28 thoughts on “A Thousand Starships”

1. The utilization of off-Earth resources comes in two phases: Early and later. Terrestrial miners have only the latter perspective because terrestrial mining is mature, serves very large markets and so are at enormous scale, and serve a different purpose than space mining. Early space “mining” won’t involve large equipment, processing hard rock, lots of hands-on repairs, won’t have a broad private market, and wont be done for the purpose of slightly reducing the price of a commodity. Rather, early harvesting will have as its purpose to reduce costs locally and not for sale on a broad market. It is to reduce transportation costs which have little similarity to how terrestrial markets will work.

   1. It is to reduce transportation costs which have little similarity to how terrestrial markets will work.

      Counter-point: the aggregate market (rock, sand, etc) is extremely transportation-cost-sensitive.

   2. Still, extraterrestrial “mining” will be pursued at whatever the most economical scale will be given the transportation means in-hand. That means will be Starship. So the initial extraterrestrial extractive industries will be on a scale at least two or three orders of magnitude bigger than would be possible with smaller, more expensive vehicles – especially severely production-limited and insanely costly disposables like SLS.

2. “Production is at least 1,000 percent harder than making one of something,” he said. “At least 1,000 percent harder.”

   I think it’s 1000 percent more risk- which you could is same thing as 1000 percent harder.

   I will note that if Musk wants to own the sub-orbital market, his approach works as well for that as it does for getting Mars settlements.
   If a seat to Mars cost 1/2 million dollars does what a seat to India costs?
   To India is fuel cost and wear tear of re-entry {how times can a Starship enter an atmosphere- 100,000 times??}. Or sub-orbital vs Mars trip in same time period can do 100,000 time more re-entries with sub-orbital vs the 1 mars trip. Or wait there are 8760 hours in year and turn around of Mars trip is few years, so closer to 10,000 rather than 100,000, but lifetime of Starship doing suborbital could exceed 100,000 times. But if it’s 10,000 times The cost per seat seems quite low, but if every 10 to 100 times it needs a “refurishment” of some kind, it could become a factor like rocket fuel costs.
   In terms of rocket fuel cost. Methane seems the cheapest.
   What is current price of liquid Methane. Hmm:
   “Liquid methane costs about $1.35 per kilogram at the December 29 spot price. ”
   https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2893/1
   {that doesn’t seem right]
   Hmm about $5 per thousand cubic feet which is 20 kg of methane or 25 cents per kg. Or production of liquid methane is not large costs, it seems it’s mostly the infrastructure of delivering to end user.
   Or if you near terminal that imports lots of LNG, it’s the trucking or pipeline costs {or from where it’s made- or if could get pure Methane gas piped to you, and the cost to liquify it, could be fairly cheap {Making LNG requires purifying “normal/typical methane gas” for household use}.

   1. Suborbital seems like a pipe dream to me, for many reasons.

      First, there aren’t many people who can justify the cost, and the kind of people who can justify the cost probably can’t justify the risk, or the flight regime (how many fifty-year-old liquid-lunch business execs can safely handle a 3g launch, for example?)

      Secondly, it doesn’t much matter if I can fly from Vancouver to Toronto in thirty minutes if it takes five hours to get from my house to Vancouver in the first place, and then I miss my suborbital flight connection because the incoming flight was late.

      Thirdly, the market for business travel is likely to collapse after the coronavirus dies off, as companies realize they don’t need to ship people around the world after doing without for a few months.

3. Get back to me when they start selling tickets. The history of technology and business both are rife with examples of success followed by massive overreach.

   = Tesla.

   1. I guess I would analogize that to whether Elon’s plan is like the post WW-I conviction that countries should build fleets of passenger dirigibles, or whether Old Space has been the ones trying to come up with a viable Zeppelin and Musk is building DC-3’s.

      The thing is, even if he just builds 10 Starships, it’s still a major game changer.

      1. At $5 million a pop, they could build quite a few without wasting a significant amount of money if things go sour. Even if Starship works but Mars ambitions fall apart, they still replace their current product with something dramatically more capable for at least the same price.

