An interview with Robert Zubrin about Mars

 A fascinating interview with Robert Zubrin.  The most interesting bits are about how frontier societies drive technological innovation.  Also, about why the USA is English-speaking not French (I didn't see that coming!)

No more free lunch

 By Mike Luckovich

Will there ever be a viable colony on Mars?

Mars lander over Valles Marineris by William Black

The Technology

In May 2018, I wrote a piece about what was then called the BFR (now renamed Starship) entitled Full speed ahead--Mars by 2024.  Musk had announced his "Mars Colonial Transporter" the previous September, and he described this goal as "aspirational".   Spoiler alert: we won't get to Mars by the end of this year.  But it looks as if he will prolly be just 2 years off.  Given that 7 years ago when Musk announced this project, most people thought that it would never happen, that's a signal achievement.

Why two years?  Mars and Earth are in "opposition"  (i.e.  Earth is between Mars and the Sun)  roughly every 2 years and two months, which is when they are closest in each current orbital period.  And that is when we would launch an expedition to Mars, because that is when the journey would have the shortest duration.

The next opposition will be on January 15th, 2025--we're not going to make that one.  The opposition after that will be on February 19th 2027.  I think that will be the date, more or less, that ships from Earth will land on Mars.   Assuming a six months flight to Mars, the expedition taking advantage of the February 2027 opposition would have to leave in September 2026.  A return journey will not happen until the next opposition, on March 25th 2029.  Once again, any ship that returns to Earth will leave 6 months or more before the opposition.  

Why am I convinced that SpaceX will be able to do it on this timeline?

Let's start with the success of flight 4 (IFT 4) of the Starship/Super Heavy booster combo.  Both the booster and the ship managed soft landings, despite some problems with re-entry and the rocket engines.  Each flight has gone further and achieved more than the previous one.   This is how SpaceX works, by iteration.  It tests, learns, redesigns, and tests again.  The gaps between each test flight have grown shorter.   

Musk has said that there will have to be "hundreds" of flights before humans climb aboard.  NASA's Artemis program to land astronauts on the Moon will be using Starship, and that is (coincidentally) also scheduled for September 2026.  So by then there would have had to be hundreds of successful Starship flights.  How will that be possible?  Well, the whole point about Starship is that it is meant to be re-usable.  So each Starship will be able to fly often, perhaps once a day, to test its ability to launch and re-enter safely.  And SpaceX plans to ramp up its production line to a Starship a day.

But ... re-usability depends on the heat tiles working and not needing to be completely replaced after every flight.   The Space Shuttle was supposed to be re-usable, but the time and expense needed to refurbish its heat shield after every flight made it very expensive.  Musk has said that the heat shield tiles, made from a kind of ceramic, are like china plates attached to the outside of the ship.  They are vulnerable to vibration, cracking, chipping and breaking up.  They have a different thermal expansion coefficient to the stainless steel of the ship's body.   

It is a formidable problem, if you want full re-usability.   Videos from IFT4's re-entry showed that most of the tiles visible to the on-board cameras were OK, but debris from the re-entry showed that some tiles were disintegrating.  IFT5 (end July?) will test new shielding, including a layer of fibrous heat shield under the solid heat shield tiles.  If the heat shield has to be replaced after every flight, this will mean the Starship is not fully reusable, which in turn means that my putative Mars timeline won't happen.

SpaceX has already faced up and solved many technological issues with Starship.  But this is the most formidable yet.  Will they solve it?   

Consider how far SpaceX has come since Musk's announcement of the BFR is September 2017.   A carbon-fibre ship was the first proposal.  Then SpaceX pivoted to a stainless steel ship and booster, because of its superior ability to withstand the heat of re-entry as well as its far lower cost.   In effect, they started from scratch at that point (2019).  Observers mistook the first test vehicle at Boca Chica for a steel water tank.  It's been just 5 and a half years since SpaceX started with the current Starship design.   So progress has been remarkable. 

Therefore, I do in fact expect to see boots on Mars in 2027.

The Economics

So we will have a scientific outpost, as we do in Antarctica.  But will it ever be more than that?  Will there be colonisation?  Will there be a city of a million inhabitants?   The issue now shifts from the technical challenges of getting to Mars (difficult but doable) to the economics of settling there in enough numbers to reach a self-sustaining million people (much more doubtful).

Before I answer these questions, read about all the problems of living on Mars in this piece I wrote.   To summarise that piece: Mars is very, very cold; has practically no atmosphere, and what it does have is poisonous; there is no soil, and the rock and dust on the surface (regolith) is contaminated with poisonous perchlorates; the planet's surface is bathed with lethal radiation; its gravity is just 40% of the Earth's.  

Terraforming Mars will take at least a century, prolly many more.  So everyone will have to live in domes or in caves.  To preserve the researchers' sanity, spouses and partners will be permitted to stay too; there will be parks under the domes or in the caves to provide some Earth greenery; there'll be guest suites, and tourists.  Tourists?  Surely, yes.   Just a few in the early years, but numbers rising rapidly as costs decline.

The research stations will require fresh food, water purification, air purification, genetically modified plants, dome construction technology, and above all, energy.  There will be powerful technological forcing functions in all these areas, and in the spaceship technology to get us there, resulting in huge cost reductions over time.

There were 350 settlers at the Jamestown colony in Virginia in 1610.   By 1630, there were 4.6 thousand settlers (and descendants of settlers), a compound growth rate of 14%.  By 1650, 50 thousand, a growth rate of 13% per annum for those two decades.  There are many more people on Earth now than there were in 1610, so there could in theory be more settlers.  But on the other hand, back in the 17th century, once the settlers had arrived, they could hack themselves a field out of the forest, build a log cabin, and start a new life.  On Mars, they'd have to live in a dome, pay for the dome's maintenance and upkeep, and find themselves a job.  No homesteading, no going off into the wilds to make your fortune.  Not only will you have to find the fare, but also enough money to live on in a high-tech environment where everything has to be paid for, including air and water.

Musk talks about a million people on Mars by 2050.   It could happen, maybe, if technological advances are enough to cut costs rapidly.  But I hae me doots.  

The first passage to Mars will cost $6 million per person (assuming 10 people per ship, with the rest of the payload being stuff needed to keep them alive).  But they'll be scientists, with their fares paid by Earth's space agencies.  The second expedition will perhaps cut that to $300K per person, and the one after that to, say, $200K.  

But that's still far more than most people can afford.  

