SpaceX catches giant Starship booster during historic Flight 5 rocket launch and landing (video)

[fj.torres]

One of the things that ChrisA talks about is the expense of the engineers to design, build, test and operate a scientific payload. But, with wider body launch vehicles that can loft heavier packages, the difficulties in doing that work for a specific mission goal can be reduced, potentially by a lot.

Of course, the asperations of scientists will also increase to utilize whatever we can get into space, so the net result may be just more results for the cost level that we can afford. Think big telescope that does not need to be folded and unfold automatically a million miles away, vs an even larger telescope that does need to unfold, but gets even better data.

However, there is also the potential to actually assemble an even bigger telescope in low earth orbit and then boost it out a million miles. Putting the ability to do final mission vehicle and instrument package assembly of prefab components into low earth orbit and being able to refuel it there is likely to be the biggest game changer for costs, and reliability.

Agreed.
Also, there is an opportunity for new mission architectures.

Imagine a swarm-based mission to jupiter with a variety of single function sensor cubesats reporting not to Earth but to a Starship-based mother ship in high Orbit. Instead of each cubesat needing a powerful storage and communication system to send data to earth, it could feed their data to the mothership which could host a big AI control system, massive antennas, and a micro nuclear reactor to relay the data streams to Earth.

Consider New Horizons: it cost $700M in 2006 dollars, $1.1B in 2024 dollars.
A Starship-based mission could carry 100 $5M cubesats and $100M in launch costs and still have $500M for the mothership customizations.

With a common modular bus design and lower weight restrictions, the swarm can be better shielded without requiring expensive radiation hardened components.

Or, consider that SpaceX gets their half centimeter landing accuracy by leveraging GPS, how about giving the moon and mars their own combo GPS/Starlink constellation? Starlink satellites are estimated to cost less than $200K and all that would be needed would be a couple dozen.

Or, how much would a farside lunar-crater version of the late, lamented Arecibo observatory weigh/cost? One launch, one landing.

The money saved from not using SLS's "best 20th century" tech can be better applied to useful payloads on a single mission.

 

[DanIAm]

+1 on the quantity is a quality all of it's own in relationship to this. They are choosing materials with a manufacturing mindset instead of high tech/unobtainium (coz, you know, "space") which brings costs and reliability issues down (not reliable if there is no replacement part available). But in doing it, with a lot of materials science to get the best stainless and other materials versions (e.g. good at hot and cryogenic temps) for the task.

Rocket launches were profoundly expensive because there were so few of them, there was a lot of infrastructure/manpower for mission control, often sitting idle. The shared cost over lot's of rockets in itself takes mission cost down. Plus they're designing via engineers & scientists instead of committee. Starship/Booster still hasn't passed it's reusability test, but even as a disposable rocket it will be profoundly cheap to build and there is another one always ready from the factory imminently - Tens of millions to build instead of the billions for SLS for example.

There is access to communications/power/vehicles/battery storage/robots )) and all the big ticket items via the associated Musk companies. But there is also a lot of other things within those, hepa filters, climate control and suchlike, ability to make their own actuators, chairs and lot's of those small things - that contracting out with a "space markup" would otherwise be at obscene cost. Though, there is plenty that is not in their control - food for example, it would seem that it's not just launch cost, there is a mindblowing markup per meal for the ISS - it would be cheaper if they were just sent champagne and caviar.

The Science section of NASA will be salivating, the launch component is such a huge part of their missions, the individual teams just want to focus on radio waves somewhere, or rock formations. Probably what they need, is mass manufactured spacecraft for missions such as Europa, so they don't need to custom build engines/thrusters/power/communications every time, but just add their own particular instruments to them - NASA would be doing a lot more science due to the savings. Or Mars Rover, instead of $2.7 billion for 1 (fingers crossed at the time, that it worked), just modify 4 x cybertrucks with your instruments, give it a folding solar array and have SpaceX deliver it - and if it blows up and you try again in the next launch window, you've probably still saved $2 billion.

 

[fj.torres]

+1 on the quantity is a quality all of it's own in relationship to this. They are choosing materials with a manufacturing mindset instead of high tech/unobtainium (coz, you know, "space") which brings costs and reliability issues down (not reliable if there is no replacement part available). But in doing it, with a lot of materials science to get the best stainless and other materials versions (e.g. good at hot and cryogenic temps) for the task.

Rocket launches were profoundly expensive because there were so few of them, there was a lot of infrastructure/manpower for mission control, often sitting idle. The shared cost over lot's of rockets in itself takes mission cost down. Plus they're designing via engineers & scientists instead of committee. Starship/Booster still hasn't passed it's reusability test, but even as a disposable rocket it will be profoundly cheap to build and there is another one always ready from the factory imminently - Tens of millions to build instead of the billions for SLS for example.

There is access to communications/power/vehicles/battery storage/robots )) and all the big ticket items via the associated Musk companies. But there is also a lot of other things within those, hepa filters, climate control and suchlike, ability to make their own actuators, chairs and lot's of those small things - that contracting out with a "space markup" would otherwise be at obscene cost. Though, there is plenty that is not in their control - food for example, it would seem that it's not just launch cost, there is a mindblowing markup per meal for the ISS - it would be cheaper if they were just sent champagne and caviar.

The Science section of NASA will be salivating, the launch component is such a huge part of their missions, the individual teams just want to focus on radio waves somewhere, or rock formations. Probably what they need, is mass manufactured spacecraft for missions such as Europa, so they don't need to custom build engines/thrusters/power/communications every time, but just add their own particular instruments to them - NASA would be doing a lot more science due to the savings. Or Mars Rover, instead of $2.7 billion for 1 (fingers crossed at the time, that it worked), just modify 4 x cybertrucks with your instruments, give it a folding solar array and have SpaceX deliver it - and if it blows up and you try again in the next launch window, you've probably still saved $2 billion.

Minor factoid: Elon isn't limited to the companies he's invested in. His entire family is entrepreneurialy rich.

Who is the richest Musk family member after Elon? Net worths, ranked

No one in Elon Musk’s family comes close to the Space X CEO’s fortune, but parents Maye and Errol, siblings Tosca and Kimbal, and ex-wife Justine are all millionaires too

www.scmp.com

Of relevance to the space business, though, his younger brother is invested in vertical farming. So if it comes to it, growing food on starships will be just a matter of calling up brother Kimball. (Who, BTW, is an early SpaceX investor, too. Come IPO time Forbes will be noticing him.)

For all that Musk harps on full reusability, the two really game changing developments are fast booster refurbishment and orbital fuel transfer. The latter has been demonstrated as far back as the 60's by the Soviets and NASA's Gemini-Agena, and as recently as the chinese and Spacex during flight 3. Worst case scenario, instead of $10 a pound a refurbishable Starship stack might cost $50 a pound instead of, ahem, $10,000 a pound with Old Space systems. Still a game changer.