Thread

1. paulus_magnus2 · 1790605967 · focus · HN ↗

   Starship is not yet reusable but they have the MVP and a fantastic position to iterate forward.

   -- they have an orbital launcher with the largest diameter cargo bay

   -- larger sats have bigger antennas and bigger PV area and more bus power. this scales as diam^2

   -- 26 x Starlink v3 ~40-65 tons to LEO

   -- every launch generates revenue, locks out the orbit for competitors.

   -- they can launch more volume, more mass and cheaper than anyone else by a large margin

   -- the design is validated - things will work

   -- there is technical debt, issues but the rocket did the job

   Caveats

   -- timelines for full reusability are optimistic etc

   -- there will be other issues in scaling to launching gigawats into orbit

   -- cooling will have to be

   -- Musk might go Full Villan mode before the thing works

   [meta] I really didn't like that other negative comment getting voted to the top. Looks like it's made by someone who never worked in a bigco. For every bigco I worked, at any time there were hundreds if not thousands of open issues. You could list them and try arguing the company is about to fail and you'd scare people who don't know better.

   It's the judgement of the severity of the issue that matters not #no_of_issues. And if there were 0 issues would our job exist?

   [edit] getting the formatting right is very hard, maybe we could get a preview / TinyMCE ?

   1. trencedamp · 1790611117 · focus · HN ↗

      Is nobody concerned about putting things in a ship that explodes every other time they launch it

      1. jfoster · 1790612641 · focus · HN ↗

         Falcon 9 used to do that when being tested.

         They push them to the limits in testing/development to make them reliable in production.

         Starship still in testing/development.

         1. spwa4 · 1790625185 · focus · HN ↗

            Or you could do it like every other rocketry startup: either succeed first time or go bankrupt. Hell, occasionally they go bankrupt after succeeding at their first flight.

            People here act like SpaceX is the only or the best rocket startup. That trial-and-error is somehow the superior design strategy and that that is responsible for SpaceX's success.

            In reality, of course, SpaceX's only real distinguishing feature is how much they blow up and how they keep getting funding despite financial analysis after financial analysis saying "this will never work, it's a loss". But no worries! Starlink will fix it! Except ... when calculating Starlink profits they're ... also negative. Starlink caused a huge boost in SpaceX funding, while losing money. How do you do that?

            In my personal experience, creating a company that runs at a loss results in losing money. I guess SpaceX makes it up on volume?

            SpaceX's secret is dollars. Investor dollars. The amount of money Musk has (frequently literally) more than the funding of EVERY other private rocket startup COMBINED.

            1. QuiEgo · 1790626829 · focus · HN ↗

               SpaceX has some absurd majority of the launch market. Because their rockets work.

               <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Space_launch_market_competition" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Space_launch_market_competitio...

               I won’t comment on the finances, but their technical success is self-evident.

               1. spwa4 · 1790627213 · focus · HN ↗

                  My point was that working rockets is not exactly a good explanation for SpaceX&#x27;s success.

                  Rocket Lab Electron works

                  Galactic Energy Ceres-1 works

                  Virgin Orbit LauncherOne rocket works

                  Astra Rocket 3.3 works (no relation to OpenAI)

                  Firefly AerospaceAlpha works

                  And this is disregarding that of course these are hardly the only kind of organization with working rockets. Did you know a rocket startup with working rockets was forced into bankruptcy for fear it might give Congo access to ballistic rockets?

                  ... What makes the difference for SpaceX is investor money, not engineering excellence. In fact most of the above companies got to orbit on their first try, no blowing up rockets and hundreds of millions of dollars required.

                  1. mmustapic · 1790629237 · focus · HN ↗

                     No, Spacex is different because of engineering. By being able to reuse rockets they can launch frequently (every week?). By launching frequently they can measure and improve the rockets, so reliability goes up and price down.

                     1. [deleted] · 1790668717 · focus · HN ↗

                        [deleted]

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