Are Space Scientists Ready For Starship - the Biggest Rocket Ever? (science.org) 88
Slashdot reader sciencehabit shared this thought-provoking anecdote from Science magazine:
NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission was brutish and short. It began on 9 October 2009, when the hull of a spent Centaur rocket stage smashed into Cabeus crater, near the south pole of the Moon, with the force of about 2 tons of TNT. And it ended minutes later, when a trailing spacecraft flew through and analyzed the lofted plume of debris before it, too, crashed. About 6% of the plume was water, presumably from ice trapped in the shadowed depths of the crater, where the temperature never rises above -173ÂC. The Moon, it turned out, wasn't as bone dry as the Apollo astronauts believed. "That was our first ground truth that there is water ice," says Jennifer Heldmann, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center who worked on the mission.
Today, Heldmann wants to send another rocket to probe lunar ice — but not on a one-way trip. She has her eye on Starship, a behemoth under development by private rocket company SpaceX that would be the largest flying object the world has ever seen. With Starship, Heldmann could send 100 tons to the Moon, more than twice the lunar payload of the Saturn V, the workhorse of the Apollo missions. She dreams of delivering robotic excavators and drills and retrieving ice in freezers onboard Starship, which could return to Earth with tens of tons of cargo. By analyzing characteristics such as the ice's isotopic composition and its depth, she could learn about its origin: how much of it came from a bombardment of comets and asteroids billions of years ago versus slow, steady implantation by the solar wind. She could also find out where the ice is abundant and pure enough to support human outposts. "It's high-priority science, and it's also critical for exploration," Heldmann says.
When SpaceX CEO Elon Musk talks up Starship, it's mostly about human exploration: Set up bases on Mars and make humans a multiplanetary species! Save civilization from extinction! But Heldmann and many others believe the heavy lifter could also radically change the way space scientists work. They could fly bigger and heavier instruments more often — and much more cheaply, if SpaceX's projections of cargo launch costs as low as $10 per kilogram are to be believed. On Mars, they could deploy rovers not as one-offs, but in herds. Space telescopes could grow, and fleets of satellites in low-Earth orbit could become commonplace. Astronomy, planetary science, and Earth observation could all boldly go, better than they ever have before.
Of course, Starship isn't real yet. All eyes will be on a first orbital launch test, expected sometime in the coming months.
Starship would've made it easier to deploy the massive James Webb Space Telescope, the article points out, while in the future Starship's extra fuel capacity could make it easier to explore Mercury, earth's outermost planets, and even interstellar space. In fact, Heldmann and colleagues have now suggested that NASA create a dedicated funding line for missions relying on Starship. Heldmann argues that "We on the science side need to be ready to take advantage of those capabilities when they come online."
The article notes that at an event in February, Elon Musk "explained how a single Starship, launching three times per week, would loft more than 15,000 tons to orbit in a year — about as much as all the cargo that has been lifted in the entire history of spaceflight."
Today, Heldmann wants to send another rocket to probe lunar ice — but not on a one-way trip. She has her eye on Starship, a behemoth under development by private rocket company SpaceX that would be the largest flying object the world has ever seen. With Starship, Heldmann could send 100 tons to the Moon, more than twice the lunar payload of the Saturn V, the workhorse of the Apollo missions. She dreams of delivering robotic excavators and drills and retrieving ice in freezers onboard Starship, which could return to Earth with tens of tons of cargo. By analyzing characteristics such as the ice's isotopic composition and its depth, she could learn about its origin: how much of it came from a bombardment of comets and asteroids billions of years ago versus slow, steady implantation by the solar wind. She could also find out where the ice is abundant and pure enough to support human outposts. "It's high-priority science, and it's also critical for exploration," Heldmann says.