Only a millionaire could afford these fares.  There are 59 million millionaires in the world.  I suppose it's possible that 0.1% of them will give up their lives of comfort and luxury on Earth for a hardscrabble living on Mars.   That's roughly 60,000 people.  60,000 in total who can both afford it and also want to do it.  

There's no way there are going to be a million people on Mars by 2050 --- unless there are big subsidies from Earth to achieve this.  It would cost, say, $100 billion a year to send 200,000 people every opposition (2,000 Starships!), at a million dollars per colonist (fare plus living costs), until the Mars colonies are self-sustaining, and all you'd have to fund is the fare.  Whatever you think about the desirability of colonising Mars, no government is going to provide that much money.  Unless .... geopolitics intervenes, and the US funds settlement to secure a hold on Mars.   Will that happen?  I can't tell.  But it has to be a possibility.  Without that, maybe 10,000 colonists every two years, at $1 million a pop?  $5 billion a year?  Yes, possibly.  110,000 residents by 2050, assuming deaths are balanced by births (can mammals even have offspring in lower gravity? No one knows.)  A long way from a million.

So, will there ever be a viable colony on Mars?  I used to think there would be.  But I don't know, any more.  What do you think?

See also:

Living on Mars -- I

Living on Mars -- II

Living on Mars -- III

Imitation & vat meats the norm by 2040

Domed forest on Mars 

Terraforming Earth 

Cost of the Mars expedition 

Cheap access to space

Cost of launches per kg will plunge

Cost of launches per kg will plunge

SpaceX's Starship fourth launch was a resounding success.  Both the booster and the ship came down for soft landings, even though one of the ship's fins was nearly burnt off by the heat of re-entry.  But compared with the first and second launches, when the Starship/booster combo exploded, and the third launch, when the Starship disintegrated during re-entry, these were huge successes.  Remember, SpaceX learns by iteration.  It tries something, then fixes any errors, then tries again, fixes new problems, tries again, and so on in a continuous program of improvement.  And the logic of the progress so far is that flight five (late July?) will be still more successful.  And flight six after that, and flight seven .....

By the end of this year, Starship will probably be carrying cargo to and from space.  And when it is, it will cut the cost of launching 1 kilo to orbit to around $20.  Musk says that each launch will cost $2 million, and each Starship can lift 100 tonnes into orbit.  Even if you allow for fat profit margins, making that, say $50/kg, it still means that a human weighing 100 kg could go to LEO (low earth orbit) for $5,000.  Though Musk says there will have to be hundreds of accident-free launches before Starship will be considered safe.  

That's just V-1 of Starship.  V-3, which will go into construction in a few months, will be even more efficient.   Its propellant load will increase 20%, but it will double its payload to 200 tonnes.  Cost per kg to orbit will fall to $12/kg.

The chart below, from Our World in Data, shows the cost of launching 1 kg to orbit since 1961, each observation adjusted for inflation since then.    SpaceX's first rocket, Falcon 1, cost $12,600/kg.  It was not re-usable.  The Falcon 9, which had a re-usable booster, but not second stage, cost $2,600/kg, half the cost of its nearest non-reusable competitor.  Falcon Heavy, three Falcon 9 boosters yoked together, cut the cost to $1500/kg.   And Starship V-3 will cut the cost to $20/kg.  Its data point will be right off the bottom of the chart.

It's impossible to know for sure how this will change the world.  But as Tony Seba says, a ten-times cost reduction leads to disruption and opportunity.   Since SpaceX started, it will have engineered a 250 times cost reduction for lifting one kilogram to LEO.   

This opens up the inner solar system to exploration.   The Moon and Mars will be in reach, affordably.  The cost of sending a single Starship to Mars will be $20 million in fuel (it will need 7 propellant ship launches to refuel it in space, each one carrying 200 tonnes of propellant).   Tripling that for food, life systems, etc., gives us a cost per ship of $60 million.  Even if we send 20 ships on the first expedition to Mars, with 10 astronauts per ship, with the rest of the payload devoted to food, shelters, water and air purification plants, rovers, and other things needed for survival on Mars, the total cost would be $1.2 billion.   That's less than half SpaceX's 2023 profit.  SpaceX could fund the first Mars mission with its own money, if it wanted to.

When asked to provide a costing for getting to Mars 20 years ago, in pre-SpaceX days, NASA estimated $100 billion (yes, with a b) for 5 astronauts, in then-money.   Things have come a long way since then.

Rocket Lab's Neutron's redesign

SpaceX isn't the only rocket company with re-usable rockets. Rocket Lab, which is based in New Zealand, is also trying to create a re-usable rocket.  Oddly enough, none of the aging dinosaurs of the industry (ULA, Boeing, etc., etc.) is even trying to produce re-usable rockets.  Bizarre.

From Teslarati

New concept art was released on Rocket Lab’s website today, showcasing new design choices for the company’s reusable Neutron rocket.

One of the major changes shown is how the payload fairing operates. In prior concepts, the fairing was comprised of 4 quarters that opened outward to allow second stage and payload separation. The new design shows two halves of the fairing opening.

Moving from four to two fairings will provide more reliability for the rocket and fewer moving parts.

Another change is a slight design to the forward strakes (fins) that help steer the rocket back to its landing site. Unlike SpaceX, which uses grid fins, the Neutron rocket will use fins that provide more lift and can return to the launch site from further downrange.

The forward fins also appear to have moved further up on the rocket, and the fairing halves size made a bit smaller.

Further down on the rocket, the landing legs are now folded in, similar to how Falcon 9 landing legs are folded, and appear to deploy the same way.

As of now, it appears the only changes are to the appearance, the Rocket Lab website still shows the same performance. The first stage will be powered by 9 Archimedes engines fueled by liquid methane and liquid oxygen, and 2nd stage powered by a single vacuum-optimized Archimedes engine.

Neutron stands 43 meters tall and is 7 meters in diameter at the base and slopes inwards to the top for a 5-meter diameter fairing. During an update on the rocket in December 2021, Founder and CEO Peter Beck said it would help the rocket make it back through the atmosphere by reducing the thermal load on the rocket.

Neutron deploying a stack satellite constellation, very similar to how Starlink satellites are stacked (Credit Rocket Lab)

The Dream Chaser space plane

 Competition is good, because it cuts costs.  The Dream Chaser space plane by SNC is another way to get to and from Low Earth Orbit (LEO), competition to SpaceX's Starship.  Like the Space Shuttle, it can land like a plane on a runway.  

