alt Hacker NewsHaving an impossible critical path will be the demise of the starship project. Too many things have to work that cannot be tested out of order. Too many of those things that needed to work years ago still don't. And those are the easy ones.
The items I'm listing here are just a subset of the critical path, and each milestone along the way will take months, optimistically, and years more realistically. To the point that starship won't be relevant to moon missions or any commercial use by the time it does what it needs to do to even partially fulfill the plans for it:
It needs to meet payload specifications. Currently it is off by a factor of two, which sounds doable until you realize the spec is 100 tons, and they need to find 50 tons more capacity by shedding weight elsewhere in the system.
It needs a launch cadence fast enough so that refueling doesn't take 15 separate starship tankers. Currently it would take years to refuel one single starship to make a one-way trip to the moon.
There's just a minor milestone on the way to that launch cadence: catching both stages.
Once both stages are reliably caught after a mission, refurbishment needs to be minimal. Proving that out will take several missions.
This is a simplified list of items on the critical path, but reaching each of these items has risks, and if those risks prove to be problems to solve, then each of those problems has a list of tasks and tests associated with it.
Some people think very highly of Elon for proposing technologically elegant solutions. But he's got a really big blind spot for the project management implications.
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They've reached orbit, and at the time of this comment are preparing to deploy Starlink sats. Which means they've successfully closed the economic development loop for the Starship program. Falcon 9 can't launch Starlink v3, only Starship can. They've already demonstrated successful booster catch. Even if they discard Ship in the ocean after every launch they're no worse off than with Falcon 9 (which also discards it's upper stage).
They'll ramp falcon flights down quickly. Ramp up Starship launches just as quickly. And in a couple years time we'll have a blooper reel like this one but larger by 10x: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ
Edit: Starlink deployed.
This post feels like written by a QA. This is their first semi operational flight . In its current state starship is a reason to be proud by any nation . It pushed science forward with cost and payload size never possible before . That’s only current state .
Raptor 3 has its only 3rd flight . That’s why the payload is “only” ~50t. Just for the reference, it’s already one of the most capable rocket in the world as of today , and even with partial reusability it has future.
They clearly doing rolling improvement , rollout and testing of many components of different readiness. Otherwise they will never ship anything.
I'm sure you also thought falcon was going to fail, Tesla would never work out, and Twitter would collapse after Elon bought it.
> they need to find 50 tons more capacity by shedding weight elsewhere in the system
In it's current test iteration they are overengineering many parts and opting for heavier, cheaper versions since currently the ship gets thrown away each time. One example are the grid fins. On Falcon 9 they are made of titanium, but on Starship they are steel probably because it's just easier to work with and why put in extra effort for something that will end up in the gulf? If they just swap in titanium grid fins they'll save 3 tons in the weight of the booster and even more fuel since that extra weight won't be getting carried up.
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If people didn't try things just because they were hard we'd all be ploughing fields right now
I wonder how this type of comment would apply to software development world where something innovative is being built, currently not ideal but the devs would just look at it: Meh, it doesn't do X, it doesn't do Y, it does Z worse and it doesn't send email!
Maybe AI applies here - from a few years of supercharged intellisense to builds stuff on its own. But even here I don't remember such a skepticism some folks are aiming at Starship.
It's like running into R&D department and just pointing out at the flaws/not implemented features while you iterate on your product. Annoying.
Starship's commercial viability rests almost entirely on whether it can orbit Starlink satellites more cheaply than Falcon. Falcon is around $3000/kg, Starship was promised at $100/kg, I doubt even Elon believes that number but it does mean they have plenty of buffer and cutting capacity from 50T to 100T is not the end of the world.
I agree that the Human Landing System plan for the moon is a shitshow, but it's almost a distraction for SpaceX at this point, and it would not surprise me if the whole program gets axed by whoever comes after Trump.
The OP will go on or not, I don't need to think high or low of Mask
"Currently it is off by a factor of two, which sounds doable until you realize the spec is 100 tons, and they need to find 50 tons more capacity by shedding weight elsewhere in the system."
You can probably prolong the stack, exactly as they did with Falcon. Also, Raptor 3 is more powerful than previous models, and I would expect future Raptor 4 to add some oomph as well.
"But he's got a really big blind spot for the project management implications."
Uh, isn't Starbase evidence to the contrary? They can produce rockets and rocket engines faster than anyone else in the world. And Raptor unit cost is ridiculously low for a liquid rocket engine.
I'm saddened by this comment being upvoted a lot on this site. I'm a space nerd from EU and have been watching SpX since they were launching from an atol. This comment is the epitome of clueless negativity, wrapped in an umbrella of big words and a list of things that are neither important nor factually correct.
Nothing listed in this comment is going to lead to "the demise of the starship project". And nothing listed there is original. We've heard it time and time again, when F9 was ready to launch, when F9 was ready to land, when F9 did land (bbbut they have to do it constantly), when F9 managed the first re-use (they need to do it at least 10 times so it's worth it) and so on and so forth.
They've now launched AND landed >600 times already. Let's just say they know what they're doing.
Anyway, for a bit of context: the current first orbital flight, with 26 satellites deploying right now, is adding the same amount of Starlink bandwidth as 10+ F9 launches. Let that sink in and re-do whatever cost/opportunity and "management" spiels you need to do. One flight > 10x F9 flights.
That alone justifies the Starship. The rest is the cherry on top.