         Mars dreams unrealized yields a cascade of success.

4. Musk isn’t crazy. He is simply moving the paradigm where it ought to have been.

   NASA’s model for Space Exploration is to build a small “lifeboat” capsule, connect it to a habitation module and service module, and fly it to where-ever with minimum resources for a reconnaissance mission.

   Musk’s model for Space Exploration is to go there with more resources than you need, because you may not be able to obtain additional resources when you get there. Plan to exploit the explored region immediately. And since space is big and slow to travel, make the trip as pleasurable as possible for all involved.

   I don’t see what is crazy about Musk’s model. It sounds like he learned from the long history of human exploration and is preparing accordingly. I suspect before he goes, he’ll already have a Mars Starlink constellation to provide navigation and communication across the surface of the planet. That’s not even in NASA’s plans for exploration.

   If others were thinking like Musk; they would be designing probes, drones, and imagery satellites to aid in prospecting Mars before Musk gets there.

   1. One thing NASA is doing right that I don’t know if Musk is doing at all: preparing the potential crew for the long duration of separation, loneliness, and potential boredom that it will take to get to Mars. I think Musk wants to bring along whoever can afford to help, but not everyone will do well in such a trip. Many explorations were destroyed when just a couple of people could no longer stand the requirements of exploration travel. Musk may have some criteria, but he really needs to weed out anybody that cannot handle the isolation that a 2 year trip to Mars will entail.

      1. NASA is doing nothing of the sort. ISS is in constant communication with Earth, they have abundant entertainment, and the crew can bail out at any time. However, NASA doesn’t need to do this because the problem has been examined for centuries. Read about Scott’s or Shackleton’s expeditions. Ask NSF how they handle winters at Amundsen-Scott base. Watch Master and Commander, Mutiny on the Bounty (especially Bligh’s amazing voyage home in an open boat), or Moby Dick.

         Any trip to Mars will be paradise compared to what sailors and explorers have handled quite well for virtually all of human history

         1. But to make the journey, they’ll have to survive ion storms, deep space anomalies, wormholes, pirates, and all sorts of other plot devices!

            Many of our ancestors spent months crossing the Atlantic down in the bowels of a poorly lit wooden ship with nothing but a King James Bible for entertainment. We can do this. Even if the ship is as bad as a jail, how many people crack up during a six-month prison sentence? Yet something tells me that everybody on the mission is going to have terabytes of games and entertainment shows at the touch of a finger.

            I think the real hazard for the voyagers is extended zero-G and cosmic radiation, but if those prove to be serious problems then Musk can come up with rotating and shielded space ship in a variety of sizes and configurations, and probably do it in probably less than a year instead of putting that step off for half a century.

            1. Fully refueling the Starship in LEO means that trip times can be cut to four months or less. Since the average crew rotation on the ISS is 4-6 months, just how much of a problem would four months of zero gee be?

               20 g/cm2 is recommended for a storm shelter against solar particle events. Water-bearing provisions (eg food) could double as shielding. If passengers were to spend their sedentary time (i.e. most of their time) in the part of the Starship that had that shielding then the GCR millisieverts would be reduced by about half. And with the shorter journey, radiation exposure would be kept to about 16% of a notional 1,000 mSv career limit. Again, just how much of a problem would that be?

            2. The potential problem is addressed Central Nervous System Responses to Simulated Galactic Cosmic Rays

               The problem is that the high energy particles may inflict a quite different type of cumulative damage than radiation inside the Van Allen belts. We’ve rarely flown any biological samples outside the belts (Apollo being the brief exception) and never flown anything with a nervous system out where the sun’s influence won’t be providing some protection.

               This lack of hard data can be easily rectified once Starship is flying into cis-lunar space, however. It might be nothing special or it might be a major issue.

            3. –DougSpace
               March 9, 2020 At 9:11 PM
               Fully refueling the Starship in LEO means that trip times can be cut to four months or less. —

               Do have any details about how this is done?

