Thread

1. Zigurd · 1790601391 · focus · HN ↗

   Having an impossible critical path will be the demise of the starship project. Too many things have to work that cannot be tested out of order. Too many of those things that needed to work years ago still don't. And those are the easy ones.

   The items I'm listing here are just a subset of the critical path, and each milestone along the way will take months, optimistically, and years more realistically. To the point that starship won't be relevant to moon missions or any commercial use by the time it does what it needs to do to even partially fulfill the plans for it:

   It needs to meet payload specifications. Currently it is off by a factor of two, which sounds doable until you realize the spec is 100 tons, and they need to find 50 tons more capacity by shedding weight elsewhere in the system.

   It needs a launch cadence fast enough so that refueling doesn't take 15 separate starship tankers. Currently it would take years to refuel one single starship to make a one-way trip to the moon.

   There's just a minor milestone on the way to that launch cadence: catching both stages.

   Once both stages are reliably caught after a mission, refurbishment needs to be minimal. Proving that out will take several missions.

   This is a simplified list of items on the critical path, but reaching each of these items has risks, and if those risks prove to be problems to solve, then each of those problems has a list of tasks and tests associated with it.

   Some people think very highly of Elon for proposing technologically elegant solutions. But he's got a really big blind spot for the project management implications.

   1. timschmidt · 1790601790 · focus · HN ↗

      They've reached orbit, and at the time of this comment are preparing to deploy Starlink sats. Which means they've successfully closed the economic development loop for the Starship program. Falcon 9 can't launch Starlink v3, only Starship can. They've already demonstrated successful booster catch. Even if they discard Ship in the ocean after every launch they're no worse off than with Falcon 9 (which also discards it's upper stage).

      They&#x27;ll ramp falcon flights down quickly. Ramp up Starship launches just as quickly. And in a couple years time we&#x27;ll have a blooper reel like this one but larger by 10x: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ

      Edit: Starlink deployed.

      1. estearum · 1790602589 · focus · HN ↗

         Now the goalposts for Starship is just whether it can put Starlink into orbit?

         You seem to be suggesting that Starship just needs to self-fund its own development, and then the question of whether that development leads somewhere desirable&#x2F;valuable is de facto answered or irrelevant. Why would that be the case?

         1. panick21_ · 1790602948 · focus · HN ↗

            Now the point of economic sustainability was always putting Starlink into orbit. That&#x27;s something people in the space community have said from the beginning.

            And both the booster and the Starship itself have proven that they can get back to ground mostly intact. So its not like they are only working on &#x27;getting to orbit&#x27;. And clearly it is leading something desirable if the have proven that they can basically land the second and first stage, something nobody else has ever achieved.

            Question how fast they can make the turn around are still there along with other question. But once you can repeatably launch you can improve much faster as they did with Falcon 9. And you can do more and more tests in shorter time, accelerating development.

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