This channel is gonna be huge. Original content (not just recycled "space news"), excellent graphical explanations of complex topics, and smooth delivery. We done, sir.
From what I've heard on the discord, the next video is coming out sometime mid to late November. Also, the discord is fun, more active than other space discords I've seen.
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” -Henry Ford There is rarely demand for a product that never existed. No one has designed 100ton LEO cargo because there was no way to get it there. When that service is on offer, don’t be surprised if SpaceX has a line out the door of customers wanting exactly that.
@@charliedevine6869 As he said in the video, one of the reasons is that the market takes time to respond to new capabilities. Falcon Heavy flew for the first time in 2018, then it flew twice in 2019, then zero times in 2020 and 2021, but in 2022 it's planned to fly 4-5 times, 2023 it's 1-2 times and 2024 it's planned to fly 4 times. It's not a very smooth graph, but as it looks right now, it flew 3 times in it's first four years of operation, and in the next four years, it will fly 10-15 times. Maybe more.
Its like with shipping cargo. If a cargo container will only fit Size X people will design their products around Size X. Build cargo containers that hold X+5 for the same cost and products will start getting designed around X+5.
@@charliedevine6869 its actually very simple. while it can carry more weight, its about the same size of the current F9. let's say you have a container that can hold 1T. and you come up with a container that can hold 5T. but its the same size. you cant fully utilize the weight, the size is still a constraint. After FH neared completion development, Spacex seen its really isn't that much more efficient then the F9, and that is why they redesigned everything with starship (originally BFR)
16:56 - Your estimated flight manifest is incredible. Like, in the back of our minds, we know that SpaceX has ambitions to launch three times a day, but even your conservative estimates look fantastic. I can't wait to revisit this video years from now to see how things have played out.
Going into this video I seriously didn't know what to expect, but tbh, I didn't think it would be so much. Future is bright if they can handle the engineering challenges!
@@Apogeespace And this isn't even considering how much the human spaceflight market could grow, especially with commercial LEO destinations. We already have a good amount just next year on Dragon, and I only see an exponential increase over the course of the decade.
@@WasatchWind A massive amount of inflatable habs can be hauled up at once. If Elon really wants Mars in his lifetime then he might have to turn away customers for his Mars Missions.
@@rexmann1984 How do you know? If they want to launch as many Starships as they do, I'm sure there will be room for tourism and other flights, and those will certainly supplement costs.
@@WasatchWind Yeah I was just thinking of one launch pad at Boca Chica. But he does have the oil rigs and he's been looking into setting up pads in china as well.
Something that I always think with your vids - there are other videos in the space community where I feel like I can listen to them as a podcast. Yours though really makes the visual part of this mean something. The infographics, unlike that of a certain company, are very good.
Before transatlantic jet airlines, the demand for steamers was high and air travel was low. After the Comet and 707, travel by ship eventually disappeared and the numbers of people traveling to other continents exploded. If Starship is successful, it will create the demand, I will be one of those people waiting in line for an orbital joy ride.
If Starship to orbit costs 2 million (as Musk wants) and can accommodate 100 people (say for a week), then the trip could sell for $50,000 per person which is a price many can pay (tenths of millions of people). Let's say 10 flights per year means 1000 people pay $50,000,000 which today is the price of one seat
You mean "Before transatlantic jet airlines, the demand for travel was high". Are you suggesting people will travel on Earth using Starship? Otherwise if you mean people will travel to space, why would they? We know why people traveled on steamers, we know what the incentives were. It is absolutely not comparable to space travel, unless you mean it will replace airliners.
Haha this timeline couldn't be more wrong, but I like your optimism! ;) I would say a realistic year for the "next first" human moon landing (via Startship) will be the launch window in early 2031 I suspect the two biggest hurdles for the Startship program that could very well stop the progress of the program for a while are 1) orbital refueling and 2) catching via the launchtower-arms
Great video! I would point out that the Starlink numbers also aren't going to drop as far in the later years as you project. The Starlink satellites have a 5 year lifespan, so maintaining the constellation means they'll launches will have to match the total launches seen about 5 years before. Also, SpaceX has already stated that they are getting customers to sign contracts that allow SpaceX to choose between Starship and Falcon 9 based on Starship's readiness, so they will likely shift customers over to Starship even faster than you projected. It just goes to show that even pretty conservative projections require it to rapidly become one of the most flown orbital rockets ever. The real question is whether it might pass Soyuz before 2030.
Exactly right! I tried to sandbag nearly every where I could to temper expectations. But you are right they may be able to transfer over to starship much sooner (and will want to). Startlink resupply will also be much greater than I listed, not only for replacement but for upgrades. Further more, unlike with other space businesses which must still pay for research, production, etc.. Starship could be a paradigm shift in cost for human spaceflight, because launch cost is basically the only cost to consider for simple tourist missions.
5 years is actually a big joke tbh, they could have used a much higher altitude to launch way less satellites by still covering the same surfaces. Other communication satellites have about 10 to 15 years lifespan.
@@alanmay7929 Higher altitudes mean the satellites are much more visible for astronomers. It means defective satellites naturally deorbit in decades rather than a few years. It means you can carry fewer satellites on every launch, increasing cost. It means you need larger antennas for the same granularity in coverage. Etc. There are many good reasons why SpaceX has chosen to place their satellites in fairly low orbits.
Bulgarian officials stated that they couldn't have launched a communications satellite if SpaceX hadn't reduced launch costs. Among other things, it appears that space manufacturing of optical fiber will increase the market for orbital launches.
A lot of people don't see how much the launch market could open up. Imagine if the cost got down to where universities for example were constantly launching satellites, even smaller ones. Imagine all that could be done when any number of companies want to have things tested in null G on a space station. Every industry will be affected by space, it's just a matter of time.
Great vid! I'm a bit more pessimistic. My entirely uninformed intuition, based on the how long it took to mature Falcon 9 to its current launch cadence (~8-10 years), is that your proposed launch manifest is more likely to be achieved in ~15 years rather than 10. Granted that Starship development so far has been rapid, and SpaceX is leveraging the lessons learned from Falcon 9, but I think it might take longer to get in-flight refuelling right, and to build out the fleet, as well as managing regulatory oversight, workforce burnout, and the inevitable loss of a mission or two, perhaps even a launchpad explosion that requires substantial repairs to the launchpad. I guess what I'm saying is a lot can go wrong. That said, this is a minor quibble. Thanks for the informative video, and I look forward to hearing more about applications for Starship.
7:50 - your cost breakdown was very insightful of why Starship is such a big deal. They have a lot of leeway with pricing, and could do dramatic undercutting of competition - I think this will result in massive plummets in cost in the next decade and a huge increase in the market.
Thing is, undercutting only works to some extent. What they will probably do is keep the prices low enough to be cheaper than the competition, but not pointlessly low to a point where they would simply be dumping profit. We're already seeing that with Falcon 9. Falcon contracts could be sold much cheaper but it simply wouldn't make any sense when there's nobody else in the industry who would be able to keep up with that pricing.
@@Brixxter Yeah especially early on. The small sat figure is interesting because we know SpaceX bid Starship at 8 million for a NASA small sat (a few hundred kg haha). They lost to Astra but we got that figure. Would be interesting to see a similar bid for something larger that would need an F9 or Atlas. Since the payload was Electron class that was the competition.
That's what she said lol.... the competition is also evolving very quickly and offering way more flexible options, not all launches have to be at the same orbit or destination.
@@Brixxter cheaper than competition doesn't means they will win those customers tbh. There are many other companies around the world developing such rockets and their locations maybe way easier for certain launches. The Russian are able to reach the ISS way faster than any other companies.
Starship is like the laser; it's a solution without a problem. Once it's available and reduces launch cost by 10x brilliant people will dream up ways to exploit that.
@@rogerrussell9544 people to Mars is a revenue negative endeavor-and will be throughout my lifetime. You need positive revenue streams to balance SpaceX books.
Isn’t that the case with every new development. I reckon that in the days of the Wright brothers people have said something similar about airplanes. I suppose they wouldn’t have taken the laser as an example. 😉
Cheap heavy launch will open up space based manufacturing possibilities. This isn't currently done since cost to orbit is too high to be practical. Decreased cost will change customer requirements.
@@mhfs61 exactly! When asked about electricity “What good is it?” Faraday replied: “What good is a newborn baby?” and/or “Soon you will be able to tax it!”
Let's not forget that payloads can be built cheaper with less mass efficiency due to the increased headroom for payload capability. Less costly manufacturing methods can be employed since there is more wiggle room for heavier payloads.
@@antonpershin998 I really hope we see such telescopes before the end of the decade, and maybe even some optical ones. It'll be amazing - imagine someday a telescope the size of the biggest on Earth built on the Moon!
