One has never been turned around as re-usable in anywhere near 24 or 72 hours as Musk claimed they would be, fastest turn around to date is I think 3 weeks, roughly in line with faster Space Shuttle turn around times. No where near ‘rapid’.
EDIT: My turnaround times for the Space Shuttle were off, fastest was 55 days and its more like 3 months in average. The point I was attempting to illustrate, which is Rapid Reusability Is A Huge Element To Making The Cost Effectiveness Gains Promised, And SpaceX Is Still Off By An Order Of Magnitude, Over A Decade Into The Falcon Program.
The cost to launch a Falcon 9 has never dropped to around 5 million dollars, as Musk claimed they would be. Even accounting for inflation, launches average around ten times the cost Musk said they would be. Musk is charging the government around 90 million per launch: Soyuz was the only option, so the Russians could overcharge a bit for ISS launches, now the Russians are not an option, and Musk is similarly overcharging.
Starship/BFR is woefully behind the schedule for accomplishments that Musk claimed it would reach in his hype shows, woefully behind schedule for the NASA contract.
Starship/BFR has cost taxpayers billions of dollars and so far has a proven payload capacity of 0, would require 12 to 16 launches to accomplish what a single Saturn V could do, has not demonstrated the capacity to refuel in orbit, is not human rated, and is now just being moved back to Starship 2 and 3, with Musk now claiming Starship 1 actually has half the orbital cargo capacity he has up to recently claimed it has.
For comparison, the Saturn project had a development time similar to how long BFR/Starship has… never once failed, proved it could do what it needed to in 67, 7 years after development began.
(They also had computers maybe a little bit more or less powerful than a ti-83 and had to basically invent a huge chunk of computer science)
Starship/BFR development has been a shit show.
Dear Moon is cancelled.
Remember when the repulsive landing Dragon Capsule was going to land humans on Mars?
Remember when we were going to have multiple Starships starting a Martian colony by now?
SpaceX in general has gotten high on their own supply over the last 10 years and has made all sorts of lofty claims about lowering launch costs, rapid reusability, rockets for military asset deployment to anywhere on Earth, rockets as basically super fast commercial airliner travel, all of which have driven massive public hype and investor confidence, and then these claims are just forgotten about when it becomes apparent just how difficult these are to achieve, or in some cases, laughably, obviously unworkable with even a modicum of thought.
The truth of the matter, as proven by Musk’s handling of his other companies, is that Musk just says things, “We can do this now!”, when in reality he’s basically had a napkin drawing plan a month ago, calls this prototyping, and now its a month later, and he emailed somebody and said ‘Make this happen’ with no further explanation, thus the project is now in development.
Musk is gross and SpaceX has some questionable marketing claims that you’ve identified, but I don’t see how anyone could claim that anything about the company’s products are a shitshow.
Falcon 9 has radically changed the economics of the space industry, and has no competition to force lower prices.
Starship has had a very successful testing campaign, and operates within a different development paradigm than Saturn. They’ve shown more progress on more technology in the last year than almost any rocket ever. It won’t be long before Starship has demonstrated all the capabilities you mentioned. While the price tag is large in absolute terms, it will be very cheap relative to the competition.
Dear Moon was not canceled by SpaceX, and no one who follows the industry has ever believed Musk’s timelines.
I guess I’m confused, because everything I know about Starship points towards it being one of the most incredible engineering accomplishments ever. There are lots of other problems with SpaceX’s leadership, environmental impact, and work culture, but aren’t the products inspiring?
They don’t have rapid reusability because it doesn’t matter to them, they have enough rockets that they can work on multiple at the same time to get the same effect
Seems like you’re comparing SpaceX to Elons promises, not against the rest of the space industry. They’re still much better than all the rest, even if they don’t quite meet Elons promises.
Even ignoring all the other aspects of one working and the other not; The big one is even with the musk grift the cost to taxpayers is orders of magnitude different.
SLS is Over US$2 billion excluding development (estimate) per launch. While Space X just upped their cost estimates in 2022 to $67 million per launch.
