Just look at the National Team / Dynetics HLS proposals with a bunch of expensive, novel custom hardware vs. Space X proposal which was "basically just Starship". It could obviate a huge amount of resources being poured into one-off disposable space hardware and let us instead focus on actually doing stuff in space.
Seriously though, this is game changing at even 100X that number or $200M per launch. Even if they don't get close to the aspirational price it's going to make a ton of stuff possible in space that was unaffordable before.
https://www.space.com/11358-nasa-space-shuttle-program-cost-...
There's some room for argument, but on the order of 1,000x the stated SpaceX Super Heavy booster.
Even if that turns out to be vastly optimistic (not ... unheard of in rocket surgery), it's all but certain that costs will be 100x lower than the Shuttle. Even a 10x factor would be utterly transformational.
I'm not an uncriticle Musk fan, but he's repeatedly delivered on promises I thought were tots redic initially (long-range EVs, reusable boosters, powered return boosters). He's had a few missed deliveries (hyperloop and Boring Co. both seem infeasible, and Mars colonisation still strikes me as a very long shot within 50 years), but we're indisputably closer to those possibilities than before he came on the scene. Credit to engineering teams, there's also something to be said for vision and force of will.
I don't think that's entirely fair. The Orbiter ( developed by Rockwell, not NASA or .gov ) was the result of two decades of hypersonic aerodynamics research combined with the state of materials art at the time. The solid boosters were ahead of the technology curve. The overall package was compromised by USAF / .mil requirements but otherwise was an advanced product for its time.
The problem was, while all of this was achieved, the resulting design was a bit too brittle (heat shields) and definitely too expensive to maintain between flights, so the prices were just off and the desired flight frequencies were never met.
While the engineering of the first edition of the shuttle was just great - especially considering some of the disputable design requirements - the failure rather lies in the fact that it never got a meaningful update. There were ambitious projects to produce a "next gen" shuttle with fixes "all" problems with the first gen, but they all failed. What was missing was updates and iteration. Just build a new shuttle which improves some aspects and keeps the rest of the design. Like a new heat shield, or just optimizing internal structures. That might have driven costs down and produced versions which still could be used. As, for example, we lost the capability to service the Hubble telescope.
[0] presents a somewhat different story. It argues that much of the blame for the compromises, lies not with DOD, but rather with OMB. To give one example, it is commonly claimed that DOD pushed for solids because of the use of solids in ICBMs; according to this account, that push came from Daniel Taft at OMB, not from DOD; Taft wanted solid boosters because they were estimated to be $1 billion cheaper.
[0] https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221.pdf – see pg 417 onwards (pg 435 of PDF)
It was the wrong curve. RP1 based engines like F-1 would have been far better to get of the ground.
> The overall package was compromised by USAF / .mil requirements but otherwise was an advanced product for its time.
There were many mistakes made. Space fans love to blame the military and politics. But if you actually go back, NASA leadership made plenty of questionable choices.
The biggest issue with the shuttle is the basic architecture.
Your criticism fails to fit the facts.
In fairness, the current best option, the Falcon Heavy, is already 35x as cost effective as the Shuttle.
But yes, even in the worst case Starship will be far cheaper.
A person walking typically manages about 3 mph / 5 kph.
A typical person on a bicycle can sustain about 15--20 mph (24--32 kph). Early trains operated at about 25--30 mph (40--50 kph), and soon regularly reached 60 mph (100 kph).
The combined factors of speed and cargo capacity make rail utterly transformational to humans (or animals) carrying loads. Even compared with high-tonnage cargo methods of the era (riverboats and canals), rail's speed was a major factor. (The tonnage/speed tradeoff continues between rail and river or ocean shipping today. For bulk, time-insensitive cargos, rail cannot compete.)
Propellor-driven aircraft moved at about 100-250 mph (160--320 kph) --- the DC3 cruised at 200 mph, as an example. Jet aircraft cruise at about 550--650 mph (850--1,000 kph).
And of course, orbital spacecraft / ballistic missiles hit 17,000 mph (27,000 kph), and up.
In the case of marine shipping, speeds didn't vary so much as tonnage did, with the net ton-miles/hour figure increasing accordingly. Clipper ships trended below 200 tons. Maersk's Triple-E class container ships displace 200,000 tons, a factor of 1,000.