I think you are mistaken at 14:40. By allowing much greater mass to be used for payloads, development cost can be reduced by going to high mass off the shelf solutions. As I've posted elsewhere before: I think most people don't see the revolution that SpaceX's Starship will usher in. Most of the extreme cost of those Mars missions was in the non-recurring expense of building low mass bleeding-edge one-off hardware. When you can put 100 tons into LEO for a few million dollars, most of that goes out the window. Rovers will be bulky, have four times the mass, and look like something out of Junkyard Wars. They can be built in groups of 5-10 for pennies on the dollar. Computer array? Build a 5x redundant system using standard rack mount hardware and put it in a pressure can with tungsten shielding to get the single event upset rate down to something that can be handled routinely. Cameras? Get a few top-of-the-line mirrorless DSLRs, put them in another pressure can with a good window, done. Sure it has ten times the mass of the exquisitely optimized jewelry on Perseverance, but who cares? RTGs? Just put huge solar arrays on the rover. Massive things, overbuilt, rugged, with built-in compressed gas nozzles to blow the dust off as needed. A vacuum pump feeds an oilless air compressor- or rather, two of each. Maybe a robotic arm with a whisk broom. Or both systems. Drive train? Baja Rally buggy with major parts machined down to add a little lightness but not too much. Install boots over the articulated sections to keep the dust out. Send the vehicles in pairs with winches and tow straps. Lather, rinse, repeat. Much smaller university consortia, working with existing smallsat builders, can go wild. With delta-V to (literally) burn, missions to the outer planets won't take a freaking decade to get there, either. Brute force all the way. It'll be glorious.
Amazing points and this all is completely ignoring starship 2.0 development which could get off the ground in parallel testing around 2026. This could also greatly reduce the number of tanker launches because that would be the best initial use of the 2.0 (no risk beyond fuel and equipment loss). Literally 1 launch of a 2.0 tanker could get a 1.0 starship to mars. Musk has stated he wants 2.0 to be 18 meters wide - its a monster but its relatively dumb design wise. If you have 400 tons to LEO (I wont go nuts and 8x it) then you can put entire factories, chip fabs, unique drug manufacturing etc into space spawning an era of massive innovations outside of just a big rocket.
I said something very similar about how being able to get a large mass up for cheap will change satellite design. Cube sats came about as an answer to the huge costs.
@@TheEvilmooseofdoom Agreed but once the current starship is landing successfully 90+% they will start working on it seriously. Wouldn't surprise me in the least if a small team is already working on it (computer modeling / basic design). Maybe 2026 is too aggressive as a first test flight expectation but the current starship basic design wont be the last one from SpaceX.
Your statement of Be the Station brings in a interesting possibility. Starship Booster could conceivably push a load into orbit or further that WASNT Starship. Heck it could be really interesting if they set out to push a load with every intent of expending the booster. Really expansive but really interesting.
I been saying this for a while. SpaceX competition, could not come from other heavy launches from ULA or Blue Origin, but from smaller rockets as the upcoming Neutron from Rocket Lab. Companies seem to be moving for more compact satellites, launched from smaller rockets.
I really hope that there a lots of people already thinking about what they could do with starships capability, it really can change everything. We could have full industry in orbit and even probably on the moon using starship
Oh there are - I'm starting to see companies that want to launch stations, larger satellites, and interplanetary craft using Starship in design documents. The market WILL grow.
Don't think i have ever clicked on a video this fast haha. Love the chanel, even though it usually ain't new information for me it's great fun to hear ye take and see it all laid out perfectly clear accompanied by amazing graphics. Awesome work!!
Also worth noting that you wont see customers for a service that doesn't exist yet, but: 'if you build it, customers will come.' By massively reducing the engineering constraints relating to mass and launch vehicle availability, you can create a new business case and new customers.
Yeah, I've thought about how many universities would love to start satellite programs if the cost was lowered. You'll also start seeing... weird stuff. People that want to put their loved one's ashes on the Moon or just into orbit. I think we'll reach peak weirdness when TH-camrs start going into space and you see space tourism clickbait on trending.
They are not worst case. Even Elon Musk said recently he estimates the time till humans land on Mars between 5 and 10 years. And we know that Elon is usually way too optimistic with his predictions.
I've stumbled upon your channel few days ago, and immediately you're one of my favourite channels about space exploration. Keep it up and I see u succeed
On the part of 12:12 "can starship grow the launch market?", especially 14:25: I think you don't have to look at it through the lens of the current market but what possibility space this will open for *new* demand. Comparing the market post- and pre-Starship will not be 1to1 like doing the same thing with a new vehicle. In the same way that a car isn't a faster horse or a smartphone isn't a faster gsm. These new technologies open new, totally different paradigms and considering disruptive technologies through the lens of the current market leads to vastly underestimating its capabilities. Thank you for the great episode!
China is starting to think big, though they are years behind, and they are the only serious player. Everyone else has got to be kidding. Just like the major auto makers in response to Tesla, sitting on their tails while being curb-stomped.
@@garyswift9347 Cool story bro. Too bad it's full of shite. Why are Muskrats so.....? Best-Selling Electric Car Brands in Germany in 2021 (Q1) According to new electric passenger vehicle registration data released by the KBA, the following were the top electric car brands in Germany during the first three months of 2021: Brand Q1/2021 Q1/2020 % Share 1 Volkswagen 16,220 6,321 25.1 2 Hyundai 6,180 1,478 9.6 3 Tesla 6,074 3,315 9.4
@@autum6764 That just can't be scaled up to last for months. Years if you want to make it into a station. You do realize this, right? The longest crew dragon lasted was 4 days. Dragon has no water reclamation system. No waste reclamation system. Don't be naive. 🙄
A few comments: 1)NASA's Space Shuttle is the only partially reusable heavy lift launch vehicle comparable to Starship. Taking into account the altitude, orbit inclination, duration and crew size of each of the shuttle flights from FY 1983 through FY 2000, the shuttle fleet could have placed a cumulative total of 2,820,000 pounds (1279t, metric tons) of payload into LEO using its maximum lift capacity. The actual number is 2,587,429 lb (1173t). So the shuttle load factor based on payload weight capability is 0.92. NASA was not launching partially filled payload bays. 2) Somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of all Starship launches to LEO will be tanker Starship launches. And every tanker launch will carry the maximum payload in methalox propellant that is possible to the LEO refueling orbit. 3) Starship will be the means to establish permanent human presence on the surfaces of the Moon and Mars. Every Starship heading for these two destinations will carry maximum payload mass, nominally, 100t.
Demand will turn out to be crazy elastic. At the projected price for Starship, commercial space stations with space tourism suddenly becomes really viable and accessible. There will be an insane rush once Starship is demonstrated to work as aspired.
Your editing is awesome. Please do a video on Terran R. I am crazy excited about this. A smaller Starship can have a lot of uses. I know Zubrin has also talked about a mini Starship sometime ago. its a great subject that has not been covered a lot.
That's going to be coming up. The next Starship series video will be on how the rest of the market can survive Starship, and then down the line he'll do a video on Neutron and Terran R.
Starlink satellites orbit at a low altitude where reboost is necessary, and they have a finite amount of fuel to do it with. That's a feature, not a bug. The fast turnover is intended to allow for ongoing design iterations. So the Starlink launches won't stop just because the full constellation has been deployed.
Yes, Starlink launches will only intensify over time. He is going slow now as he works on lowering the cost of receivers, etc. He just switched to doing regular launches from both coasts for Starlink as a hint that he will be launching quite a few more satellites next year.
Yes there's demand for Starship of course the reason being it's so huge virtually countless possibilities of what you can launch in space literally a whole space station if you wanted to a giant telescope or refueling station and it goes on.
Another fantastic video. This channel is one of my favorites when it comes to Starship analysis. While I love all of the channels that cover that rapid development at Boca Chica, this is one of very few that is providing well-thought-out projections of what the future may bring. The use of economic fundamentals to support projections adds a lot of value (as opposed to just making unasserted claims). Keep up the great work.
A really great video. I have some thoughts. So my era of most familiarity is the Constellation Program (CxP) (2005-2010) and what you say about paying attention to 'the market _at the time_ ' is important. Because during CxP something like the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) just doesn't make any sense at all. For it's entire history up to that point the ISS was serviced by NASA Shuttles and Roscosmos Progress/Soyuz spacecraft. CxP had the Ares-I to continue this system, because why wouldn't you? There was no reason to change things. (Also the ISS was supposed to end in 2014 at this time) In 2010 that all changed. CxP was dead, and the Shuttle was about to be too. NASA _had_ to do something, so it did COTS. The COTS contract money built the first Falcon 9s. COTS lead to Commercial Crew and the Crew Dragon, and now we can't imagine what it was like before they existed. Starship to today's market is like COTS was before 2010. We cannot understand it's usefulness. And in 2031 we won't be able to understand how we ever lived in space without it.
Loved the content. One thing that should be considered is that the estimates are based on current starship designs and performance expectations. Starship is constantly modifying ship designs which could impact costs and even quantity of launches. For instance, if they continue to have problems with the heat shields, they may have to have more launches of fuel to slow ships down for reentry without heat tiles. Also, with the competition with China an possibly Russia, I expect more launches to the moon for NASA and the Space Force.