               For example, hohmann like transfer to Mars and some sort of vector change at Mars? And at Mars does largely have to do with using the Mars atmosphere? {and Starship could do this- unlike typical spacecraft}

               I have been advocating that NASA get to Mars in 3 months or less.
               Using non hohmann transfer {a vector change at Earth orbit} and would do this from highly elliptical high earth orbit with low perigee- or not from LEO.

               The way I describe it, is you getting to Venus to Mars hohmann trajectory, but you get to this trajectory from Earth.
               To me, this similar getting to Mars cycler from Earth- or Mars cyclers generally are not in a Earth to Mars hohmann orbit.
               Another way I describe it, is that once get into this Venus to Mars hohmann, if don’t stop at Mars distance the trajectory returns you to Venus distance.
               Or any hohmann type trajectory from Earth would return you to Earth orbital distance and what I mean by non hohmann.
               Of course anything getting you from Earth to Mars in less than 8 month is a non hohmann, but the 7 month trip time, is called hohmann plus a patched conic {and patched conic is a vector change done when get near to Mars].

               But what I am talking about is like hohmann in the sense it’s a single burn at perigee and in the sense “gets to” a Venus to Mars hohmann trajectory.
               Now it doesn’t have to be Venus distance, it could be Mercury to Mars, or between Venus and Mercury distance, but return is closer to the Sun than Earth distance.

               So it would like a Venus to Mars hohmann- and it would be like a Venus to Mars hohmann with a patched conic. And you would reach Mars atmosphere at about same velocity as Earth to Mars hohmann transfer which have been used to send spacecraft Mars.

               But I regard this as a “theory” rather than a given fact {and it seems to me, that people tend to regard it as though it’s crazy or unworkable theory}.

         2. ISS is in constant communication with Earth

            NASA has more programs for preparing crews than just ISS. Yes, there is a long history of explorers able to handle such situations as well many that failed.

            I don’t need to watch Mutiny on the Bounty because I read the book and it is an example of a failure. The mutiny succeeded and Bligh lost his command. Bligh certainly survived heroically, but that is after his crew, unable to handle the necessary isolation, took over the ship, left him adrift, and sailed back to Tahiti to take wives and started their own colony on Pitcairn. That you miss this massive part of the story is my entire point in giving NASA some credit, but only some.

            1. … his crew, unable to handle the necessary isolation …

               Actually, in the case of the Bounty, it wasn’t the isolation that made things come apart, it was the … um … lack of isolation they had experienced during several months already spent on Tahiti. When they arrived at Tahiti, Bligh had a well-disciplined crew. When they left, he practically had to force them aboard at gunpoint.

            2. Well true, they really liked the Tahitian women.

5. I suspect that VR may have a role to play in preventing cabin fever during a 3-year+ mission. Want to visit any place on Earth? Ship a few terabytes of imagery (see: MS Flight Sim). Want to visit any place on Mars? A small Starlink constellation will give you excellent bandwidth to the newest telescope in orbit (preferably, 9m diameter). You don’t have to be stuck looking at the same walls every day, for years on end.

6. Still kills me with Elon’s time frames.

   SpaceX’s stretch goal is to build one to two Starships a week, this year

   Suppose I really should read more emphasis on the”stretch”.

   There no way he’ll build 1 per week before the end of this calendar year. He won’t even have shown the capability of launching more than 1 in orbit a month by the end of this year.

   Though suppose I should be looking at it that his production goals are to hit his Red gravity well of a “White whale”, with a colonizing fleet in his life time. But he will really need to hit 2 a week that gives him 10 years to build his fleet. Guessing he also need to get to 20 or so Super Heavies fairly quickly (Assuming they can meet cited/hope for turn around times and Life cycle which they have been factor of 10 off from meeting with the F9s at least for turn around time) or his fleet will be collecting dust and be needing retrofits before their first flight.
   He’ll also need Raptor engine production to support them both.

