41 thoughts on “Elon Musk”

  1. Mark 1 came out a bit on the heavy side, at 200 tons instead of 85. I could revise my delta V calculations, but they’d probably have a Mark 2 built before I get done.

    1. I suspect Mk1 and Mk2 (which is almost complete, in Florida) are overbuilt to a massive degree, as are many prototypes. I think they’ll do a lot better on Mk3 and Mk4, and keep trimming, like they did with F9. At least I hope so, because at 200 tons, it’s only going to have about 40 to 50 tons usable payload to LEO, which while not exactly trivial, won’t get the job done.

      What most interests me is the claimed timeline. 6 months to orbit? Okay, we all know slips happen, and the term “Elon Time” came into being for a reason (though NASA and Boeing are no stranger to slips), even if we double that, that’s a year, while SLS will take two (assuming no slips… yeah, right). Starship should reach orbit first, and quite a few times, before SLS does.

      I do not think SLS can survive the dual blows of that, plus being unable to meet the Artemis timeline.

      IMHO, even if Starhip never acomplishes anything else whatsoever, if it kills SLS, it’ll be one of the most useful things in existence.

      1. To scribble down in my CRC Mathematical Table Handbook for future reference, what is the conversion of Elon Time to Boeing Federal Contract Time? To one decimal place is good enough. Thanks!

        1. NavyNuke, that is an excellent question. I wish I had an exact answer.

          Both seem a bit variable. It also depends on what’s considered a delay. Boeing is way behind on some things, like SLS, CST-100, Vulcain, and let’s not forget the 737 issue, etc, but those are schedule slips, not delays. So, SLS has schedule slips, while Falcon Heavy (which a NASA official dismissed as a powerpoint rocket, not a real rocket, at one point) had delays. Because, um… I’m not really sure, but they say it, so it must be true, right?

  2. It can be exhausting to listen to Musk speak. He reminds me of the boffin played by James Stewart in “No Highway in the Sky.” That said, the monster looming against the night sky made me glad I lived long enough to see it. I sure wish this had happened 35 years ago. Not technically impossible.

  4. I have been thinking that this kind of lift capacity has significant strategic and military implications. Billy Mitchell grade implications on existing weapons systems and tactics. This could be a much bigger threat to the majors that just to ULA.

    If you can move that tonnage I to space, you can move
    It intercontinentally. Not to mention the ability to put kinetic strike weapons into orbit and sub-orbit.

    Imagine a 150 ton tungsten penetrator special delivery to Iran for starters.

    2. A quick Googling tells me that on paper Starship would have about the same payload as a 747-8 Freighter. Same day bomb and/or parcel delivery to anywhere on Earth could be commercially viable.

    3. 150 tons coming down from orbital velocity could be reasonably expected to hit with the KE of about a kiloton to a kiloton and a half of TNT. It depends on drag.

      But it would probably make more sense to use multiple, smaller projectiles targeted at key installations.

      However, what Musk has created might be bad in the long term because it was simple enough to be built outside by a welding crew, which means any country that can produce the rocket engines could eventually field a force of kinetic energy weapons, which stay below the nuclear threshold yet could take out nuclear power plants, dams, and bridges anywhere in the world. Of course the first targets would be the other side’s Starship class launchers.

      We have a head start, but if we’re going to start the game we had better dominate it completely.

      1. “Of course the first targets would be the other side’s Starship class launchers.”

        That doesn’t necessarily achieve much when you can build twenty more of them for the cost of building a single F-35… and probably do it in much less time, too.

    4. That is the elephant in the room that nobody talks about. If starship works out, that essentially makes orbital kinetic energy weapons a no-brainer. Cheap, impossible to intercept, impossible to protect against, no radiation.

      But it is probably for the best that this possibility remains unmentioned for now, and starship remains fully civilian.

  5. Any opinions on Musk continuing to quote the 100 passenger capacity figure?

    Frankly I don’t see how that is possible at only 1000 cubic meters of usable interior volume.

    1. That’s the aspirational figure for when it’s flying to Mars regularly And ten cubic meters per person is a fair amount to float around in, even if there’s furniture and life suport stuff in the way. 353+ cubic feet. That’s about half the size of the room I’m sitting in (which is jammed with books, furniture, and gizmos), but I’m stuck to the floor, most of the volume only there so I don’t bump my head. My guess is, you’ll get a berth to sleep in, and access to common areas. Anyone whose ever spent time aboard a 1950s-era nuclear submarine knows that plenty. You probably won’t even have to hot bunk!

    2. My guess at that is the 100 person aspiration is for the second generation Starship/SH he mentioned a few weeks ago; 18 meter diameter, compared to the current 9.