Absolutely, the use of air vents for directing airflow in a space station could be beneficial not just for moving cargo, but also for managing fluids and responding to accidents in a microgravity environment. Additionally, integrating such a system with artificial gravity pathways and AI control adds another layer of functionality and efficiency. 1. **Fluid Management:** In microgravity, liquids behave differently, forming floating globules that can be hard to contain. Using directed airflow through vents could help guide these fluids to designated areas, preventing them from causing damage or interfering with equipment and operations. 2. **Accident Response:** In the event of a spill or the release of hazardous materials, controlled airflow could be used to quickly move these substances away from sensitive areas or crew members, directing them to containment zones. 3. **Integration with Artificial Gravity Pathways:** Your idea of using this airflow system in conjunction with rotating sections of the station for artificial gravity is intriguing. The air vents could help in smoothly transitioning objects or crew from the microgravity parts of the station to the rotating sections. This would necessitate precise control to match the speed and direction of the moving parts to ensure safety and efficiency. 4. **AI Control:** Utilizing artificial intelligence to manage this system would be essential for handling the complexities involved. AI could continuously monitor and adjust airflow, respond to changing conditions, and ensure the safe and efficient transport of objects and fluids. It could also coordinate with other systems on the station, like life support and navigation, to optimize overall functionality. This concept presents a multifaceted approach to space station management, leveraging the unique properties of the space environment and advanced technology to create a safer, more efficient living and working space. 3/
I rank this site and the content right up there with Scott Manley and Everyday Astronaut. Insightful analysis, tasteful and informative graphics and a soothing voice. You just need to get the word out somehow to grow to the level your quality deserves.
I think your timeline is very conservative, because going fast will be financially beneficial to them, they will continue to push to be fast. The number of flights for refueling and astronaut training and testing will be significant, and I think they will be done sooner than you estimate. As soon as starship is profitable to operate, they will dominate the launch market, and have a ton of cash to reinvest into new infrastructure to make even more money. Positive feedback loop, just like Tesla. Also, thank you for the great thought-provoking video, with all that information. Great job man.
I'm really hoping Starship pans out and can do those "hundreds of passengers" tourist flights (maybe go up into orbit, do a few orbits, then come back down). Those sound like they could be cheap enough that a regular person could actually afford one with some saving.
@@Apogeespace Good point. Suborbital flights would be even easier - with the right location of the launch and landing sites, they could do hundreds of those each year.
Design and build costs for satellites can be reduced dramatically as well if the satellites can be launched and retrieved cheaply. The over provisioning and over building of redundancies can be greatly reduced. Cheap launch services also means that a lot of satellite parts may become commoditized standards instead of being custom designed and built for every new satellite.
SpaceX is planning to be vastly more aggressive than this. Almost no matter what the turn around on launchers are, you are missing their whole factory model. They plan to be making a new starship every 2 weeks and a new booster every month. This implies a whole different philosophy, more akin to commercial aircraft manufacture than traditional space. I think we'll be hitting several flights a day by 2026 and several flights an hour by 2030. They are applying a whole new scaling to space services.
Yes agreed. I found the estimates extremely conversative and they don't line up with the production model. I would also expect to see far higher utilisation for tourists and potentially long distance flights (eg Aus/EU/USA)
@@iamarokotmanson Human space tourism, starlink, commercial, and mars. Although I personally think that is more likely by 2029. Eventually of course, there will need to be thousands per year to support mars colonization and turning mars into a self sustaining colony.
@@iamarokotmanson For whatever people want! the price per kilo is about 2200 USD now (~65M for ~25 tons) in this model it'll be sub 100 bucks a kilo (10M for 100T) and making access 1/22nd the cost changes literally everything. Building a factory in space means no zoning or Nimby or land deals, mining asteroids means no environmental assessment, space suddenly becomes the cheapest way to do a ton of things that require few people and a lot of space. Also this is 2-3 years after the tesla plans on selling their humanoid robot, so that is going to have secondary impacts on how industrial processes happen, and probably will be first used to lower the costs at SpaceX, leading to sub $1M flights before the end of the program.
i think that the answer to your question "what is there to launch?" , "what is the demand".. is obvious to most folks before they have watched this vid.. (could be wrong).. but musk has talked about and shown over and over, that demand can be something that is generated, not something that is only just exploited. and this is proven in his first principles actions; his endeavours. (not only at SX). goals. get to mars. find a way to do this that is self-funding. it's "evo-memetic". its symbiotic. its second-order tool-making. ,we must begin to portray this phenom to the public for what it actually is.. because its inspiring and a source of hope in a dark time.
The cost of spacecraft will reduce. Because of the lower cost to orbit, more companies will be launching stuff to orbit. This results in higher production of satellite components. The increase in production of any good results in a decrease in manufacturing cost.
Well if you want to explore the solar system then I would say "hell yes" we got payloads to boost onto orbit. Folks usually buy pickup trucks for the big occasional loads even though on most occasions you don't need to carry anything in the back bed.
The writer(s?) should thank their english teachers who did a fine job indeed. Engineering expertise plus writing excellence equal effective and engaging content that, in the case of this channel, provokes new questions and heightens the engagement of users who appreciate these rare qualities. Not once have I heard "so....yeah" to finish a sentence.
@@WasatchWind Thanks. In my career in civil engineering I was always the go-to guy when important letters needed editing or substantial re-work. Engineering folks, in general, are likely to have avoided the humanities during their education and so exhibit some significant shortcomings when it comes to communicating with non-technical audiences. This fellow clearly has effectively straddled that divide and it makes his work here stand out above the crowd. I was fortunate enough to have zero formal engineering training, so it never held me back in that respect.
Loving the analysis! you are one of my favorite space channels, possibly my favorite. I love the interesting informative videos you make. they have structure, real information, a good script, and excellent visuals. you are on par with everyday astronaut's rocket deep dives, though the subject matter is different. more focused on analysis than how space works. I love both.
@@WasatchWind I am on the discord. I confess mostly to find out when the next video was coming out at first. but I really like the launch bot and the community.
15:30 I actually disagree that Starship won't reduce the costs of the satellites themselves all that much. I would contend that a large part of the reason why satellites are so expensive to develop in the first place is because the high launch costs make it important to get everything right on the first try, so a lot of effort is expended on extensive tests and a lot of up-front work to improve reliability and reduce mass. With cheaper launches, it isn't so bad if the satellite fails after a few years, so development and testing will be much cheaper.
I think there will be indirect cost reduction in satellites as a response to growth in the market. As there is more competition for building satellites there will be more incentive to make the process less expensive.
I can't help but to think that the risk adversity of satellite producers will change in the face of inexpensive launch costs. Much of the cost of a payload comes down to making sure everything works right the first time, every time. That last percent to perfection costs a lot. When you now have a launch provider providing services at an order of magnitude less than ever before, and capable of launching daily rather than quarterly, AND capable, ostensibly, of retrieving and returning payloads back to Earth for repair, recycling or refitting... Boy, that changes the game a lot! Can start building Satellites using parts with a quality more akin to terrestrial stations than orbital ones.
As a time traveler from 2024, I can tell you your expectations were *almost* spot on-just off by about 2 years! We’ve had three flights so far, with the fourth expected later this year.
I'm not sure about these customer flights though. Pretty sure that on-orbit manufacturing (biotech, solar energy) will be exploding in the late 20s once starship is clear to be viable.
Predicting star-ship scenarios now is like predicting the usefulness of lasers the day it was conceived. Only 50 years later did we realize the potential of fiver optic communications, back hair removal, and sharks with freeken laser beams attached to their heads. 😀
True. Everyone has been designing things to decrease mass because of the super high costs. Hence cube sats. The JWST is just under 7 tons at launch and going up on a launcher that can carry I think 10 tons at most. Because of that a lot.. a LOT of time and money was wasted figuring out the super light weight sun shade. IF they were given a mass budget of 2.. or 3 or 10x they could use cheaper (heavier) parts and far more robust parts and even increase the fuel load to extend mission life. Once 100tons to orbit cheap is a reality a lot of doors open.
Even if starship were to fail in its rapid reuse goals, thats still a launcher capable of taking over 100+ tons to low earth orbit. Thats why i love it, it doesn't necessarily have to be full reuse to work.
Musk said recently in a Lex Fridman interview that they will land humans on Mars in 5 to 10 years, which would be between the start of 2027 and 2032. Given that Musk is known to be chronically overoptimistic with timelines, your expectation of humans on Mars in 2028 seems significantly too optimistic too.
As you say, present those numbers in reverse order, & nobody believes them. But put it all together as you have done, which is logical & conservative, & you see just what can be achieved - but also, by the same token, just what a cadence SpaceX has to reach. I shall be interested to see your thoughts on whether Starship & SpaceX *can* actually do this.
It's crazier when you think about the broader market - a launch will happen EVERY DAY or more. With other rockets being crew rated, human spaceflight will have a big uptick. In space manufacturing will truly begin. There's probably amazing things we can't even imagine right now that'll happen.
