It's a hard problem, and both SpaceX and Blue Origin will probably have failures in the future too, I am encouraged that they both see failure as a way to do better and looking forward to both of them eventually succeeding. It's a good time to be a space nerd.
There's a saying in the racing business. If you're not walking back to the pit now and then carrying the steering wheel, you're not trying hard enough. If you're walking back to the pit too often, you're incompetent.
There's another aspect. If you're launching men in rockets, you cannot tolerate failures, so the development cost is way, way higher. The cost effective method is to launch unmanned ones, tolerating a lot of failures, and when the bugs are worked out then launch men.
Nobody else has anything remotely like Starship. If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will, they will extend their dominance for another decade if not more.
Yes, Starship development has been slow and occasionally explodey, but they've successfully demonstrated all the fundamentals and it's "just" iteration from here. (They haven't gone into full orbit, but that's by choice, not lack of capability.)
> If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will,
I really wonder about this psychological effect where non technical people champion people like Musk so hard without any basis for doing so. Is is some sort of wanting to belong to some ideology that makes you just make shit up in your head about how Starship is a success, despite many indicators of it clearly being a stupid idea born from Musks ketomine episodes?
For the record, Starships engines are the equivalent of taking a Toyota Corolla and making it run on nitrous continously on the verge of self destructing. You may be able to do technology demonstrations here and there, but making it work reliably for actual missions is much much harder.
Bringing together the money and people to make this stuff happen is the basis. That’s the most impressive part. Debatably the only truly impressive part.
There’s no ideology. You can watch a really big rocket take off every month or two and watch a smaller rocket take off every couple days. I’m sure there are better designs out there… on drawing boards.
I know insurance for a launch is typical, but seems really tough to do that for this still “rather experimental” launch. I got to imagine it has costs something like 50% on a project like this.
The failure of the upper stage is a bummer. If it triggers a months-long review, that will almost certainly bump back the schedule for the prototype Blue Moon lander launch.
I will be good to have competition for space Internet. It’s unclear though if the market will really support two players. Satellite radio and data quickly ended up consolidating down to one.
Amazon is trying to become more vertically integrated but they seem at a structural disadvantage here competing against SpaceX.
You might be counting out the value of government and military contracts that might not want to do business with a wild card.
SpaceX is killing it because the US government gives them a bunch of contracts, but if stability is slightly more important than cost or speed, amazon has a contender.
It came to my attention recently how many TOTAL objects currently exist in LEO. And that a study said that due to light deflection of these objects, that the earth’s night sky is an average of 10% brighter than it was in 1980s… although I generally am excited by technological advancement, that fact (if true) made me feel somewhat melancholy.
Once Elon showed how to do it, and how cost-efficient it was, a rocket company that doesn't do it is not viable.
Spacex first landed an orbital booster just over 10 years ago and have now landed 600 times.
The entire rest of the world combined has done it twice.
For a long time people would scoff when it was said they had a 10 year lead, and that others would catch up quickly. Proof meets pudding.
FTA: "SpaceX suffered upper stage failures on three test flights of the massive Starship rocket last year. "
SpaceX has also had numerous failures with the larger generation of second stages and currently doesn't have a lead there. Nobody does.
It's a hard problem, and both SpaceX and Blue Origin will probably have failures in the future too, I am encouraged that they both see failure as a way to do better and looking forward to both of them eventually succeeding. It's a good time to be a space nerd.
There's a saying in the racing business. If you're not walking back to the pit now and then carrying the steering wheel, you're not trying hard enough. If you're walking back to the pit too often, you're incompetent.
If you always fail, you aren’t trying.
If you never fail, you aren’t trying.
If you always fail, you aren’t learning
Isn't that better?
True, but then you have to differentiate trying and failing vs not doing anything and failing by default.
There's another aspect. If you're launching men in rockets, you cannot tolerate failures, so the development cost is way, way higher. The cost effective method is to launch unmanned ones, tolerating a lot of failures, and when the bugs are worked out then launch men.
Nobody else has anything remotely like Starship. If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will, they will extend their dominance for another decade if not more.
Yes, Starship development has been slow and occasionally explodey, but they've successfully demonstrated all the fundamentals and it's "just" iteration from here. (They haven't gone into full orbit, but that's by choice, not lack of capability.)
> If they pull it off, and it's looking like they will,
I really wonder about this psychological effect where non technical people champion people like Musk so hard without any basis for doing so. Is is some sort of wanting to belong to some ideology that makes you just make shit up in your head about how Starship is a success, despite many indicators of it clearly being a stupid idea born from Musks ketomine episodes?
For the record, Starships engines are the equivalent of taking a Toyota Corolla and making it run on nitrous continously on the verge of self destructing. You may be able to do technology demonstrations here and there, but making it work reliably for actual missions is much much harder.
Bringing together the money and people to make this stuff happen is the basis. That’s the most impressive part. Debatably the only truly impressive part.
There’s no ideology. You can watch a really big rocket take off every month or two and watch a smaller rocket take off every couple days. I’m sure there are better designs out there… on drawing boards.
Its not a video game where you put enough resources into "science" and stuff just works.
There are fundamentals at play that Musk certainly doesn't understand, and its ridiculous to think that he would be smart enough to account for them.
> There are fundamentals at play that Musk certainly doesn't understand
Examples?
It's the 4-minute mile except it's taking everyone else too long to copy it. Really shows how far ahead Musk is.
I know insurance for a launch is typical, but seems really tough to do that for this still “rather experimental” launch. I got to imagine it has costs something like 50% on a project like this.
The failure of the upper stage is a bummer. If it triggers a months-long review, that will almost certainly bump back the schedule for the prototype Blue Moon lander launch.
I wonder how a company would be able to catch up with SpaceX, and make this no longer a monopoly.
I think we will see many soon. India and China alone have something like ten promising space launch startups.
What I was not aware of is how many satellites Amazon already has in LEO for it's own Internet service.
They've been flying under the radar there it would seen.
I will be good to have competition for space Internet. It’s unclear though if the market will really support two players. Satellite radio and data quickly ended up consolidating down to one.
Amazon is trying to become more vertically integrated but they seem at a structural disadvantage here competing against SpaceX.
You might be counting out the value of government and military contracts that might not want to do business with a wild card.
SpaceX is killing it because the US government gives them a bunch of contracts, but if stability is slightly more important than cost or speed, amazon has a contender.
They "only" have about 250 but they're authorized for 3000. They just bought a satellite company this week though that might boost the numbers a bit.
As late as 2010 there were "only" around 1000 satellites in orbit.
It came to my attention recently how many TOTAL objects currently exist in LEO. And that a study said that due to light deflection of these objects, that the earth’s night sky is an average of 10% brighter than it was in 1980s… although I generally am excited by technological advancement, that fact (if true) made me feel somewhat melancholy.
Space is hard.
Losing payloads hurts though, especially for a new platform.
Video of the booster landing: https://xcancel.com/JeffBezos/status/2045874068763632017
Stupid question I know, but are there people on that boat?
It's a drone boat, so no.
IIRC people standby on a boat at a safe distance, then come onboard to secure the booster when it's safe enough