When SpaceX CEO Elon Musk talks up Starship, it's mostly about human exploration: Set up bases on Mars and make humans a multiplanetary species! Save civilization from extinction! But Heldmann and many others believe the heavy lifter could also radically change the way space scientists work. They could fly bigger and heavier instruments more often — and much more cheaply, if SpaceX's projections of cargo launch costs as low as $10 per kilogram are to be believed. On Mars, they could deploy rovers not as one-offs, but in herds. Space telescopes could grow, and fleets of satellites in low-Earth orbit could become commonplace. Astronomy, planetary science, and Earth observation could all boldly go, better than they ever have before.
Of course, Starship isn't real yet. All eyes will be on a first orbital launch test, expected sometime in the coming months.
Starship would've made it easier to deploy the massive James Webb Space Telescope, the article points out, while in the future Starship's extra fuel capacity could make it easier to explore Mercury, earth's outermost planets, and even interstellar space. In fact, Heldmann and colleagues have now suggested that NASA create a dedicated funding line for missions relying on Starship. Heldmann argues that "We on the science side need to be ready to take advantage of those capabilities when they come online."
The article notes that at an event in February, Elon Musk "explained how a single Starship, launching three times per week, would loft more than 15,000 tons to orbit in a year — about as much as all the cargo that has been lifted in the entire history of spaceflight."
Re: First (Score:1)
It's usually done by rsilvergun to promote his social ideology.
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only if you got a big rocket.
Nuclear icy moon orbiters (Score:3)
Mars colonization is great but the question I want answered in my lifetime is there is life under Europa or any of the other icy moons. Having those fission reactors provides the power for powerful radars and maybe even a drilling operation in a few decades.
I just want us throwing orbiter after orbiter like we were doing with Pioneer and Voyager.
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the question I want answered in my lifetime is there is life under Europa or any of the other icy moons.
that's the question for your lifetime. seriously. not how consciousness emerges, the shape of the universe, what is the fabric of time ... you just want to know if there is bacteria lumbering in some solar system backyard object.
how do you even manage to live with yourself???
Mars colonization is great
it's a great hoax. on the long run reaching out for other bodies is mandatory for our species, but marx colonization is a problem of orders of magnitude greater complexity than guaranteeing sustainable colonization on earth. the thing i
Re: Nuclear icy moon orbiters (Score:2)
Sea people probably live there.
Re: Nuclear icy moon orbiters (Score:2)
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You're worried about a few square meters of melted ice on Europa?
How do you feel about what's happening to the only inhabitable planet we know about?
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Keep in mind that the only way a Starship is going to be taking off again, is if there's already refueling infrastructure nearby. That works fine for Mars (if we're building at least a robust outpost there), and the Moon (where we can ship fuel to orbit from Earth), but not so much for scientific missions to hard-to-reach places like Jupiter. Most likely it never lands in the first place, but instead deploys an ice-optimized lander.
Worst case scenario the landing plume softens the ice unevenly so that the
Re: Nuclear icy moon orbiters (Score:2)
Why would starship need to land on it?
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the question I want answered in my lifetime is there is life under Europa or any of the other icy moons.
that's the question for your lifetime. seriously. not how consciousness emerges, the shape of the universe, what is the fabric of time ... you just want to know if there is bacteria lumbering in some solar system backyard object.
Huh? I'm with him. I think that's a much more important question than "how consciousness emerges" or any of those others. If there's any sort of self reproducing organism there then it's as big a deal as proving that the Earth isn't the center of the universe.
how do you even manage to live with yourself???
Ditto.
PS: What is "consciousness" anyway?
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PS: What is "consciousness" anyway?
that's the question of my lifetime, but let's just say that it's what allows me to make bad jokes that other people don't get. don't you have any extraplanetary bacteria to chase?
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PS: What is "consciousness" anyway?
that's the question of my lifetime,
What do you think would change if you knew the answer?
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we could make conscious toasters. and door rugs.
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We already do, you're just not defining the terms correctly to get your desired answer.
Just as with insect thought; or insect sleep.
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I just want us throwing orbiter after orbiter like we were doing with Pioneer and Voyager.