@@andrewandersson Oh it's just joking in good fun. I'm really excited for most new rockets coming online in the coming years. Vulcan at least has plans for reusability.
@@armchairrocketscientist4934 I was referring to Snowballs comment, your comment was quite clearly a joke with "xD" and all. lol The reason for my comment is that I've seen the OPs comment before, some people seem to think its wrong to have a larger profit margin than the competitors and I guess everybody should just have a 1% profit margin or something?
@@armchairrocketscientist4934 Vulcan isn't planned to have much reuse. Not even full first stage reuse. It won't be commercially competitive against Falcon 9/Heavy, much less Starship. And SMART isn't even being worked on much. It's many years away.
Starlink is already demand enough for Starship. If SpaceX could cut launch costs by a tenth or a hundred, they will be untouchable in satelite internet. They can then prove Starship for lunar missions, military missions and provide unique service for a new type of telescopes that can be bigger, much more capable and much cheaper to build. In fact they can even make a telescope integrated in a non reusable Starship. There will be demand...
The demad will be bringing stuff back down. Resources are there for the taking. Space is the ideal place for heavy industry. Once the industry is built there will be demand beyond measure.
Very nice presentation. You can add in future tubes about Starship's possible innovations, for example adding an EM engine (3 sea level and 3 vacuum alternately on the perimeter and one EM in the middle). Can you please research the initial crew possibilities?
Great video. Very insightful, even though it’s the happy flow. What I’m wondering however, is what impact any disasters will have. Either when a Starship crashes on Starbase, wrecking the infrastructure or any re-entry disaster with humans aboard. I truly hope decision makers can refrain from the knee jerk reaction to shut everything down.
I have a video planned in the distant future about this topic. As space opens up and more and more people fly to and from space, it is a near certainty that more people will also die in space vehicle disasters. Tough but important topic.
@@Apogeespace Looking forward to that future video. It’s a tough topic indeed. Not to dramatise the topic, but truly assessing the risk involved and being clear eyed about it. No exploration or new development is without risks. Being aware of the risks and try to mitigate them is better, than neglecting them and getting caught off guard.
@@mhfs61 You would lose probably 3-6 months of progress if a prototype veered off course and blew up immediately after liftoff, taking out either the integration tower or the tank farm. This is pretty much the worst-case scenario in the near term. But the risk of this happening is fairly low. The tower is quite sturdy and can take some hits, and the tank farm is a distance away from the orbital pad. The rockets also have flight termination systems which will activate if the rocket veers off course, so it would have to happen very quickly. Possibilities like these are part of why SpaceX intends to make two completely separate orbital pads and tank farms at Boca Chica. Once this is in place, if anything happens to the infrastructure at one of the pads, they can just move the launches over to the other one. And then, later, SpaceX will also start launching from pad 39A and platforms at sea, increasing redundancy further. SpaceX is really at it's most vulnerable for the next 12-24 months. They'll be doing multiple high-risk tests with the very untested Super Heavy booster, almost fully fueled. Risk will drop off as SpaceX gets more redundancy on the infrastructure-side, and the worst of the design flaws in Super Heavy and Starship are corrected. Starship likely won't be flying crew until 2024 at the earliest, so risks associated with crewed flights aren't an immediate concern, but they will become more significant over time. I think deaths during crewed flights wouldn't affect Starship in it's entirety, though. It would lead to a hold in the crewed missions, while uncrewed launches could continue. I would guess the biggest risk is the Dear Moon mission, or the first NASA moon landing. A failure there would take years and years to recover from, in terms of reputation. That would likely push further crewed flights multiple years further out in time, delaying crewed missions to Mars and the moon. But safety of the crew will of course be something SpaceX will focus on intensely, so hopefully the risk will be low.
@@mhfs61 The good thing about something going wrong in the catch attempt instead of during the launch is that the propellant tanks are nearly empty, so the explosion/fireball will be much less intense. Also, the catch attempt is likely to be performed off to the side of the launch table, so if the catch attempt is unsuccessful, the vehicle will drop onto a clear area bordered by embankments to shield the infrastructure. And if the catch arms are overloaded, they are likely to just break off at the pins holding them in place and fall with the prototype onto the clear area. That would destroy the catch arms, but not the whole tower. There would of course be damage, but SpaceX should in most cases be able to get back on track in a month or two. And if the second orbital launch pad is operational, I doubt you would see any meaningful impact to progress.
um... star ship would be perfect for use building large orbital space station to use as construction platform for large colony ships and space tourism. It would be more cost effective than a moon base for such endeavors. Don't for get the end goal is not mars. Mars is just the beginning. The galaxy awaits just beyond our solar system.
I kinda wonder... With the high-mass capability of Starship, does it make sense to design a reusable 'tug stage'. The idea being that Starship launches to a specific orbit that always rendezvous with a Tanker/Depot. Once up, the tug deploys and boosts the payload to the required orbital plane while the Starship then docks with the tanker/depot and offloads any excess fuel carried up. The tug then returns to the tanker/depot (possibly using ion thrusters for the return). The cargo Starship recovers any tugs currently at the Tanker/Depot location and returns them to Earth for integration in future launches. Thus SpaceX maximizes what they get out of every flight by carrying excess fuel to preposition at the Tanker/Depot for deep space missions.
Your graphics are astounding. I have no doubt that your channel is going to be huge someday.
This is exatcly what I was gonna comment.
Yep. He just needs a bit more consistent schedule
@@bastienbongers8036 I hope that if his videos get more attention, it'll hopefully help with that.
Yep. Just subbed. On par with Tim Dodd, absolutely.
Your presentations are amazingly well done. I would love doing the same in my monthly report for my company. Would you share what tools do you use ?
This channel is gonna be huge. Original content (not just recycled "space news"), excellent graphical explanations of complex topics, and smooth delivery. We done, sir.
From what I've heard on the discord, the next video is coming out sometime mid to late November. Also, the discord is fun, more active than other space discords I've seen.
Thanks!
Thanks!
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” -Henry Ford
There is rarely demand for a product that never existed. No one has designed 100ton LEO cargo because there was no way to get it there. When that service is on offer, don’t be surprised if SpaceX has a line out the door of customers wanting exactly that.
Then why aren't there more customers for Falcon Heavy?
@@charliedevine6869 like he said in the vid its more expensive then f9 and starship, if your not in a hurry you would wait for starship i guess lol
@@charliedevine6869 As he said in the video, one of the reasons is that the market takes time to respond to new capabilities.
Falcon Heavy flew for the first time in 2018, then it flew twice in 2019, then zero times in 2020 and 2021, but in 2022 it's planned to fly 4-5 times, 2023 it's 1-2 times and 2024 it's planned to fly 4 times. It's not a very smooth graph, but as it looks right now, it flew 3 times in it's first four years of operation, and in the next four years, it will fly 10-15 times. Maybe more.
Its like with shipping cargo. If a cargo container will only fit Size X people will design their products around Size X. Build cargo containers that hold X+5 for the same cost and products will start getting designed around X+5.
@@charliedevine6869 its actually very simple. while it can carry more weight, its about the same size of the current F9.
let's say you have a container that can hold 1T. and you come up with a container that can hold 5T. but its the same size. you cant fully utilize the weight, the size is still a constraint.
After FH neared completion development, Spacex seen its really isn't that much more efficient then the F9, and that is why they redesigned everything with starship (originally BFR)
16:56 - Your estimated flight manifest is incredible. Like, in the back of our minds, we know that SpaceX has ambitions to launch three times a day, but even your conservative estimates look fantastic. I can't wait to revisit this video years from now to see how things have played out.
Going into this video I seriously didn't know what to expect, but tbh, I didn't think it would be so much.
Future is bright if they can handle the engineering challenges!
@@Apogeespace And this isn't even considering how much the human spaceflight market could grow, especially with commercial LEO destinations. We already have a good amount just next year on Dragon, and I only see an exponential increase over the course of the decade.
@@WasatchWind A massive amount of inflatable habs can be hauled up at once. If Elon really wants Mars in his lifetime then he might have to turn away customers for his Mars Missions.
@@rexmann1984 How do you know? If they want to launch as many Starships as they do, I'm sure there will be room for tourism and other flights, and those will certainly supplement costs.
@@WasatchWind Yeah I was just thinking of one launch pad at Boca Chica. But he does have the oil rigs and he's been looking into setting up pads in china as well.
Something that I always think with your vids - there are other videos in the space community where I feel like I can listen to them as a podcast. Yours though really makes the visual part of this mean something. The infographics, unlike that of a certain company, are very good.
Before transatlantic jet airlines, the demand for steamers was high and air travel was low. After the Comet and 707, travel by ship eventually disappeared and the numbers of people traveling to other continents exploded.
If Starship is successful, it will create the demand, I will be one of those people waiting in line for an orbital joy ride.
