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Musk might be an idiot in many ways but on focusing and organising the abilities of his engineers, he is far from being an idiot.

As impressive as this feat of engineering is, this is an attempt (with enormous effort it should be added) to solve what is more an economic problem than one of practical performance. Even if other space agencies and their contractors can make this happen reliably, it reduces the absolute performance of the launch vehicle. Clearly they've done the maths and it is worth pursuing and better to have the capability than not. It is just that we are still at the proof of concept stage. SpaceX has yet to make this a commercially viable product that works reliably. Can it ever be done? Until they show it can, I do not believe CNSA will push for this from their various SOE suppliers.

If a reusable Starship can be operational to any extent in the next couple of years, a 10 year advantage at least compared with CZ 9 represents a huge gap differential in payload to orbit capacity that should not be acceptable from a military/national strategic point of view. This is all about anti-sat capability now, not about who gets back to the moon first.

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ASAT job falls to TSTO or future SSTO spaceplanes which are already quite capable of performing these roles. I don't see how reusable rockets add to this or provide advantages compared to spaceplanes.

discspinner said:

If a reusable Starship can be operational to any extent in the next couple of years, a 10 year advantage at least compared with CZ 9 represents a huge gap differential in payload to orbit capacity that should not be acceptable from a military/national strategic point of view.

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no. China is not competing with the US in payload to orbit capacity. There is limited to none commercial overlap, and this is not a zero sum game anyway.

discspinner said:

This is all about anti-sat capability now, not about who gets back to the moon first.

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no. ASAT has to do with missiles, not SHLV capabilities.

Please don't post about things you do not comprehend properly.

ougoah said:

Musk might be an idiot in many ways but on focusing and organising the abilities of his engineers, he is far from being an idiot.

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Musk doesn't run SpaceX. Gwynne Shotwell does. That's something most people don't pay much attention to.

Interesting tidbit here: in a Congressional hearing, SpaceX lawyers said the current operating cost of the Starship program (excluding initial R&D into the engines and rocket) is about $4m a day.

ougoah said:

Musk might be an idiot in many ways but on focusing and organising the abilities of his engineers, he is far from being an idiot.

As impressive as this feat of engineering is, this is an attempt (with enormous effort it should be added) to solve what is more an economic problem than one of practical performance. Even if other space agencies and their contractors can make this happen reliably, it reduces the absolute performance of the launch vehicle. Clearly they've done the maths and it is worth pursuing and better to have the capability than not. It is just that we are still at the proof of concept stage. SpaceX has yet to make this a commercially viable product that works reliably. Can it ever be done? Until they show it can, I do not believe CNSA will push for this from their various SOE suppliers.



ASAT job falls to TSTO or future SSTO spaceplanes which are already quite capable of performing these roles. I don't see how reusable rockets add to this or provide advantages compared to spaceplanes.

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I agree. A famous saying by Deng Xiaoping was "摸着石头过河", literally means "crossing the river by touching the pebbles". Then a joke came "摸着美国过河“, "crossing the river by touching the Americans", or we can also say "crossing the river by touching SpaceX". It essentially means that acquire the capabilities but don't rush it, let others do the risky job to prove the worthness, there is no hurry.

discspinner said:

If a reusable Starship can be operational to any extent in the next couple of years, a 10 year advantage at least compared with CZ 9 represents a huge gap differential in payload to orbit capacity that should not be acceptable from a military/national strategic point of view. This is all about anti-sat capability now, not about who gets back to the moon first.

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Payload to orbit or lack thereof is the interesting part about Starship. It hard for people to visually appreciate just how much denser steel is compared to aluminum, and just how punishing rocket equation is to dry mass, especially the upper stage. You can solve alot of problems with more dry mass but it comes at a cost.

Their official v2 and v3 slides already implicitly admitted v1 with recovery cant make orbit with payload if at all. Latest LM9 concept matches V3, and V3 is 40% larger than current so I wouldnt bet on seeing it anytime soon. If anything New Glen might be a bigger threat.

Cost function for Chinese launches are very different than US. The cadence threshold for reuse viability scales inversely with build cost, and like everything else the thrrshold is much higher for China than the US. China's multiple megacontellations should give you a clue to how much upmass China expect to do.

Also its going to be an interesting sight to watch China land 2 people on the moon with just 2x LM10 launches (or just 1 if LEM can be refueled and reused) while US sends up dozens of Startships just to do the same.

gpt said:

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Interesting tidbit here: in a Congressional hearing, SpaceX lawyers said the current operating cost of the Starship program (excluding initial R&D into the engines and rocket) is about $4m a day.

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Is the $4m/day paid from SpaceX's own pocket or NASA's budget?

taxiya said:

Is the $4m/day paid from SpaceX's own pocket or NASA's budget?

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I believe most of Starship development has been funded internally, though they have been awarded funds from NASA for moon related activities. At this point, I don't think $4 million a day is too big of a financial output for a company the size of SpaceX.

NASA's Europa Clipper was launched today on a FalconHeavy. It will arrive at Jupiter for orbital insertion in April 2030. ESA's JUICE (hate that name) will arrive in July 2031. Tianwen-4 is supposed to arrive in 2034.

JUICE will study Europa for 35 days and then move to study Ganymede for around 284 days.
Tianwen-4 will study the whole system and then focus on Callisto.

Juno is still there and an Io mission is being studied. We will have a pretty good idea of what the Galilean Satellites are like by the end of the 2030s. Pretty damned exciting, tbh.

Europa Clipper is supposed to scout for a potential Europa lander mission as well.

News on Europa Clipper:


a bit more about the mission from the Planetary Society: