction on size, optimization for long time travel like potential synthetic gravity via spin, more radiation shielding, etc). No reason SpaceX couldn't lead the charge on that too in principle, though certain attractive forms of propulsion like anything using nuclear would probably necessitate more government involvement until/unless SpaceX can form their own mature government far down the road.
Anyway, $100-200/kg (or less!) and huge volume/high cadence is so radically disruptive that it's kind of hard to predict how space will look a few decades down the line. It's going to be a wild thing to watch, with lots of opportunity.
It goes between two places with at least some sort of atmosphere by default (or one with and on without for the Lunar variant) so while indeed dragging aerosurfaces with your in the vacuum of space might seem wasteful on the first look, you can save huge amounts of delta-v once you arrive at your destination due to atmospheric braking.
A purely built for space vacuum only craft could be built to be much lighter but would also need to loose all that excess interplanetary speed with engine power alone, potentially negating the advantages quite a bit.
There are, of course, various hybrid approaches: - the space only craft still could have some limited aerodynamics to do earocapture to orbit at the destination or at least do aerobraking from a "cheap" eccentric capture orbit - you could have a space only "hotel" ship on a cycler orbit and get passengers and cargo using Starship like "taxi" ships from a planet - a big complex space-only ship could have fancy high tech low thrust & high ISP engines that would not realistically fit on craft that needs to be fairly aerodynamic
Also as for in space construction - indeed, it will enable really massive and efficient space structures, but we are not there yet space infrastructure wise. And Starships so far have shown how easily they can be made in their current form using very basic tech during their assembly, even compared to tech used for existing decades old expandable rockets! :)
So no doubt eventually big efficient high tech in space cruisers will carry the most interplanetary traffic, it seems like Starship is a surprisingly good fit for the time being & for putting in place the building stones of that future. :)
Heck, you don't need orbital assembly for that. SpaceX could put in orbit a single- or two-engine starship with no landing legs and no heat shielding for transfers. Eventually they could decommission one such truck to make an orbital station.
> Anyway, $100-200/kg (or less!) and huge volume/high cadence is so radically disruptive that it's kind of hard to predict how space will look a few decades down the line. It's going to be a wild thing to watch, with lots of opportunity.
There might be so many satellites in orbit as to permanently disrupt astronomy on Earth, necessitating a fleet of replacements for the James Webb telescope.
That's SpaceX's lunar lander plan - a Starship that'd never need to come back to Earth except for refueling.
Most importantly, there is no commercial space station to move people and current starship test articles are not fitted for passenger transport nor low earth orbit rendezvous.
It's a long road from even a properly working Starship towards this goal.
Sorry not familiar with these plans - does this mean that we assemble a bigger rocket (by using earth based rockets) at ISS level orbits and then relaunch to another planet?
In theory this would work for anything that is permanently in vacuum, such as the NASA Lunar Gateway (though it's currently planned for lunar-orbit operations only), or some future low-Earth orbit station such as Gateway Station[1] or some sort of Venus, Mars, or Ceres orbital habitat.
After that, orbital infrastructure: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373132222555848713
And possibly nuclear propulsion? https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1153378777893888005
Not to mention colonies on other planets: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1373735946244431873
Most of that is pretty long-term though. I suspect Starship will remain a commercially viable platform for quite some time after its inception.
- Reusable launch system
- Intercontinental transport
- Space tourism
- Earth–lunar transport
- Mars colonization
- Multiplanetary transport
Because of that, I would say starship still has to prove it is commercially viable.
Space tourism, in particular, highly depends on how safe one can make the trip. A 1:1000 risk of death likely would make many would-be passengers think twice before booking a trip.
It also would depend on making the trip nice. The first few tourists might go for bragging rights, but after that, one would need attractions in space. Building those there will increase the cost of a trip.
https://www.nasa.gov/content/commercial-lunar-payload-servic...
Granted, it's a monopsony for now but...
Also, the next market might be "companies who want to mine asteroids for rare metals or rocket fuel", in which case SpaceX may be in the "sells pickaxes to gold miners" business.
Those who pursue asteroid mining would do well to review the history of recently dormant or acquired companies such as Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries, and Shackleton Energy Company.
That said, I agree that some of Elon's longer-term goals in space are somewhat more questionable from an economic perspective. Safety is still a big question mark when it comes to tourism and intercontinental transport, and a lot of the other proposed uses (such as Elon's goal of settling Mars) have questionable economic value. Will be interesting to see if any new markets get created by Starhip's record low launch costs.
Starship is already pretty marginal of an upper stage and it's fired early. More marginal than old Space Shuttle, but cheaper to refurbish.