If Starship to orbit costs 2 million (as Musk wants) and can accommodate 100 people (say for a week), then the trip could sell for $50,000 per person which is a price many can pay (tenths of millions of people). Let's say 10 flights per year means 1000 people pay $50,000,000 which today is the price of one seat
@@SirThreepio A trip to do what exactly?
You mean "Before transatlantic jet airlines, the demand for travel was high". Are you suggesting people will travel on Earth using Starship? Otherwise if you mean people will travel to space, why would they? We know why people traveled on steamers, we know what the incentives were. It is absolutely not comparable to space travel, unless you mean it will replace airliners.
@@nononono3421 There is a civilian market for it, yes! The space market needs only an "activation energy" in order to explode.
LOL. The delusion here....
Haha this timeline couldn't be more wrong, but I like your optimism! ;)
I would say a realistic year for the "next first" human moon landing (via Startship) will be the launch window in early 2031
I suspect the two biggest hurdles for the Startship program that could very well stop the progress of the program for a while are 1) orbital refueling and 2) catching via the launchtower-arms
Great video! I would point out that the Starlink numbers also aren't going to drop as far in the later years as you project. The Starlink satellites have a 5 year lifespan, so maintaining the constellation means they'll launches will have to match the total launches seen about 5 years before.
Also, SpaceX has already stated that they are getting customers to sign contracts that allow SpaceX to choose between Starship and Falcon 9 based on Starship's readiness, so they will likely shift customers over to Starship even faster than you projected.
It just goes to show that even pretty conservative projections require it to rapidly become one of the most flown orbital rockets ever. The real question is whether it might pass Soyuz before 2030.
Exactly right! I tried to sandbag nearly every where I could to temper expectations. But you are right they may be able to transfer over to starship much sooner (and will want to).
Startlink resupply will also be much greater than I listed, not only for replacement but for upgrades.
Further more, unlike with other space businesses which must still pay for research, production, etc.. Starship could be a paradigm shift in cost for human spaceflight, because launch cost is basically the only cost to consider for simple tourist missions.
well they probably wont want to re-fresh starlink once 5 years if they ever want starlink to be profitable, which is their goal
5 years is actually a big joke tbh, they could have used a much higher altitude to launch way less satellites by still covering the same surfaces. Other communication satellites have about 10 to 15 years lifespan.
@@Jordan-df5uy 5 years is such a waste of money and energy, not to mention the pollution.
@@alanmay7929 Higher altitudes mean the satellites are much more visible for astronomers. It means defective satellites naturally deorbit in decades rather than a few years. It means you can carry fewer satellites on every launch, increasing cost. It means you need larger antennas for the same granularity in coverage. Etc.
There are many good reasons why SpaceX has chosen to place their satellites in fairly low orbits.
Bulgarian officials stated that they couldn't have launched a communications satellite if SpaceX hadn't reduced launch costs. Among other things, it appears that space manufacturing of optical fiber will increase the market for orbital launches.
A lot of people don't see how much the launch market could open up. Imagine if the cost got down to where universities for example were constantly launching satellites, even smaller ones. Imagine all that could be done when any number of companies want to have things tested in null G on a space station. Every industry will be affected by space, it's just a matter of time.
And 3D printed organs in spaces, you cant do that on earth
Great vid! I'm a bit more pessimistic. My entirely uninformed intuition, based on the how long it took to mature Falcon 9 to its current launch cadence (~8-10 years), is that your proposed launch manifest is more likely to be achieved in ~15 years rather than 10. Granted that Starship development so far has been rapid, and SpaceX is leveraging the lessons learned from Falcon 9, but I think it might take longer to get in-flight refuelling right, and to build out the fleet, as well as managing regulatory oversight, workforce burnout, and the inevitable loss of a mission or two, perhaps even a launchpad explosion that requires substantial repairs to the launchpad. I guess what I'm saying is a lot can go wrong.
That said, this is a minor quibble. Thanks for the informative video, and I look forward to hearing more about applications for Starship.
yey, finally a video after so much time
it's going to be high quality
7:50 - your cost breakdown was very insightful of why Starship is such a big deal. They have a lot of leeway with pricing, and could do dramatic undercutting of competition - I think this will result in massive plummets in cost in the next decade and a huge increase in the market.
Thing is, undercutting only works to some extent. What they will probably do is keep the prices low enough to be cheaper than the competition, but not pointlessly low to a point where they would simply be dumping profit. We're already seeing that with Falcon 9. Falcon contracts could be sold much cheaper but it simply wouldn't make any sense when there's nobody else in the industry who would be able to keep up with that pricing.
@@Brixxter Yeah especially early on. The small sat figure is interesting because we know SpaceX bid Starship at 8 million for a NASA small sat (a few hundred kg haha). They lost to Astra but we got that figure. Would be interesting to see a similar bid for something larger that would need an F9 or Atlas. Since the payload was Electron class that was the competition.
That's what she said lol.... the competition is also evolving very quickly and offering way more flexible options, not all launches have to be at the same orbit or destination.
@@Brixxter cheaper than competition doesn't means they will win those customers tbh. There are many other companies around the world developing such rockets and their locations maybe way easier for certain launches. The Russian are able to reach the ISS way faster than any other companies.
@@alanmay7929 SpaceX can reach the ISS as fast as NASA allows them to. Dragon 2 is vastly more capable than Soyuz.
Starship is like the laser; it's a solution without a problem. Once it's available and reduces launch cost by 10x brilliant people will dream up ways to exploit that.
That may be true, but it ignores the real reason for Starship. People to Mars.
@@rogerrussell9544 people to Mars is a revenue negative endeavor-and will be throughout my lifetime. You need positive revenue streams to balance SpaceX books.
Isn’t that the case with every new development.
I reckon that in the days of the Wright brothers people have said something similar about airplanes.
I suppose they wouldn’t have taken the laser as an example. 😉
Cheap heavy launch will open up space based manufacturing possibilities. This isn't currently done since cost to orbit is too high to be practical. Decreased cost will change customer requirements.
@@mhfs61 exactly! When asked about electricity “What good is it?” Faraday replied: “What good is a newborn baby?” and/or
“Soon you will be able to tax it!”
Let's not forget that payloads can be built cheaper with less mass efficiency due to the increased headroom for payload capability. Less costly manufacturing methods can be employed since there is more wiggle room for heavier payloads.
I'm hoping this has a big impact on satellite costs. For certain types of payloads this could be game changing.
@@Apogeespace just imagine JWST, but without fancy folded mirror and solar shield.
@@antonpershin998 Just imagine telescopes on the far side of the Moon!
@@WasatchWind this is also very important to radio astronomy
@@antonpershin998 I really hope we see such telescopes before the end of the decade, and maybe even some optical ones. It'll be amazing - imagine someday a telescope the size of the biggest on Earth built on the Moon!
I think you are mistaken at 14:40. By allowing much greater mass to be used for payloads, development cost can be reduced by going to high mass off the shelf solutions. As I've posted elsewhere before:
I think most people don't see the revolution that SpaceX's Starship will usher in. Most of the extreme cost of those Mars missions was in the non-recurring expense of building low mass bleeding-edge one-off hardware.
When you can put 100 tons into LEO for a few million dollars, most of that goes out the window. Rovers will be bulky, have four times the mass, and look like something out of Junkyard Wars. They can be built in groups of 5-10 for pennies on the dollar.
Computer array? Build a 5x redundant system using standard rack mount hardware and put it in a pressure can with tungsten shielding to get the single event upset rate down to something that can be handled routinely.
Cameras? Get a few top-of-the-line mirrorless DSLRs, put them in another pressure can with a good window, done. Sure it has ten times the mass of the exquisitely optimized jewelry on Perseverance, but who cares?
RTGs? Just put huge solar arrays on the rover. Massive things, overbuilt, rugged, with built-in compressed gas nozzles to blow the dust off as needed. A vacuum pump feeds an oilless air compressor- or rather, two of each. Maybe a robotic arm with a whisk broom. Or both systems.
Drive train? Baja Rally buggy with major parts machined down to add a little lightness but not too much. Install boots over the articulated sections to keep the dust out. Send the vehicles in pairs with winches and tow straps.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Much smaller university consortia, working with existing smallsat builders, can go wild. With delta-V to (literally) burn, missions to the outer planets won't take a freaking decade to get there, either.
Brute force all the way. It'll be glorious.
Amazing points and this all is completely ignoring starship 2.0 development which could get off the ground in parallel testing around 2026. This could also greatly reduce the number of tanker launches because that would be the best initial use of the 2.0 (no risk beyond fuel and equipment loss). Literally 1 launch of a 2.0 tanker could get a 1.0 starship to mars. Musk has stated he wants 2.0 to be 18 meters wide - its a monster but its relatively dumb design wise. If you have 400 tons to LEO (I wont go nuts and 8x it) then you can put entire factories, chip fabs, unique drug manufacturing etc into space spawning an era of massive innovations outside of just a big rocket.
@@ccibinel Starship 2.0 is a notion only, I doubt there is a single person actually working on it.
