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1. Starprophet1 (starprophet1@nicecrew.digital)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 13:11:28 JST Starprophet1

   • Starprophet1

   Elon's SpaceX Starship

   A comparison of a depicted cross-section of crew Starship, and the current Ship 28 prototype slated for IFT-3 orbital test flight. Ship 28 is a Starlink Cargo variant of Starship.

   • Starprophet1 (starprophet1@nicecrew.digital)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 13:11:20 JST Starprophet1

     in reply to

     • VaxxSabbath
     • brigrammer
     • Charles_in_Charge
     • PopulistRight
     • Kalogerosstilitis2RvngotJunta

     SpaceX will have to figure out some way to convince people to spend huge sums to put all of that mass in orbit,

     It's called "Starlink," and Starlink is the majority of the world's satellites.

     Man, I wish TheShadowedKnight (another military guy with high tech knowledge like me) joined up with us from Gab. He is still there.

     https://gab.com/theshadowedknight

     Cc. @VaxxSabbath @Kalogerosstilitis2RevengeoftheJunta

   • brigrammer (brigrammer@poa.st)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 13:11:21 JST brigrammer

     in reply to

     • Charles_in_Charge
     • PopulistRight
     @Charles_in_Charge @Starprophet1 @PopulistRight With these things being government funded, there is also no "need" to win outside of politics. NASA makes some money, but is not a profitable business mining the moon or something. It does some research that is funded by taxes. The same is true for almost all space launches, save commercial satellites.
     
     Without businesses needing launches, how much to spend on space flight is largely a policy matter - not an economic one. Roscosmos is surely fuming that they aren't getting the same volume of launches - but for the Kremlin getting stuff into space is only useful as a capability. Without our bottomless petrodollars, they have other priorities like finishing off Ukraine, possibly taking on more land, and trying to populate the vast tracks of virgin land they could be mining and farming. Sending up another science experiment is not that valuable for them unless they overtake the US.
     
     SpaceX will have to figure out some way to convince people to spend huge sums to put all of that mass in orbit, the moon, and eventually mars. That or they will have to make a business case up themselves.
   • Charles_in_Charge (charles_in_charge@poa.st)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 13:11:23 JST Charles_in_Charge

     in reply to

     • brigrammer
     • PopulistRight
     @brigrammer @Starprophet1 @PopulistRight There's also the intersection of the reality of R&D and government bureaucracy. Look at all the things SpaceX blew up or crashed before they got the Falcon 9 to work on the regular. Bureaucracies are very, very risk adverse. The old Apollo program only got funding because the race to beat the Russians to the moon was considered to be in the national interest, and only then because Kennedy said it was.
     
     Even with that, the motto for NASA was "failure is not an option". If a rocket blew up, it was considered a national embarrassment. We had to get to the moon, now, and everything had to work perfect. If something went wrong, it meant someone's job, some government worker's job.
     
     Once Apollo wound down, the pressing need to further develop space travel faded. They then knew how to get into low orbit, the contractors had that tech down. That's pretty much all the government was willing to pay for, and building those rockets made them money. Their own engineers told them they could do it, but the bean counters were more interested in meeting quarterly profit goals. Developing reusable rockets would have cost them money without any promise of further profit, so they didn't do it. No one wanted to waste the time and money on creating something new when there didn't seem to be a demand for it, and no one wanted to stick their neck out and risk embarrassment if it failed. As is so often the case, it took a no fucks given autist to do what others wouldn't
   • Starprophet1 (starprophet1@nicecrew.digital)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 13:11:24 JST Starprophet1

     in reply to

     • Charles_in_Charge
     • PopulistRight

     Each Soyuz booster has a single engine (with 4 chambers). So they cannot throttle down.

     They have no grid fins, nor the kind of heat shielding to land. (Even though the Russians know how to build that stuff, they have hypersonic missiles in the MaRV, HGV, and HCM range.)

     The Russians do have the engineering talent, but they lack the proper leadership. They need to start developing reusable rocket stages right-the-fuck now. The Chinese know this, that's why they're copying Elon.

   • brigrammer (brigrammer@poa.st)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 13:11:24 JST brigrammer

     in reply to

     • Charles_in_Charge
     • PopulistRight
     @Starprophet1 @PopulistRight @Charles_in_Charge So, in my opinion the reason nobody before Elon made reusable rockets is because they were always just repurposed weapons tech. If you need to make a rocket to kill somebody then it doesn't need to land - so why not just figure out how to make it carry something other than a warhead.
     
     If I were Russia I would be much more interested in developing better and more mass manufacturable weapons that can also be used for launching stuff to space than spend those limited resources on landing when that is <1% of all rocket needs.
     
     TbH, making disposable rockets way cheaper so you can make more weapons is probably a better bang for the buck from a state actor point of view.
   • Starprophet1 (starprophet1@nicecrew.digital)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 13:11:27 JST Starprophet1

     in reply to

     • Charles_in_Charge

     I wonder how many times the Russians kick themselves for not selling Elon those rocket motors he asked for.

     "Sad trombone noises"

     (Pictured: a "landed" Russian booster vs Elon's landed booster)

   • PopulistRight (populistright@poa.st)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 13:11:27 JST PopulistRight

     in reply to

     • Charles_in_Charge
     @Starprophet1 @Charles_in_Charge The Russian engines cannot re-start for a landing burn?
   • Charles_in_Charge (charles_in_charge@poa.st)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 13:11:28 JST Charles_in_Charge

     in reply to
     @Starprophet1 I wonder how many times the Russians kick themselves for not selling Elon those rocket motors he asked for.
   • brigrammer (brigrammer@poa.st)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 13:12:03 JST brigrammer

     in reply to

     • VaxxSabbath
     • Charles_in_Charge
     • PopulistRight
     • Kalogerosstilitis2RvngotJunta
     @Starprophet1 @Charles_in_Charge @Kalogerosstilitis2RevengeoftheJunta @PopulistRight @VaxxSabbath Starlink is cool. After that, what else can make money in space?
     
     I say all of this as a SpaceX fan. I just think that there are very good reasons nobody else is even trying to compete with Elon. I hope he gets cities on Mars. I just don't think state actors care about that.