I am assuming they are talking about this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzXcTFfV3Ls&t=3s

Edit: Another link with probably better info

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC1wgWi9WWU

TLDR: DC-X (Delta Clipper X)

I think it's a really responsible decision by SpaceX to not put their StarShip stage into a full orbit until they have demonstrated the ability to get it back out of orbit.

They should be applauded for this, along with their iterative approach.

Note that this next test will demonstrate re-light of the engine in space at micro-gravity. This is the demonstration needed prior to putting the StarShip in orbit. We'll probably see a full orbital test for the flight after this one.

They could have easily put previous tests into orbit - it's a fairly minor change to their existing regime and they have plenty of fuel to use.

Do you really believe that they “can’t” get out of low earth orbit, as opposed to “haven’t yet”??

Didn't SpaceX launch Europa Clipper to Jupiter a few weeks ago?

The shuttle boosters required rebuilding / refueling (which is solid rocket goop) and the fuel tank was completely lost and required rebuilding. The head shield tiles were extremely fragile on the shuttle.

It was never a fully reusable design, just more reusable than before.

SpaceX plans to have no parts that are lost each flight and is working to make the tiles mostly standardized and less sensitive to faults.

Some of SpaceX's first stages are getting close to the individual Shuttles' launch counts, with substantially less turnaround time and cost than Shuttle ever had.

Starship has work to do, but it's hard to argue they're not at least on the right path.

With the Falcon 9 they're already at over 100 launches this year. It's multiple rockets, but the turn around is pretty quick and getting quicker every year. They're designing starship from the start with same day turnaround in mind. I wouldn't bet against it I guess.

For the Super Heavy booster, SpaceX is targeting a <1hr turnaround time. For the ship, it gets a bit more complex. Ships have to make complete orbits before returning, and generally they have to be loaded with cargo as well. Tanker Starships for lunar/Mars missions will probably have pretty quick turnaround given that fuel can be loaded on the pad; other ships will have significantly longer turnarounds.

It's a good question. The hurdle to clear for same-day reuse will be the heat shield. SpaceX hasn't yet demonstrated that Starship can reenter the atmosphere and remain fully intact. Doing it while sustaining near zero wear on the heat shield will be even harder. But I think it is not impossible, and I don't know of any other obvious blockers for same day reuse.

The previous flight was October 13, 2024, so while I can't speak to every day, one month turnaround is a reality.

SpaceX already launches multiple times per month just to maintain Starlink. That will be much cheaper with Starship while enabling larger and more capable satellites. In fact, it's likely that one of the reasons SpaceX built Starlink is to create their own customer (and spur competitors) to plausibly use a significant fraction of Starship's capabilities. None existed at the time.

In the near term the biggest reason to do multiple launches in a day will be orbital refueling. This is required for sending much, much larger payloads to the Moon and Mars. It will require on the order of 10 launches to fuel up one moon lander in orbit, and obviously doing that as quickly as possible will be beneficial. NASA has already committed to this plan for Artemis.

It's a mandate for the next Artemis Mission. [1]

The HLS (Spaceship) will need many refuels at orbit in order to get to the Moon and back. That means at least a dozen of fully-loaded Heavy launches to LEO just so each one of them can load a bit of fuel into HLS. The fuel in orbit can't sit idle for too long, or it deteriorates; I haven't found a limit on days for that, but a week-long launch window is considered a dealbreaker, we're talking a dozen Heavy launches in a week.

It's either a short launch window, or at least 6 Starships built and launched twice in ~10 days. Don't count out on SpaceX building 12 Heavy Starships just for that Artemis mission.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_III

Needs tend to develop once the means are there.

200 years ago, there was no need to use electricity. 100 years ago, there was no need to use a programming language. 30 years ago, there was no need for gigabit wireless Internet.

If satellites don't have to worry as much about weight constraints they can be made cheaper and quicker. Space missions can become more routine.

If we want to establish long term bases on the Moon or Mars then yes, you need not only to send crew and habitation modules but ongoing supplies and equipment.

Other use cases include launching and maintaining satellite constellations (Starling / Starshield), and launching singular large payloads like space telescopes.

Even for smaller payloads, having both the first and second stages be reusable will reduce launch costs.

Yes, obviously.

It takes a heavy launch rocket to launch heavier things into space or missions, refueling, and to goto other planets.

Yes, to do anything at all in the rest of the universe.

We are insatiably curious explorers. The cosmos calls to us. Many are willing to do anything they can to answer that call.

Think about it, Starship enables a new era of military dominance in space. Military stuff is notoriously heavy.

Besides, Elon is the first to go after supervillain territory.

That is totally false, but you are not the first person I have heard spread this roomer.

You can go to the official govenrment website and look at the contract, it tells you exactly how much has been paid out and how much has not been. The money is getting out as SpaceX hits development milestones.

I don't remember, exactly but about 2.x billion $ were paid out so far. The money is spread over 40ish milestones. And they have done like 25 or so by now.

To get the full pay out, they will be required to land on the moon and take off again. Those are likely the last couple milestones.

That's just straight up not true. The $3bn were never meant to fund the entire project in the way you imply.

The problem with space guns is you can't just yeet rocks into orbit. Any orbit that starts at the surface returns to the surface. So you still need a disposable rocket and avionics and fuel in every payload to change the orbit once out of the atmosphere. Only now the rocket needs to survive being literally shot out of a gun and then traveling at orbital velocity in atmosphere. That puts a pretty high floor on the cost per shot.

I applaud GP's effort at also avoiding shipping cliches like Olympic-size swimming pools.

Cheaper rockets also mean cheaper payload in that the payloads don't have to be engineered to such high standards of reliability.