The Space Shuttle was supposedly reusable, to cut the costs of launching to LEO, but in practice, checking and replacing the heat shield tiles was so expensive that it still cost billions each launch.  It was also not very safe, with two shuttles blowing up, one during launch, and one during re-entry.  It was retired 13 years ago, and all astronauts had to use the Soviet/Russian Soyuz rocket system to get to and from the International Space Station (ISS) until SpaceX's Dragon Crew Capsule started work.  

Musk's Starship is intended to colonise Mars, though it will be essential to launching all the Starlink satellites that will be needed to set up a mass universal satellite internet/phone system.   So the Starship lands vertically using retro-propulsion (the atmosphere on Mars isn't thick enough for wings to work).  This is tricky, though I don't doubt that SpaceX will eventually make it work.   

So, two alternate, competing technologies.  It --- at last! --- looks as if Dream Chaser will make its first test flight soon.  That is, if the rocket that is supposed to launch it is ready by then, which seems unlikely.  Perhaps SNC should have a chat with SpaceX, and use the Falcon 9 rocket to launch its Dream Chaser.

This video is a good explanation of Dream Chaser.

Will Starship lift off soon?

There has been little news about SpaceX's Starship for a more than a year now.  Partly, this was because SpaceX had to get government approval to launch Starship (something which it had inexplicably omitted to do); and partly because its new update of its Raptor engine seemed to have teething problems.  However, it has just successfully tested the booster with a full static fire, the last step before a launch.  In other words, it's just possible that in the next few weeks, the full stack Starship will be launched.  

From The BBC

Elon Musk's SpaceX company has performed a key test on its huge new rocket system, Starship.

Engineers conducted what's called a "static fire", simultaneously igniting 31 out of 33 of the engines at the base of the vehicle's lower-segment.

The firing lasted only a few seconds, with everything clamped in place to prevent any movement.

Starship will become the most powerful operational rocket system in history when it makes its maiden flight.

This could occur in the coming weeks, assuming SpaceX is satisfied with the outcome of Thursday's test.

The static fire took place at SpaceX's R&D facility in Boca Chica on the Texas/Mexico border.

On Twitter Elon Musk said that the team had turned off one engine before the test and that another engine stopped itself, leaving 31 engines firing overall.

But, he added, it was "still enough engines to reach orbit".

Even though this was not the full contingent of engines, it was still notable for the number of engines working in concert. The closest parallel is probably the N1 rocket that the Soviets developed in the late 1960s to take cosmonauts to the Moon.

It had 30 engines arranged in two rings. But the N1 failed on all four of its flights and was eventually cancelled.

The SpaceX Super Heavy booster, with all 33 modern power units, should produce roughly 70% more thrust off the launch pad than the N1. Even the US space agency Nasa's new mega-rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), which flew for the first time back in November, is dwarfed by the capability being built into Starship.

Mr Musk has high hopes for the vehicle. The entrepreneur wants to use it to send satellites and people into Earth orbit and beyond.

Nasa has already contracted SpaceX to develop a version that can play a role in its Artemis programme, to once again land astronauts on the Moon.

Mr Musk himself is focused on Mars. He's long held the ambition to get to the Red Planet, to establish settlements and, as he puts it, to make humans "a multi-planet species". He's also talked about point-to-point travel, taking passengers from one side of our world to the other in rapid time.

If Starship can be made to work it will be a game-changer, not just because of the mass it will be able to lift into space.

The concept is designed to be fully reusable, with both parts - the Super Heavy booster and the ship on top - coming back to Earth to fly, time and time again.

This means it could operate much like an airliner. The long-term cost savings compared with conventional, one-time-use rockets would be immense.

SpaceX will now review its data to understand why it couldn't fire all 33 engines on this occasion. It will also inspect the launch pad to see what, if any, damage occurred during the short firing. Previous, smaller-scale engine tests had fractured the concrete under the launch mount, requiring repairs.

Mr Musk has talked about an orbital attempt of the full Starship system in late February or March.

The ship, or upper-stage of the rocket, was removed for Thursday's test in case there was a catastrophic failure of the booster.

Starlink Maritime is available

 From Teslarati

SpaceX announced a new Starlink product. Starlink Maritime will provide oceangoing vessels with up to 350 Mbps download while at sea. And it’s not just ships and boats that would benefit. Starlink Maritime is primarily for all types of sea-going vessels including merchant vessels, oil rigs, and even premium yachts.

According to the website, “Starlink Maritime allows you to connect from the most remote waters across the world, just like you would in the office or at home.”

“In addition to withstanding extreme cold, heat, hail, sleet, heavy rain, and gale-force winds, Starlink also holds up against rocket engines.”

“Starlink is currently being used to get high-quality video of SpaceX rocket landings at sea, providing continuous coverage in the face of engines capable of generating up to 190,000 lbs of force.”

Users will be able to monitor and manage their Starlink fleet from a single portal and installation is designed with minimal above-deck space in mind.

The cost of Starlink Maritime includes a monthly payment of $5,000 and a one-time hardware cost of $10,000. The latter also includes two high-performance terminals. That may sound expensive but Elon Musk pointed out that SpaceX was paying $150,000 per month for a worse connection for its ships.

He added it wasn’t easy to ruggedize Starlink for relentless salt spray and extreme winds and storms in the deep ocean. As someone who lives in a state that has hurricane season, I’m sure these ocean storms will definitely put Starlink to the ultimate test.

Starlink has proven to save lives already. Elon Musk provided Ukraine with thousands of Starlink terminals which has helped the nation stay online despite the continuous attacks from Russia. SpaceX also provided Starlink terminals to St. Charles Parish after hurricane Ida left most of the southern portion of Louisiana without power and communications.

In the comments below the article, it was pointed out just how lucrative this would prove to Starlink/SpaceX.

Starlink has destroyed Putin's disinformation campaign

 From Tesmanian

SpaceX partnered with the U.S. Agency for International Development to send 15,000 Starlink user terminals to Ukraine amid the Russia invasion earlier this year. Today, June 11, marks 3 months and 2 weeks since Russia started a full-scale war against Ukraine. The Starlink satellite broadband constellation has proven to be a reliable source of communication in the country, especially for government authorities and emergency response teams who are working around-the-clock to keep civilians safe from Russian soldiers’ aggression.

