I typed this up and scheduled it to post just before Starship’s second test flight.
My thoughts on
Starship? Meh.
I was extremely
excited in 2008 when SpaceX became the first private company to put a payload
into orbit on their Falcon 1 rocket. As
a big space supporter, I saw this as the first step on the road to the space
future I’d been dreaming about. I
figured it was just a matter of maybe a decade or so before we’d see private
rockets launching private astronauts to private space stations. I was super excited for the future.
I was a bit bummed
when the Falcon 1 was retired, but the Falcon 9 would be a better rocket to
launch people on. And the first fights
were of the cargo Dragon capsules which would lead the way to crewed
Dragons. So I was still super excited.
Now, I know that the
space business isn’t known for speed. That
it takes years to design, and build, and test craft long before they even
launch. But even knowing that, there
were some unnerving things with SpaceX.
At some point, I read that they had contracts to launch 60 satellites in
the next five years, which works out to a launch a month. At the time, that was a pretty tough launch
cadence. But at the time, they had
launched only five or six times in a year.
And sometime in this “They need to speed things up” thinking, they
started making changes to the booster and the fueling. Which is great, but for awhile it seemed
about every mission was delayed because they had issues with the densified
fuel. As an armchair rocket person, I
wondered why they didn’t just build five or six of the boosters they knew
worked to keep launching satellites to get through their backlog, and to give
them some time to work on their new boosters on the side. And I’m sure there are a hundred reasons not
to have done it that way, but from the outside looking in it seemed like a
missed opportunity to keep the launch cadence up while still experimenting.
Still, these
experiments lead to boosters being recovered and launched again, and
again. Reusable rockets are
fantastic. They are a clear necessity to
the space future I want. And yes, now
it’s a slow week if only one Falcon 9 launches, but most of the flights are for
Starlink. Don’t get me wrong, space
internet is a great idea, but far from the private space stations and moon
bases and stuff I’ve been waiting for for … over a decade now.
And yes, the cargo
Dragon got upgraded to a Crew Dragon, and they are flying astronauts to the ISS
and to orbit, but I read they stopped building Crew Dragons. Which I don’t understand. There are people who will pay to orbit the
Earth, and I’m sure there are friendly nations who would love to have missions
with their astronauts, and someday there will be private space stations needing
craft to carry crew to. And again, as
someone from the outside looking in, it’s like, “You have something that’s
working, why aren’t you continuing with it?”
To step back a
bit, there’s the Falcon Heavy. Which,
when it was announced, I was thrilled by.
I’m a Return to the Moon person, and surely the Falcon Heavy could land rovers
or cargo to start building up a moon base.
But then, it will launch next year.
It will launch next year. It will
launch next year. And it finally launched,
but then we only had like four launches in five years. Now, I understand it’s a bit like putting the
cart before the horse of why build a satellite needing this much lift if a
rocket capable of that lift isn’t flying yet.
But we’re coming up on six years since Elon’s car was launched. And yes, we’ve had four flights this year,
with one more scheduled. But it almost
feels like they spent all this time to build this big rocket, and then found it
hard to find things to launch with it. Which
seems like a bit of a misstep.
And now to
Starship. After years of waiting for the
Falcon Heavy, I knew not to get too excited for this even bigger, more complex
rocket. And after all this time, I don’t
really care. Like, either it will be
like the Falcon Heavy and start to hit its stride four or five years from now,
in which case I might be more excited, or it will hit its stride in a year or
two by launching Starlinks. What would
get me excited is if they announced a plan to launch Starship with an
expendable upper stage so they could put this Skylab type space station
up. That I would like. But nothing else about Starship seems that
exciting. Yes, there’s the Human Landing
System for Artemis 3 and 4, but what happens beyond that? Will it just be for those missions, or will
there be more to build up a private moon base?
You’d think, if they had the systems to land people on the moon, why not
continue to do that? But I’ll point out,
they apparently stopped building Crew Dragons.
What is the future
of Starship, and of SpaceX? They’ve
pretty much stopped talking about Mars, which I always found annoying. (I mean, I am the author of The Moon Before Mars: Why returning to the moon makes more sense than rushing off to Mars.) But is their future just … Starlink?
It’s tough to get excited for this big rocket if I don’t really care
what it will be used for. It’s like,
even though I’m a Return to the Moon person, I don’t really care for the
SLS. Because I want a continual,
sustained presence on the moon, and a billion-dollar rocket that launches once
a year, maybe, isn’t how you do that. And
I don’t know if Starship will do that. Honestly,
at this point I’m more excited for New Glenn, only because, while I don’t know
what they’ll do with it, it doesn’t have as much baggage as Starship or
SLS.
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