> it's not clear what a Moon base is good for

not letting China do it first

People congregate around water sources. They don't just gather anywhere and make it happen. Ports are where they are due to the location having the necessary resources to support a population servicing a useful(1) industry.

Similarly, moon or Mars bases will be where they are if the location has some useful(1) industry and sufficient resources to support a population servicing that industry.

(1) 'Useful' to them, and not necessarily to everyone everywhere all the time.

> A 100x reduction in costs means that it becomes a fundable endeavour that countries like the US could still justify.

Don't forget the dynamics. Costs of all such projects drop further when early steps become affordable. Like, with 100x reduction on the sticker price, US might feel Mars colony is still too expensive a project, but 100x reduction on trying out some adjacent space tech may just be in range of NASA budget or some private interest. Steps get made, iterated on, making next steps cheaper and more likely to happen. Derisking compounds.

I do agree it'd still be a decades long project at least (with a settlement established early on; it's the tail end that will drag on).

>> or nestled in a crater on the Moon.

>..why?

Having some gravity and hard surface to build on simplifies engineering challenges, particularly on large scales, as in free space, tension becomes a big issue. And, perhaps more importantly, the Moon would shield the telescope from all the electromagnetic noise produced on Earth, and also by the Sun.

> Regardless of reusability, there are realities of fixed FOSSIL FUEL costs associated with getting into gravity. They're not cheap, and they're not frivolous.

I hope you don't mean hydrogen and methane. Those are downright easy to make without fossil fuels. And kerosene isn't all that hard.

The payload is so big it will be a pretty dramatic phase transition for almost everything space related, assuming theres not some horrible flaw hidden away somewhere.

Quite bizarre how some people genuinely think he's just some guy who allocates capital. Or rich dad or whatever. I guess his dad was probably rich but that's clearly not enough.

SpaceX are not building a transcontinental railroad. I think that is a false equivalence.

An operational Starship should be very impactful on space exploration but it won't be shipping cattle back from Mars. There is a difficult to discern line between reality and bullshit that Musk likes to blur. The "vision" stuff is there to hype up the troops and investors. You don't need to swallow it to appreciate the technology. It isn't narrow minded to reject stuff that just doesn't add up. The scales, time, distance, energy, investment involved in space colonization are incomparable to settling the USA. The railroad was bringing people to a land that was already successfully settled by neolithic peoples tens of thousands of years earlier.

Yet people cannot help themselves.

Musk owns, runs, and is the public face of SpaceX, he is automatically germane to any discussion of it.

It may seem a bit trite, but the answer right now is 'because SpaceX is actually doing it'. Space was in a massive rut. SpaceX is breaking that rut and I don't begrudge a single penny that has gone towards that. But a core issue that successful people have is that they assume that because they had success in x they are right in everything else. There is good and bad with Musk, as there is with everyone. I personally would like to kick start the conversation about how cheap access to space can be about society and not about money and personality. We are on the cusp of truly being a space based species and we are just letting it happen instead of guiding it. Now that the technology is rapidly progressing again, it is time to have the conversation about society and space and not just how cool the tech is.

The next block of starship has altered flap geometry that should largely fix that.

I think they can probably do both at once - heatshield testing and pez dispenser testing shouldn't interfere with each other, so might as well use whatever spare upmass you have!

Yeah you might lose the payload, but SpaceX has the cheapest satellites in the business from what I understand.

i hope the next dummy payload is a giant 2 story tall anime figurine, knowing musk it's not out of the question

It's not required for launching satellites. But yeah, they need to figure out the heat shield for the flap hinges before they can recover the ship.

If I understand you correctly: So you'd have to do it over unpopulated/depopulated areas, which is impossible to guarantee when you are zooming around the globe at very high speeds. Thanks for explaining.

"...all of which will still fall to the ground (ocean) as debris..." After it's been flying in orbit for awhile, where it could in theory hit something else.

As you say, the other part of it--and probably more important--is that if it's turned into orbiting pieces, there's no control over where it lands. Some of it could easily land on the ground rather than the ocean, who knows where. That of course has happened with other satellites and their final stage rockets in the past (notably by the Chinese), but Starship is bigger, and therefore the pieces that hit the ground could be bigger. By launching it sub-orbital for now, and turning off the engines so it lands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the risks of both orbital debris and unknown ground landing points are avoided.

That makes a lot of sense.

> Detonating something in orbit could trigger Kessler's Syndrome

Unlikely in general, no at LEO and definitely not at the suborbital velocities IFT-6 contemplates.

Perhaps your account has more Youtube XP.

> But, yes, they should be easy for YT to detect & block automatically - it's frustrating they (and other scams) get to stay online so long.

It's the Google way. It's impossible until it suddenly isn't.

Break up this monster company and regulate the resulting companies until they behave.

Some of the views their cameras get are fantastic - and the tracking on the last flight test would quite possibly make NASA envious. Cameras on the beach and also just next to StarHopper are in harms way too, they've lost a couple of them. I'm not sure what the cost of repair was after a chunk of concrete from what used to be the pad took out the back of a car!

Falcon 9 and SLS are not in the same class.

Eh, Cargo/Crew Dragon is wildly cheaper than the non-functional Boeing option, and I suspect cheaper (both in cash, and geopolitically) than using Soyuz.

They've taken the lion's share of the market by being quite a bit cheaper. It makes plenty of sense to keep the price there and put the resulting profits into R&D.

Which is why I find it exciting and am stoked every time I see progress made.

Howevever, it's hard to view an announcement of the next launch with some minor additions to the experimental flight, as the most exciting space news today. Future launches, once they get the license updated, will he more exciting.

Please list them because right now it is a hugely costly project that has shown no significant capital advancement for society beyond propping up Elon Musk and a “someday the average man will walk on the moon” dream. If anything of capital gain comes from it, it will never actually benefit the financial bottom line of the middle and lower class.