I said something very similar about how being able to get a large mass up for cheap will change satellite design. Cube sats came about as an answer to the huge costs.
@@TheEvilmooseofdoom Agreed but once the current starship is landing successfully 90+% they will start working on it seriously. Wouldn't surprise me in the least if a small team is already working on it (computer modeling / basic design). Maybe 2026 is too aggressive as a first test flight expectation but the current starship basic design wont be the last one from SpaceX.
Your statement of Be the Station brings in a interesting possibility. Starship Booster could conceivably push a load into orbit or further that WASNT Starship. Heck it could be really interesting if they set out to push a load with every intent of expending the booster. Really expansive but really interesting.
You might take a look at SpaceX Vision's video on the single launch space station, it has some interesting renders of this idea.
I been saying this for a while. SpaceX competition, could not come from other heavy launches from ULA or Blue Origin, but from smaller rockets as the upcoming Neutron from Rocket Lab. Companies seem to be moving for more compact satellites, launched from smaller rockets.
I really hope that there a lots of people already thinking about what they could do with starships capability, it really can change everything. We could have full industry in orbit and even probably on the moon using starship
Oh there are - I'm starting to see companies that want to launch stations, larger satellites, and interplanetary craft using Starship in design documents. The market WILL grow.
No :) Unless you develop way to safely deorbit small bulk carrier's worth of mass from LEO.
I'm so glad I found this channel so early in its life.
Don't think i have ever clicked on a video this fast haha. Love the chanel, even though it usually ain't new information for me it's great fun to hear ye take and see it all laid out perfectly clear accompanied by amazing graphics. Awesome work!!
Also worth noting that you wont see customers for a service that doesn't exist yet, but: 'if you build it, customers will come.' By massively reducing the engineering constraints relating to mass and launch vehicle availability, you can create a new business case and new customers.
Yeah, I've thought about how many universities would love to start satellite programs if the cost was lowered. You'll also start seeing... weird stuff. People that want to put their loved one's ashes on the Moon or just into orbit. I think we'll reach peak weirdness when TH-camrs start going into space and you see space tourism clickbait on trending.
Always impressive. I'm surprised you don't have more subscribers yet
The fact that these manifest estimates are worst case scenario is crazy awesome
They are not worst case. Even Elon Musk said recently he estimates the time till humans land on Mars between 5 and 10 years. And we know that Elon is usually way too optimistic with his predictions.
I was waiting for this! As always amazing quality. Keep it up!
I've stumbled upon your channel few days ago, and immediately you're one of my favourite channels about space exploration. Keep it up and I see u succeed
On the part of 12:12 "can starship grow the launch market?", especially 14:25: I think you don't have to look at it through the lens of the current market but what possibility space this will open for *new* demand. Comparing the market post- and pre-Starship will not be 1to1 like doing the same thing with a new vehicle. In the same way that a car isn't a faster horse or a smartphone isn't a faster gsm. These new technologies open new, totally different paradigms and considering disruptive technologies through the lens of the current market leads to vastly underestimating its capabilities. Thank you for the great episode!
This is something I want to examine soon on the channel.
@@Apogeespace Super exciting, I wonder what new possibilities open up! Thanks for the great episodes
@@Apogeespace I would love to watch a full video on the topic of "can starship grow the launch market?" btw amazing video
SPACEX: "Where we're going, we don't need a space station... We ARE the station."
Every other spaceflight company: NANI!?!
Also SpaceX: "We don't have any life support systems."
China is starting to think big, though they are years behind, and they are the only serious player. Everyone else has got to be kidding. Just like the major auto makers in response to Tesla, sitting on their tails while being curb-stomped.
@@garyswift9347 Cool story bro. Too bad it's full of shite. Why are Muskrats so.....?
Best-Selling Electric Car Brands in Germany in 2021 (Q1)
According to new electric passenger vehicle registration data released by the KBA, the following were the top electric car brands in Germany during the first three months of 2021:
Brand Q1/2021 Q1/2020 % Share
1 Volkswagen 16,220 6,321 25.1
2 Hyundai 6,180 1,478 9.6
3 Tesla 6,074 3,315 9.4
@@jcwiggens wdym? Crew dragon has life support systems
@@autum6764 That just can't be scaled up to last for months. Years if you want to make it into a station. You do realize this, right? The longest crew dragon lasted was 4 days. Dragon has no water reclamation system. No waste reclamation system. Don't be naive. 🙄
A few comments:
1)NASA's Space Shuttle is the only partially reusable heavy lift launch vehicle comparable to Starship. Taking into account the altitude, orbit inclination, duration and crew size of each of the shuttle flights from FY 1983 through FY 2000, the shuttle fleet could have placed a cumulative total of 2,820,000 pounds (1279t, metric tons) of payload into LEO using its maximum lift capacity. The actual number is 2,587,429 lb (1173t). So the shuttle load factor based on payload weight capability is 0.92. NASA was not launching partially filled payload bays.
2) Somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of all Starship launches to LEO will be tanker Starship launches. And every tanker launch will carry the maximum payload in methalox propellant that is possible to the LEO refueling orbit.
3) Starship will be the means to establish permanent human presence on the surfaces of the Moon and Mars. Every Starship heading for these two destinations will carry maximum payload mass, nominally, 100t.
Demand will turn out to be crazy elastic. At the projected price for Starship, commercial space stations with space tourism suddenly becomes really viable and accessible. There will be an insane rush once Starship is demonstrated to work as aspired.
Apogee coming in with another well documented and researched interesting video.
No “Game Over!! What did Elon just say!?!?!”
The bait is so tempting though! Maybe April fools day....
GAME OVER! ELON MUSK'S NEW 18 METER NUCLEAR SOLAR SAIL STARSHIP TO THE SURFACE OF JUPITER???
@@SpacefarerIndustries surface of Jupiter xD, you have achieved komedy.
Stop with the nonsense game over thing mate.
Your editing is awesome. Please do a video on Terran R. I am crazy excited about this. A smaller Starship can have a lot of uses. I know Zubrin has also talked about a mini Starship sometime ago. its a great subject that has not been covered a lot.
That's going to be coming up. The next Starship series video will be on how the rest of the market can survive Starship, and then down the line he'll do a video on Neutron and Terran R.
Starlink satellites orbit at a low altitude where reboost is necessary, and they have a finite amount of fuel to do it with. That's a feature, not a bug. The fast turnover is intended to allow for ongoing design iterations. So the Starlink launches won't stop just because the full constellation has been deployed.
Yes, Starlink launches will only intensify over time. He is going slow now as he works on lowering the cost of receivers, etc. He just switched to doing regular launches from both coasts for Starlink as a hint that he will be launching quite a few more satellites next year.
Yes there's demand for Starship of course the reason being it's so huge virtually countless possibilities of what you can launch in space literally a whole space station if you wanted to a giant telescope or refueling station and it goes on.
Probably my fave space exploration channel. Amazing content!
Wow, thanks!
am I the only one who thinks the intro music is the coolest ever, the first time iv heard it I played it back multiple times lol
I love that NSF and EDA also have equally sweet music.
Apogee is consistently making the best space industry and engineering analysis videos on youtube. Incredible work!
I love your simple and elegant bird logo. Black, white, and red...looks native.
Loving the strategic look at the space industry, deep dives being 30 mins is great as well. Keep on going!
Starship will allow large scale manufacturing in space for multiple applications.
Tremendous job! First time I've seen the Starship rollout projected over the next decade. Can't wait to watch this unfold. Thank you!!!
Honestly, looking at it right now is still a good prediction if you off set it by 2 years.
Another fantastic video. This channel is one of my favorites when it comes to Starship analysis. While I love all of the channels that cover that rapid development at Boca Chica, this is one of very few that is providing well-thought-out projections of what the future may bring.
The use of economic fundamentals to support projections adds a lot of value (as opposed to just making unasserted claims). Keep up the great work.
A really great video. I have some thoughts.
So my era of most familiarity is the Constellation Program (CxP) (2005-2010) and what you say about paying attention to 'the market _at the time_ ' is important. Because during CxP something like the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) just doesn't make any sense at all.
For it's entire history up to that point the ISS was serviced by NASA Shuttles and Roscosmos Progress/Soyuz spacecraft. CxP had the Ares-I to continue this system, because why wouldn't you? There was no reason to change things.
(Also the ISS was supposed to end in 2014 at this time)
In 2010 that all changed.
CxP was dead, and the Shuttle was about to be too. NASA _had_ to do something, so it did COTS.
The COTS contract money built the first Falcon 9s.
COTS lead to Commercial Crew and the Crew Dragon, and now we can't imagine what it was like before they existed.
Starship to today's market is like COTS was before 2010.
We cannot understand it's usefulness.