Pioneer and Voyager are a bad solution for the great question you want answered. These two space programs are basically fly-by missions, although I think some launches in the Pioneer series made use of (crash?) landers or atmospheric descent probes.
So, yes, we'd need probes on the ground, "a drilling operation". Which brings me to the intriguing possibility of a fusion of technologies between SpaceX and another of Elon Musk's other hard tech companies, the Boring Company, although its specialty might be mor
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Yes thats why I want orbiters, I mean Pioneer and Voyager more in the sense that were launching them pretty regularly on a semi standardized platform. In the span of about 15 years we launched something like over a dozen science probes out there. They didn't have anywhere close to the dV to put craft in orbit around the outer planets then but with Starship and a new style power system we could and should have something like Cassini or better around every planet.
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Actually, SpaceX with TESLA ROBOTICS will be far more useful. TBC is for the moon and mars.
You're right. TBC clears dirt not ice. Elon's infamous sub [cnet.com] might be a better fit.
Are they ready? (Score:4)
Are Space Scientists Ready For Starship
I mean, they made it didn't they?
Starship isn't real yet
Oh, okay then.
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Nope. I can almost guarantee you that few if any astronomers, astrophysicists, xeno-geologists(?), or other "space scientists" were involved in building Starship.
Rocket scientists, sure. But rocket science has about as much to do with space as car design has to do with roads. There's a few surface-level details to keep in mind, but beyond that it's a completely unrelated field.
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Yeah, you wouldn't want, say, an expert in space weather to be involved in the design of a spaceship. Nope. Totally useless.
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Pretty much.
Obviously you consult them, ask "What sort of radiation will we be looking at?" - but once they answer there's not much else they can contribute to designing the spacecraft.
Didn't save scientists use the space shuttle (Score:2)
... astronomers, astrophysicists, xeno-geologists(?), or other "space scientists" ....
I can guarantee you the above will not figure out how to utilize a spacecraft very well until they have one to start fooling around with. OK, that first one may be a mockup on the ground. But the next step is to fly. Didn't all sorts of space scientists conduct experiments aboard the space shuttle? Why not more of that aboard Starship?
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Generally speaking they don't "fool around" with anything - they build multi million(billion) dollar probes to conform with the provided rocket specs (basically, payload mass, volume, acceleration, and vibration constraints). They don't really care about much else, other than reliability. The rocket is not their business, it's just the bus they take to wherever they' going.
At present there's several decade-old projects being developed to utilize the SLS, which also "isn't real", and at this point it's not
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Generally speaking they don't "fool around" with anything
I think you are getting those rocket scientists confused with the space scientists. The rocket scientists also build the probes for the space scientists. What space scientists do in space includes a lot of what we have seen on the space shuttle in the past. What was done one the space shuttle could be done on Starship. Perhaps more done on Starship give greater resources.
Even if Starship somehow takes another 5-10 years to fly, it's unlikely that any mission whose planning started today would be ready to launch by then.
And you know what happens years in advance of the spaceflight? The space scientists plan the experiments they will conduct in space. What
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>I think you are getting those rocket scientists confused with the space scientists.
How so? You don't suggest any way in which the space scientists significantly contribute to the rocket scientists. Other than as customers at least.
There is definitely significant overlap going the other direction, but that's not the topic we're discussing.
>And you know what happens years in advance of the spaceflight? ...
Exactly. Which is why the missions being planned *today* should be seriously considering exploi
Re:Didn't space scientists use the space shuttle (Score:2)
>I think you are getting those rocket scientists confused with the space scientists. How so?
Well the sentence that followed the above answered that: "The rocket scientists also build the probes for the space scientists."
You don't suggest any way in which the space scientists significantly contribute to the rocket scientists.
They contribute to the mission. But you erroneously credited them with building a spacecraft, the "probe".
Let's try this again. We don't have to guess. There is nothing new here. We sent probes to the Moon in the 1960s and Mars in the 1970s. We flew the space shuttle from the 1980s through the 00s. Starship is just a new vehicle. Space scientists will do what they have been doin
$10 per kg? (Score:4, Funny)
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You're comparing the costs of a single package (what you and I would pay) vs the costs of a bulk package (what the big box store pays)...
