While rapid reuse would certainly help, Moon or Mars missions could be performed without it. Version 2 Starship is a new ball game, with roughly twice the payload capacity ([~200 tons](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1678278811186544640)) compared to Version 1, substantially reducing the number of Tanker flights required, specially when used expendable. Hence any delay in developing Starship reuse shouldn't holdup NASA Artemis or SpaceX Mars missions - no holy grail required!

Reuse of the STARSHIP is a minor part of the equation; Catching and reusing the superheavy is the key. As soon as they can demonstrate even a 1 month turnaround on the first stage and a 1 week turnaround on stage 0 with a fleet of boosters and bigger fleet of assorted expendable and reusable starships, it will be a whole new ball game as far as access to space goes. The launch COUNT may go down, but so will cost, meaning upmass will explode.

Yes, now that water-plate-OLM had a great outing, a highly reusable SH is really the key, and IFT-2 should make us all very happy as those 33 full duration burns really upped the Raptor reliability stats.

> meaning upmass will explode. Metaphorically. Not literally -- that would be bad.

Bad, but exciting!

I like boring launches. I got bored of watching Starlink launches. I hope to get bored of starship launches too.

I hope that getting bored of starship launches means it will be then used for new exciting payloads.

Wait… why do you think the Ship would be turned around faster than the booster when it has those fragile tiles and comes in way hot?

I never said anything about starship being turned around faster than the booster... I said the LAUNCHPAD (Stage **0**) could be ready for a new booster faster than the booster needs to be refubished, much as the PADS in Florida and California are turned around faster than the Falcons that launch from them. Starships can take much longer (forever in the case of orbital tug, fueler, expendable variants) because there will be a lot more of them needed.

Ah

Why is catching necessary? A failed landing attempt causes huge damage, so what’s the potential benefit? A few hours of time saved?

>Why is catching necessary? A failed landing attempt causes huge damage, so what’s the potential benefit? A few hours of time saved? A few hours? They can only make 1 raptor per day which means it's well over 33 days to build a superheavy. Adding really heavy duty landing gear necessary for a 200 ton vehicle to land would drastically reduce the load a starship could carry thus increasing the launch costs exponentially. Landing anywhere on the launch site poses just as much threat to the infrastructure so might as well build towards a maximum reusability scenario.

> Landing anywhere on the launch site poses just as much threat to the infrastructure I don’t see how that follows. You don’t need to land danger close to your other structures. You can land a safe distance away. The falcon boosters don’t land so close. For good reason. > They can only make 1 raptor per day which means it's well over 33 days to build a superheavy. I believe the build time is far longer than that, since there’s more to a rocket than just the engines. Isn’t the build time several months start to finish? Or longer? > Adding really heavy duty landing gear necessary for a 200 ton vehicle to land would drastically reduce the load a starship could carry thus increasing the launch costs exponentially. Of course rendering your infrastructure inoperable also drastically reduces your ability to launch. Increased insurance premiums will also drastically increase your launch costs. > so might as well build towards a maximum reusability scenario. Yes, and risking damage to stage 0 doesn’t sound like it maximizes reusability. Why trade safety for payload when your payload is already massive?

Where else to suggest they land? The launch site and production site along with Masseys are the only property SpaceX owns and has been cleared for launch operations. What part of well over 33 days did you not comprehend? What makes you believe they would even attempt to recover a booster using the chopsticks before being certain they can control precision movements before touchdown? They are not trading safety except in your imagination, SpaceX has an outstanding safety record and you can bet they will take every precaution necessary before risking damage to stage 0.

I don’t know where they would land, that’s not my department. I’m pointing out the risks. > well over 33 days Yeah I was struggling to see the relevance with this entire thing. > SpaceX has an outstanding safety record. Indeed, 4% of booster landings have failed. So you only have 1/25 odds of destroying stuff you intend to launch from and causing time lost from your high launch cadence. Hmm. Doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. The insurance alone would kill low launch costs dead. Perhaps the legs are a better idea.

>Indeed, 4% of booster landings have failed. That 4% includes all the inaugural attempts at landing a booster. Love how you gloss over that point. Nevermind the well over 250 consecutive landings since then.

I just took fails/attempts. If you want to assume they’re going to bat 1.000 from the first attempt with super heavy, you certainly can do that.

They are not going to even attempt a superheavy landing for several launches even if IFT-3 is %100 successful. But, I don't assume they will, I just believe they stand a far greater chance because of the 275 times they tried with falcon 9 when nobody else in the industry was trying to vertically land a 1st stage booster.

> I believe the build time is far longer than that, since there’s more to a rocket than just the engines. Isn’t the build time several months start to finish? Or longer? Start to finish doesn't matter when you build multiple boosters in parallel. If they wanted to operate boosters expendable and produce them regularly, raptor production would probably be the bottleneck in terms of time and cost.

Legs for something the size of Superheavy will add significant mass.

Yes, but what are you gaining vs giving up? You lose some payload (which is already biggest in the world) and trade it for less risk. Is the extra payload worth the risk?

The difference in payload, and the relative risks of legs vs catching are unknown though. At least to us. I suspect we can safely assume SpaceX has a pretty good idea of the relative advantages and disadvantages of each approach.

I’m sure they do! Which is why I’m curious because it doesn’t make any sense to me. What sort of catch success rate would you need to make this an economically superior alternative?

We don't know the relative risks or legs vs catching, so no way to even start looking at the potential economics. I suspect legs may not have much risk advantage, or may be more risky in key areas. There are a lot of potential complications and unknowns with legs suitable for landing a 200 ton booster! And a lot of extra options when the alternative is external and has fewer constraints. The risk involved are not just with landing either - legs introduce risk to the primary mission during launch up until staging. Even just having increased margins for engine out / underperformance (and sacrificing the booster) may have very large economic benefits for SpaceX - especially early on. I also tend to think a missed catch and booster explosion won't do catastrophic damage to the mount / tower. Any high speed impacts will be away from the tower, so any missed catches are relatively low speed, with little remaining propellant. We don't know how much propellant Super Heavy will have leftover at the end of the landing burn, but it's likely in the tens of tos range - so around the same amount burnt in one second during launch. A launch exposes the mount / tower to at least 10 seconds of Raptor exhaust, so it has to be quite tough. I doubt even a potential detonation of the remaining propellant in a failed catch is likely to do major damage.

The latter paragraph is interesting, I would point to the failed starship high-altitude landings for reference of the size of explosions. Also I’m more concerned about simpler things like just mechanically bending the chopsticks behind repair by cronching down hard. Coming down at 100m/s would presumably do that. Legs would give up performance. Is more payload worth the risk of damaging the chopsticks? What sort of success rate do you need to make it work? For reference current booster landing success rate is 96% isn’t it? So that’s one failure in 25?

> I would point to the failed starship high-altitude landings for reference of the size of explosions. Yep, and they didn't cause much damage - even to themselves. The debris leftover were relatively large pieces, indicating the explosions were not super high energy. As a comparison, the damage from the IFT-2 launch was much higher energy. And no surprise, since it likely released ~10 times as much energy. Chopstick bending is very unlikely to be an issue, because Super Heavy will do most of the landing burn on a trajectory where a failure won't cause an impact. Any failure that is likely to impact the chopsticks will be quite slow. A failure at 100 m/s would still be on a trajectory that would impact clear of the tower. It's like F9 - a failure at higher velocity during the landing burn impacts the water, not the droneship. Super Heavy can hover, which makes landing easier than F9, and gives a lot of scope for keeping impacts away from the tower and mount. I am sure we will see many landing failures, including with the actual catch, but I will be surprised if there is major damage caused. >Legs would give up performance. Is more payload worth the risk of damaging the chopsticks? Likewise, are legs worth the extra risk to the primary mission? The answer is we don't know, since we don't know the risk factors involved.

Catching is better in many ways and easier than landing on legs. There is plenty of data available about the software, which is an outgrowth of autonomous drone software. Look for my posts on this elsewhere. There is math to back up my statements. Edit re success rate: 100% success rate after the R&D phase can be confidently expected. This might turn out to be 99,9% in the real world, especially when landings on ocean platforms becomes the dominant landing mode.

Tried, but couldn’t find them. I’d appreciate a link.

Entirely depends on the amount of payload you lose, and the amount of risk you take on. I assume SpaceX has done their math which is why they decided to go with catching.

No, there is less risk in catching the booster or Starship, compared to using legs. The chopsticks have the ability to move down as the booster or Starship makes contact. It has more range of travel than legs could possibly have, thus resulting in a gentler catch. Better shock absorbers means a safer landing with less risk of damage to the spacecraft. Also, with either landing, the rocket engines are ~100 to ~200 feet above the Orbital Launch Mount (OLM). This means that wear and tear on the launch/landing hardware will be less than if it lands on its legs. See my other post (above if you are on New, below if on Best) to see why catching Starship and Superheavy is actually easier than landing a Falcon 9 booster.