And in 2031 we won't be able to understand how we ever lived in space without it.
the problem with flacon heavy is not the lack of demmand but the very limited fairing volume. the extended fairings will hopefully help with that
Loved the content. One thing that should be considered is that the estimates are based on current starship designs and performance expectations. Starship is constantly modifying ship designs which could impact costs and even quantity of launches. For instance, if they continue to have problems with the heat shields, they may have to have more launches of fuel to slow ships down for reentry without heat tiles. Also, with the competition with China an possibly Russia, I expect more launches to the moon for NASA and the Space Force.
Supply of something good creates demand if you have the channels to inform the people of it.
When I see an Apogee upload, I drop whatever I'm doing and watch it if possible.
I have just binge watched your videos and went o bed, looked quickly and noticed you uploaded. Thanks m8
Great timing!
@@Apogeespace a small video suggestion, you could make a video about the tesla bots that they are developing for mars etc
Absolutely, the use of air vents for directing airflow in a space station could be beneficial not just for moving cargo, but also for managing fluids and responding to accidents in a microgravity environment. Additionally, integrating such a system with artificial gravity pathways and AI control adds another layer of functionality and efficiency.
1. **Fluid Management:** In microgravity, liquids behave differently, forming floating globules that can be hard to contain. Using directed airflow through vents could help guide these fluids to designated areas, preventing them from causing damage or interfering with equipment and operations.
2. **Accident Response:** In the event of a spill or the release of hazardous materials, controlled airflow could be used to quickly move these substances away from sensitive areas or crew members, directing them to containment zones.
3. **Integration with Artificial Gravity Pathways:** Your idea of using this airflow system in conjunction with rotating sections of the station for artificial gravity is intriguing. The air vents could help in smoothly transitioning objects or crew from the microgravity parts of the station to the rotating sections. This would necessitate precise control to match the speed and direction of the moving parts to ensure safety and efficiency.
4. **AI Control:** Utilizing artificial intelligence to manage this system would be essential for handling the complexities involved. AI could continuously monitor and adjust airflow, respond to changing conditions, and ensure the safe and efficient transport of objects and fluids. It could also coordinate with other systems on the station, like life support and navigation, to optimize overall functionality.
This concept presents a multifaceted approach to space station management, leveraging the unique properties of the space environment and advanced technology to create a safer, more efficient living and working space.
3/
I rank this site and the content right up there with Scott Manley and Everyday Astronaut. Insightful analysis, tasteful and informative graphics and a soothing voice. You just need to get the word out somehow to grow to the level your quality deserves.
Finally! Another Apogee Video!
Love your intro.(especially the bg music)
Love your content.
Have been waiting for this for quite a while now.
I think your timeline is very conservative, because going fast will be financially beneficial to them, they will continue to push to be fast. The number of flights for refueling and astronaut training and testing will be significant, and I think they will be done sooner than you estimate. As soon as starship is profitable to operate, they will dominate the launch market, and have a ton of cash to reinvest into new infrastructure to make even more money. Positive feedback loop, just like Tesla. Also, thank you for the great thought-provoking video, with all that information. Great job man.
Hey! I can watch this while I wait for S20s static fire, awesome!
lol
Excellent video... you have put in much time and effort... Keep them coming, for you do better with each outing...
I'm really hoping Starship pans out and can do those "hundreds of passengers" tourist flights (maybe go up into orbit, do a few orbits, then come back down). Those sound like they could be cheap enough that a regular person could actually afford one with some saving.
Would be great! Imagine the suborbital possibilities: No booster, heatshield, or orbital launch pad required. Could be very cheap.
@@Apogeespace Good point. Suborbital flights would be even easier - with the right location of the launch and landing sites, they could do hundreds of those each year.
I spy a fellow Utahn....
Design and build costs for satellites can be reduced dramatically as well if the satellites can be launched and retrieved cheaply. The over provisioning and over building of redundancies can be greatly reduced.
Cheap launch services also means that a lot of satellite parts may become commoditized standards instead of being custom designed and built for every new satellite.
SpaceX is planning to be vastly more aggressive than this. Almost no matter what the turn around on launchers are, you are missing their whole factory model. They plan to be making a new starship every 2 weeks and a new booster every month. This implies a whole different philosophy, more akin to commercial aircraft manufacture than traditional space. I think we'll be hitting several flights a day by 2026 and several flights an hour by 2030. They are applying a whole new scaling to space services.
And that's why I love the video. Even this more conservative estimate has stupendous results, and I think it'll be more persuasive to skeptics.
Several flights a day by 2026? With what demand?? That's more than 700 flights per year!
Yes agreed. I found the estimates extremely conversative and they don't line up with the production model. I would also expect to see far higher utilisation for tourists and potentially long distance flights (eg Aus/EU/USA)
@@iamarokotmanson Human space tourism, starlink, commercial, and mars. Although I personally think that is more likely by 2029. Eventually of course, there will need to be thousands per year to support mars colonization and turning mars into a self sustaining colony.
@@iamarokotmanson For whatever people want! the price per kilo is about 2200 USD now (~65M for ~25 tons) in this model it'll be sub 100 bucks a kilo (10M for 100T) and making access 1/22nd the cost changes literally everything. Building a factory in space means no zoning or Nimby or land deals, mining asteroids means no environmental assessment, space suddenly becomes the cheapest way to do a ton of things that require few people and a lot of space. Also this is 2-3 years after the tesla plans on selling their humanoid robot, so that is going to have secondary impacts on how industrial processes happen, and probably will be first used to lower the costs at SpaceX, leading to sub $1M flights before the end of the program.
i think that the answer to your question "what is there to launch?" , "what is the demand".. is obvious to most folks before they have watched this vid.. (could be wrong).. but musk has talked about and shown over and over, that demand can be something that is generated, not something that is only just exploited. and this is proven in his first principles actions; his endeavours. (not only at SX). goals. get to mars. find a way to do this that is self-funding. it's "evo-memetic". its symbiotic. its second-order tool-making. ,we must begin to portray this phenom to the public for what it actually is.. because its inspiring and a source of hope in a dark time.
The future is exciting! Very nice video!
The cost of spacecraft will reduce. Because of the lower cost to orbit, more companies will be launching stuff to orbit. This results in higher production of satellite components. The increase in production of any good results in a decrease in manufacturing cost.
Well if you want to explore the solar system then I would say "hell yes" we got payloads to boost onto orbit.
Folks usually buy pickup trucks for the big occasional loads even though on most occasions you don't need to carry anything in the back bed.
The writer(s?) should thank their english teachers who did a fine job indeed. Engineering expertise plus writing excellence equal effective and engaging content that, in the case of this channel, provokes new questions and heightens the engagement of users who appreciate these rare qualities. Not once have I heard "so....yeah" to finish a sentence.
To my knowledge, he does the videos solo.
@@WasatchWind Thanks. In my career in civil engineering I was always the go-to guy when important letters needed editing or substantial re-work. Engineering folks, in general, are likely to have avoided the humanities during their education and so exhibit some significant shortcomings when it comes to communicating with non-technical audiences. This fellow clearly has effectively straddled that divide and it makes his work here stand out above the crowd. I was fortunate enough to have zero formal engineering training, so it never held me back in that respect.
Hell yeah, a new Apogee video!!!
Great video. Your timeline seems very realistic.
Loving the analysis! you are one of my favorite space channels, possibly my favorite. I love the interesting informative videos you make. they have structure, real information, a good script, and excellent visuals. you are on par with everyday astronaut's rocket deep dives, though the subject matter is different. more focused on analysis than how space works. I love both.
That's the reason why I love the channel as well - you'd probably enjoy our discord too, it's a great place for space discussion.
@@WasatchWind I am on the discord. I confess mostly to find out when the next video was coming out at first. but I really like the launch bot and the community.
@@spencerjensen1993 I like the discord because the other free space discords are really inactive.
15:30 I actually disagree that Starship won't reduce the costs of the satellites themselves all that much. I would contend that a large part of the reason why satellites are so expensive to develop in the first place is because the high launch costs make it important to get everything right on the first try, so a lot of effort is expended on extensive tests and a lot of up-front work to improve reliability and reduce mass.
With cheaper launches, it isn't so bad if the satellite fails after a few years, so development and testing will be much cheaper.
I think there will be indirect cost reduction in satellites as a response to growth in the market. As there is more competition for building satellites there will be more incentive to make the process less expensive.
@@WasatchWind Economies of scale. Yes, good point. That's another important factor that might drive cost reductions.
I can't help but to think that the risk adversity of satellite producers will change in the face of inexpensive launch costs. Much of the cost of a payload comes down to making sure everything works right the first time, every time. That last percent to perfection costs a lot.
When you now have a launch provider providing services at an order of magnitude less than ever before, and capable of launching daily rather than quarterly, AND capable, ostensibly, of retrieving and returning payloads back to Earth for repair, recycling or refitting... Boy, that changes the game a lot! Can start building Satellites using parts with a quality more akin to terrestrial stations than orbital ones.
Im so exited you made another video! your videos are so underrated!
As a time traveler from 2024, I can tell you your expectations were *almost* spot on-just off by about 2 years! We’ve had three flights so far, with the fourth expected later this year.