If 10 kg from Beijing was $1300, your cheap plastic shit wouldn't be so cheap.
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I think he's comparing it with air freight prices. I haven't looked at costs recently, but back in December it cost me $690 to ship a parcel weighing roughly 100 pounds (including the pallet) from Nanjing to my doorstep in Florida via DHL air freight. Had I had them ship it via a slow boat (like most bulk shipments are done), the cost wouldn't have been anywhere near that much, but I likely wouldn't have received it until three months later. So, he may have a point that SpaceX might be able to be competit
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This is already something being talked about (by SpaceX/Musk).
https://www.inverse.com/innova... [inverse.com]
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Hopefully we will at least get more leg room
NASA is about jobs not space exploration (Score:3)
why else would they throw billions in this bottomless pit called 'SLS'?
It's just a very expensive disposable piece of fireworks where maybe only the door latch of the capsule might be reusable if everything goes well.
The rest is just destined to be garbage.
Starship will definitely be good for jobs. (Score:3)
Have a multibillion-dollar mission every decade, half-billion-dollar missions every few years, $50M missions every few months, $10M missions every few weeks, and $1M missions every few days. Shit, do ten $100k missions every day, to anywhere. The extremely generous ma
Re:NASA is about jobs not space exploration (Score:4, Interesting)
SpaceX is literally 10-20 years ahead of the competition. But if it fails, we need a backup plan. Space travel is too important to trust to just one company. So, we can cough up a few billion per year to fund SLS. That’s the equivalent of a half-dozen top-tier fighter jets nowadays. US gdp is 20 trillion. A billion isnt what it used to be and we waste way more money on way lesser endeavors.
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Exactly this. Plus a lot of money, reputations and effort went into SLS all the same so even just to save a little bit of face so we'll see it go up at least twice I'd say.
At the very least NASA should have to prove the thing works even if in 3 years when Starship is proven it'll get dropped like hot potatoes.
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SpaceX has already not-failed. Falcon 9 is about to be the most launched booster in history and will continue to be flying reusable missions until (and unless) Starship economics look so much better that F9 could be retired. Even so, F9 will be a more advanced medium lift rocket than anything anybody else will have for the next 3 to 5 years.
If SLS isn't put out of it's misery by congress, history will record it's few missions as the bizarre confluence of the most expensive booster ever and yet as a 'new'
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Re: NASA is about jobs not space exploration (Score:2)
Starship is absolutely critical for the future of starlink. It will also put us way ahead of any competitors who are planning on launching leo ISPs (not that we aren't already way ahead.)
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I believe that Musk has said something to the effect that Starship should be cheaper per launch than Falcon 9 as soon as they can land it reliably. That would make for a pretty abrupt retirement path for the Falcon 9.
But Falcon 9 has a reliability record that should keep it going for a while, especially for more valuable payloads and timing-sensitive launches beyond Earth orbit. And Crew Dragon is certified as safe for passengers. It's going to take a whole lot of proven flight record, crew modules testin
Re:NASA is about jobs not space exploration (Score:4, Insightful)
If he stays the course for another 20-30 years, he'll go down in the history books as a figure bigger than Edison and Ford combined.
I realize he contractually requires he be given titles like "founder" or "chief engineer", but Elon Musk is basically a very shrewd investor who parlayed his PayPal money wisely. If he stays the course, he'll be remembered more like Carnegie or Morgan (J.P., not Captain).
Re: NASA is about jobs not space exploration (Score:4, Informative)
According to people who do or did work at SpaceX Musk indeed is chief engineer not only by title. But what do they know?
Re: NASA is about jobs not space exploration (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it hard to believe he really grasps the engineering, because he keeps making ridiculous predictions. Aside from anything else, you would think he would have learned by now.
