SpaceX is now building a Raptor engine a day, NASA says

Re:SpaceX is now building a Raptor engine a day, NASA says by fabian2k on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @01:05PM (#33439228)

Starship will certainly enable some new things we could not do before, or that were simply not economically feasible. But even then there is likely still a severe limit to the demand for launching payloads. All those payloads cost serious money, and while you can save a significant amount by removing the necessity for very lightweight construction due to the enormous capacity of Starship, this might only move stuff from "extremely expensive" to "very expensive".

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Re:SpaceX is now building a Raptor engine a day, NASA says by avmich on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @01:15PM (#33439407)

> But even then there is likely still a severe limit to the demand for launching payloads.

The Starship is about changing the approach, not applying state of the art to a changed parameter. Currently there is a limit. After Starship is offered on the market, that limit may significantly change, as its main reason to exist is the high price of the launch services.

> All those payloads cost serious money

Right, but if you, say, are going to send off-the shelf - or, ok, almost off-the-shelf :) - Caterpillar to the Moon, the payload cost suddenly drops. This is exaggerration, of course, but the idea is that payloads may become much - orders of magnitude - cheaper to produce.

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Re:SpaceX is now building a Raptor engine a day, NASA says by Seanambers on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @02:56PM (#33441147)

If you can drive the price ($ per ton to orbit) down, more demand will be created. Historically and right now the payload cost dwarfs the rocket costs. That will change and be reversed over time.

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Re:SpaceX is now building a Raptor engine a day, NASA says by m4rtink on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @03:08PM (#33441337)

Some very sophisticated stuff like space telescopes is much more expensive than their launch costs. But indeed, try launching stuff like propellant or shielding and the difference currently is so high its not funny.

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Re:SpaceX is now building a Raptor engine a day, NASA says by avmich on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @05:46PM (#33443335)

> Some very sophisticated stuff like space telescopes is much more expensive than their launch costs.

Today. Space telescopes are much more expensive than their Earth-bound cousins. In a large part because you can't afford failure. With cheap launches you'll send much cheaper telescopes, which will still do the same science - and they are cheaper because they are not made not to fail with very high probability.

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Re:SpaceX is now building a Raptor engine a day, NASA says by m4rtink on Friday November 04, 2022 @07:58AM (#33465158)

Agreed, still even in the future instruments will be likely more expensive than say bunch of liquid H2 for your NERVA engine & which would influence how they are being launched and moved around.

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Re:SpaceX is now building a Raptor engine a day, NASA says by bombcar on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @03:09PM (#33441356)

I think the whole long-term point is to be able to "build" fuel in space somehow, either on the moon or in orbit, because then the rocket equation has been effectively solved.

Starships bringing fuel up is a stop-gap.

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Re:SpaceX is now building a Raptor engine a day, NASA says by ufmace on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @03:44PM (#33441867)

Maybe, maybe not. Historically speaking, every time we make doing some expensive and rare thing dramatically cheaper or faster, somebody will dream up a way to make use of that new capacity. I'd be more than happy to see what people dream up to do if we manage to make access to space 10x cheaper.

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