I'm not sure about these customer flights though. Pretty sure that on-orbit manufacturing (biotech, solar energy) will be exploding in the late 20s once starship is clear to be viable.
Hopefully! I wanted to keep estimates conservative but I will be going into Near Future Space Industries in a future video.
Predicting star-ship scenarios now is like predicting the usefulness of lasers the day it was conceived.
Only 50 years later did we realize the potential of fiver optic communications, back hair removal, and sharks with freeken laser beams attached to their heads. 😀
"Lasers - sharks - laser sharks" xD
True. Everyone has been designing things to decrease mass because of the super high costs. Hence cube sats. The JWST is just under 7 tons at launch and going up on a launcher that can carry I think 10 tons at most. Because of that a lot.. a LOT of time and money was wasted figuring out the super light weight sun shade. IF they were given a mass budget of 2.. or 3 or 10x they could use cheaper (heavier) parts and far more robust parts and even increase the fuel load to extend mission life. Once 100tons to orbit cheap is a reality a lot of doors open.
Best video ever about starship
Excellent presentation.
Even if starship were to fail in its rapid reuse goals, thats still a launcher capable of taking over 100+ tons to low earth orbit. Thats why i love it, it doesn't necessarily have to be full reuse to work.
You SOB! You put out a video While I'm watching Event Horizon. Of course I clicked right away but still... 😂🤣🤣😂 Love your stuff man.
Musk said recently in a Lex Fridman interview that they will land humans on Mars in 5 to 10 years, which would be between the start of 2027 and 2032. Given that Musk is known to be chronically overoptimistic with timelines, your expectation of humans on Mars in 2028 seems significantly too optimistic too.
I love these. This thoughtfully done without being patronising, good job.
We ABSOLUTLY need a way of getting tons of material into space...Building a space station for example...
8 ships in 2029 to Mars? No way musk is at least gonna do 20
As you say, present those numbers in reverse order, & nobody believes them. But put it all together as you have done, which is logical & conservative, & you see just what can be achieved - but also, by the same token, just what a cadence SpaceX has to reach. I shall be interested to see your thoughts on whether Starship & SpaceX *can* actually do this.
It's crazier when you think about the broader market - a launch will happen EVERY DAY or more. With other rockets being crew rated, human spaceflight will have a big uptick. In space manufacturing will truly begin. There's probably amazing things we can't even imagine right now that'll happen.
thank you kindly for the video .. really enjoyed this ..
Why did TH-cam wait a week to recommend me this? This is a good video! And I've watched from the channel before.
Excellent content as always! Well constructed and easy to understand. Would love to see faster cadence of videos if possible. Keep up the great work!
yes
9:55 Out of context, it looks like Starship's ploy is to steal more profit than Vulcan from customers.
The ploy is to steal profit from everyone xD
What do you mean steal? Businesses are meant to make a profit.
@@andrewandersson Oh it's just joking in good fun. I'm really excited for most new rockets coming online in the coming years. Vulcan at least has plans for reusability.
@@armchairrocketscientist4934 I was referring to Snowballs comment, your comment was quite clearly a joke with "xD" and all. lol
The reason for my comment is that I've seen the OPs comment before, some people seem to think its wrong to have a larger profit margin than the competitors and I guess everybody should just have a 1% profit margin or something?
@@armchairrocketscientist4934 Vulcan isn't planned to have much reuse. Not even full first stage reuse. It won't be commercially competitive against Falcon 9/Heavy, much less Starship. And SMART isn't even being worked on much. It's many years away.
SO good, as always! Out of curiosity, where did you get that footage of the test lunar/mars rover?
Just off of NASA's youtube. I think I searched "NASA Mars"
@@Apogeespace awesome, thank you!
If I could only live that long. You make everything I read in the 50s and 60s seem real. I envy the future
Starship as a space station to enable microgravity manufacturing on a decent scale could be a major application of the spacecraft.
once again great video man keep up the good work!
Starlink is already demand enough for Starship.
If SpaceX could cut launch costs by a tenth or a hundred, they will be untouchable in satelite internet.
They can then prove Starship for lunar missions, military missions and provide unique service for a new type of telescopes that can be bigger, much more capable and much cheaper to build.
In fact they can even make a telescope integrated in a non reusable Starship.
There will be demand...
Great video!
I think at least one Starchip will launch to the Moon or Mars even earlier than we think..
LETS GO BABY! LETS GO!
The demad will be bringing stuff back down. Resources are there for the taking. Space is the ideal place for heavy industry. Once the industry is built there will be demand beyond measure.
Very nice presentation. You can add in future tubes about Starship's possible innovations, for example adding an EM engine (3 sea level and 3 vacuum alternately on the perimeter and one EM in the middle). Can you please research the initial crew possibilities?
Just found out this channel!
Loved it man. Keep up the good work.
good analysis. I think that Starships will require more refurbishment than many expect, at least until they really improve the re-entry technology.
Definitely possible. I think creating a heatshield that is durable and rapidly reusable is the hardest task ahead.
Great video. Very insightful, even though it’s the happy flow.
What I’m wondering however, is what impact any disasters will have. Either when a Starship crashes on Starbase, wrecking the infrastructure or any re-entry disaster with humans aboard.
I truly hope decision makers can refrain from the knee jerk reaction to shut everything down.
I have a video planned in the distant future about this topic. As space opens up and more and more people fly to and from space, it is a near certainty that more people will also die in space vehicle disasters. Tough but important topic.
@@Apogeespace Looking forward to that future video.
It’s a tough topic indeed. Not to dramatise the topic, but truly assessing the risk involved and being clear eyed about it.
No exploration or new development is without risks. Being aware of the risks and try to mitigate them is better, than neglecting them and getting caught off guard.
@@mhfs61 You would lose probably 3-6 months of progress if a prototype veered off course and blew up immediately after liftoff, taking out either the integration tower or the tank farm. This is pretty much the worst-case scenario in the near term. But the risk of this happening is fairly low. The tower is quite sturdy and can take some hits, and the tank farm is a distance away from the orbital pad. The rockets also have flight termination systems which will activate if the rocket veers off course, so it would have to happen very quickly.
Possibilities like these are part of why SpaceX intends to make two completely separate orbital pads and tank farms at Boca Chica. Once this is in place, if anything happens to the infrastructure at one of the pads, they can just move the launches over to the other one. And then, later, SpaceX will also start launching from pad 39A and platforms at sea, increasing redundancy further.
SpaceX is really at it's most vulnerable for the next 12-24 months. They'll be doing multiple high-risk tests with the very untested Super Heavy booster, almost fully fueled. Risk will drop off as SpaceX gets more redundancy on the infrastructure-side, and the worst of the design flaws in Super Heavy and Starship are corrected.
Starship likely won't be flying crew until 2024 at the earliest, so risks associated with crewed flights aren't an immediate concern, but they will become more significant over time. I think deaths during crewed flights wouldn't affect Starship in it's entirety, though. It would lead to a hold in the crewed missions, while uncrewed launches could continue. I would guess the biggest risk is the Dear Moon mission, or the first NASA moon landing. A failure there would take years and years to recover from, in terms of reputation. That would likely push further crewed flights multiple years further out in time, delaying crewed missions to Mars and the moon. But safety of the crew will of course be something SpaceX will focus on intensely, so hopefully the risk will be low.
@@espenha Thank you for your response,Aspen.
I was also thinking of the booster being missed of partially grabbed by the ‘chopsticks’.
@@mhfs61 The good thing about something going wrong in the catch attempt instead of during the launch is that the propellant tanks are nearly empty, so the explosion/fireball will be much less intense. Also, the catch attempt is likely to be performed off to the side of the launch table, so if the catch attempt is unsuccessful, the vehicle will drop onto a clear area bordered by embankments to shield the infrastructure. And if the catch arms are overloaded, they are likely to just break off at the pins holding them in place and fall with the prototype onto the clear area. That would destroy the catch arms, but not the whole tower.
There would of course be damage, but SpaceX should in most cases be able to get back on track in a month or two. And if the second orbital launch pad is operational, I doubt you would see any meaningful impact to progress.
um... star ship would be perfect for use building large orbital space station to use as construction platform for large colony ships and space tourism. It would be more cost effective than a moon base for such endeavors. Don't for get the end goal is not mars. Mars is just the beginning. The galaxy awaits just beyond our solar system.
I kinda wonder... With the high-mass capability of Starship, does it make sense to design a reusable 'tug stage'. The idea being that Starship launches to a specific orbit that always rendezvous with a Tanker/Depot. Once up, the tug deploys and boosts the payload to the required orbital plane while the Starship then docks with the tanker/depot and offloads any excess fuel carried up. The tug then returns to the tanker/depot (possibly using ion thrusters for the return).
The cargo Starship recovers any tugs currently at the Tanker/Depot location and returns them to Earth for integration in future launches.
Thus SpaceX maximizes what they get out of every flight by carrying excess fuel to preposition at the Tanker/Depot for deep space missions.