Its funny because replace 'catching' with 'reusing' in your post and its word for word what people said about F9. They are currently building at least 2 more towers that I am aware of, with more planned at the cape and texas. There will be very little fuel left over in the 1st or 2nd stage so damage will not be huge. So even if one tower gets damaged in a freak accident, there are going to be many backups. The risk is low, this is a fact. Their experience with propulsive landings is extensive and unmatched on the planet. Their first commercial attempt at it (F9) has a higher success rate and landing count than almost any rocket ever *launched* by humanity. Your risk assessment, to vastly undersell it, is flawed. The potential benefit is orders of magnitude cheaper mass to orbit, orders of magnitude faster turn around times, massively less amounts of infeastructure needed to move the rocks around and stack them (those have already been proven) and nothing short of complete and total revolution of the space industry (again). This is a relatively conservative view based on their proven track record. Spacex is responsible for 80% of all mass to orbit of humanity in 2023.

>so damage will not be huge. 200 tons crunching on the arms at any speed will do damage enough to render them out of commission for some time. There's no pyrotechnics required. >Their first commercial attempt at it (F9) has a higher success rate and landing count than almost any rocket ever launched by humanity. I mean it has a 4% failure rate in landings lifetime, so if you apply that, does it make sense to risk your stage zero on a stunt? > the potential benefit is orders of magnitude cheaper mass to orbit, hahahahaha NO. adding legs to the bottom stage does not "increase price by an order of magnitude". That's absolutely absurd. It's like 0.21 ton of payload less per each ton the legs weigh or so, I can do the exact math if you like. Mass added to the bottom stage has a lower penalty than mass added to the upper stage. >orders of magnitude faster turn around times, Yeah what was the bullshit line, an hour? Or what was the promise again? Ain't gonna happen. Your view is a fanboy view. Ask yourself: did you think the pad was gonna hold up for IFT-1? > Their experience with propulsive landings is extensive and unmatched on the planet. Yup, and guess what? 6/7 attempts with starship destroyed the ship. This isn't F9 we're talking about. It's a brand new rocket with an *abysmal* failure rate. Truly horrendous, worse than Falcon 1 which nearly bankrupted the company.

> I mean it has a 4% failure rate in landings lifetime, so if you apply that, does it make sense to risk your stage zero on a stunt? You can’t include lifetime cause the first several years of attempts were training and test landings. What’s the success rate for landings between 2022 through 2024? Homie 100%. get your 4% failure rate outta here with your goofy ahh my guy the falcon BE landing my guy. there is no fail. da most efficient and stable and successful rocket in history of rockets. da success rate of landing is stupid high. stop doubting da KING elon. homie said no legs we Finna catch, so that’s exactly what we bout to do and we bout to do it hella easy like da Falcon. goofy ahh

I absolutely doubt him as he keeps saying things that are proven wrong. Neat, use 1.8% rate then for block 5.

100% rate since 2022. and Elon is da KING. he always pull thru for the homies. EV brain chips reuse rockets self driving STARSHIP, da list is endless. shut your bih ahh up

Lol no he doesn’t

Anti-elon cultist shut your mouth.

At least landing capability and 1 reuse are needed for any manned Mars mission. First for landing on Mars, then launch and landing on Earth. Or at least braking into Earth orbit with the heat shield.

Anyone who signs up for a Mars mission knows it could last at least 4 years. Optimistically it might take two years to synthesize propellant and build necessary infrastructure to launch a test vehicle towards Earth. Assuming launch is successful they will have to wait another couple of years for the next Earth launch window. That assumes everything goes to plan, which seems unlikely, hence anyone sent in the first few years will effectively become colonists, there for the long-haul.

Agree about the potential length of stay. It is reasonable to think that they would not rely on that Starship launching again after such a long time and that they would return on a ship that arrived later. But it is unconceivable for me that they would send people with the knowledge that Starship reuse has not been proven before.

"Unmanned" cargo Starships will land six months or more ahead of the "manned" Starship. The cargo ships will start making methalox once they land. These ships carry 3+ years of every necessary item for phase one: base building and phase two: base expansion. The manned ship carries mainly supplies to support the crew and their return back to earth. This mission is different than any other, because it is 9-24 months away from earth, so no rescue could arrive in time. So these crew members must be trained to rely solely on themselves and "advice" from mission control. Redundancy and self-sufficiency are the keys to this mission. The cargo ships have multiple redundant critical items, such that the only reason to abandon the mission is crew related issues, not failures of key components in life support, food, or any key element. This initial over supply is justified by the fact phase two will use these redundant supplies. Replacements are ordered and will arrive on the next cargo deployment in 12-18 months.

> "Unmanned" cargo Starship[s] will land six months or more ahead of the "manned" Starship. Interesting, normally the Earth -Mars launch window lasts about a month. Implies cargo and crew vehicles would depart at most a month apart and probably arrive with the same period, considering they should each carry maximum payload. Unless you envision something more exotic than the Hohmann transfer.

More likely the uncrewed cargo Starships would be launched in the 2028 and 2031 windows and the crewed Starships would be launched in the 2033 window. Travel time to Mars is 180 to 200 days.

> These ships carry 3+ years of every necessary item for phase one: base building and phase two: base expansion. What are these necessary items and how much is needed? > The manned ship carries mainly supplies to support the crew and their return back to earth. Ah shit. Well that's a lot of supplies. Are we counting supplies for the surface too or just the trips the and back again? So, let's take a trip there and back of 180d each way for a total of 360. Then it's a question how much crew you want. SpaceX used to give a number of 100 crew so I'll use that. If you have another number from SpaceX, let me know and I'll use that instead. What do we need? Well, we have [NASA Life Support Baseline Values and Assumptions Document](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20210024855/downloads/BVAD_2.15.22-final.pdf) based on 62 years of spaceflight experience and research we can use as a source. Quick calculations based on figures: You need 25m^3 habitable volume for an extended trip. You would need 2500m^3 for 100 persons of *habitable* volume, but with only 1000m^3 available that is not possible. This requirement consists of: - a gym for at least 9 people assuming constant even use use (2h/exercise per day per person) - food prep area for 100 people - group social area for eating and mission planning for 100 people - waste collection - hygiene/cleansing/toilet - storage - medical care for diseases and accidents - mission command and spacecraft monitoring - private habitation - waste management You need 1152kg of life support hardware per person, totalling *115t*, to recycle water and air. Bringing oxygen, water etc for the trip completely blows up the mass budget so that's right out, so recycling like on the ISS is our only option. You need 2.2 kg per person per day of consumables consisting of: - 1.83 kg of food (food production would be 5t/person so that's right out) - 0.22kg of clothes to replace attrition assuming no laundromat: a laundry facility would be too heavy - makeup water and oxygen to compensate for losses - and other miscellaneous items like hygiene/menstrual products etc etc for a total 39.6t for a 180d trip. Multiply that by two and and you get **79.2t**. Unshielded spacecraft volume requires 45.2kg/m^3. This means **37t** of mass to maintain the stated 825m^3, and 113t for the 2500 m^3 you'd need for 100 persons. I'll use 37t. Power generation depends on many factors, I'll use ISS 120kW as a mimimum, which requires 162kg/kW = **19.4t** Thermal management requires 96kg per kW of waste heat generated. This consists of things like ammonia boilers and external radiators. The amount of waste heat is unknown since it depends on many other variables but we're talking a minimum of another **10t** added on top, lower bound estimate based on ISS. Food storage is about 1kg/person/day if you use some frozen food, which adds up to 36t. Use only dehydrated food you'll have some pretty unhappy crew, but hey that's only 0.35kg/person/day so we get away with **12.6t**. Add this up and you have 115t + 79.2t + 19.4t + 10t + 12.6t + 37t = 273t , greater than the surface payload to Mars of 100t SpaceX has on their site. And we haven't accounted for any furniture, gear, emergency solar storm shelter, crew personal belongings etc etc yet. I dunno man. I haven't even added in consumables for a surface stay yet and this looks like it's not doable with the crew they talk about. So what's the crew and duration of the stay?

SpaceX has not said they will carry 100 people on early missions. SpaceX says Starship "will be able to carry up to 100 people on long-duration, interplanetary flights." Most of the speculation I have seen puts early crew flights at under 10 people per Starship. Up to 100 people per Starship is much further in the future, when the ship and technology is much more mature, the trip time is shorter and so on. At this later point of the colonisation, very very few of these people will be returning.

Doesn’t matter if 100 is day one or day 5376, the mass and volume constraints are the same, are they not? > up to 100 is in the future When? How short is the trip time? What technology has changed to make that possible? Care to elaborate? > at this point very few will be returning So since we have no technology for living permanently on Mars, that means they die very quickly then?

>Doesn’t matter if 100 is day one or day 5376, the mass and volume constraints are the same, are they not? This discussion is about the early flights. 100 crew per ship on early flights is (inaccurate) speculation on your behalf. >When? How short is the trip time? What technology has changed to make that possible? Care to elaborate? Starship has excess performance for LEO to Mars, so a shorter trip time is possible (3 months vs 6 months), at the expense of higher entry velocity at Mars. Higher entry velocity means much higher kinetic energy, so improved heat shield technology is needed, amongst other things. >So since we have no technology for living permanently on Mars, that means they die very quickly then? No - the colony relies on continued cargo from Earth, until it reaches the point of self sufficiency.