U.S. Brigadier General Steven Butow says SpaceX's Starlink services have been vital for Ukrainian military operations, he has worked with SpaceX Starlink representatives as the director of the space portfolio at the defense innovation unit. "The strategic impact is, it totally destroyed [Vladimir] Putin's information campaign," Butow told Politico reporters. Russia is known to run misinformation campaigns to control its population; that tactic has not worked with Ukrainian civilians thanks to SpaceX's Starlink. "He never, to this day, has been able to silence Zelenskyy," said Butow about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

"It helped us a lot, in many moments related to the blockade of our cities, towns, and related to the occupied territories," Zelenskyy told Wired reporters in an exclusive interview. "Sometimes we completely lost communication with those places. To lose contact with those people is to lose control completely, to lose reality. [...] Believe me: people who got out of the occupied cities, where there was no such assistance as Starlink, said that the Russians told them that Ukraine doesn't exist anymore, and some people even began to believe it. I am really grateful for the support of Starlink," said Zelenskyy.

SpaceX operates approximately 2,600 Starlink satellites in Low Earth Orbit. The network has allowed soldiers to maintain contact with family members and coordinate fighting tactics. Starkink is very easy to access by simply connecting the user antenna to a power source and pointing it at the sky with easy instructions that allow anyone to access from anywhere in just a few minutes. Politico wrote a great story about how a Ukrainian soldier is using Starlink during combat - Read it here: UkraineX: How Elon Musk’s space satellites changed the war on the ground.

"We’ve got more than 11,000 Starlink stations and they help us in our everyday fight on all the fronts," says Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, "We’re ready, even if there is no light, no fixed internet, through generators using Starlink, to renew any connection in Ukraine." Alongside the Starlink user terminals, SpaceX founder Elon Musk also delivered Tesla electricity generators and car cigarette lighter power adapters to use Starlink aboard vehicles.

Source: Bloomberg

Micro nuclear reactors

I've already talked  about the small nuclear reactors NASA has developed for use in space and on Mars, called KRUSTY.  These will produce 1 kW of power, with the scaled-up version producing 10 kW.   I've also mentioned small modular reactors, here.

Ex-SpaceX engineers are developing a micro, portable nuclear reactor that can produce 1 MW of electricity, 100 times more than the scaled up version of NASA's KRUSTY nuclear reactor, designed to portable on the back of a lorry and with safety features allegedly making it much safer than the behemoths that catastrophically melted down at Chernobyl and Fukushima.  Since the company is still in the process of acquiring patents, there aren't many details.  

For me, one of the interesting aspects of this development is that SpaceX seems to have a division designing small nuclear reactors for use on Mars.  And on Starship?  No wonder SpaceX's latest video update about Starship shows it journeying to Mars without deploying solar panels!  

Using helium as a coolant certainly reduces the risk of explosions.  No mention of how nuclear waste is to be disposed of, though.

It's intriguing to see lots of private sector companies producing new designs for nuclear fission reactors.  The old super large designs seem to have got stuck in an expensive cul-de-sac.  Nuclear reactors will be very useful right here on Earth, if they can be made cheap enough and safe enough, as a complement to renewables in our electricity grids.  Lots of competing designs and companies might get us there quicker than large government bureaucracies, with both nuclear fission and fusion.

From New Atlas

California company Radiant has secured funding to develop a compact, portable, "low-cost" one-megawatt nuclear micro-reactor that fits in a shipping container, powers about 1,000 homes and uses a helium coolant instead of water.

Founded by ex-SpaceX engineers, who decided the Mars colony power sources they were researching would make a bigger impact closer to home, Radiant has pulled in US$1.2 million from angel investors to continue work on its reactors, which are specifically designed to be highly portable, quick to deploy and effective wherever they're deployed; remote communities and disaster areas are early targets.

The military is another key market here; a few of these could power an entire military base in a remote area for four to eight years before expending its "advanced particle fuel," eliminating not just the emissions of the current diesel generators, but also the need to constantly bring in trucks full of fuel for this purpose.

Those trucks will still have to run – up until the point where the military ditches diesel in all its vehicles – but they'll be much less frequent, reducing a significant risk for transport personnel.

Radiant says its fuel "does not melt down, and withstands higher temperatures when compared to traditional nuclear fuels." Using helium as the coolant "greatly reduces corrosion, boiling and contamination risks," and the company says it's received provisional patents for ideas it's developed around refueling the reactors and efficiently transporting heat out of the reactor core.

Radiant joins a number of companies now working on compact nuclear reactors, and a smaller number focusing specifically on portable units, which would include the floating barges proposed for mass-manufacture by Seaborg. It'll be a while before we see one up and running, but a clean, convenient, low-cost, long-life alternative to diesel generators would be very welcome.

 

20 Things which will change the world by 2040

Here are 20 things in no particular order which I think will totally change the world over the next 20 years.

1.  CHEAP ELECTRICITY

 Wind costs are falling by 5-10% per annum, solar by 10% to 20% and batteries by 15% plus.  Wind's cost declines will prolly slow over the next 10 years—it's a mature technology.  But the cost declines in solar are likely to continue, and in batteries, there's a real chance they'll accelerate.  If these trends continue (and why won't they?), in 10 years electricity will cost 25% of what it does now.  If the trend decline then halves to, say 7% a year, then in 20 years, electricity will cost just 10% of what it does now.  Cheap energy supercharges economic growth.  The low oil price from 1945 to 1973 helped drive rapid and sustained growth in the world economy.  Cheap renewables will do the same over the next 20 years and beyond.

2.  EVS

They're going to be cheaper than ICEVs (internal combustion vehicles) to buy, and much cheaper to run.  They'll be replacing ICEVs  so the shifts in society might not seem dramatic.  But with AIs running them, transport as a service will become common.  You'll summon a car using your phone, and it will drive itself to where you are and then to where you want to go.  Because EVs will last much longer than ICEVs and will be significantly cheaper to run, "transport as a service" will be a popular way for people to get around.  Car sales are likely to decline by 50% plus, as TAAS takes off.  Air pollution in cities will end.  By 2040, most of the world's vehicle fleet will be electric.  Maybe hydrogen fuel-cell, but I doubt it.  The cost of building a hydrogen refuelling network will be much more costly than just attaching your car to an already existing network, the electric grid.  And the energy efficiency of the hydrogen cycle is much lower than batteries.

3.  AI

I don't think we'll have true AI, as in sentient robots.  But we will have very sophisticated computerised control systems, such as those which will allow for self-driving cars and self-landing rockets.  This has been made possible by the 5 or 6 orders of magnitude decline in the costs of and size of super computers, as Tony Seba points out.  SpaceX's ability to land and re-use its rockets would not have been possible without the advances in computing power.  These advances and changes all interact.

