ULA employee "critiques" Starship architecture : spaceflightmemes

[–] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 13 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

Every single current effort for a Mars journey is poorly planned PR nonsense.

We’re putting the cart before the horse. We should not be wasting this much resources & effort into human spaceflight beyond the moon. We should be working to capture mineral rich asteroids, bring them into a Lagrange point, and start working on autonomous mining/refining/manufacturing from the asteroids.

This is key to human colonization of the solar system. Trying to launch everything we’ll need from out of the gravity well is stupid. Once we have autonomous space manufacturing perfected, we can have massive spacecraft delivered to earth, and all we need launch is the personnel and their food (with autonomous farming, we could grow the food long before human crew arrival). We can also have bases built at our destination point long before any humans arrive.

[–] ProfessorPeregrine@reddthat.com 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

There is no economically viable space mining scenario now. Someday with a large free fall population there might be, with CHON mining first, but even that is completely untested technology built on massive assumptions.

I wish it were different, I really do, since we may run out of easily available resources here and lose the ability to get out there.

Speaking as a metallurgical engineer with experience in mining. There is no resource out there that we can't mine on Earth for a bazillion dollars (approx.) less.

On the Mars side of things, I like Aldrin's cycler idea for a practical pipeline to Mars, but I'm not an expert on that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler

[–] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

‘The thing we haven’t invented yet isn’t economically viable yet.’ Yeah, no shit.

I guess let’s just keep polluting our planet, because it’s cheaper.

[–] ProfessorPeregrine@reddthat.com 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

For FAR less than trying to mine in space we can develop emissionless refining methods and less destructive mining on Earth. I'd purpose that path as more realistic.

I worked at an emissionless copper refinery back in the 80s. You know why we still emit sulphur dioxide during copper refining? Because this company shut it down because it was not economically viable with a copper price below like $1.50 a pound. There is just no way space mining is an answer in the short or medium term. You are taking orders of magnitudes of difference in cost, if it is even possible at all.

And it may not be.

One of the many reasons mining is so comparatively cheap on Earth is because the planet has kindly concentrated interesting minerals for us. This does not happen for most asteroids, they are undifferentiated. Earth may have a smaller proportion of some element than an asteroid on average, but due to any of a number of gravity and atmospheric driven processes we have learned to find areas where it is so concentrated it is worthwhile to pick it up from the ground. Due to these processes we can find gold ores with 1 gram of gold per ton and that is economical. You would have to find some way to refine an entire asteroid to extract what is valuable. No gold veins there.

And you have to think about how you are going to get it here to where we can use it. What impact do you think it will make to the environment to deorbit a years worth of whatever metal? Do the calculations yourself to understand the amount of heat. It would be a constant addition of heat to the atmosphere for any realistic technology that, at scale, could be as bad or worse than HCGW.

Friend, I am on your side here, but if there's is not an economic incentive to do something, it is not going to happen. It will be hard enough to require the additional cost of using known technology here on Earth that would make the use and reuse of these materials sustainable. We should focus our mineral efforts there, not space.

If we colonize the Moon or Mars, mining there for local purposes could well be viable, but economically even less viable to send that to Earth.

[–] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago

We’re not talking about materials for use on earth. We’re talking about using those materials in space, and not needing launch everything up the gravity well for use up there.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 7 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Solid points, the whole in-flight refueling process is still completely untested. Many people are probably still under the impression that Starship could fly around the moon, return and land on just its original fuel load. The rant doesn't elaborate on why rocket reusability in general is a bad idea though - Falcon is a proven reusable vehicle that has reduced launch costs by an order of magnitude. Maybe a better system design for Starship (I hate that name, it's not a fucking "star"ship) would have been as a launch vehicle for something like a VASIMR or other more advanced low-fuel engine for the interplanetary portion of a mission.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 3 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Starship (I hate that name, it’s not a fucking "star"ship)

Same. Mars Colonial Transporter, Interplanetary Transport System, and Big F****n Rocket were more appropriate names.

something like a VASIMR or other more advanced low-fuel engine

I'd love to see some more advanced engines, but I think that the capability to reset the rocket equation in LEO has merit.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago

LEO reset does have merit, it just never gets away from the fundamental problem of lifting fuel into orbit.

I would really prefer a space travel dev approach that doesn't prioritize getting humans somewhere as the immediate goal. We already know we can shoot people to the moon and land them. We can use LEO to study problems of interplanetary travel such as prolonged weightlessness and confinement. I think we should be sending robots to the moon and Mars to mine and refine local material, print permanent structures, pressurize them and grow food in them. Then send people once they can just show up and live in them. Mere survival shouldn't be their main task.

[–] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 5 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

it's very goofy to see the difference in attitude for any post involving obviously spacex things between lemmy and normal spaceflight communities lmao

[–] theonlytruescotsman@sh.itjust.works 1 points 13 hours ago

Some people still think musk has any decision making authority in SpaceX.