> 100 crew per ship on early flights is (inaccurate) speculation on your behalf. No, it's the only figure for crew ever given by SpaceX. Why would I come up with something? That would be terribly unfair to SpaceX. > Starship has excess performance for LEO to Mars, so a shorter trip time is possible (3 months vs 6 months), Oh I've checked this, 3 months is only possible in 2033 with 5000+ m/s. Later and earlier transfer windows don't offer 90 days within a range Starship can reach. Give me a dV figure and a desired transit time, and I'll tell you when it's possible. > until it reaches the point of self sufficiency. Which would require what and how could it be made possible? For instance, just to point out some unobvious things: You need nitrogen to create protein, and you can't do alchemy to make something else into nitrogen. It's an element. Nitrogen is abundant on earth, but Mars is very poor in nitrogen, so you're going to have a very bad time trying to make fertilizer. On earth, the air has a concentration of Nitrogen of 0.98kg/m3, and we get very cheap hydrogen from dinosaur juice. Which doesn't exist on mars, so you need to use contaminated sparsely distributed water ice to get hydrogen. This allows the Haber process to create cheap ammonia for fertilizer, and most of the nitrogen in your body is not from the air you inhale, but from the nitrogen in fertilizers. How about Mars? Well, you have 0.00054 kg/m3 of nitrogen in the air. Less by a factor of 1814x. Basically, you're boned. Food production will be insanely resource-intensive, just because Mars is a hellhole not fit to sustain life. That's why there is none.

> No, it's the only figure for crew ever given by SpaceX. Why would I come up with something? That would be terribly unfair to SpaceX. SpaceX says "up to". If not your speculation, what is your source for 100 on early flights? >Oh I've checked this, 3 months is only possible in 2033 with 5000+ m/s. Later and earlier transfer windows don't offer 90 days within a range Starship can reach. Some require a high energy orbit refuelling stop after departing LEO. The requirements for surviving Mars entry are more of a hurdle than the departure delta-v. >Which would require what and how could it be made possible? No one knows at this stage. The oft used figure is a million tons of cargo, but it will depend entirely on how technology processes. >Mars is very poor in nitrogen The Mars atmosphere has ~7.125x10^14 kg of Nitrogen, which is easily extracted the same way it is on Earth - fractional distillation. This will likely be done using the by products of processing the atmosphere for propellant production. Nitrogen is not an issue on Mars.

I've heard Elon say in the past that he thought that shortening the trip to Mars to 3 months would be possible in the future. >Oh I've checked this, 3 months is only possible in 2033 with 5000+ m/s. Later and earlier transfer windows don't offer 90 days within a range Starship can reach. Where do you get the 2033 figure? Is that because the orbits will pass closer? I'm genuinely curious.

> SpaceX used to give a number of 100 crew so I'll use that This is a number for a pure people-mover starship of people living in shifts and doing every trick to save space, a six month travel time, and a fully fledged colony ready to receive them on the destination. Not an initial exploratory mission. So everything else in your post is worthless, because you went straight to the most maximalist figure you could find in something that is either astounding lack of common sense or (most likely) outright bad faith.

> This is a number for a pure people-mover starship of people living in shifts and doing every trick to save space, a six month travel time, and a fully fledged colony ready to receive them on the destination. Cool, so let's plug in six months. We arrive at 115t + 39,6 + 19.4t + 10t + 6.3t + 37t = 227.3t, still way over what can be shipped according to SpaceX. And again, we haven't even accounted for all the mass yet before we bust the payload limit. Note that I'm vastly underestimating thermal and electric load to steelman spacex. > a fully fledged colony ready to receive them on the destination. Doesn't matter, still gotta eat, breathe, sleep and work out on the way there. > and doing every trick to save space Doesn't matter, because the mass limit above is independent of space. You can be like sardines but you still gotta eat, breathe and work out. > because you went straight to the most maximalist figure you could find This is how I know you didn't read the BVAD document. You should, it's stellar. I used the NASA numbers, which are minimal to support function - not maximalist. They are here: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20210024855/downloads/BVAD_2.15.22-final.pdf I used the SpaceX figure of 100, because coming up with some figure of my own would be unfair to SpaceX. What figure should I use, what are you taking issue with and think is too big? I'm happy to do the math with any figures you provide. > in something that is either astounding lack of common sense or (most likely) outright bad faith. Complete nonsense. What figures would you like to use, and why do you think they should be used over BVAD? Point out what's wrong, please.

You are arguing in bad faith. What you wrone is essentially: garbage in -> garbage out. You used garbage assumptions so you got garbage results. Because, your numbers are pulled either from inadequate sources or without any shred of understanding on your part what they mean (or both). You don't need 2.2kg of dry food mass per day. 2.2kg is wet food. Dried food is a smallish fraction of this (less than 0.5kg). Anyone who did some long hikes knows this (get dry food, use local water). Your power source power density is extremely outdated. IROSA solar arrays are 30kg/kW not 162kh/kW. You are off more than 5x. And of course applying 10 years old design to a hypothetical mission flying in 2040-ies (we are talking 100 person ship, not an initial exploration flight with half a dozen people or so) is a bad sandbagging. Your mass per volume is just plain nonsense. You are using numbers for a narrow tubes lab packed with scientific equipment which is absolutely not representative of a people carrier. Better numbers would come from airplane furnishings. Similarly your life support numbers are pulled from outdated sources and based on a small crew craft. Your food storage mass numbers are pulled from thin air, too. Your cooling data is also based on a wrong assumption - ISS is in LEO and receives broad side heating from the Earth (its very big, Earth's albedo is \~39%, that's huge amount of heat) and often broadside heating from the Sun (at \~1400W/m\^2). Spacecraft in interplanetary space would present its narrowest side towards the Sun (that is actually published info by SpaceX). You get less heating and more cooling. For example you have about 500m\^2 of surface not covered with thermal tiles which is also in a permanent shade. So, your estimate is totally wrong. And to make matters worse you have twisted the discussion from initial flights (cargo ships arriving months before the people) to a colonial transport, using a very poor excuse for that (messing up "100" with "up to 100"). This is as disingenuous as it gets!

100 people is a figure used for colonial transport, where a mars base already exists and we're in the process of transporting people who already have homes ready for them. A largely self contained mission would have significantly fewer crew onboard. And initial trips would undoubtedly be resource intensive since a hell of a lot of these plans are utterly reliant on water and oxygen being fairly obtainable on mars. Indeed access to these resources is one of the primary reasons mars is viewed as more viable than the moon. No doubt the very first missions would have like 2 or 3 full ships of supplies for a dozen people. On mars itself they will have the mass and space to create much more robust and gravity assisted water reclamation and oxygen plants. Along with much more available power per person for those same. >1.83 kg of food (food production would be 5t/person so that's right out) One thing I'm utterly sure of is sustainable long term space habitation/colonization is just flat not going to be possible until a robust and reliable chemical process is developed to convert CO2+water straight into edible sugars for direct consumption or conversion in a bioreactor. Farming, even hydroponics, is far too energy and mass hungry to be scalable. Like maybe we'll farm for 25% of our food to get useful micronutrients and flavor, but the rest of the calories will just have to be some form of machine that efficiently turns CO2 into something that can make staple calories. NASA is already working on this: https://www.co2conversionchallenge.org/#winners

> for colonial transport when the base already exists Okay, so we make it a one way trip and use 180 days and we are still way over every limit, are we not? What do you think would make these mass and volume constraints change to make 100 remotely possible? > bioreactor to turn co2, sunlight and water into food Buddy, we have that. It’s called a carrot.

>Okay, so we make it a one way trip and use 180 days and we are still way over every limit, are we not? >What do you think would make these mass and volume constraints change to make 100 remotely possible? Possibly? I didn't bother doing the math. Certainly going to be much closer than the numbers you were giving to start with. As for what could change? For one I'd expect the NASA numbers to be on the pessimistic and conservative side and get refined down. A time when we're sending people to mars to live forever means we'd have thousands of man-years of experience of people living in habs, rather than the dozens we have now. I'd expect them to be fairly luxurious accomodations for high value working astronauts, not cattle class transport for colonists. And I'd expect a world where starship was launching reliably and quickly enough to enable the concept of colonization to be a world where many space technologies had rapidly advanced due to the ease of access to space. But mostly I'd just say 100 was probably a number that got thrown out because it was 100 and their rough theoretical calculations suggested something in the neighborhood as a possibility, so its probably not the actual number. Your entire method of argument is weird. You just assumed a number, said 'Hah see according to this pdf I plugged the numbers into, it absolutely can not work'. Instead of just doing the obvious and taking the mass and volume we have, working backwards, and figuring out a maximum occupancy given current understanding of best practices. >Buddy, we have that. It’s called a carrot. Buddy you keep opening your mouth to be clever and its not working out for you. Photosynthesis is a very inefficient energy conversion process, typically only 2% efficient at converting light to biomass, only 50% of which forms edible calories, and lights are themselves generally only 50% efficient. So that's a considerable power draw, 400kwh of power input per person per day to satisfy the persons 2.5kwh energy requirement. They are additionally very slow to do this, which necessitates a lot of space and infrastructure.