      At least, that’;s what I hope, because I see no plausible way that life support systems, supplies, other consumables, support like laundry and cleaning, etc etc etc would possibly fit in 10 cubic meters per person without utterly inhuman conditions (even if technically possible, which I doubt). Even an older nuclear attack sub, notorious for their emulation of sardine cans when it comes to crew elbow room (especially when crammed with supplies for a long patrol) had more cubic meters per person than that. (remember, the total volume per person includes all bunks, bulkheads, galleys, common areas, consumables storage, etc) There’s also the fact that designing all the support systems to minimize their size and mass makes them a lot more expensive, and SpaceX tends to optimize for cost.

      For comparison, an old Sturgeon class attack sub had a surface displacement of 4256 tons. A ton of seawater is pretty close to a cubic meter. So, a very rough estimate of a Sturgeon’s internal air volume is 4256 cubic meters. The crew compliment was 109. so, about 39 cubic meters per person. Much of that volume would be taken up by the sub’s various systems – just like on Starship.

      So, my guess is that 100 people in a current size Starship to Mars is not plausible (and would be an inhuman hell to endure for so long a journey) but, to the moon is IMHO quite plausible.

      1. I did repair and refit on 1950s-era nuclear attack submarines, so I’m intimately familiar with them. There really is not that much crew space in one. Think about the volume of the reactor, deck fittings, weapons, etc. Add to that there’s 1g at all times in a sub, so a lot of the volume available to crew was head-bump space. There was also lots of space you *could* get into, but not usually. For example, in drydock, there’s no reason not to be in a torpedo tube. different story under way. With the 9m Starship, most crew/passengers aren’t ever going to be inside a fuel tank. But they are going to be able to float around. Musk once described it as being like the inside of an SUV per passenger, but I still think old sub. Finally, as far as “inhuman conditions go,” go down to Jamestown some time and go aboard the replica of the Susan Constant. Stand in the hold and picture a hundred people living in there for months. Then picture it also filled with cargo and cannons.

        1. The submarine is an excellent example. USS Tullibee was a one-off. She was quite a bit smaller than a Sturgeon at 2600 tons submerged. Wiki lists her crew size at 66 officers/enlisted. I don’t know where that number came from. In the 80’s it was 110.

        2. I won some bets with Navy recruits about naming the three ships on the Virginia quarter. Everybody comes up with Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria, and then Mayflower, and then they realize that they their textbooks never mentioned the names of those three ships, the Godspeed, Endeavor, and Susan Constant.

          However, unlike the crew of a submarine, who have duty stations and long shifts, the people going to Mars really don’t have to do anything during transit, except perhaps repel space pirates working for Bezos.

          Since they colonists are going to be stuck on Mars paying The Company for oxygen until they rise up in rebellion, we really don’t have to care about their personal comfort. Perhaps a slave ship or a Chevy slipping in from Tijuana are more apt starting points for volumetric capacity calculations.

          However, once underway, I think a strut strung with Bigelow structures could dramatically increase the passenger volume. But I’d be more worried about long term zero G and cosmic radiation as the major hurdles to overcome.

          1. Musk actually addressed the “nothing to do” aspect of trips to Mars at one point, and talked about video games and the like. To me, there’s no such thing as nothing to do. Somebody interview Bernie Madoff about life in the Federal slammer (he’s imprisoned about 15 miles from my house). He daid, “Well, now I have plenty of time to read.”

            The flights to Mars aren’t so long that zero-gee will matter, and we know nothing about adaptation to 0.38gee. GCRs are probably a bigger concern, since all this is happening just as the next Grand Minimum gets rolling, but, again, the trips are fairly quick (a few months, tops) and people won’t be walking around naked on the surface of Mars, they’ll be living underground.

          2. They could give all the passengers VR googles and so they can spend most of their flight in “the holodeck” like season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

        3. @ William Barton;
          I’ve never set foot on a Nuc, all I’ve done is go aboard some WWII museum subs. I have the highest of possible regards for the Silent Service; just an hour as part of a tour group aboard a sub had my skin crawling imagining how crowded it was with a full compliment aboard.

          I have also been aboard ships from the age of sail, and have done a fair amount of bluewater sailing on yachts. I concede your point as to the belowdecks, however those ships also had weather decks, so there was at least some relief from the confines. Except, of course, on slave and prisoner ships, which had conditions I’d certainly call inhuman.

          Another way of looking at it (which probably undermines my contention a bit) is the internal volume of the Starship crew/passenger section is claimed to have about the same internal volume as an Airbus A380. It doesn’t, it’s a lot closer to a 747-8. So, assume the cargo/luggage lower deck area of that 747 is used for supplies, consumables, life support, etc. What’s left, the passenger areas and the cockpit, is all that’s left for 100 people, their bunks, their common areas, the galley, 0g toilets and showers, etc, etc, etc, for at least 80 days. I guess, thanks to zero G, it is plausible – but I think I’ll pass.

          1. If a few months in tight quarters means you’ll pass up a flight to Mars, then you’re probably not pioneer material anyway. If this all works out, they’ll be a luxury liner some time down the road. If you’re young enough to wait… Me, I’m old enough that even if my chances of dying on Mars “at the point of impact” were 50:50, I’d climb on the Starship next week. There’s a fair to middling chnace I won’t be alive by 2025 anyway.