[–] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I don't get why the other rocket companies are not doing reuse at this point. Its like most car companies now have electric offerings.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 3 points 15 hours ago

I don't think the legacy launch industry expected Falcon 9 to succeed, and they were caught off guard. ULA have no plans for booster reuse, and Arianespace's timeline stretches into the 2030s.

There are some other companies developing reusable rockets. Blue Origin could launch New Glenn within in the next month, Rocket Lab are testing Neutron hardware, and there are a couple of reusable Chinese rockets in development as well.

Most of these are still only aiming for booster reuse. Stoke Space's Nova is the only other fully reusable rocket design which comes to mind.

[–] Poach@lemmy.world 29 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I mean SpaceX is only about 5 years and $5 billion behind in their timeline and budget to go to the moon. So, Starship doesn't seem to be a serious vehicle.

[–] Bimfred@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

People love bringing up that Starship was supposed to be doing round trips to the Moon and Mars by now, but when has anything space ever been on budget, in time, and working perfectly on the first try? Every new launch vehicle takes longer and more money than initial optimistic predictions state. Damn near every probe and telescope is years over deadlines and often a significant percentage of first estimates over budget.

[–] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

The problem isn't so much new vehicle takes time, it's the bullshit spacex fanboys spout about every other rocket company for doing the same thing.

[–] theonlytruescotsman@sh.itjust.works 1 points 13 hours ago

The difference is in scale. For the cost of the SLS program, which is likely to be scrapped next year, you could fund the entirety of SpaceX to this point in history. It's also in success rate, SpaceX within the next five years will have more successful launches than any other space company or organization. They're already more prolific than any conpetitor with a viable launch vehicle, except Russia.

[–] 9bananas@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

i mean...going to the moon be expensive

the u.s. spent about 96 billion on launch vehicles alone so getting stretching those 5 billion as far they did is pretty impressive in comparison!

sure, it's taking longer than musk claimed, but pretty much everyone else said from the very beginning that musk's timeline is unrealistic...

god i hate that idiot....spaceX could be so much better at what it does without him...

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 day ago (7 children)

He's being generous by assuming 100% fuel transfer and no boil off.

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[–] tomatolung@sopuli.xyz 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well, he's not wrong technically, but the context feels like it's obviously missing. We have no Saturn V vehicles anymore, nor can we build them again. Starship might require that many launches to get to TLI, but with reusability, it probably can. Not to mention that the cost will come down a bit. So it can at least do it soon.

I'm sure others have more coherent and thought out rebuttals.

[–] subignition@fedia.io 21 points 1 day ago (13 children)

why can't we build them again? were the blueprints and knowledge lost? deliberately destroyed? genuine question

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 5 points 17 hours ago

Because tech evolved, we could do better now.

[–] Bimfred@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago

The production lines are shut down and any custom tooling has had its materials reclaimed to make other things. The institutional knowledge, the little bits that never got written down in the blueprints or manufacturing instructions, it's all gone. The people who worked on that rocket and its components are dead or have been working on something else for the last 50 years. How well would you remember some little tidbit of information that you last needed half a lifetime ago?

[–] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 5 points 20 hours ago

because they were insanely expensive

[–] sprittytinkles@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Because a lot of "Released Engineering Documents" were just engineering notebooks, and each vehicle was different, even the parts that were supposed to be the same. There was a lot of "repair" versus "rework" disposition, and a "Just make it work; it only needs to work once" culture.

Basically, because it was a race against the Russians, and the Russians were winning.

[–] subignition@fedia.io 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

huh, impressive that we did a (relatively) slapdash job of it and still pulled it off. Thanks for clarifying.

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 3 points 17 hours ago

It's downright fucking nuts that it all worked and I'm astonished we didn't leave any astronauts on the moon, and Apollo 13 crew made it back.

Apollo 13 is a helluva movie that really exposes how razor-thin everything was.

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[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Is it true that starship will have less payload weight to LEO than all other SpaceX rockets?

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I don't think so.

Even Starship v1 (which have already ceased production) had an estimated payload to LEO comparable to a reusable Falcon Heavy (~50 tonnes). Starship v2 (scheduled to launch in January) has a projected payload to LEO around 100 tonnes, and v3 will be higher still.

[–] 7toed@midwest.social 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Okay then why did they only launch a banana as cargo? I thought the EV was a standard test payload

[–] Morphit@feddit.uk 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Standard for what? The first Dragon payload was a wheel of cheese.

It's just something silly they wanted to do. You can't seriously think the max payload capacity of starship to almost-LEO is one single banana.

[–] 7toed@midwest.social 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Like heavy then, why did they not use an actual test payload before now already being done with starship v1? Hypothetical payload to orbit doesnt count if you never done it 🤷‍♂️

[–] Morphit@feddit.uk 1 points 1 hour ago

Why would they need to prove anything? SpaceX knows how much the vehicle can lift. They will be their own first customers with Starlink when they finally go into orbit. The re-entry and recovery systems are much more important to SpaceX and since they haven't inserted into a full orbit yet, what would it even prove? The haters are wrong on one more weird conspiracy?

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