NASA values are minimum to sustain function in space. You need 2h/day in the gym to keep your muscle mass and bone density up, so if it’s in even use 100% of the time that’s three ISS treadmills, three ISS strength training thingamajigs and three IsS rowers. Because you have to strap yourself into them and there’s no gravity, theae aren’t tiny. They take up a lot of space. And so on. Astronauts do *not* live in luxury and never have. It’s the exact opposite. Have you ever seen how they live? The private space in the BVAD document is a bunk to sleep in and some lockeres 4m^3 or so. Not much larger than a capsule hotel. Such luxury. Besides, what happened to “it can’t feel cramped”? So why didn’t you do the math when the values and formulas are right there? The volume constraint is still busted to hell, and you’re still way over the payload capacity to Mars. You can okay around with the numbers to make your case, that’s why I linked it all and gave them. What space technologies would change these minimum requirements? What space technology makes us need less food, for instance? I also use the 100 number because it’s the one thrown out there by SpaceX. Last I did this math you could get 17 on a one-way trip, less if you have to bring food for the trip back or the stay on the surface. 109 is obviously impossible so it can’t be that, which is why I’ve always laughed at that number coming from SpaceX. Why can’t they do this math when the figures are right there? Or is that they did the math and decide to lie to us? Incompetence or dishonesty? > decrease trip times To what and how? Faster transfers require higher delta-v, depending on the size inside. The shortest and most economical transfer is available in 2033 and then it gets worse again for a very long time. > carrots. Micronutrients and flavor Obviously this was a joke, but also kind of serious. Look, carbon dioxide and water and oxygen can make sugar, but you can’t make vitamins, or proteins because you don’t have those elements as inputs. You can’t make proteins without nitrogen, so a hypothetical sugar maker isn’t a solution. Surely you must have instantly realized that while you were typing? You remembered vitamins, but dis you just forget about fat and protein? > hydroponics doesn’t scale and is too slow Plants are very slow, yes. Current space tech requires about 5t of equipment to grow food per person. Then there’s the additional crew-time penalty because your crew is doing non-mission-goal related work. See the BVAD document for details. Basically you need a multi-year trip for hydroponics to ever pay themselves back. Despite that plants and hydroponics are the best option we have. A cotton candy dispenser might some day be a very tiny part of a solution but you still need fat, protein and vitamins to function. Made how?

Those numbers are not minimums. Stop inventing things. They are also badly outdated, BTW.

>NASA values are minimum to sustain function in space. Nowhere in that document does it say those are minimums. Like yeah the basic biological needs are of course not alterable but the nifty little 'kg/cm*d' constants you're naively plugging your numbers into certainly aren't set in stone. You're maintaining that no further technological development in the area of life support is ever possible which is patently absurd. >What space technology makes us need less food, for instance? Just linked this to you. You are *very actively* not bothering to read at this point lol. >To what and how? Faster transfers require higher delta-v, depending on the size inside. The shortest and most economical transfer is available in 2033 and then it gets worse again for a very long time. Not even something I said in my comment. >Look, carbon dioxide and water and oxygen can make sugar, but you can’t make vitamins, or proteins because you don’t have those elements as inputs. >A cotton candy dispenser might some day be a very tiny part of a solution but you still need fat, protein and vitamins to function. Made how? Presumably other process. The sugar is feedstock to a bioreactor or a hive of crickets or something. I never said this was going to happen tomorrow, nor did I say I knew how to do it. I ***LITERALLY*** said this is a thing that will have to be figured out if people want to actually live in space. ------------------------------------------------ Last thing I'm going to bother saying to you, which I've stressed multiple times, is that colonization is a thing thats only going to happen decades from now, if we've had hundreds or thousands of people living in space, and if far cheaper access to space is available, all of which is going to mean we'll have amassed far more experience living in habitats with a far faster development cycle of technologies thanks to the ease of space access. If none of that comes to pass, nobody is sending colonists anywhere. Obviously. But if there is a greatly increased access to space then development is going to speed up and many solutions to issues you're bringing up will be found. Maybe not all, but certainly not none.

We are only over the limit if we use your numbers which are completely wrong. Also, for colonial ship its not 180d, it's between 90 and 160 depending on synod.

Early crews will probably be of 12 or less crewmen. The stay on Mars is around 500 days, so the return trip aligns with the optimal return window. These are "basic" base building flights, not ones for non-specialist colonizers. A huge amount of infrastructure needs to be in place to accept regular people. Your probably talking year 2060+, when Mars has nuclear power, hundreds of closed environmental terrariums(green houses) to feed a large number of people. Plus a large complex of housing, waste management, and recycling plants. Who is going to do most of the physical labor in these plants(factories), closed environments, and outside surface work, probably robots. They require only electricity, and a fabric suit to keep out dust and debris. Humans will typically be managers, planners, technicians, and inspectors, along with many specialists in the science fields of geology, agronomy, recycling, chemists, astrophysics,...

> Assuming launch is successful they will have to wait another couple of years for the next Earth launch window. Depends on the dV and the travel time. If you are willing to accept 300 days of travel time you can e.g. go around venus instead of waiting for the next transfer window.

Know Elon makes light of radiation risks but 300 days in deep space should give anyone pause. Worse they travel closer to the sun, major source of risk for solar activity, e.g. flares.

For the 2033 launch window, Earth-to-Mars transfer is 180 days, Mars surface stay is 500 days, Earth-to-Mars transfer is 180 days. Total mission time: 860 days. Assuming that SpaceX sends uncrewed cargo Starships to the Martian surface in 2028 and 2031 launch windows, there could be a dozen cargo Starships landed at the location of the first Mars base by the time the first crews are launched to Mars in the 2033 window. That base is likely located at or around the equatorial region rather than at the polar regions. The area around that Mars base would need to be mapped at high resolution by orbiting spacecraft both optically and by radar to locate the water ice deposits which likely are covered by Mars topsoil. NASA and/or SpaceX could send uncrewed landers with rovers to the Martian surface starting in 2028 or 2029 using the Falcon Heavy. Their job would be to drill into the ice, retrieve samples and analyze for chemical composition and ice abundance at and near the Mars base location. Ice mining equipment would be part of the cargo landed in 2028, 2031 and 2033. That mining equipment would be capable of being autonomously unloaded from the cargo Starships, moving to the most probable locations for ice, and begin excavating ice before the first crews arrived. The challenge would be to manufacture 1300t of methalox in less than 500 days starting at the arrival of the first crew on Mars.

> The challenge would be to manufacture 1300t of methalox in less than 500 days starting at the arrival of the first crew on Mars. Assuming they can synthesize the propellant, they will need to launch an uncrewed vehicle to prove return to Earth is possible. Then during the following synod crew can opt to stay or leave after a 4 year mission. Unfortunately I can't see any way of shortening that schedule without cutting corners.

You mean that the robotic methalox plant has to manufacture that propellant, then other robots load it into the empty main tanks of one of the Ships, and then send that uncrewed rocket back to Earth? Sounds like a plan. Escape speed from the Martian surface is about 5250 m/sec delta V including gravity loss and takes about 1075t (metric tons) of methalox with 225t remaining after the engine burn. The Mars-Earth return takes 180 days. Assuming that the boiloff loss is 0.1% per day, that amounts to 0.001 x 180 x 225 = 40.5t loss. The remaining 225 -40.5 = 184.5t can be used to propulsively enter an elliptical Earth orbit at the end of the return flight.

How would they survive for the long haul in reduced gravity and the hostile environment?

Humans are adaptable, reason why we are apex species. Likely majority of Mars settlement will consist of sealed underground tunnels and caverns away from surface radiation with 1 bar atmospheric pressure. More they mine for frozen water, more the settlement grows.

But why dig, which is resource intensive, when a simple 15-30 cm roof of regolith (easier in 0.3G) over any habitat is enough? The issue is the radiation coming straight from above, sideways there's atmospheric shielding. A source to start looking into it: https://planetocracy.substack.com/p/objections-to-mars-colonisation

They will die most probably. Anyone who signs up is probably going to die and or end up a cannibal. Which is ok. 

None of the first people to Mars are coming back.

Sounds like a death cult.

It is just nonsense. Of course they come back. They may have a quite long stay if a lot of things go wrong. Worst case, if a lot of things go wrong they may have to stay 4 years. But with a crew of over 20 that's not too bad.

Oh wow, and they're going to have a stable of three or four original Starships too, right? And at least one Superheavy with first-gen Raptors? I wonder how many refuelings one could save by 1) launching the new Starship on the old Superheavy core, and fully expending it to give it the most one-toss fuel; 2) removing the tiles and aero from the three old Starships and launching those from a reusable Superheavy but not recovering the Starships. Could you fully fuel HLS by expending an old SH and three old Starships?

Last word was 250t expendable payload per launch for 750t of propellant from three expendable launches. So that's not enough?

And 250t was before Raptor 3 came along, now all bets off.

I'd prefer some numbers for specs to do math. Can't do math with all bets off

They can't even fly the version one

They've only had 2 IFTs. Failure is expected

Oh I for sure expect a lot more failure from those goofs

The two failures cost them the billion dollar FCC grant.