   off topic: Rand since you relied on one of your favorite tactics of ad hominem, attacks at me a few articles ago with nothing supporting your assertions, I bet you my predictions in the italicized 2nd paragraph above will turn out to be 100% accurate than at minimum 8 facts you can give me from John Solomon articles that prove some nefarious/Nepotistic plot by Joe Biden in Ukraine (Unless you want to change the topic we can discuss) that Solomon was initial single source. Facts that he did not rely on other news media reporting or found video from other sources. Must provide corroborating evidence ie after the fact first hand report (NO reporting of reporting back to Solomon articles {unlike some of Solomon sourced documents}) preferably with sources names attached, US government Witness testimony under oath, official US documents, FOIA Documents, No Federalist, Daily Caller, American Greatness, Sarah Carter articles (Unless very well sourced and attributed). No article or document can be sourced by Dmytro Firtash, Rudy G and company , Solomon’s lawyers, or people involved with Fraud Guaranteed INC. Documents and Translations provided by mentioned sources can’t count as corroborating evidence. May have to work something out when have conflicting statements by same source. I ‘m sure their a few minions here that can help with the digging, if you too busy not writing articles for CEI or Popular Mechanics.

   1. Thank you for your latest ungrammatical idiocy. I haven’t written for CEI or Popular Mechanics for years.

   2. That was an amazing twist to the tactic of demanding someone you are arguing with sacrific their time to produce something that you intend to ignore. You ask for not one link but eight!

      The Hill “review” has been debunked.

7. “As the role of the United States and her allies in space evolves and grows, so would the Space Force’s mission. Moon bases, asteroid mining facilities, space-based manufacturing and Musk’s dreamed of Mars settlement will need defending.

   The Space Force will be not only a war-fighting service, but also a rescue organization, a peace-keeping force and even a space debris collection group. It may eventually take over space exploration duties from NASA or have the entire space agency folded into it.

   To use a slightly altered version of a well-known line:

   “Space, the final frontier, our continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

   Not to mention make Elon Musk richer than he already is and make the United States the undisputed superpower on and beyond the Earth for the foreseeable future. A marvelous win-win situation, that.”

   https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/486538-spacexs-elon-musk-wants-the-space-force-to-become-star-fleet?rnd=1583714333

   Musk and Bezos are locked in a war of competition; between two insanely rich hyper competent entrepreneurs each trying to upstage the other. Suppose Bezos decides to concede the reusable heavy lift booster market to Musk and decides to reach higher? Maybe decide to support one of the speculative fusion startups?

8. Maybe Dr. John Slough’s design:

   “The Fusion Driven Rocket: Nuclear Propulsion through Direct Conversion of Fusion Energy”

   “The future of manned space exploration and development of space depends critically on the creation of a dramatically more proficient propulsion architecture for in-space transportation. A very persuasive reason for investigating the applicability of nuclear power in rockets is the vast energy density gain of nuclear fuel when compared to chemical combustion energy. Current nuclear fusion efforts have focused on the generation of electric grid power and are wholly inappropriate for space transportation as the application of a reactor based fusion-electric system creates a colossal mass and heat rejection problem for space application. The Fusion Driven rocket (FDR) represents a revolutionary approach to fusion propulsion where the power source releases its energy directly into the propellant, not requiring conversion to electricity. It employs a solid lithium propellant that requires no significant tankage mass. The propellant is rapidly heated and accelerated to high exhaust velocity (> 30 km/s), while having no significant physical interaction with the spacecraft thereby avoiding damage to the rocket and limiting both the thermal heat load and radiator mass. In addition, it is believed that the FDR can be realized with little extrapolation from currently existing technology, at high specific power (~ 1 kW/kg), at a reasonable mass scale (<100 mt), and therefore cost. If realized, it would not only enable manned interplanetary space travel, it would allow it to become common place. The key to achieving all this stems from research at MSNW on the magnetically driven implosion of metal foils onto a magnetized plasma target to obtain fusion conditions. A logical extension of this work leads to a method that utilizes these metal shells (or liners) to not only achieve fusion conditions, but to serve as the propellant as well. Several low-mass, magnetically-driven metal liners are inductively driven to converge radially and axially and form a thick blanket surrounding the target plasmoid and compress the plasmoid to fusion conditions. Virtually all of the radiant, neutron and particle energy from the plasma is absorbed by the encapsulating, metal blanket thereby isolating the spacecraft from the fusion process and eliminating the need for large radiator mass. This energy, in addition to the intense Ohmic heating at peak magnetic field compression, is adequate to vaporize and ionize the metal blanket. The expansion of this hot, ionized metal propellant through a magnetically insulated nozzle produces high thrust at the optimal Isp. The energy from the fusion process, is thus utilized at very high efficiency. Expanding on the results from the phase I effort, phase II will focus on achieving three key criteria for the Fusion Driven Rocket to move forward for technological development:
   1.the physics of the FDR must be fully understood and validated,
   2.the design and technology development for the FDR required for its implementation in space must be fully characterized, and
   3.an in-depth analysis of the rocket design and spacecraft integration as well as mission architectures enabled by the FDR need to be performed. Fulfilling these three elements form the major tasks to be completed in the proposed Phase II study. A subscale, laboratory liner compression test facility will be assembled with sufficient liner kinetic energy (~ 0.5 MJ) to reach fusion breakeven conditions. Initial studies of liner convergence will be followed by validation tests of liner compression of a magnetized plasma to fusion conditions. A complete characterization of both the FDR and spacecraft will be performed and will include conceptual descriptions, drawings, costing and TRL assessment of all subsystems. The Mission Design Architecture analysis will examine a wide range of mission architectures and destination for which this fusion propulsion system would be enabling or critical. In particular a rapid, single launch manned Mars mission will be detailed."

