/sci/ - Science & Math

>>16143329
>>16143371
>>16143373

Sci fi spaceships are very quickly going to seem quaint.

Pic related is a table I made a year ago on what it would look like for Starship to launch 150 tonnes per day, with a new starship added every month. Given these assumptions, the upmass is ridiculously large. After 3 launches, the mass of the ISS can be in orbit. After a year, the mass of the Donnager. After 3.5 years, the total mass of the US Navy.

If you have a specific criticism of why starship won't work, I would love to hear it. Even if these assumptions are too rosy (upmass is less, or its reuse cadence is slower), it will still revolutionize space.

>>16082335
Yes, they're reasonable and require no new science to build. They do require some new economics to work. Luckily, rapidly reusable, cheap, superheavy rockets are being built now.

Here's a post I wrote a year ago, it shows how much more stuff Starship can enable. And the things it can bring to space will enable turning big asteroids/small moons (Deimos & Phobos) into habitats.
>>Begin!
The scale and importance of Starship is still greatly underestimated. I made a rough calculation of Starship upmass using some basic assumptions (1 new rocket [superheavy+starship] is added to the fleet per month. [~500 raptors/year @ 6+33=39 per stack; 500/39 ~12]
Each rocket can get 150 tonnes to LEO per launch
Each rocket will fly once per day
Assuming flights start Jan 1 2024....

>For comparison to real things:

After 3 flights, you've launched 450 tonnes, which is more than the 420 tonne ISS [which took more than 40 flights to assemble!]

After 6 months, you've sent mass up equal to a US supercarrier [100,000 tonnes]

In about a year, you could launch the of the Momentum Limited Orion Nuclear Pulse ship. This ship was designed in the 1960's to use contemporary tech to get humans to Alpha Centauri quickly by periodically detonating nuclear bombs and using their energy to gradually push the ship to 3% of the speed of light. [400,000 tonnes]

Before 4 years, you've sent more than the total US Navy tonnage [4,635,628 tonnes]

>The scale and economies of Starship are so ridiculous that science fiction things can actually happen.

The Nostromo [bulk carrier from Alien] is ~ 63,000 tonnes, so that could be launched in the first 4 months of Starship operations.

The USS Enterprise NCC-1701 is 190,000 tonnes, so that could be launched in about 9 months.

The Donnager [Martian flagship in the Expanse] is ~250,000 tonnes, so that could be launched in about 11 months.

>>15808925
in 2023, SpaceX has launched 73 Falcon9's so far, with around 20 more by the end of the year. That cadence means on average a Falcon 9 launches once every 4 days. Next year they're planning for 40% more, so that will be a launch every 3 days.
Starship is being designed with more emphasis on reusability, so it seems likely it will have an even higher cadence than Falcon9.
Even if the upmass per starship is less than the 150 tonnes expected (maybe they need a heavier heat shield, or the chopsticks don't work so they need landing gear, etc.) they will still be able to lift astronomical amounts of stuff to orbit. See pic related, which has 'conservative' assumptions of once-per-day launches per starship (SpaceX wants to get to several launches per day per starship).

I'm optimistic that SpaceX is going to unlock a ton of formerly science fiction ideas into reality. (i.e. orbital manufacturing, asteroid mining, offworld colonies, etc.) -- just look at the upmass in pic rel.

How do I invest in this new future without getting scammed by obvious scams (like Mars One, ARCAspace) or more elaborate ones hiding behind SPACs? How many $ do I need to be able to buy into SpaceX directly?

>>15556815
We're going to make it. Humans will colonize other worlds! The first parents of a child born off earth are probably already alive. The dangers of living in space/on other worlds longterm discussed in that video are easily mitigated by having larger habitats/spacecraft than the tiny ones we've used thus far. Instead of the Apollo (each mission had two 6 m^3 spacecraft), transits to Mars will have dozens of 1100 m^3 starships.

Once settlers get to Mars, they won't cower in tiny shacks. They'll build massive habitats. If low gravity is a problem (like it could be during gestation) a maglev train going in a circle could provide centripetal gravity for people who need it. (maybe pregnant women sleep on the train every night, or people recovering from certain injuries stay on it for a few weeks, or athletes live on it at 1.5g for a few months before big events like current Olympians train at altitude) etc.)

The last major milestone for getting humans truly spacefaring is being able to get millions of tons of stuff to orbit cheaply. Starship is probably going to be the way this happens. I made a chart showing upmass with realistic numbers (in fact more pessimistic than SpaceX's estimates). With these kinds of masses to play with, colonizing Mars will be relatively safer and more comfortable than we previously imagined.

The scale and importance of Starship is still greatly underestimated. I made a rough calculation of Starship upmass using some basic assumptions (1 new rocket [superheavy+starship] is added to the fleet per month. [~500 raptors/year @ 6+33=39 per stack; 500/39 ~12]
Each rocket can get 150 tonnes to LEO per launch
Each rocket will fly once per day
Assuming flights start Jan 1 2024....

>For comparison to real things:

After 3 flights, you've launched 450 tonnes, which is more than the 420 tonne ISS [which took more than 40 flights to assemble!]

After 6 months, you've sent mass up equal to a US supercarrier [100,000 tonnes]

In about a year, you could launch the Momentum Limited Orion Nuclear Pulse ship. This ship was designed in the 1960's to use contemporary tech to get humans to Alpha Centauri quickly by periodically detonating nuclear bombs and using their energy to gradually push the ship to 3% of the speed of light. [400,000 tonnes]

Before 4 years, you've sent more than the total US Navy tonnage [4,635,628 tonnes]

>The scale and economies of Starship are so ridiculous that science fiction things can actually happen.

The Nostromo [bulk carrier from Alien] is ~ 63,000 tonnes, so that could be launched in the first 4 months of Starship operations.

The USS Enterprise NCC-1701 is 190,000 tonnes, so that could be launched in about 9 months.

The Donnager [Martian flagship in the Expanse] is ~250,000 tonnes, so that could be launched in about 11 months.