4.  3-D PRINTING

This cuts the cost of manufacturing metal things by at least half, because there's much less scrap.  It also reduces the stock of parts you have to keep on hand.  And allows you to make more complicated things, like SpaceX's extraordinary new Raptor rocket engines.  On the ISS, there is a 3-D printer to make spare parts.  On Mars, and the Moon, 3-D printers will be used to build habitats; to make things which would take too long or are too expensive to get from Earth; and to make things which have short production runs or are experimental.

5.  VAT MEAT, MILK AND FISH

Cheap energy will change agriculture.  Right now, 20% of Australia's tomatoes come from a factory in the semi-desert in the north of the State of South Australia, using desalinated sea water and growing the tomatoes in greenhouses.  This undertaking uses no fossil fuel at all.  Animal rearing  uses vast areas of land, is highly polluting, and contributes 20% to global CO₂ emissions.  Vat meats and fish are already starting to take off.  Their costs are declining year by year.  By 2040, they will become the norm.  

There won't be "real" meat on Mars or on the Moon or in Space Stations .  There just aren't the resources to grow it.  If vat meat, fish and milk taste like the real thing, cost about the same or less, are environmentally kinder, and involve no animal suffering, why wouldn't you switch?  This will reduce emissions by 20% while allowing the rewilding of unused fields and grasslands.

6.  CHEAP ACCESS TO SPACE

Cheap access to space will change everything.  To settle Mars, we'll need to rapidly improve a whole range of technologies, like vat meat production, genuine air conditioning (meaning far more than just heating and cooling), hydroponics, water purification, extracting CO₂ from the atmosphere, genetic modification, medicine, and so on.

By the time SpaceX's Starship is running, SpaceX will have cut the cost of launching a kilogram to LEO (Low Earth Orbit) from $22,000 to ~$20.  Whenever you have a 10-fold decrease in costs you get disruption, as new technolgies take off.   This will be a 1000-fold decrease in cost.  We're already seeing the consequences of cheaper launches in the roll-out of SpaceX's Starlink super fast internet.  The development of a space-faring civilisation will spawn new technologies we haven't even thought of.  Who would have thought 20 years ago that we would carry computers in our pockets millions of times more powerful than the first IBM computer, computers which connect us to a massive knowledge network as well as news, videos, maps, Wikipedia?   None of that was predicted.  Yet think of the businesses which have developed because of those twin inventions, the smart phone and the internet (Apple, Google, Uber, Air BnB ....).  And think also how the explosive growth of smart phone sales also drove down li-ion battery prices,  allowing EVs and grid energy storage to happen.

7.  ASTEROID MINING

With cheap access to space also comes asteroid mining.  Because the asteroids aren't in deep gravity wells like the Earth or Mars, nudging them into orbits which intersect Earth's or Mars's will be cheap.  The resources of a single medium-sized  asteroid, for example for rare earth metals, will more than equal all the rare earth metals that have ever been mined on Earth.   We will prolly stop stripping the Earth to produce metals and minerals and instead start disassembling asteroids to do that.  The world's major resource companies will be asteroid miners.

But some of these will be used in space manufacturing.  Why take stuff into the gravity well when you can build it in LEO?  Asteroid mining will be even more important on Mars, as asteroids will likely provide the volatiles needed to give Mars an atmosphere dense enough for humans to work in without needing to wear pressurised space suits. 

8. BECOME A MULTI-PLANETARY SPECIES

Our first colony will be Mars.  Read  the Red Mars trilogy to see how colonising Mars will change Earth too.  Not just in technological advances but also in social advances.  Looking down on Mars and Earth from space will change mankind's perception of itself.  As Robert Zubrin says, knowing that there is no shortage of resources because we have unlimited resources in space means that most of the causes of war on Earth will disappear.  Of course, no matter how technologically advanced and prosperous humans become, there is no reason to suppose we will ever be more intelligent, less venal, less greedy, and less petty. 

After we colonise Mars, we'll start on Venus.  That'll be much harder.  But by then we will also have colonies in the asteroid belt and large inhabited space stations in orbit round the Earth and Mars.  We will truly be a multi-planetary species.  And that will change everything.

9. TRULY GLOBAL HIGH-SPEED INTERNET

SpaceX's Starlink has kicked off a revolution in high-speed internet.  Starlink's network will be truly global, available in the Arctic and Antarctic,  the Sahara and across the world's oceans.  In countries where wired internet is only available in cities, such as most of Africa, Starlink will provide links to remote villages and towns.  It'll be expensive ($100 per month), but villages could club together to pay for it.  Those same villages are off the electric grid, too, and small solar panels and batteries will change that.  Children who do their homework by candlelight will now be able to do it by LED light, and access the internet, connecting to the ginormous encyclopedia which is the interweb.  20 years ago we didn't have Wikipedia.  Today, even if your village doesn't have a library, even if you  can't afford to buy a book, you'll still be able to study science, maths, languages, technologies.    

10.  TERRAFORMING THE EARTH

The current fall in emissions isn't rapid enough to prevent a rise of more than 1.5 degrees C, maybe even 2 degrees C,  in global temperatures.   We will need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.  One way would be to cover desert and semi-desert areas with forests.  To do this would require desalination plants, powered by solar, which will get cheaper and cheaper over the next 2 decades.  It would be a mammoth undertaking, almost beyond our imagination.  But it will prolly be necessary.  Given the scale of the problem, any de-carbonisation method will have to be massive.  But something will have to be done to remove CO2 from our atmosphere.  Changing a planet's climate to make it more livable is called terraforming.  You might also call it geo-engineering.  Whatever; we will prolly have started to do it by 2040.  We will have no choice.


11.  GENE THERAPY & GENETIC MODIFICATION

The colonisation of Mars and the growth of space travel will accelerate the development of gene therapy, because radiation on Mars and in space will cause genetic damage.   Treating that will become imperative, and as technology often responds to extreme need, it will likely be developed, because it has to be.  Gene therapy will provides cures for cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and inherited genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis. 

Creating plants which will grow in our domes on Mars and on space stations to provide us with food will be important to the pioneers.   Dwarf wheat, larger tomatoes, low-rise almond/fruit trees, and so on and so on.  The need for these advances will drive rapid change.  But the advances themselves will drive down the cost of food back here on Earth.  


12.  THE RISE OF AFRICA

Africa is the second-largest continent, in population and size, compared to Asia.  For decades, Africa has been an economic laggard.  But solar favours countries near the equator.   Seasonal storage needs are much less than in high latitudes further from the equator.  8 hours of storage will be enough for most places within 30 degrees north and south of the equator.  Cheap electricity will be even cheaper in Africa.  In addition, Africa's population is young, it speaks English as a first or second language, and it's so far behind the production possibility frontier that high speed internet and distributed solar power will be transforming.    

