One of the underrated topics about space right now is the potential supply of rockets outstrips demand by a lot.
We're simply out things we can profitably send to space so SpaceX and others are trying to come up with ideas to induce demand.
My understanding is that Starlink mostly grew out of the same need to justify scaling up rocket production.
Before LEO internet constellations, even the leading nations had just ~20-25 launches per year each, and a good chunk of those were for ISS services.
Other than the occasional GNSS, weather, scientific, broadcast and surveillance satellite, there's not all that much worth sending into space.
This really isn't true. Infrastructure build outs, space mining, the power generators and datacenters needed by the world's current best funded and most energetic sector all depend on more launches and larger cargo holds.
I, and I'm not alone, would pay a giant pile of money to go into space for a holiday.
And yet space tourism ventures consistently struggle to be viable. Even SpaceX barely bothers with that market.
People have been pointing to space tourism for decades, but I've never thought it viable. You quickly run out of people with enough money to pay what it costs to run the service.
Beyond that, it's got to be the lousiest way to spend a couple days. Weightlessness is really uncomfortable -- you're most likely going to be motion sick for a day or two. But beyond that your body requires gravity for proper distribution of fluids. The reason astronauts look so puffy in photographs is their faces are swelling from excess fluid.
That ought to be the most CO2 heavy holiday I can think of. I wish it could be made illegal, but I am certain there will always be one country allowing it.
This is correct. The only problem that "data centers in space" solves is the problem of trying to scale a rocket company where the potential demand for rocket launches is simply not that big.
I don't know why space marines aren't a thing yet. The USA could put a rapid reaction force of Tier 1 Special Forces onto a space station and deploy them through atmospheric re-entry anywhere on Earth within 30 minutes.
I can only assume "too easy to track" is part of the logic.
Ditto for kinetic strikes. That was super hyped up.
The whole kinetic strike concept is 100% complete idiocy.
There is zero merit and zero gain from lobbing pole sized object at terrestrial targets, and I blame people having negative understanding of orbital dynamics for the whole concept getting popular in the first place.
Problems are:
1) You pay every single Joule of impact energy (and more!) in rocket fuel for getting the thing up there in the first place, which is an abysmal deal.
2) You can't actually "drop" anything from orbit once its there, you have to accelerate it while being trivially observable (and trackable) from earth by 30 year old radar technology.
3) You could literally do the same thing by launching purely kinetic ballistic missiles at targets. Non one ever does that for a reason-- its difficult, expensive and ineffective at the same time. Basically the only benefit is demonstrating that you could have delivered an actual nuclear payload in the same way.
The cost would be insane. And it wouldn’t be near 30min, you’d need lots of teams to reach this, driving the cost further up. Need to rotate them on a regular basis. And soldier without gravity for months at a time are definitely not fit for combat.
> The cost would be insane.
Yeah, that's why it'd be a good way for SpaceX to make money.
But it doesn't make sense for the marines. For the same money you could spin up a bunch more QRFs and scatter them over the globe.
> Ditto for kinetic strikes. That was super hyped up.
Dropping steel rods from orbit didn't seem so crazy. But I've never seen a detailed evaluation of the idea.
Kinetic strikes sure. It seems like space marines would be incredibly easy to shoot down. They would be on a ballistic re-entry and must slow down without extreme g-forces before they reach the ground.
> potential supply of rockets outstrips demand by a lot.
IDK I think plenty of people will want to go to space or even cut 24 hour flights across the world to 90 minutes.
As for experience - it's going to be pricy, but look how many multi-million dollar yachts are out there, parked, doing nothing. People do have money for such experiences.
I think for travel around Earth, supersonic passenger aircraft are more feasible than rockets. Even if we consider sonic booms, a lot of routes where rockets would be desirable are across uninhabited oceans.
Somewhat agree. Boom has demonstrated something, but Starship looks more ready than them. Plus it's going to be vastly more faster and more impressive.
Sonic boom can't be the limiting factor forever.
> Boom has demonstrated something
They didn't even demonstrate performance on par with their 1950s era T-38 chase plane, and now they've retired their 'demonstrator' and pivoted into data centre power turbines.