The Astronomy Thread

BrutulTM · Aug 27, 2025

Captain Suave said:
SpaceX should be an all-time case study for risk tolerance. If it's just money on the line, the long-term advantage of allowance for failure seems quite clear. If you're not failing, you're not trying enough new ideas. Not having any is exactly what stagnated NASA.

And they're building a factory to up their production capability to 1 starship per day. That's a stunning number of rockets, especially considering that they are reusable and carry a silly amount of payload. I can't imagine what they would use all those starships for, but I've seen too much from SpaceX to say it's stupid at this point.

Captain Suave · Aug 27, 2025

BrutulTM said:
I can't imagine what they would use all those starships for

They've been quite open about it, but no one seems to want to take them at face value. Starlink and Falcon/Starship will generate cash that they're going to use to put a million tons of infrastructure on Mars. It seems too sci-fi to be real, but there's no reason to disbelieve them at this point.

Kiroy · Aug 27, 2025

BrutulTM said:
And they're building a factory to up their production capability to 1 starship per day. That's a stunning number of rockets, especially considering that they are reusable and carry a silly amount of payload. I can't imagine what they would use all those starships for, but I've seen too much from SpaceX to say it's stupid at this point.

elons said exactly what he’s going to use them for like 500 times

Cybsled · Aug 27, 2025

If SpaceX was a public company, then this model wouldn't be sustainable because shareholders would get impatient.

The biggest risk would be if the Starship project risks the finances of SpaceX long term because of a lack of meaningful progress towards human flight. For example, they do have the Lunar Lander contract which is basically just Starship. While the Lunar Lander doesn't need to be rated for atmospheric re-entry, it does need to be safe enough to land humans on the moon and get them back to orbit, as well as serve as their living quarters for the duration of the stay. Presuming that whole lunar landing project doesn't get killed off (which could potentially happen if China beats the US back to the moon and claims the premium real estate at the southern pole).

Captain Suave · Aug 27, 2025

Cybsled said:
If SpaceX was a public company, then this model wouldn't be sustainable because shareholders would get impatient.

Which is why it isn't and won't be, by design. The pressures of public trading make for terrible long term planning. You need a time horizon longer than a fiscal quarter.

As far as billionaire vanity projects go, this is one I'll get behind.

Cybsled · Aug 27, 2025

Captain Suave said:
Which is why it isn't and won't be, by design. The pressures of public trading make for terrible long term planning. You need a time horizon longer than a fiscal quarter.

As far as billionaire vanity projects go, this is one I'll get behind.

Even at the government level, long term planning frequently goes out the window for manned missions. I think it was Bush Jr who got the ball rolling for a possible lunar mission after the shuttle got shut down, then Obama pulled back on that a bit because he wanted a manned mission to something besides the moon like an asteroid, then Trump wanted the moon again and a base, then Biden didn't really shake anything up in terms of a moon mission really so the Trump goals more or less stayed the same, then Trump comes back and still wants the moon mission but ditched the lunar gateway idea from his first term.

Meanwhile nothing is actually ready, which calls into question if we will even get back there before the end of the decade, assuming Trump or some other president doesn't kill off the project

Chanur · Aug 27, 2025

Captain Suave said:
Which is why it isn't and won't be, by design. The pressures of public trading make for terrible long term planning. You need a time horizon longer than a fiscal quarter.

As far as billionaire vanity projects go, this is one I'll get behind.

If I had his kind of money I would be doing the same thing. Or building giant Mechs and funding Dredd2.

BrutulTM · Aug 27, 2025

Captain Suave said:
They've been quite open about it, but no one seems to want to take them at face value. Starlink and Falcon/Starship will generate cash that they're going to use to put a million tons of infrastructure on Mars. It seems too sci-fi to be real, but there's no reason to disbelieve them at this point.

I think there's reason to disbelieve that. Getting the rocket into orbit and deploying satellites is one thing, but it's a far cry from hundreds of missions to Mars. SpaceX and Starlink are profitable, but not *that* profitable. I feel like there has to be another step in between unless Elon is actually successful at getting the government to give him a couple trillion dollars. Meanwhile they're building the rocket factory now. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think Elon will be lucky to live long enough to see it himself.

Captain Suave · Aug 27, 2025

BrutulTM said:
but it's a far cry from hundreds of missions to Mars. SpaceX and Starlink are profitable, but not *that* profitable.

I just mean that's what the future capacity is designed for. As a byproduct they'll cut the cost to orbit by an order of magnitude or two, which will bring big demand expansion. They'll obviously need to fund it as a going concern.

Lambourne · Aug 28, 2025

Elon also said that the Optimus robot is part of the plan. Early missions to Mars could have nothing but robots on them to build the basic starter infrastructure for human landings.

I think a launch tower may be needed to have full re-usability due to the problems with concrete chunks going everywhere when launching from the ground on the first test flight. Also a water deluge system isn't really an option until they find a way to easily get large amounts of water on Mars.