Until recently, Africa has lagged the world economy, but access to electricity and information will change everything.  Africa will be the new China, with high growth rates, falling poverty and  rapid development, and with that will come greater political power.  China has recognised this reality; the rest of the world has not.  That needs to change.


13.  THE END OF NEO-LIBERALISM

Neo-liberalism has been tried for 40 years.  It has resulted in greater economic and financial instability, and vastly increased inequality of income and wealth (especially in those mostly Anglophone countries which have most enthusiastically embraced it), as well as a lower growth rate.   The rising inequality has also led to increased political extremism.  Economists like to pretend that economics is separate from politics.  But the consequences of increased inequality and greater uncertainty have shown that there is a non-economic price for neo-liberalism: the rise of far right parties and policies. The dogma of small government, low taxes, and deregulation is becoming tarnished.  The Covid crisis has conclusively shown that there are some things government does better than the private sector.  Unlike the neo-liberal dogma, the private sector doesn't inevitably do things better and more cheaply than the public sector, especially when second order effects are considered.  Privatisations of state-owned enterprises have mostly failed: costs are higher, services no better, corruption worse.

Expect a gradual retreat from the extreme tenets of neo-liberalism towards a more measured and pragmatic process.  Big(ger) government is back.  The big borrowings government took up under Covid are not going to be repaid.  Instead, governments will start running deficits again.  The post WW2 pragmatic neo-Keynesian synthesis will once again modify red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism.  

14.  A UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME

Technological advances will cause major disruptions to job markets.  So will shifts in economic growth and development.  In the past, dire poverty among the old was reduced by the introduction of a universal basic income or social wage for old people, otherwise known as the old age pension.  A UBI in developed countries, for everyone, has so far been seen as a step too far.  But opinion is changing.  If we are truly to drain the poison of the extreme right, we will need to address the insecurity and poverty of the precariat, which will likely be worsened by the technological and economic changes I think will happen.   A UBI would do that.

15.  HYPERSONIC INTERCONTINENTAL FLIGHTS

SpaceX would like to use Starship to run suborbital long-distance flights.  Musk has said that over long distances, suborbital flights will have a lower cost than conventional jet travel.  At 20 times the speed.  Anybody want to bet it won't happen?

16.  NEURALINK

Musk is afraid that a real AI (as opposed to very clever software) would end up ruling the world and humanity would end up being no more than pets of the machines.  If we even survive.  His response to that is to develop brain-machine interfaces.  This would make us as clever as our AI overlords.  We would have chips in our brain, like a permanently embedded smartphone.  It might never get to that, but if an interface can enable a blind person to see again, or a disabled person to walk, then that would be huge.  And having a small device in your head which allows one to communicate directly with the interweb would be revolutionary.  Not sure I like the security implications of that, though.

17.   ELECTRIC PLANES

We will soon see the introduction of electric planes which will allow short flights (up to 400 km) at 1/20th the cost of jet or jet-prop aircraft of today.  They will be used to connect outlying regions to the spaceports where suborbital ultrasonic flights will depart from and arrive at.  The long-term outlook for conventional airliners isn't good at all.  What these two developments mean together is that one will be able to fly from a small town in the bush to another small town on the other side of the world in a few hours.  A hundred years ago, it took 3 weeks for a ship to sail from Australia to Europe.  Currently, it takes 24 hours to fly that distance.  With suborbital hypersonic rockets, the journey time will be down to just an hour.

18.   NUCLEAR FUSION

Nuclear fusion is the opposite of nuclear fission, where large atoms, e.g., uranium, are split into smaller atoms, releasing massive amount of energy.  Fusion is what happens inside stars like our sun, where the lightest atoms, hydrogen, are blasted together under intense heat and presure to produce heavier atoms.  And therein lies the difficulty--it's very hard to create those conditions outside the fiery heart of a star.   For 70 years, the joke goes, nuclear fusion has always been 30 years away. But maybe that's changed.  Fusion is likely to make much faster progress now that private firms and individuals are bankrolling research than it has under the aegis of giant bureaucracies, so I think we'll prolly have fusion by 2040.  We will need nuclear fusion on Mars, and to mine the asteroids.  And it will be enormously useful on Erarth, too.

19.  A RETURN TO DEMOCRACY

Winston Churchill said that democracy was the worst system, apart from all the others.  People have pointed to the Chinese and Russian dictatorships as exemplars of how to run politico-economic systems.   Yet both countries have declining growth rates.  This is particularly interesting in the case of China, which is far from being a wealthy country, and where you would expect growth to remain higher than it is, given where it is in the typical development pathway.  For all America's faults, and despite the out-and out dementia of the Right and the Republican Party, the technological developments there are breathtaking.  Perhaps people need freedom if they are to innovate.  Just a thought.  

If we drain the pus of divisiveness and far-right toxins from our democracies by reducing inequality, and again giving ordinary people hope that their lives and the lives of their children will be better, I believe that the autocratic political/social/ economic alternatives of China and Russia will be seen as what they are: relative failures.

20.  SYNERGY

All these changes will interact, just as smartphones and internet did, the one driving the development of the other.  And the interactions will spiral out of control unforecastably. changing the world in ways which will surprise and shock us.  And some of the consequences will be adverse.  But it's going to be a most interesting ride.

SpaceX safely de-orbits Starlink satellites

 From Tesmanian

SpaceX demonstrated on-orbit debris mitigation after a geomagnetic storm destroyed 40 Starlink satellites on February 4th. The satellites were launched to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) by a Falcon 9 rocket on February 3rd. Geomagnetic storms are a major disturbance of Earth’s magnetosphere that is caused when there is an exchange of high energy that comes from Solar wind into the space environment surrounding Earth. The geomagnetic disturbance caused the density of Earth's atmosphere to increase. The higher atmospheric drag in LEO caused 40 out of the 49 newly launched Starlink satellites to fall back to Earth. The satellites are designed to completely burn up in the atmosphere when they’re no longer operational to avoid creating space junk in orbit. Some of the satellites affected by the magnetic storm already burned up.