Not necessarily, although I wouldn’t be too surprised, scientific endeavors tend to operate at a loss. I’m just saying that Musk’s funding gave SpaceX a jumpstart on the competition. Someone like NASA isn’t going to be able to keep up when their budget is consistently getting cut and Musk is rolling around in more money than anyone could ever spend.
So then if you want to move that goalpost again at least move it to a comparison that makes sense. SpaceX and Blue Origin are both Billionaire funded launch providers. Even though SpaceX now operates from their launch sales.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin has a complete lack of real world launch vehicles to send viable payloads. The best they’ve shown is a handful of tourism rides on New Shepard. And massive delays on the new engines for New Glenn and other rockets, which are finally starting to be delivered to customers massively delayed, but still no New Glenn rocket anywhere near being launched.
He’s the frontman, even if Shotwell is the CEO now she’s made some of the absurd claims I’ve referenced.
And SpaceX as a company, its developed products, fall laughably short of its promises, of its marketing.
The rest of the Space industry, generally, is no where near as bombastic and obviously full of shit, instead preferring to develop and operate without grandiose media/public performances.
There is a saying in business: Under-Promise, Over-Perform, or Over-Deliver.
Like it or not, the industry would still be worse off without the idiotic claims. The idiotic claims pushed the industry forward. You want to make a bulleted list of all the things you dislike or you perceive as failures and drawbacks, fine, go ahead. There are just as many positive bullet lists that could be made.
Not sure why SpaceX is in this group, except “cause musk”, since they’re objectively the best rocket company out there.
The rest are obvious, but the Falcon 9 is the cheapest, and most reliable rocket.
While Falcon 9 is a dependable rocket…
EDIT: My turnaround times for the Space Shuttle were off, fastest was 55 days and its more like 3 months in average. The point I was attempting to illustrate, which is Rapid Reusability Is A Huge Element To Making The Cost Effectiveness Gains Promised, And SpaceX Is Still Off By An Order Of Magnitude, Over A Decade Into The Falcon Program.
The cost to launch a Falcon 9 has never dropped to around 5 million dollars, as Musk claimed they would be. Even accounting for inflation, launches average around ten times the cost Musk said they would be. Musk is charging the government around 90 million per launch: Soyuz was the only option, so the Russians could overcharge a bit for ISS launches, now the Russians are not an option, and Musk is similarly overcharging.
Starship/BFR is woefully behind the schedule for accomplishments that Musk claimed it would reach in his hype shows, woefully behind schedule for the NASA contract.
Starship/BFR has cost taxpayers billions of dollars and so far has a proven payload capacity of 0, would require 12 to 16 launches to accomplish what a single Saturn V could do, has not demonstrated the capacity to refuel in orbit, is not human rated, and is now just being moved back to Starship 2 and 3, with Musk now claiming Starship 1 actually has half the orbital cargo capacity he has up to recently claimed it has.
For comparison, the Saturn project had a development time similar to how long BFR/Starship has… never once failed, proved it could do what it needed to in 67, 7 years after development began.
(They also had computers maybe a little bit more or less powerful than a ti-83 and had to basically invent a huge chunk of computer science)
Starship/BFR development has been a shit show.
Dear Moon is cancelled.
Remember when the repulsive landing Dragon Capsule was going to land humans on Mars?
Remember when we were going to have multiple Starships starting a Martian colony by now?
SpaceX in general has gotten high on their own supply over the last 10 years and has made all sorts of lofty claims about lowering launch costs, rapid reusability, rockets for military asset deployment to anywhere on Earth, rockets as basically super fast commercial airliner travel, all of which have driven massive public hype and investor confidence, and then these claims are just forgotten about when it becomes apparent just how difficult these are to achieve, or in some cases, laughably, obviously unworkable with even a modicum of thought.
The truth of the matter, as proven by Musk’s handling of his other companies, is that Musk just says things, “We can do this now!”, when in reality he’s basically had a napkin drawing plan a month ago, calls this prototyping, and now its a month later, and he emailed somebody and said ‘Make this happen’ with no further explanation, thus the project is now in development.