The energy cost of lighting over the past 200 years has fallen by a factor of thousands, from candles and oil lamps to LEDs. Lighting uses which were previously unfathomable are now commonplace. Candle-powered outdoor advertising displays might be quaint, however, if somewhat fire-prone.
Again, typically, a 10x gain in some metric pushes applications to an entirely new domain, which was my point. Not that a 10x improvement was the likely limit in this case.
I'm saying that the Falcon Heavy has already achieved a 35x improvement from the Space Shuttle, and therefore if Starship achieved only a 10x improvement relative to the Shuttle it would actually be worse than what we already have and so wouldn't be an advancement.
If you meant 10x relative to current rockets, then yes, I agree that would be significant.
You are not reading the message I am attempting to convey.
So, it means nothing.
The Space Shuttle also was supposed to be cheap and almost completely reusable, it turned out to be one of the most expensive launchers. BFR is not the space shuttle, but I will not make any speculation before I can actually order a launch.
Elon Musk is known for overpromising. The tech is awesome, and SpaceX realizations speak for themselves, but I consider anything Elon Musk says "not even wrong".
I mean, I love SpaceX, and I follow BFR closely, but I think it would be better without the sensationalism.
Methane (Starship fuel) is massively cheaper than Kerosene (Falcon 9 fuel). Methane also has a much higher specific impulse, which means you can use less of it to get the same increase in velocity. Methane can be stored in liquid form in same temperature as oxygen, which means less insulation the two propellant tanks. Inversely, Kerosene will freeze at the temperatures required to get oxygen into liquid form.
Basically, nothing you said is accurate.
20% of the cost of the whole rocket. With no reuse. Now that reuse has cut the cost of launch way down, the second stage is much more than that of the cost.
Long-term marginal cost is determined by the nonreusable component cost + minimum refurbish & refit costs per launch. Effectively, the benefits of reuse offer diminising marginal benefit per reuse. Though designing for long-term use (say, a personal automobile vs. a rocketship) can still make sense.
An automobile used for daily commute with a 5 year life sees ~1,000 re-uses. You can vary the parameters to get different results. There are fuel, maintanance, garaging/parking, tax/registration, and insurance costs as well.
Something New Glenn sized definitely could.
Seemingly, SpaceX is the current best in the world and they couldn’t do it.
Right now SpaceX is the only company that recovers their orbital class booster. And that didn't happen until 2016! Prior to that, everyone dismissed landing rockets as impossible. Given the lack of competition for launch vehicles + the fat defense contracts being awarded, there wasn't much incentive for the incumbents to even try to bring the cost down.
Designing a rocket that can land and be reflow is a multiyear process. As other comments have said, more design changes would been needed to F9 to make it more reusable, those changes have tradeoffs. Instead, SpaceX chose to invest in a new design and more capable vehicle.
Other launch providers like RocketLab and Blue Origin are pursuing reusable vehicles.
"Why has no one done it?" give it time... it will happen sooner than we probably expect.
Also, you’d have to redesign F9 somewhat. Starship has the fairing integrated with the upper stage, which reduces recovery costs. Starship’s booster also does Return To Launch Site nominally, which means you don’t need a separate recovery droneship (Falcon 9 does that, too, but to make the most out of every expended upper stage, it makes sense to use down-range recovery). The F9 legs are sort of complicated logistically whereas Super Heavy is supposed to be recovered by the actual launch site, reducing turnaround time and costs. Also, using methane means less coking in the engines, which reduces turnaround costs and maintenance. Lots of things like that you’d need to reengineer to enable $1 million launch costs, but it’s feasible for an MLV. Relativity is planning to do it.
As Elon likes to point out, imagine how expensive it would be to fly if, after every flight, they threw away the plane. That's exactly what people traditionally did with rockets. The result is that the cost to fly a jet is mostly the cost of the fuel, while the cost to fly a rocket is the cost of the rocket.
Consider a Falcon 9 launch. Thanks to reuse, the cost to relaunch is in the neighborhood of $30 million. The cost of the fuel is about $200,000. Over 99% the launch cost is depreciation, maintenance, or having to replace what you didn't reuse.
The aim with Starship is to make the cost of a launch as close to the cost of the fuel as they can get.