Sociedad de Astronomia del Caribe, a Puerto Rico astronomy non-profit organization, shared on February 7 that it captured a video of some of the brand new satellites burning upon atmospheric reentry, shown below. SpaceX intentionally deploys its satellites into lower orbits between 210 and 240 kilometers “so that in the very rare case any satellite does not pass initial system checkouts it will quickly be deorbited by atmospheric drag,” the company said. “While the low deployment altitude requires more capable satellites at a considerable cost to us, it’s the right thing to do to maintain a sustainable space environment.”

The company assured that the “deorbiting satellites pose zero collision risk with other satellites and by design demise upon atmospheric reentry—meaning no orbital debris is created and no satellite parts hit the ground. This unique situation demonstrates the great lengths the Starlink team has gone to ensure the system is on the leading edge of on-orbit debris mitigation,” said SpaceX.

For every mission, the company communicates with each newly launched Starlink satellite to see if it is working properly. If the satellites do not work they intentionally deorbit it to completely burn up in the atmosphere. If everything is working well, each satellite uses onboard Krypton-powered ion thrusters to slowly raise into an operational orbit of around 550-kilometers. The satellites in higher altitudes are unaffected by the atmospheric drag caused by geomagnetic disturbances.

SpaceX said that the recent geomagnetic storm “significantly impacted” the newly launched Starlink satellites. –“[…]  Onboard GPS suggests the escalation speed and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50 percent higher than during previous launches. The Starlink team commanded the satellites into a safe-mode where they would fly edge-on (like a sheet of paper) to minimize drag—to effectively ‘take cover from the storm’—and continued to work closely with the Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron and LeoLabs to provide updates on the satellites based on ground radars,” the company shared in a press release. “Preliminary analysis show the increased drag at the low altitudes prevented the satellites from leaving safe-mode to begin orbit raising maneuvers, and up to 40 of the satellites will reenter or already have reentered the Earth’s atmosphere.”

Source: Sociedad de Astronomia del Caribe

Starship goes mainstream

 For a long time, it was just internet dweebs who were excited about Starship.  If you talked to most people, they'd never even heard of Starship, and if they had, they thought it was about creating a bolt-hole for billionaires (hint: no it isn't) There were enthusiasts on YouTube, but the mainstream media mostly ignored the story, or when they did cover it, did shallow and inaccurate reports.  Readers of this blog will know that I have been enthusiastic about Starship since it was first mooted, under the name 'Interplanetary Explorer'.  

But .... The Economist magazine has finally taken the whole thing seriously enough to do a reasonably in-depth and accurate piece, which I summarise below.   Starship is now mainstream enough to get the serious attention of a prestigious news magazine.  

WHEN IT COMES to size and spectacle, the peak of the Space Age passed in 1973, with the final flight of the Saturn V rocket that had carried the Apollo astronauts to the moon. Taller than the Statue of Liberty, the Saturn V could lug 140 tonnes into orbit. Its first flight, in 1967, provoked Walter Cronkite, an American news anchor reporting far from the pad, to exclaim: “My God, our building’s shaking here!” as ceiling tiles fell around him. Despite half a century of technological progress, nothing as powerful has reached orbit since.

Not far from Boca Chica, a Texan hamlet a couple of miles from the Mexican border, SpaceX, a rocketry firm founded by Elon Musk, is developing a machine that it hopes will change that. Built from gleaming stainless steel, with its nose adorned with fins and ten metres taller than even the Saturn V, “Starship” looks like something from the cover of a 1950s pulp science-fiction magazine. Its planned payload of up to 150 tonnes means that five Starship flights could put more stuff into space than the rest of the world managed with 135 rocket launches in 2021. Its upper stage contains more pressurised volume than the International Space Station, which took a decade, dozens of launches and perhaps $100bn to assemble.

But it is not just the size that matters. When a Saturn V took off to send men to the moon, the only bit of the 2,800 tonnes of hardware which came back was a cramped five-tonne capsule with three men inside. Each new mission meant a new Saturn V. With Starship, the idea is that all the hardware will come back: the massive booster stage almost immediately, the second, orbital stage after fulfilling whatever mission it had been sent on.

At a press event on February 10th to show off an assembled rocket Mr Musk reiterated his reasons for founding SpaceX in the first place: to buy humanity an insurance policy against existential risks by establishing a colony on Mars. Starship is designed to transport the million tonnes of supplies he thinks might be necessary for that job—roughly 100 times more mass than has been launched since the start of the space age. To that end, it is designed to be not only the biggest rocket ever built, but also the cheapest. Existing rockets cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars per launch (the Saturn V may have cost over $1bn in today’s money). Despite Starship’s size, SpaceX hopes to cut that to single-digit millions.

 [....]

But first the rocket needs to fly. A series of test flights of Starship’s upper stage (which, in isolation, is rather confusingly also called “Starship”) have ended in crash-landings and explosions. A successful flight came on May 5th last year, when an upper stage flew 10km into the air before landing safely back on its pad. A full-fledged orbital test of the two-stage form of the rocket, with one “Starship” upper stage sitting atop a “Super Heavy” booster, had been due in January.

That orbital flight, though, needs approval from regulators, who were deluged with thousands of public comments. Officials have promised a decision within weeks. But broader environmental issues could yet force the firm to suspend work at Boca Chica entirely. An internal memo leaked last year revealed serious problems with the “Raptor” engines intended to power Starship. In his press conference, Mr Musk left himself a fair amount of wiggle room. An orbital flight, he said, might come in “a couple of months”—though it could also slip to the end of the year.

Something like Starship has been in development at SpaceX for over a decade, under names such as MCT (“Mars Colonial Transporter”), ITS (“Interplanetary Transport System”), and BFR (“Big Fucking Rocket”). Earlier versions were huger still: at one point the ITS was to have a 300-tonne payload. But all versions have had one thing in common: they are designed to be entirely reusable.

SpaceX already flies partially-reusable rockets: the first stages of its Falcon 9 machines fly back to Earth under their own power. Once refuelled and refurbished, they can fly again, spreading their construction cost over many launches. But their second stages, which end up much higher and moving at orbital speeds, remain expendable. (One, first launched in 2015, is due to crash into the Moon in March.)

With Starship, SpaceX plans to recover both parts. Its “Super Heavy” first stage, like the Falcon 9’s, is designed to fly back to the ground shortly after launch. SpaceX plans to catch it in mid-air with a pair of robotic “chopsticks” attached to the launch tower from which it took off.

Recovering the upper stage requires more drama. The plan is for Starship to fall belly-first from space, relying on atmospheric drag—rather than scarce fuel—to shed most of its speed. It will use its stubby fins for control, “rather like how skydivers use their hands and feet,” says Scott Manley, a physicist and programmer who runs a popular rocketry-focused YouTube channel. When it is within a few hundred metres of the ground it will flip itself upright, relight some of its engines and make a rocket-powered landing of its own.