10 years ago he said he would have people on Mars by 2022. If he was really the chief engineer, he should have known that was completely unrealistic.
6 years ago he said he would have fully self driving cars within a year. 3 years ago he said that the AI was almost ready for the roll out of his Robotaxi service. This tells me he doesn't understand AI engineering, or even just control system engineering.
He also told his biographer that Hyperloop was just invented to stop California investing in high speed rail that would compete with his businesses. Which suggests that he maintains the image of being a genius engineer for the purpose of making people waste millions of dollars and holding back infrastructure development.
Re: NASA is about jobs not space exploration (Score:4, Interesting)
If I know anything about engineers, it's that they make hopelessly optimistic predictions...
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From my experience, the only people who make more hopelessly optimistic predictions are the sales force.
Re: NASA is about jobs not space exploration (Score:4, Insightful)
Whether you find it hard to believe or not has no bearing on reality. I've never met the man, nor have I ever worked at one of his companies, but as a working R&D engineer I'll say that the informal interviews I've seen with him (especially the Starbase tours with the Everyday Astronaut) show that he is, without a doubt, the "lead engineer". Some of the interviews show SpaceX employees coming up to ask a technical engineering question, and show Musk considering, asking appropriate follow-ups, and making engineering decisions. They show interviewers asking all kinds of wide-ranging detailed technical questions, and Musk answering at a technical level that no CEO I've ever worked for would be able to answer at.
Yes, he makes ridiculous predictions. I'm still wating for my Tesla to drive itself across country, a feat he promised would occur almost 5 years ago. He also made the predictions that he could create a successful electric car company (See his "Secret Master Plan" from 2006, for crissakes: https://www.tesla.com/blog/sec... [tesla.com] ), and revolutionize the space industry (see "History of SpaceX" on Wikipedia).
Don't let schedule slips blind you to the big picture.
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SLS is an insurance policy for Starship?
SLS was started in 2005, as part of Constellation. When a group decided that Constellation was too expensive and Obama killed it, then CONgress, namely the GOP, revived Constellation as SLS, or the Senate Launch System.
It was NOT insurance. It was a $ PIT for JOBS for GOPs ( and a few dems ). 20+B into SLS and nearly 10+B into Orion. Orion, like SLS, is a TOTAL JOKE. Again, designed by CONgress.
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As has often been noted, the SLS is a congressional pork barrel. That's why the acronym means Senate Launch System.
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The SLS is an insurance policy just in case Elon Musk strokes out or goes insane.
Odds are good that he would be removed from SpaceX in short order if he went full bananas, probably before he did any substantial damage. And at this point it can survive without him, arguably better in fact since he doesn't seem to have enough to do to keep him off of twitter.
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>SpaceX is literally 10-20 years ahead of the competition.
Yeah, though I think it would be a mistake to underestimate just how fast they could catch up. SpaceX is doing a lot f trailblazing that eases the way for others.
Rocket Lab is looking to, in many ways, leapfrog Starship with its reusable carbon fiber Neutron rocket. And while Relativity Space is still ironing out their fully 3D printed answer to the Falcon 1, it sounds like they're well on their way to having a fully reusable Falcon-9 competitor
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SLS is not "insurance" against anything. If the HLS version of Starship doesn't get developed, its replacement will be a new lander to be launched using Falcon Heavy, New Glenn, Vulcan, etc, because the one and only SLS launch available for each Artemis mission is tied up getting the Orion capsule out to near-lunar orbit. SLS isn't a lander, and even Block 1B won't be able to deliver one alongside the Orion (co-manifested cargo capacity being only 10 t). SLS is purely a jobs program.
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Parts of NASA to be sure are as you describe (jobs programs) but as with any large agency there are "factions". While one of the factions (management) seems set on supporting the likes of Boeing/Lockheed Martin in throwing billions at unsustainable programs, other factions (science/technical) seem to have gone out of their way to support SpaceX and similar new space companies in providing better/cheaper space access/services. And even managements drive is not wholly of their own making, Congress has had a
Remember Galileo? (Score:5, Funny)
the article points out, while in the future Starship's extra fuel capacity could make it easier to explore Mercury, earth's outermost planets, and even interstellar space.
