It’s a SpaceX World (Everyone Else is Playing Catch-up)
SpaceX was not just dominant in 2023, it humiliated its competitors. We see this in launch services, in spacecraft operations (and, logically, manufacturing), and the tremendous mass its rockets lifted to orbit:
@SpeakerToManagers Falcon 9/Starlink seems to be succeeding at performing a circus rope trick—the Pentagon is buying into it, as are various other cellcos, and Starlink 2 is aiming to provide global cellphone service but needs Starship as a heavy lift launch vehicle (the comsats are much bigger than for Starlink 1).
Mars colonization is an idiotic boondoggle, but I suspect Starship will go to the Moon and Mars with NASA expeditions on board.
@cstross
I don’t have much good to say about StarLink, what with Musk’s playing Cold War politics with it, and its deleterious effect on astronomical light pollution, but you’re probably right that the military will love dumping a thousand birds into orbit at once.
@cstross@SpeakerToManagers do you disagree with the idea that establishing a human settlement in mars would not result in a forcing function for creating new technologies that would also aid and benefit life on earth ?
@fleeky@SpeakerToManagers There are too many negatives in that sentence for me to parse it unambiguously.
Also, define "settlement". Do you mean a research base with 4-12 astronauts working there for shifts of multiple months to a couple of years, or Elon Musk's Neom-flavoured apartheid dream city?
@cstross@SpeakerToManagers sorry if I posed the question in a bad way, apologies. Was hoping just to hear your thoughts on the matter.
I personally don't have a specific definition of what the settlement should be, mostly enjoy discussing with others to discover what an ideal concept could be.
For me I live in a village of 800 maybe start there ? Would also be happy to hear your thoughts on a 4 - 12 person version.
@fleeky@SpeakerToManagers A 4-12 person expedition/research base could plausibly be supplied 100% from Earth, if Starship works as advertised. But it's basically a glorified moonbase, albeit with some different environmental requirements (different thermal, atmosphere, and ambient corrosive environmental concerns: deeper gravity for Earth return). But a surface base for crew makes no sense when you can have humans dig in on Phobos and operate drones remotely (with no signal lag) much cheaper.
@cstross@SpeakerToManagers this approach makes 100 percent sense initially and an aim for the stairs approach makes a lot of sense. What would be the step after that? I mean if SpaceX could achieve 2 million tons to orbit every travel window there seems to be a lot of possiblity on the horizon.
Creating groups dedicated to creating the necessary social and technological ability to use even that seems like a fascinating exploration.
@fleeky@SpeakerToManagers I keep having to repeat until I'm blue in the face: THERE IS NO CREDIBLE ECONOMIC RATIONALE FOR MARS COLONIZATION.
It's essentially a religious touchstone of faith. ("Be fruitful and multiply"—by spamming every corner of the cosmos with error-prone copies of yourself.)
Mars settlement doesn't even have the Lunar 3He bullshit (and it IS bullshit) going for it.
@cstross@SpeakerToManagers I dont quite see it that way but apologize for antagonizing you. Will do my best not to discuss it. Thank you for your point of view!
@fleeky@SpeakerToManagers You're not antagonizing me! You're just revisiting stuff that got chewed over and spat out by the commentariat on my blog 10-20 years ago.
@cstross i see a pattern emerging: elmos companies thrive, they redefine the market, then at some point he leaves his role as the guy with the money and gets involved in the product. Then everything turns to shit. I recently got to talk with a space engineer who explained to me what a bad idea starship is, as it is confronted with some nearly unsolvable obstacles, that can put the crew in danger.
@Nfoonf Luckily Starship isn't going straight to crew-rated service; if Falcon 9 is anything to go by, it'll take most of a decade (at least) to get there. Which makes the HLS spin-off program timetable sound a little bit optimistic (I'm betting on Starship HLS working eventually, but probably not before 2030).
@cstross@Nfoonf probably not till next year but starship is designed for turnaround on the order of hours , not days or weeks if they can really achieve that I think we will have crew ratings a lot sooner.. but only time will tell
@fleeky@Nfoonf What I have noticed is that each Starship test flight gives them data on 36 sea level Raptors and 3 Rvac engines, and several re-lights. Engine clustering builds up reliability statistics really fast. So what's left is the end-to-end system integration and stuff you can't test until you've passed other gateways (eg. can't test the heatshield under re-entry conditions until you can make orbital velocity).
Add comment