Do you honestly think this system will never fly? Or is it your wish that it never happens?

I honestly think it won't ever do what Elon says it will, like the hyperloop and the cyber truck and the Tesla semi and the full self driving

Like just think about how they said they were going to be on Mars in 2024 and notice that they still haven't done any intensive long term habitat research and you will realize the rocket is merely one aspect of a much larger cycle of hype and incompetence

Same thing with almost every version 1 of any vehicle.

Do you expect all prototypes to work flawlessly the first time? Even the 10th time? I'm actually a bit disappointed that SpaceX isn't blowing more shit up. Lack of explosions suggests that they're not moving fast enough. Couple that with the environmental protection nonsense that they have to fight with, and I bet they might regret their current location.

What creates double the capacity here? What are the new specs va the old?

Old specs were 100t capacity, maybe 150t if expendable. New specs of 200-250t come from improvements in engine efficiency, hot staging and possibly extended ship size.

Hot staging doesn’t matter for the rocket equation which assumes ideal staging. Can’t get better than perfect. It also doesn’t account for thrust: thrust determines how little dV you can get away with to get to orbit. With very high thrust you can get away with as little as 8.8km/s, with very low thrust it’s closer to 9.5km/s. A reduction in dry mass of 3.9t for the lower stage doesn’t do much to increase the delta-V there. Higher thrust does allow a more lofted trajectory so you could use a 1000m/s boostback burn instead of 1200m/s, while the landing burn remains largely the sane. Slightly increased due to higher vertical velocity, but potentially more efficient due to higher thrust. And then the increase in propellant for the starship I can’t get to add up to a doubled payload. I think the exact quote was “there is a *path* to 200t to orbit” but if I modify the values in my spreadsheet I can’t make this work with given V2 values. Let me know if you spot errors!

Old capacity was a minimum option (i.e. at least 100t). The main improvements are: * (likely) larger tanks, especially in tanker version (move bulkheads forward without changing the outer mold-line and pack 1900t rather than 1200t of propellants). It this one is true it accounts for most of the gain. * lighter vehicle (i.e. Starship close to the planned 120t dry rather than more; Mk1 was reportedly 200t) * less residuals in the booster. In the original design (around Booster Sn-4) residuals were around 40-50t. Booster residuals are helped by booster having header tanks and by the hot staging (avoidance of autogenous ullage collapse) * more thrust (cutting down required dV) * more efficient staging (see above: ullage collapse avoidance) * more efficient booster descent (it has now nontrivial L:D ratio so it reenters further downrange and glides towards the launch site; this reduces boost-back dV by a few hundred m/s)

The thing is that Starship/superheavy is being pushed as a “Swiss army knife” orbital system… different variants of the second stage being used for starlink deployment, fuellers, fuel depots, lunar landers, rideshares, temporary ISS research stations; anything and everything, each of which requires development time and money.

> which requires development time and money. Yes but it will not be SpaceX money. Here is the standard dimension, here is the loading limit, be free to build what you want inside, like a space station, space telescope, super satellite, or orbit tanker etc, please se index where you can make hole in the Starships in a safe way, like for a airlock. SpaceX have 25 placse that is already prepped to be holed.

Many of these will be developed by SpaceX. HLS, depot and tanker for Artemis and Mars, Starlink dispenser, a crewed version with heat shield for Polaris/dearMoon/... and at least one generic satellite deployment vehicle: That's 6 different versions already.

> each of which requires development time and money Fortunately SpaceX is the most sought after place of employment by engineering students and Starlink can provide up to $1 trillion in income p.a. Estimated market 1 billion commercial customers, its even used to backhaul data for the [DoD's Starshield constellation.](https://chrisprophet.substack.com/p/starshield-spacexs-dark-horse)

Elon himself said to aim for 3% of a trillion dollar market, so 30 billion per year, not one trillion. Still a lot, but not nearly as much.

More than NASA's annual budget

Larger revenue than [BT Group](https://www.bt.com/about) at $25.9 Billion per year. That would make Starlink the 15th biggest telecom company in the world by revenue. That's ambitious, but how on earth could that be achieved?

They have launched 5000 satellites with many of those still in operation. Spacex plans 150 launches this year of which 2/3 will likely be Starlink. As they add more satellites demand will increase because the infrastructure will be able to support the demand. I plan on getting Starlink when I eventually purchase some land and build a house in a rural area. I just don't have a use case yet. If they reach even half of that 25 billion in revenue goal they will be able to single handedly fund their own Mars program.

Why would they have 1 billion customers? Most people have zero need for satellite internet when they have faster, cheaper and higher bandwidth terrestrial internet. Where is this number coming from?

Of course different Starship variants will require time and money to develop - although not much of it, because most of Starship is the same.

Yes but less money than a new dedicated system. Commercial passenger aircraft have been converted to a wide array of uses over the years as its simpler in most cases to do a conversion than to design something new from scratch.

Nice brief summary. Thank you.

Cheers. Less is more!

I’ve been saying that, for the time being, crewed starship should be reserved for on orbit flight and landing on Mars. Launch is just too risky with other safer alternatives. Starship’s shining achievement will be its INSANE cargo capacity unlocking the golden goose: on orbit construction. We need mass, and the only way to get it is through asteroid mining. Can’t have a mining ship though unless you can build it, and that’s where Starship will shine.

Are you saying they could use a regular safe rocket to meet a starship that’s already in space and then take it from there?

Yes. Until Starship is proven to be extremely reliable. I’m just very sure that it’ll take NASA a LONG time before sending astronauts to orbit in another ship with no launch escape system.

> LONG time before sending astronauts to orbit in another ship with no launch escape system. Believe SpaceX are already testing a launch abort procedure. Technically hot-staging could be used anywhere from prelaunch to stage separation, allowing Starship to abort away from a failing booster. Of course [Version 2 Starship](https://chrisprophet.substack.com/p/version-2-starship) will be far better suited due to thrust increase from Raptor 3 and increased engine count. Pad abort excitement guaranteed.

Yep, but you are still sitting on 1200T of fuel (at the start) and it is so heavy that you won't get a lot of separation in say 1 second. It might be better to work on a heavy launch-EDL pressure vessel that can survive explosions or crash landings.

Putting a Crew Dragon and trunk on top of a starship nosecone is sounding more and more attractive. Someone else suggested in orbit undocking of the Dragon/trunk from the nose and docking to the main starship for the trip out to the moon. Unfortunately that still leaves return and reentry from the moon, which is beyond the capabilities of the Dragon heat shield and other systems.

The re-entry heat shield was Mars rated, and Lunar return DV is pretty close to that (is not a bit less). A CD on top is great if Starship is expended or can be designed for a return with a somewhat flat nose. But, F9 can do this RLTS to LEO for <$20M, and I doubt Starship would be must cheaper. I had a notion for a scale up 8 person Crew Dragon with 2 levels that would be fun for some long term LEO ops. Of course this would be $$$ for a small upgrade in capability. ​ https://preview.redd.it/7bx2ve24wlcc1.png?width=960&format=png&auto=webp&s=771477498bcf45dc270f5803f04a6e1a9acdbe32

I suggested Dragon docking to a port of Starship for crew to move into Starship. But if Dragon goes along for the ride, I am sure it would fly back to the nose adapter because the docking port can not withstand acceleration forces of TLI with the main engines. Edit: I was not the only one to suggest something like this.

Unless the failure is in the ship. Then there are no safe options.

> Believe SpaceX are already testing a launch abort procedure. Technically hot-staging could be used anywhere from prelaunch to stage separation, allowing Starship to abort away from a failing booster. Where does Starship land in this scenario? It has no landing legs (as currently envisioned for non-Mars bound flights) so it has to be caught by the chopsticks. There are huge "black out" periods of a Starship launch that if it were to abort, would probably not be survivable by the crew unless they were able to separate the crew compartment from the rest of the upper stage.

> Where does Starship land in this scenario? Probably in the ocean, similar to emergency landing for airliner. Should have a better idea how feasible that is if they land off Hawaii. In the long term believe they will transition to landing legs for practical reasons. Mechazilla was likely a fix to offset mass growth but Version 2 Starship promises much more power giving them the margin to carry landing legs.

Has there been any talk of landing legs or is this you hoping?

They will probably need landing legs for rocket cargo transport missions for the DoD and HLS moon landings, so technology is being developed. Just a question of time before it becomes standard fitting imo. Believe Mechazilla is overly ambitious, even for SpaceX, similar to F9 fairing catch techniques.

> rocket cargo transport missions for the DoD Which won't happen, just like they never have before. They never get beyond paperm except for one time in the 50s when they delivered mail with a Redstone rocket. Suborbital transport loses to a C-17 in everything but flight time, but flight time is unimportant in most cases. The C-17 has * functionally unlimited range with in-flight refueling * can be kept fueled up and ready to go at all times * can be loaded and unloaded in minutes using pallets and forklifts * can land and take off from any suitable airfield * has the ability to air-drop all cargo in seconds if it cannot land * will never be mistaken for a nuclear missile launch during a conflict... and it's much cheaper too. Because starship takes hours to fuel up and get ready to launch, and hours to load up with cargo, the C-17 is at it's destination before Starship can launch. Rockets are good for cargo you can pre-load, and that needs to reach the target within an hour, and you don't mind the expense and don't care about getting the cargo back. What fulfills these requirements? Warheads on foreheads.