Those would be the Sun's outermost planets. We have known Ptolemy was wrong for quite a long time now...
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Ah the ambiguity of a comma delimiting a list, collection, or grouping as compared to a comma delimiting an example, such as this one.
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...compared to a comma delimiting an example, such as this one.
So you think the author was intending to say that Mercury was an example of earth's outermost planets? Not even Ptolemy was that wrong.
Getting. (Score:4, Funny)
The question is, are they getting ready. Not "Are they ready". There is no Starship, so the title is dumb.
And the answer is: Of course they fucking are. What kind of stupid question is this?
Go further than that (Score:2)
Heldmann could send 100 tons to the Moon, more than twice the lunar payload of the Saturn V, the workhorse of the Apollo missions.
I understood that the Starship could be boosted into LEO as a tanker for fuel to be transferred to a subsequent vehicles. If so doesn't this significantly increase the potential payload to be landed on the lunar surface and brought back?
With multiple vehicles, payload is unbounded. (Score:2)
Re: Go further than that (Score:1)
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then fly back to earth
The current plan for the lunar Starship is that it will not be able to return to Earth because it won't have the header tanks it needs for landing. It also won't have the fuel to land with, so you would have to bring both fuel and the second cargo to orbit before it can land on the moon again.
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It could in principle (though a more likely approach is to refuel with a tanker/cargo-crew transport in cislunar orbit), but NASA's Artemis plans would have it sitting empty for years between uses. NASA hasn't even bought a second landing, and won't even ask for one until they have another lander from someone else under the "Sustaining Lunar Development" program. Between those SLD missions and Tollbooth-specific missions, it could be 2 or 3 years between Starship HLS missions. That's a long time to sit in o
payload (Score:2)
The Lunar Module weighed 36,000 pounds fueled ("extended" version), about 10,000 pounds empty. The mass on the Moon was somewhere in between these numbers, since the descent engine's tanks were nearly empty (notoriously so for Apollo 11) on landing, but the ascent engine's tanks were full.
But if you don't count the Lunar Module, and you only count the astronauts, their life support, and the Rover (about 460 pounds), then yes, I would guess around a ton.
Space Scientists (Score:2)
Rick Sanchez: "There's literally everything in Space!" [youtube.com]
...the largest flying object the world (Score:5, Informative)
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And you could fit a Hindenburg into a titanic, and nearly both into a World trade Center, and ALL OF THEM into Vesuvius!
Re:...the largest flying object the world (Score:4, Interesting)
As the Hindenburg is no longer in the running, the Starship will be the largest flying object.
The Hindenburg is the 'largest man-made object that ever flew'.
Follow the pedantry all the way down.
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The Hindenburg is the 'largest man-made object that ever flew'. Follow the pedantry all the way down.
Well, then "Starship" is not the largest flying object in the world, as there, right at this moment, is no "Starship" in flight. Even if some day "Starships" fly, most of the time they will not.
And if you want one orbiting the earth to be called "in flight", then somebody just needs to inflate a big balloon with some gas in orbit to top the record.
what goes up ... (Score:2)
Space junk (Score:1)
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That's one possibility, but I think another one is more likely. With far lower launch costs and far more financial opportunity (and potential losses) it is likely to hasten the cleanup of the space junk that is already up there and decrease the amount created in new launches. With decreasing launch costs and greater payloads to orbit satellite operators are more likely to place redundant deorbiting hardware on their satellites to prevent more debris from being created. And at the same time all of the unu
What could go wrong? (Score:1)
Let's take "hundreds of tons"of mass from the moon.
There's money to be made!!
We Built This Rocket (Score:2)
We built this lunar city... (Score:2)
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Are you saying the JWST was made by Ikea? Did it come with non-verbal (picture only) assembly instructions?