They are aiming for daily launches of starship, so the site operations costs would be divided by potentially hundreds of launches per year instead of the one or two dozen a year nowadays.
The cost model per flight of Starship is more like that of a jumbo jet than that of a Falcon 9.
Methane on the other hand is starting out at a much lower temperature, and it's very difficult to get methane molecules to react with each other to form large molecules as you're not starting with any single C-C bonds. Isolated free carbon atoms (soot) aren't much of a problem.
The raptors don’t run fuel rich, which should reduce that problem.
I am skeptical of the claim that they will just be able to refuel and go. Every reusable space vehicle has had that goal and always cost more than expected to refurbish for the next launch. Yes, we may get there eventually but not in the next few decades, the risks of a catastrophic component failure are too high to do no refurbishment.
The starship and super heavy are certainly cheaper to construct but that has more to do with fabrication techniques than the material cost.
Methane is less dense than kerosene so needs larger tanks but it does have more energy per unit mass. The overheads of using cryogenic fuel are reduced on a larger rocket but the performance gain is probably only 10% or so.
I am not aware of any significant insulation between tanks on the Falcon 9 and it certainly isn't a major cost factor.
There have only been 2 reusable launch vehicles ever, and both were only partially reusable. Shuttle and Falcon 9. Falcon 9 has already made massive strides in reducing any refurb costs between missions. there is no reason that you couldn’t build one that requires no maintenance in between flights for the same reason that there’s no reason you can’t make an upper stage that can do multiple firings per flight without any maintenance in between. Upper stage reuse will be trickier, but ultimately there’s no fundamental reason why refurb has to be done in between every flight.
Do they deliberately deorbit the Falcon second stage? Would be interesting if we could keep a couple parked in LEO and refuel them for different missions.
Reusing second stages in space only really makes sense once you are making your fuel in space.
For a lot of purposes, Starship should make it extremely cheap to send propellant from Earth. $10/kg in LEO. Cheaper than any lunar mining proposal I’ve seen.
That said, I hope we do make propellant off-Earth eventually.
The whole reason for the full-flow staged cycle is to have much more reasonable internal temperatures. Methane as well was picked partially because its far more clean burning.
There is no reason rocket engines couldn't be as reliable a jet engines.
> far more fuel
RP1 is very expensive. Methane is much cheaper, and they can even produce it local. Ox is very cheap and is basically gone turn into the cost of electricity and they are using local solar to make it.
Helium is also a very expensive part of the Falcon 9. Starship avoids the use of helium.
Additionally the Falcon 9 used TEE-TAB that is also expensive.
And it used nitrogen as well, that not expensive but just one more thing to worry about.
Falcon 9 has 6 different different consumables, Starship has 2.
> generally more expense in all the ground operations
This is wrong. The Falcon needed to have drone ships operating and tug boats for them as well, to catch the fairing they have another 1-2 boats out there to collect the fairing.
Then the stages need to be brought into port, transported back to the launch site and so on. The fairing have to be refurbished as well.
In additional Starship has multiple design upgrades that make it actually easier. Unlike Falcon 9 Upper stage, the Starship will be fueled from below, meaning there is no secondary fuel infrastructure for the upper stage. Not requiring the fueling of the consumables above also makes it much easier.
Plus they were able to apply everything they learned from Falcon 9 and ground operations to this new launch vehicle and launch site.
> In a world where this can be launched for $2M, Falcon 9 can be launched for less than $1M.
Falcon 9 can not do that. First of all, you need to build an upper stage that cost you 5-10M. You can't build that Upper stage fast enough to reach the required flight rate. Falcon 9 is also more difficult to launch and prep for launch. It wasn't designed to be fully reusable and still need more checks and refurbishments.
Now $2M is extreme, even if it is $10M or $20M that only really matters for stuff like Mars. If you can launch it anywhere under $100M its revolutionary vehicle for space flight.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1094793664809689089?s=20
100 reuses is not the limit either. The first stage in particular may be made for a lot more.
By using a 100% reusable vehicle and the cheapest fuel available the aspirational launch cost of starship is $2M.
Even Apples to Oranges it will be an order of magnitude cheaper than the current paradigm of $35M per Falcon9 launch. When you further consider it has 10x the payload capacity, this experiment gets really exciting.