   https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2012_Phase_II_fusion_driven_rocket

   After all Tom Corbett and the space patrol, excuse me space force will need some kind of way to patrol the Solar System.

   1. Tom Corbett’s outfit was called the Solar Guard. Officers in black and gold, enlisted in scarlet, senior cadets in blue, first year (“eathworms”) in green.

      I reread the books once in a while to see how they hold up, and its pretty well. Based on performance, the “atomic” rocketships appear to be some kind of hybrid gas core fission with closed cycle in atmosphere, switching to fission fragment once clear. Considering its supposed to be 400 years in the future (of the early 1950s) it’s not implausible. Other than that they have some kind of unexplained hyperdrive FTL.

      1. “Based on performance, the “atomic” rocketships appear to be some kind of hybrid gas core fission with closed cycle in atmosphere, switching to fission fragment once clear.”

         Of course the stories were written in the 1950’s so fission would be more familiar to them. As of now would likely go with (after the perhaps nearer term Slough’s design) with a modified
         Z-pinch fusion drive:

         ” Z-Pinch Pulsed Plasma Propulsion Technology Development Final Report, Z-Pinch Fusion Propulsion, Fusion Propulsion Z-Pinch Engine Concept. Like many of the others, they started with the HOPE study, replaced the HOPE Magnetized Target Fusion engine with their own engine, and compared the two.”

         “Zeta-pinch or z-pinch is a technique to compress fusion fuel plasma to the point where it ignites a fusion reaction. You send a bolt of electricity through a cloud of fusion fuel. The electrical current induces a magnetic field in the plasma that squeezes the plasma towards the bolt.”

         http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesignsfusion.php#hopezpinch

         Fusion fuel like De/Tritium (from Lithium) being generally much cheaper more abundant and easier to lay your hands on than fission fuel. To say nothing of out-performing a gaseous core nuclear fission rocket.

9. One thought about extraterrestrial resources: there’s a lot of CHON out there and oceans of rocket fuel on Titan, but Psyche is the only big hunk of metal so far.

   1. And the beauty of Musk’s desire of 1000 starships launched by a large no. of lower stage super-heavy reusable rockets is that at last it makes the ambitious rocket designs developed over the last few decades practical (or at least testable). It would be feasible to speak of launching them into orbit off of Saturn 5 level payload reusable rockets to orbit to be assembled into larger structures. Most of the ambitious nuclear designs seem to mass out at around 1000MT in orbit give or take, well within the capabilities of a reusable super heavy boosters to put up in just a few launches. That is the sea change.

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