            In some ways this reminds me of on-line discussions of Moon flights aboard capsules I participated in about 15 years ago. An awful lot of people seemed horrified that astronauts might “have to go to the bathroom in front of each other” (ignoring the fact that in 1965 Borman and Lovell spent two weeks seated in a spacecraft the size of a subcompact sports car). My response was, if it means I get to fly to and land on the Moon, I’ll do my business on live TV, with close-ups, and be glad of it.

          2. @ William Barton,

            I’m definitely not pioneer material if it means cramped spaces in transit, and on Mars, as it probably will. I can’t even stand living in cities, I’m a wide open spaces guy, and put up with an hour drive to the nearest store of any kind as part of the price. That’s why I have such deep respect for people like Navy submariners; they do what I simply could not.

            However, I’m obviously biased on this issue due to my own preferences (and claustrophobia). I’m not a lefty, so I’m deeply opposed to imposing my preferences on others. So, if SpaceX does go ahead with what I consider intolerably cramped conditions, I’ll still be cheering them and their passengers on and supporting them. Just because it’s not for me doesn’t mean I won’t support it. I absolutely do support it, 100%.

    1. There’s a great 1949 novel called “Ride the Gray Planet,” sometimes better known by the title of a later edition, “Assignment in Space.” The “Marines” aboard SCN Scorpius were called Planeteers. It was my favorite book when I was about 8 years old, and it still reads well. Scorpius had nuclear engines (using a thorium reactor), but used methane as its working fluid. And it had a coking problem.

        1. That’s the one. I have the 1958 edition with the black cover, showing the asteroid and scene of snapper boat combat. I think 1952 is the first book publication, and there was a 1949 magazine publication not mention there.

      2. Thanks for the heads up on the book, just finished the Kindle version. A bit dated in spots but I kept thinking throughout that with a little update here and there the premise could make a good movie!

      1. I’ve got most of Bono and Gatland’s “The Pocket Encyclopledia of Spaceflight in Color.” That illo is from “Frontiers of Space” (1969). Very influential on my developing views of space exploration when I was young. I also still have Willy Ley’s children’s books about the coming space age, from the 1950s. Those are the ones with Chesley Bonestell illustration, including the conical version of Von Braun’s 3-stage rockets (which were to be 3x the size of the later Saturn V). When I was 6 years old, I thought that was the world I would grow up to live in.

    1. For a long time, I thought the colonization of Australia, starting in 1788, was the best analogue for colonizing Mars. If you work out the cost, relative to the British budget at the time, its fairly similar, once you’ve accounted for the enormous technological gap. And then the colony ships (full of convicts and whatnot whose lives were considered worthless) took about a year to make the trip. With Starship, it will wind up being cheaper, easier, and safer than anybody ever dreamed.

      There’s another false narrative that includes the huge death toll at Jamestown (50% the first winter). What most people don’t know is, the competing Popham colony (at the mouth of the Kennebec River in Maine!) founded later the same year, was more or less successful, and only lost one colonist that same winter. After a fire, they ran low on supplies, so they sent half the colonists home, and the rest were fine. They built a fort with cannon, and also built a 30 ton pinnace capable of transatlantic crossings that was later used to resupply Jamestown. The colony “failed” when the proprietor inherited his brother’s estate in England, and decided not to waste any more time fooling around in North America, so he packed up the remaining colonists and took them home.

      The story we’re taught about Plymouth isn’t quite right either. While the Pilgrims were doing their best to be zealots, earlier settlers in the area were trading for furs, and in one case operating a brothel nearby. Gets left out of the schoolbooks…

  9. I show non-rocket people the starship, and they are interested for about 0.5s.

    Steel is real. The bringing it back to simple is probably essential. Probably for as many components as possible. So, that at least you have a chance of DIY repairs.

    His design concepts are fascinating: If it’s taking too long, the design is wrong. Also, the concept of mistakes originating at department interfaces. That will trigger a lot of people.

  10. The fact that he is building this thing out in the open with a crane, some welding tools and a few wrenches is the most remarkable aspect of this.

  11. After Musk’s Starship talk he gave a long interview to the Everyday Astronaut about Starship, design philosophy, engines, and other topics.

    Youtube video of the interview

    I agree with his point that a failing of smart engineers is that they’ll jump in and start optimizing a complex system instead of stepping back to ask if the system is surplus to requirements, adding unnecessary weight, cost, delays, maintenance, and failure modes.

    1. I’ve always thought that rockets need to evolve into vehicles with all the strength and reliability of a Mack Truck. They don’t have to live right on the edge of the performance envelope.

  12. Optimize the SYSTEM, not the individual components.

    Australia. After flying around it a few years ago in our BD-4 I’ve concluded most of it is suitable for strip mining and keeping the coasts apart. I live in it.
    Founded by convicts and most Australians still have a convict mentality. If you talk of freedom or liberty they look at you and ask themselves “which planet is this bloke from?”

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