Musk is gross and SpaceX has some questionable marketing claims that you’ve identified, but I don’t see how anyone could claim that anything about the company’s products are a shitshow.
Falcon 9 has radically changed the economics of the space industry, and has no competition to force lower prices.
Starship has had a very successful testing campaign, and operates within a different development paradigm than Saturn. They’ve shown more progress on more technology in the last year than almost any rocket ever. It won’t be long before Starship has demonstrated all the capabilities you mentioned. While the price tag is large in absolute terms, it will be very cheap relative to the competition.
Dear Moon was not canceled by SpaceX, and no one who follows the industry has ever believed Musk’s timelines.
I guess I’m confused, because everything I know about Starship points towards it being one of the most incredible engineering accomplishments ever. There are lots of other problems with SpaceX’s leadership, environmental impact, and work culture, but aren’t the products inspiring?
They don’t have rapid reusability because it doesn’t matter to them, they have enough rockets that they can work on multiple at the same time to get the same effect
Seems like you’re comparing SpaceX to Elons promises, not against the rest of the space industry. They’re still much better than all the rest, even if they don’t quite meet Elons promises.
How is it so much better than SLS/Artemis?
Even ignoring all the other aspects of one working and the other not; The big one is even with the musk grift the cost to taxpayers is orders of magnitude different.
SLS is Over US$2 billion excluding development (estimate) per launch. While Space X just upped their cost estimates in 2022 to $67 million per launch.
You are not comparing apples to apples though. How much did SpaceX’s cost to develop?
SLS cost to develop so far: US$23.8 billion nominal
Falcon 9 cost to develop
so far(note this was for falcon 9 1.0)(estimate): US$300 millionOnce again, not even close.
For more fun I started to look at some of the other development costs of Space X rockets.
Starship (the big spender) : $5 billion to $10 billion
Falcon Heavy : Over $500 Million
Falcon 9 : $300 Million
Falcon 1: $100 Million
Like I dislike the kirkland brand Dr.evil as much as the next dood, but I think boeing might just have a spending issue.
Speaking of Kirkland Brand Dr. Evil, how much has Blue Origin spent in its non highly publicized efforts to develop the New Glenn?
A big part of that is money. The competition is either less wealthy Musks or notoriously underfunded government agencies.
Are you saying SpaceX is selling launches at a loss? I don’t think musk is paying for SpaceX launches with Tesla money.
Not necessarily, although I wouldn’t be too surprised, scientific endeavors tend to operate at a loss. I’m just saying that Musk’s funding gave SpaceX a jumpstart on the competition. Someone like NASA isn’t going to be able to keep up when their budget is consistently getting cut and Musk is rolling around in more money than anyone could ever spend.
So then if you want to move that goalpost again at least move it to a comparison that makes sense. SpaceX and Blue Origin are both Billionaire funded launch providers. Even though SpaceX now operates from their launch sales.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin has a complete lack of real world launch vehicles to send viable payloads. The best they’ve shown is a handful of tourism rides on New Shepard. And massive delays on the new engines for New Glenn and other rockets, which are finally starting to be delivered to customers massively delayed, but still no New Glenn rocket anywhere near being launched.
Musk is SpaceX.
He’s the frontman, even if Shotwell is the CEO now she’s made some of the absurd claims I’ve referenced.
And SpaceX as a company, its developed products, fall laughably short of its promises, of its marketing.
The rest of the Space industry, generally, is no where near as bombastic and obviously full of shit, instead preferring to develop and operate without grandiose media/public performances.
There is a saying in business: Under-Promise, Over-Perform, or Over-Deliver.
SpaceX does the opposite of this.
Like it or not, the industry would still be worse off without the idiotic claims. The idiotic claims pushed the industry forward. You want to make a bulleted list of all the things you dislike or you perceive as failures and drawbacks, fine, go ahead. There are just as many positive bullet lists that could be made.