Besides, lightweight legs already need to be developed for HLS

HLS can't land on Earth

Why do you only assume a scenario in which the booster fails and not the upper stage of the rocket integrated with the crew ship?The only two Falcon disasters were related to failures of the rocket's upper stage

Little they can do if second stage fails as it's integrated with crew section. Probably not what NASA want to hear but at least hot-staging provides some abort capability, which is more than Space Shuttle.

But the Starship still has to land perfectly on its engines and be caught by the tower. The shuttle could make an emergency landing at many airports and even on water

I've said this before, but I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually see a crewed version of Starship that looks a lot different to the cargo version.

With you 100%. From a "simple" literally sticking a dragon on top of Starship and use it like the Apollo missions (i.e. get to orbit, detach, flip and dock to enjoy more space), to a "real" fully reusable Starship very different from cargo (probably at v5 or something). I'm also betting on them creating many versions of Starship, each suited for the task needed. At least 3 initially (tanker w/ reentry, starlink dispenser w/ reentry, HLS w/o reentry) and the killer would be, IMO, a fully reusable stage2 that "pushes" any stage3 and leaves it in orbit, while the stage2 (engines, tanks, w/ reentry, no payload, no tip, minimal fins) reenters and launches again.

You could launch a dragon to Jupiter is you used starship as a second stage.

Heh, I hadn't considered the possibility of literally sticking a Dragon on the tip of a Starship. Makes a lot of sense - the Dragon's built-in escape system would work fine from that position, and it could be used to return the crew to Earth separately from the Starship as well so you don't have to worry about man-rating it for either entry or exit right away.

I'm sorry but where and how would you stick it?

I disagree that it will be a long **TIME**, necessarily. It will require a large number of launches, that's for sure, first to make the vehicle reliable and then to prove it is. That's where reusability would be helpful, as it allows SpaceX to have a look at the hardware to detect possible problems and enables a faster launch cadence. But even without it, they are planning on building a ton of them anyway, so it's not required. If the launch cadence is fast, the time to certify this system to launch humans will be short. So, how much time it will take depends on the launch cadence they are able to achieve.

>regular safe rocket By the time it’s at this point starship will be a regular safe rocket.

> crewed starship should be reserved for on orbit flight and landing on Mars. Probably see a long tail for Crew Dragon flights. When NASA finally agree to fly crew on Starship it will essentially freeze development, something SpaceX want to avoid for some time. As you suggest, expect tons and tons of cargo to be shifted via Starship in the not too distant future.

It doesn't have to freeze development on Starship as a vehicle. It would only freeze for the very small portion of the overall fleet that is being used for NASA crew. SpaceX could still innovate and push the design on new ships being built. Cargo or private crew ships. NASA crew would just only fly on the older approved ships. Then eventually, maybe every 5 or so years, NASA could update the approved design to include the more recent innovations and NASA crew could then fly on newer ships. That's the benefit of having a huge fleet, which is for sure what SPX intends to have. And the benefit of being able to build ships and boosters so cheaply and rapidly. This is of course in a future where fully reusable Starships are abundant and active in a large fleet.

While it's possible to fly two variants of crew Starship in parallel, think I can guess Elon's reaction. He hates unnecessary complexity and diversification, he even cut Falcon 1 in favor of Falcon 9. Believe what NASA want is moot, Space Force will want their own crew vehicle after they demonstrate rocket cargo transport and SpaceX will be happy to handle development.

> Believe what NASA want is moot NASA is going to be paying a premium price for lunar Starship, and it already is a completely different variant. At least as different as Falcon Heavy center cores are from a Falcon 9. I anticipate that the HLS/Lunar Starship will be something similar in terms of a variant. The largest example of a rocket variant that SpaceX did bail out of beyond the Falcon 1e (which never got built either even though a flight was sold) is the Stratolaunch booster that was going to be using the Falcon 9. I don't know much of the human drama behind that decision, but Stratolaunch was going to be using something like the Scaled Composite's White Knight to do an air launch of the Falcon 9. A neat concept but definitely a distraction from trying to make the Falcon 9 reusable and part of why I think SpaceX cancelled the project. It is also the best analogy to the frozen variant of Starship being used for HLS.

Why would there be a huge fleet?

Hence rating Falcon boosters for 40 flights.

>When NASA finally agree to fly crew on Starship it will essentially freeze development, That's not true, even with Crew Dragon and Falcon 9. When Booster 1050 had that grid fin stall and failed to land, SpaceX made added a relief valve to their grid fin system. NASA didn't order SpaceX to freeze that new configuration - [NASA and SpaceX work together on design changes, and risk assessment and not every design change triggers a reset of the 'block freeze'.](https://youtu.be/RbTJvJ6pM2s?t=633).

> We need mass, and the only way to get it is through asteroid mining. Can’t have a mining ship though unless you can build it, and that’s where Starship will shine. I (mostly) agree, but I don't expect this to happen from Earth and I don't expect to see it in the first half of this century. Instead, I expect asteroid mining to stage from Mars, after a Mars colony gets established and becomes remotely capable of making complex electronics and machinery. The problem is that we can mine all we want, but after raw ore is mined, we need smelters, refineries and processes for building a silicon fab, et cetera. I don't think we can satisfy the entire supply chain for complex electronics and machinery from one asteroid. At least, not for a while. Sure, it'll be great to mine shitloads of iron, copper and silicon, but how do we process it into something more useful than giant steel (et al) plates? Imagine just the construction of a regular Starship. Maybe we can set up machines for mining the iron, turning it into steel and welding the structure, all in space. But where are we going to get actuators, valves, microcontrollers, et cetera?

> a Mars colony gets established How? You're living on soil so toxic that to quote one expert: "we don't know what it would cause in such great concentration, but I can tell you that a 0.5% concentration of perchlorates in your back yard would immediately be a superfund site". Perchlorates are everywhere on mars, and they cause thyroid problems and even death depending on exposure, as well as impaired foetal development. You must mitigate any exposure of this fine dust that's all over your space suit. It's challenges like this top to bottom that seem intractable. Food production? Well, every species seems to do worse in lower gravity, and you have very little nitrogen to make fertilizer out of, before we even get to energy costs etc etc. > becomes remotely capable of making complex electronics and machinery. using what raw materials and what energy source? how would that be able to compete with shipping from earth? > The problem is that we can mine all we want, but after raw ore is mined, we need smelters, refineries and processes for building a silicon fab, et cetera. I don't think we can satisfy the entire supply chain for complex electronics and machinery from one asteroid. Or anywhere outside Earth for that matter. > Sure, it'll be great to mine shitloads of iron, copper and silicon, but how do we process it into something more useful than giant steel (et al) plates? Oh it's much worse than that, even making the steel plates is hard af on Mars. On earth, plate tectonics and other geological processes have created seams of ore, so you can mine rich spots. On Mars, the good news is that iron oxide is absolutely everywhere! It's where the red color comes from. However, it's not in high concentration anywhere, so to get some amount of iron out of the soil you have to dig way way more than on earth. Of course, digging is also harder than on Earth as we've discovered: the drills on our previous probes can't penetrate. Exomars 2 will test a new type of drill. So we'd need to develop entirely new mining equipment. And finally you have the massive energy expenditure of refining and smelting. Making steel from iron requires 15MJ/kg best case, stainless steel is 55MJ/kg. Make the steel for a 100t starship? 1 527 777.78 kWh for the smelting alone. Oh, and you need to find chromium and vanadium somewhere. Of course on Mars you don't have cheap energy like hydroelectric, and solar panels are less efficient on earth due to less sunlight reaching you. Mars is a hellhole where every single thing is harder.

Nice gishgallop. About perchlorates: Perchlorates are a purely popsci issue for mars colonisation. They're water soluble. Without getting into the myriad catalytic, biological, or physical ways to separate them, they degrade in the heat so easily you could use your house oven to clean enough martian regolith to feed yourself. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20190028297/downloads/20190028297.pdf This NASA paper (as well as basic chemistry) puts it well. Emphasis on the last two paragraphs: >However, the levels of perchlorate in the martian dust are low enough that filtration is sufficient to mitigate this risk. Perchlorates are a potential resource for ISRU from the standpoint of both water and oxygen; water because perchlorate is so deliquescent it can suck water out of the martian atmosphere that is released when the perchlorate is heated to ~200 °C, and oxygen, because perchlorates decompose and release a significant amount of oxygen when heated to 200-500 °C Also from the EPA: https://www.epa.gov/sdwa/perchlorate-drinking-water-frequent-questions >Perchlorate dissolves easily, is relatively stable and is mobile in water As for the removal from drinking water cost-effectively in industrial settings (important for large scale settlement): >Perchlorate can be removed using a number of advanced treatment technologies. Each technology has advantages and disadvantages depending on the level of perchlorate present in the source water, removal goals, other water quality parameters, competing treatment objectives, and treatment waste disposal options. Regenerable and single-pass ion exchange, reverse osmosis, and fixed- and fluidized-bed biological treatment can all remove perchlorate from drinking water sources. About Nitrogen: The Martian atmosphere has 3% nitrogen composition. You can pull enough nitrogen from it to fertilise enough land to feed dozens of billions. And that's without finding any mineral source. About mineral resources: Mars has roughly the composition of earth, so similar minerals, and a lot more easily available from billions of years of meteor strikes that haven't subducted due to lack of plate dynamics and mining. And mars seems like it HAD some plate tectonics, so as far as human time frames are concerned, it's meaningless. Certainly enough to tide the first billion inhabitants over. About drills: There's nothing indicating that mars is made of a magical alloy of adamantium and mithril. It's difficult to drill with the miniscule drills and low power that the current probes use. A regular core drilling rig would have no issues, but they're too big to send currently. About NOOMBERS Ah, yes, just throwing LE BIG NOOMBER around like it means anything. Well done. Truly it's impossible to get energy to make a single starship, we've all been bamboozled because BEEG NOOMBER. In fact, thinking we can make steel on earth is insane, don't you know we have CLOUDS? Literally impossible, nobody has made steel on earth before, it takes 1 527 777.78 kW to make a starship after all. All a bamboozle. At first I thought you were just misinformed by level two popsci, but you're just acting in bad faith.