Next Mars window is December 2026, wouldn't surprise me to see them attempt a flyby/Mars orbit test by then. Getting Starship to close to orbit seems to be going well enough now. Once you're in low earth orbit you're 2/3rds of the way to Mars orbit in terms of delta-v requirements.

Big Phoenix · Aug 28, 2025

Lambourne said:
Next Mars window is December 2026, wouldn't surprise me to see them attempt a flyby/Mars orbit test by then. Getting Starship to close to orbit seems to be going well enough now. Once you're in low earth orbit you're 2/3rds of the way to Mars orbit in terms of delta-v requirements.

Id love to be proven wrong but I cant imagine theyre doing a Mars flyby in 2026.

Cybsled · Aug 28, 2025

I agree that is an insanely optimistic time table, especially if they needed to do or test mid-orbit refueling as part of that plan

Lambourne · Aug 28, 2025

If they can demonstrate the in-orbit refueling successfully, that does leave them with a fueled up ship in orbit. At that point, they might as well leave it in orbit and send it somewhere.

Sanrith Descartes · Aug 28, 2025

Lambourne said:
If they can demonstrate the in-orbit refueling successfully, that does leave them with a fueled up ship in orbit. At that point, they might as well leave it in orbit and send it somewhere.

I wonder how much explosive power a fully fueled Starship has if it were to "accidently" fall out of the sky and land on someone's capital.

Captain Suave · Aug 28, 2025

Sanrith Descartes said:
I wonder how much explosive power a fully fueled Starship has if it were to "accidently" fall out of the sky and land on someone's capital.

Fully loaded the total energy is about what was released over Hiroshima, but since it's not designed as a weapon the damage profile would be substantially reduced. The fuel can't all oxidize simultaneously and the speed of reaction and therefore violence of the shockwave is slow compared to true explosives. We've already seen what it looks like when one of these goes boom - local destruction and a big fire. It's impressive for civilian industrial accidents but not particularly scary compared to military ordinance.

Lambourne · Aug 28, 2025

Yeah would cause a fire but nothing like a modern bomb would. It's more dangerous as a delivery vehicle for a real bomb. Governments keep a pretty close eye on rocket companies for that reason. SpaceX isn't allowed to hire H1Bs for example, (naturalized) US citizens only.

Kajiimagi · Aug 28, 2025

Lambourne said:
Yeah would cause a fire but nothing like a modern bomb would. It's more dangerous as a delivery vehicle for a real bomb. Governments keep a pretty close eye on rocket companies for that reason. SpaceX isn't allowed to hire H1Bs for example, (naturalized) US citizens only.

When Elon built the Nevada Gigafactory he was using every tax incentive he could get. One of the conditions for working on the place was you had to be a Nevada Citizen. Do you know how fucking hard it is to find Skilled electricians that are also Nevada citizens? At the time there was only about 3 million people in all of Nevada , we were scraping the bottom of the barrel to find people to go up to Sparks and work on it. I worked for (one) of the multiple electrical contractors on that place but never actually worked on it.
I did get a tour of what was then called 'Area 4' and it was very impressive. Wasn't allowed to take pics of course.
Oh also fun fact: after the construction was complete , they decided to audit every contractor to make sure they didn't charge too much. Thanks for your hard work, now spread wide I'm gonna crawl up your ass and do forensic accounting.

Furry · Aug 28, 2025

If you converted spacex's super heavy lifter into a conventional ordinance you could slap 6 moabs on it and hit anywhere on earth.

I'd be shocked if there wasn't a plan for a ground penetrator warhead that fits onto it already floating around in the pentagon.

Sanrith Descartes · Aug 28, 2025

Kajiimagi said:
When Elon built the Nevada Gigafactory he was using every tax incentive he could get. One of the conditions for working on the place was you had to be a Nevada Citizen. Do you know how fucking hard it is to find Skilled electricians that are also Nevada citizens? At the time there was only about 3 million people in all of Nevada , we were scraping the bottom of the barrel to find people to go up to Sparks and work on it. I worked for (one) of the multiple electrical contractors on that place but never actually worked on it.
I did get a tour of what was then called 'Area 4' and it was very impressive. Wasn't allowed to take pics of course.
Oh also fun fact: after the construction was complete , they decided to audit every contractor to make sure they didn't charge too much. Thanks for your hard work, now spread wide I'm gonna crawl up your ass and do forensic accounting.

Isn't Sparks on the other side of the river from Reno?

Cybsled · Aug 28, 2025

Furry said:
If you converted spacex's super heavy lifter into a conventional ordinance you could slap 6 moabs on it and hit anywhere on earth.

I'd be shocked if there wasn't a plan for a ground penetrator warhead that fits onto it already floating around in the pentagon.

I mean at that point, it is basically just a non-nuclear ICBM

The military is interested in rapid materials deployment capabilities of Starship if they can get it functional as advertised - being able to load various logistics into one and send it across the globe in hours would be a pretty nice thing to have in certain situations if time was a huge concern

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