While Falcon 9 is a dependable rocket…
- 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
There is a saying in business: Under-Promise, Over-Perform, or Over-Deliver.
SpaceX does the opposite of this.
It literally doesn’t matter though: everyone and their mother are buying falcon 9 or heavy launches. SpaceX accounts for almost 90% of the world’s launched upmass. They are simply the cheapest most reliable option out there and it is not close. The only reason not to fly on a SpaceX rocket is national security or wanting to keep your own domestic launch industry alive.
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?
I specifically said Starship development has been a shitshow.
I would not characterize all of SpaceX as a shit show, more like vastly under delivering compared to what was promised.
They say it themselves: SpaceX specializes in turning the impossible into merely late.
When Starship was announced, people were saying it wouldn’t fly with so many engines because the Russians tried and failed with their N1 rocket. Now that it did fly, it’s that the heat shield will never work.
Are they late compared to what they announced? Absolutely. Are they still faster than anyone else? Look at Blue Origin and you have your answer.
Some people just cant separate the musk from the accomplishments. Or they read headlines about costs and historical comparisons without actually thinking about how apples to oranges they are. The vitriol over musk which is well deserved has really fucked with the space industry’s image. And considering how fucked the image already was (not hated, but jaded and perceived as a waste of money), its a shame.
3 weeks, roughly in line with faster Space Shuttle turn around times
The shortest shuttle turnaround time was 55 days. Almost three times as much as Falcon 9. The fastest post-Challenger turnaround time was 88 days, I believe. After Columbia, the fastest turnaround was around 5 months.
NASA claimed that the shuttle could achieve a turnaround time of two weeks (page IX). It looks like SpaceX is not the only one setting unrealistic timelines?