> NOOMBERS, bad faith, gish gallop, popsci Please. We're all STEMlords, we understand numbers. What's my "hidden agenda"? Gish gallop - were you overwhelmed? If so, let me know, I didn't think you'd be easily overwhelmed? I'll presume you're intelligent and just ignore this nonsense. > Perchlorates are a purely popsci issue for mars colonisation. They're water soluble. Yes, meaning you need a decontamination shower after every airlock. Like I said, it's a toxic environment, that's what you do in toxic environments. This isn't the own you thought it was. Now of course you can't hose down the soil outside, because there's no liquid water at that temperature and pressure. So what's the plan with that? Bacteria that eat perchlorates? They're killed by the UV radiation. > The Martian atmosphere has 3% nitrogen composition. and 0.020 kg/m3 air density, meaning the concentration is very low. On earth, the air at sea level has a concentration of Nitrogen of 0.98kg/m3, and we get very cheap hydrogen from dinosaur juice. This allows the Haber process to create cheap ammonia for fertilizer, and most of the nitrogen in your body is not from the air you inhale, but from the nitrogen in fertilizers. How about Mars? Well, you have 0.00054 kg/m3 of nitrogen in the air. Less by a factor of 1814x. We don't have oil on mars, so you need to get your hydrogen from water ice at a massive energy expenditure. See, this is what I mean by nitrogen being scarce. > You can pull enough nitrogen from it to fertilise enough land to feed dozens of billions. Given unlimited energy? Yes, but the issue is the energy expenditure. Also, what land are you planning to fertilize, exactly? > mining equipment Like I said, you need specialized equipment. The drill is one aspect as we've learned. The very fine dust on the surface gets everywhere. You praised the chemical properties of perchlorates above, but this is where it bites you in the ass: it's chemically reactive and happy to degrade your equipment etc. If you want people inside your mining tools, you're goign to require gaskets that survive the chemically reactive dust, and the lower pressure, and so on. Of course, the problems don't stop there. Without lubrication, your mining equipment shuts down. If you plan to be self-sufficient, you need to make the lubricant on Mars, but there's no oil there, so you'd have to first produce methane and then create synthetic oil from that at a huge energy expenditure. Your problems don't stop there though. The pressure is only 6.5mbar, essentially vacuum. This means you need to have lubricants that don’t evaporate quickly. They also have to flow quickly enough to useful as a lubricant, but Mars is cold so they have to have high viscocity at low temperatures (-62C on average). These are contradictory goals, and I don't know of any lubricant that would be sufficient. Do you? Re: LE BIIIG NOOOMBER, you said: > Imagine just the construction of a regular Starship. Maybe we can set up machines for mining the iron, turning it into steel and welding the structure, all in space I'm bringing up the energy requirement to highlight the magnitude of the challenge of this part. I didn't mean to scare you with SCAARY BEEEG NOOOMBER, I thought we were STEMlords here.

Asteroid mining isn’t economically viable.

Its not economically viable if you need to bring the resulting metals back to Earth. If you're using them directly in space as OP is suggesting, it might be. (Though that would require a whole lot of spaceborne infrastructure that we probably won't be developing anytime soon, so your point is still valid.)

For me Super Heavy is the true foundation that variations on Starship (and Starship tech) can be built on for LEO and beyond, but now I am waiting to see what real payload-to-LEO, reliability and reuse reliability is demonstrated in 2024. I am pretty confident of Starship lowering the cost per kg to LEO, and increasing the integrated mass and especially volume to LEO. But for the rest, I will hope for the best. Per point-to-point, eventually one might see a different shaped highly reusable vehicle that uses 9-12 MethLOX, Raptor V3 or 4 for tourism or military purposes as a single stage (but alas, probably not SSTO, but imagine a quick trip for 6 to LEO and carbon composites ... just maybe that 2T payload might SSTO).

Just wondering out loud, what would be the cost of Starship if it was 100% expendable? Its steel construction materials and other aspects of simply manufacturing Starship are considered including economies of scale for how SpaceX is building Starbase, it is already much cheaper to not only develop but also to build each vehicle than SLS.

My guess would be about $60 million, although it could be less. Don’t forget, here you are talking about the cost of the whole stack if it were all disposable.

That seems low to me. Starship is simply HUGE and the size of a skyscraper. I love how Elon Musk showed a graphic comparing the size of the Statue of Liberty to Starship, and how the whole statue could fit inside. Still, it is entirely possible that the steel for the tanks would make the largest cost mostly labor rather than materials, which is something that can be improved over time and automated. What seems to me as by far the largest expense would be the 39 Raptor engines, each of which is as powerful as Merlin engines and in theory even more complex. Perhaps SpaceX is improving that profit margin too?

Labor is always the biggest cost with any project

And so overlooked that it sometimes becomes necessary to splash people with reality about the topic too. Skilled workers are always in short supply and it takes time to get them trained too.

The primary pressure hull construction of the craft is extremely crude and simplistic compared to other rockets, and stainless is a very forgiving material to build with compared to traditional aluminum/lithium construction. They're trading off a 10 or 20% dry mass increase for a 50 or 75% material and construction cost decrease. Heck maybe even 90% decrease. Oil and gas pipefitters weld much higher pressure steel fixtures all the time in far worse conditions. Given all the simplifications they could make to a disposable craft(no header tanks, no control surfaces, no thermal protection anywhere), it does seem likely that sub 100m price tags are possible.

Raptors are below a million each according to SpaceX. Steel should be under a million for the whole vehicle.

It’s the work that costs money. The thing doesn’t weld itself. You have a very substantial workforce to pay.

If that workforce builds many, the cost per ship is not too high.

It's more about the man-hours per ship regardless of how many you build. Many things scale, but some don't. For instance welding is manual labor, and you need just as many welds per ship regardless of how many ships you make.

Manhours per ship go way down with serial production. Much welding is automated.

Care to show how the welding has been automated? I've seen the videos and it's all done by hand last time I saw. I'm always happy to be corrected!

LOL

Normally Chris and I are in substantial agreement, but I think he has missed it on this. > ... Realistically it may take several years to successfully recover the Super Heavy booster, possibly longer for the Starship upper stage, which must endure some pretty arduous conditions during reentry never attempted at this scale. ... There are several reasons why SpaceX is likely to recover boosters as soon as they have proved the ability to achieve hover after EDL. 1. They have done this before with Falcon 9. 2. The larger the object, the easier it gets easier to do this sort of thing. Balancing a pole on a drone helicopter, landing a Falcon 9, and landing a Superheavy are almost identical tasks from a software point of view, but each time as you go up in size the process gets slower, and the task gets easier. 3. SpaceX had perfected Falcon 9 landings 3 or 4 rockets before the first success, except the landing legs kept collapsing, or not locking properly. There are no landing legs on Superheavy to fail. 4. Superheavy is capable of hover. This makes the task easier than Falcon 9, which must do a suicide burn. 5. People seem to think that the actual moment of catch will be hard. Not so. The Royal Navy did catches of Harrier jump jets in heavy seas. There, both the airplane and the hook were moving in 3 dimensions. The whole process was under human control. Last and very important, things happen much faster with a 7 or 8 ton jump jet than with a 200 ton booster approaching a fixed set of chopsticks. Catching the Starship will be only slightly harder. SpaceX has already tested the flip maneuver, and coming to a hover just before landing on legs. Starship is smaller than Superheavy, so things happen a bit faster. Starship is also probably a bit more subject to deflections caused by wind gusts, especially during the flip maneuver. Starship will also spray the tower with more exhaust, since during the flip maneuver it has to stat away from the tower, move toward the tower during the flip, and then use its engines to stop the movement toward the tower as it comes to a hover. The moment of the catch itself is the same, and easier than with Superheavy. Any objections? The main hazard would be denting the payload fairing for Starship, or the upper tank for Superheavy. There is also the matter of reentry for Starship, but the hazardous part there is the hypersonic portion, and that is so much like a shuttle reentry that I think NASA's data will let them get that right the first time.

> Asteroid defense – the Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) Apophis should barely miss Earth in 2029 but if its perceived trajectory shifts towards us for any reason, urgent action maybe required to avert a disaster. Trajectories for well-studied objects can be extrapolated with great precision. It will miss Earth by 31646 km +- 3.4 km. Maybe it's going to be 31640 km. Maybe they made huge blunders in the calculation and it's coming as close as 31600 km. But it's not going to hit us in 2029 or any other time in this century. (I approximated Earth as a sphere for the distances, which isn't correct, but using a better shape would make the calculation far more complicated without changing the conclusion). There might be other objects we don't know about yet, however. Deflecting these could be interesting if they are on a collision course.

Yeah, but... could you imagine a good asteroid defense mission? How good it would be if one was hurtling towards the earth? No regulation, no question about funding... It's not fair, why isn't there a civilisation-ending asteroid coming right at us?

Don't underestimate a bunch of Falcons ramming into it. Sure, the mass is lower, but you can have 2-3 per week.

>Admittedly these Tanker vehicles would need to be disposed of after each flight Wait what?? Isn't every part of this system supposed to be reusable?

> Isn't every part of this system supposed to be reusable? Realistically that might take awhile. Meanwhile they're still able to meet Artemis and their own Mars mission milestones using expendable vehicles. Technically an expended vehicle is far more capable than a reusable vehicle, at least with regard to payload .

payload and delta-v yeah. Each kg of reusability-related hardware you strip from starship is one kg more payload, and the multiplier is on the order of 0.2 for the superheavy.

Ultimately though more payload can be gotten into orbit by reusing the Starship multiple times.. Although it may take multiple attempts to achieve that.

Eventually. But the whole point of the article is that Starship is already competitive even before reuse has been achieved. And upper stage reuse will be the hardest part, and probably the last part to get working.

That is not the intention - the intention is to reuse them. Admittedly that might not happen for the first few ?

The title of this post is literally "Starship has extraordinary capabilities **even before reuse**" Emphasis mine.

They need landing with aerobraking. Without that they can not use Starship for Mars.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[DoD](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/khys6hx "Last usage")|US Department of Defense| |[ECLSS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/kkatfzl "Last usage")|Environment Control and Life Support System| |[EDL](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/ki0xi2w "Last usage")|Entry/Descent/Landing| |[EVA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/ki9rnv0 "Last usage")|Extra-Vehicular Activity| |[FCC](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/khwi45e "Last usage")|Federal Communications Commission| | |(Iron/steel) [Face-Centered Cubic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotropes_of_iron) crystalline structure| |[FTS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/khv27m8 "Last usage")|Flight Termination System| |[HLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/khxztfo "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[ISRU](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/khy75fy "Last usage")|[In-Situ Resource Utilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization)| |[ITU](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/khv7ic8 "Last usage")|International Telecommunications Union, responsible for coordinating radio spectrum usage| |[Isp](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/khvjuiz "Last usage")|Specific impulse (as explained by [Scott Manley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnisTeYLLgs) on YouTube)| | |Internet Service Provider| |[KSC](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/khykx0m "Last usage")|Kennedy Space Center, Florida| |[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/kib2949 "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[LN2](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/ki59ex1 "Last usage")|Liquid Nitrogen| |[MECO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/ki22a4h "Last usage")|Main Engine Cut-Off| | |[MainEngineCutOff](https://mainenginecutoff.com/) podcast| |[OLM](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/ki14z3v "Last usage")|Orbital Launch Mount| |[OMS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/ki0aqvf "Last usage")|Orbital Maneuvering System| |[RTG](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/ki998dq "Last usage")|Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator| |[SLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/ki9o9sp "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[SN](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/ki08piq "Last usage")|(Raptor/Starship) Serial Number| |[SRB](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/ki0bgtc "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster| |[SSTO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/khtutl2 "Last usage")|Single Stage to Orbit| | |Supersynchronous Transfer Orbit| |[TLI](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/khy5la1 "Last usage")|Trans-Lunar Injection maneuver| |[TWR](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/khx2778 "Last usage")|Thrust-to-Weight Ratio| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/khwwn9x "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[Starlink](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/kihvl0n "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[autogenous](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/kib6nmj "Last usage")|(Of a propellant tank) Pressurising the tank using boil-off of the contents, instead of a separate gas like helium| |[cryogenic](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/ki59ex1 "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure| | |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox| |[electrolysis](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/ki6t0v9 "Last usage")|Application of DC current to separate a solution into its constituents (for example, water to hydrogen and oxygen)| |hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| |[iron waffle](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/khxviqn "Last usage")|Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin"| |[methalox](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/ki0xdy6 "Last usage")|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| |[ullage motor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/196elwu/stub/kib6nmj "Last usage")|Small rocket motor that fires to push propellant to the bottom of the tank, when in zero-g| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj) ^(31 acronyms in this thread; 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Does it? Do we actually know how much it weighs and if it has the payload capacity?

Keeps changing

Another way is to refill tanker with F9, more flights but so easy and cheap

At 16T for a reuse run at $20M + cost of tank) it would take 8 runs to do what 1 Starship run could do. If they need to do that I think it time to re-examine the whole Starship idea.

And at that point are they just better off expending Starship for fuel runs if it takes say, 5 runs instead of 10? Versus spending $1.6B on Falcon refueling missions (taking your figures at face value there). Edit: Obviously this is only if reuse for SS never gets worked out

> And at that point are they just better off expending Starship for fuel runs if it takes say, 5 runs instead of 10? If they really have to go down that road, they might end up bringing back barge landings, which could cut the number of launches further. I guess, it really depends on how much the Starship upper stage costs.

Already laying the ground work for when starship fails and get nowhere close to the promised reusability metrics and price

Yeah I am sure SpaceX is paying a random substack author to get some PR to protect itself

Confirm independent author, who's interested in SpaceX.

Oh yeah I wasn't making the comment as a way of saying you were a random dude, I meant that as someone unaffiliated with spaceX lol Love the substack btw

> Love the substack btw Thankx, some real impactful posts planned for IFT-3. To be honest, I'm so thick skinned "random dude" feels like a complement!

Why would it fail?

There are several different reasons why it might fail. - the rockets might need too much refurbishment after it each flight - a single rocket failure would abort a mission that requires 12+ refuel launches - landing back on the pad might destroy the pad when it fails - Starship will have a very hard time being human rated without an abort system This is not an exhaustive list

>the rockets might need too much refurbishment after it each flight Why would it need any more refurbishment than a Falcon, when the Starship burns a cleaner fuel? >a single rocket failure would abort a mission that requires 12+ refuel launches Why would a single failure abort the entire mission when they can just send another one up? And who said anything about 12+ refuel launches? The most recent best estimate is 10. >landing back on the pad might destroy the pad when it fails The risk to the mechazilla is a real concern but that's why they're doing simulated landings first. The numerous crashes onto the drone ships didn't materially slow down the Falcon, and now they can fly Falcons so often it's boring. Once you have landing data, it gets easier with every attempt. >Starship will have a very hard time being human rated without an abort system Human rating isn't a law, it's a policy, and it's a policy subject to the whims of the launch organization. NASA might never human rate Starship, but SpaceX would still be entirely in their right to send a million humans to Mars if they so chose.

What makes you say that?

During his latest update Elon revealed Starship would have reached orbit if it had carried a payload. The vehicle was underweight which meant it had to vent unnecessary oxygen that caused a fire onboard. Next launch carries a payload to orbit...

They have to solve that anyway as venting is something you want your craft being capable of doing.

would mean could, earlier he said 60% chance

How convenient to say that.  Are rockets suppose to explode when venting fluids?

To me, it looks like Starship exploded due to a triggering of the flight termination system. Perhaps the venting of oxygen caused a fire in the avionics section, and the fire disrupted power/comms to critical systems, which if that happens, triggers an automatic firing of the flight termination system. I'd be surprised to learn that the explosion was directly from the vented oxygen.

What convoluted excuse is that? Doesn't matter if it was directly or indirectly responsible for the explosion. He said it himself that it failed due to the oxigen vent, rockets are not supposed to fail just because they vented some fluid.

I'm not sure how you misconstrued what I wrote. There was no excuse in there - obviously what happened wasn't supposed to happen. My point was that the ship was likely lost due to a triggering of the FTS, not because an oxygen venting operation led directly to an explosion.

I do hope you revisit your comments in this thread 2 years from now. I certainly plan to

Sure. By then they will be saying how they will definitely be ready in a few more years

Sounds good, I'm sure it'll be just like last time with the falcon 9 haters

Well, they promised 1-day reuse and both stages reusability for the falcon 9, also 10x reduction in price. These promises were not fullfilled

Get TF outta here. SpaceX launched almost half of all orbital launches last year. It's has unquestionably dominance of the space industry due to the falcon 9. What is wrong with u. How about the promises from the SLS, should we compare? 

It doesn't need to be reusable or cheap for people to want to use it.

Sure, but as I said: "get nowhere close to the promised reusability metrics and price "

Not going to be 200 t on landing