Several test flights have practised this flipping manoeuvre already, though not after a descent from orbit. Mr Musk (whose bold visions sometimes work, and sometimes do not) hopes that each “Super Heavy” booster could be ready to fly again within an hour. Since the rocket’s upper stages would have to complete at least one orbit before returning to Earth, he hopes they might one day manage three flights a day. (The minimum re-use time for a Falcon first stage is about a month.)

Starship’s “Raptor” engines are likewise designed with reusability in mind, says Mr Manley. They use a sophisticated, highly efficient design pioneered—but never flown—in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. That helps reduce wear on components. Somewhat unusually, they run on methane rather than kerosene, a more-commonly used rocket fuel. One reason is that methane produces very little soot, which helps keep the engine’s internals clean—another boon for an engine intended to fly again and again. And both methane and the oxygen necessary to burn it can be made from Mars’s thin carbon-dioxide atmosphere with the help of some fairly straightforward industrial chemistry. SpaceX hopes that could, one day, allow Mars-bound Starships to refuel for a return trip to Earth.

But high-level design decisions are not the only reason Starship is cheap. SpaceX has an iterative, rapid-fire, startup-style culture very different from that of older aerospace firms (hence all the crash-landings and explosions). Mr Musk’s development philosophy is that “if things are not failing, you aren’t innovating enough.” In a speech in November to America’s National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine he spoke of running a dozen test flights in 2022. The firm mixes high-tech, bespoke design in some areas (such as the Raptor engines) with a make-do-and-mend attitude elsewhere (some Super Heavy prototypes have fins controlled by electric motors taken from cars made by Tesla, another of Mr Musk’s businesses).

One good example is the rocket’s stainless-steel construction. Starship was originally going to be built from high-tech carbon-fibre composites, which are both very strong and very light. But in 2019, despite having produced several big components, SpaceX changed its mind and went back to the drawing board. Carbon composites, it turns out, have several disadvantages. They are porous, fiddly to work with, and need to be cured in an autoclave—not easy when making rocket-body segments that are 9 metres across. And, at around $130 per kilogramme, composites are expensive.

Stainless steel, by contrast, is strong but heavy and therefore not an obvious choice for rocket-building. Some steel alloys, though, get significantly stronger as they cool down, meaning less is required for a given strength. And since Starship uses cryogenic propellant, cooling is in abundant supply. Steel is tougher, too, which can save weight elsewhere. SpaceX hopes to get away with applying a heat shield to only the “windward” part of the upper stage, which feels the full force of re-entry heating, leaving the “leeward” side as bare metal and saving mass. Steel does not need painting, which cuts weight a bit more. It is much easier to work with, and can be had for mere dollars per kilogramme. For a company that intends to mass-produce its gigantic rocket, says Mr Potter at BryceTech, a firm of space-industry analysts, that matters.

That may sound like a risky approach when it comes to something as unforgiving as rocket science. But it has served SpaceX well so far. It has pulled off 111 Falcon 9 launches in a row without failure, making it one of the most reliable rockets ever flown. Some individual Falcon-9 first stages have already been launched ten times.

[....]

SpaceX, for its part, knows exactly what it wants to do with Starship, even before it starts thinking about Mars. Its “Starlink” project aims to use swarms of thousands of low-flying satellites to beam high-speed internet to anywhere on the Earth’s surface. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s chief executive, has noted that the global telecommunications market is worth perhaps $1trn a year. SpaceX thinks it might reasonably aspire to about 3-4% of it.

Because low-flying satellites can see only a small portion of the Earth’s surface, Starlink requires enormous numbers of them. The firm already has about 1,655 in orbit, about a third of the total number of active satellites in space. It has permission from American regulators to fly 12,000, and is trying to obtain a licence for 30,000. And that number will need topping up regularly, as individual satellites in the fleet fail, or as the tiny traces of atmosphere that are present in low orbit eventually pull them from the sky. (The satellites are designed to disintegrate on re-entry.) Starship should be able to launch around 400 at a time, of a bigger and more advanced design, and for much less to boot.

Other challenges will need solving. Satellite internet has a bad record of bankrupting those who try it, as Mr Musk has noted. The cost of the satellite dishes that consumers use to receive the service is another issue. SpaceX presently sells those at a substantial loss. Nonetheless, excitement over Starlink’s potential accounts for almost all of the firm’s $100bn valuation.

But first, SpaceX has to make the rocket work. In his press conference Mr Musk was at pains to play down the probability of the orbital test—when it happens—going smoothly. Even if it did, plenty more testing and development would be needed before the rocket would be ready to fly real cargo.

Regulatory battles may be looming, too. The firm’s Boca Chica facility was built on the understanding that it would be used for the Falcon Heavy, a much smaller rocket than Starship. Explosions from failed flight tests have scattered debris over a wide area, says Mr Manley, while road closures annoy locals. Environmental regulators are reportedly unhappy, and pushing for a full review of the firm’s licence. Mr Musk has said that, in the worst case, SpaceX would have to move Starship development to Cape Canaveral in Florida, which would delay things for months.

Even then, Starship’s capabilities could go unused. The true size of the market for Starlink remains unknown, even if SpaceX can drive costs down. As for his grandest ambition of all, it is not at all clear how many people would volunteer to live on Mars. The sales pitch, said Mr Musk, is that “it’s going to be cramped, dangerous, difficult, very hard work [and] you might die.”

But the only way to know for sure is to get the rocket working. Here, at least, it would take a bold person to bet against SpaceX. In 2008, after the first three launches of its tiny Falcon 1 rocket had failed, the firm almost went under. But the fourth launch worked. Later, it took its engineers more than a dozen attempts to master landing the first stage of the Falcon 9. These days, it is among the most reliable rockets ever built. Mr Musk, for his part, is confident. “[Starship] will work,” he said. “There’ll be a few bumps along the road, but it’ll work”.

[Read more here]

Starship to be upgraded to increase LEO tonnage

 From Teslarati

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that future Starships – or at least certain Starship variants – are being upgraded with 50% more Raptor engines and stretched propellant tanks.

On December 17th, the CEO revealed the plans, confirming a tweet published three months prior stating that Starship was “begging for an extra 3 engines.” Musk was likely referring to the fact that a 9-engine Starship – combined with upcoming 33-engine Super Heavy boosters – would create a rocket with 42 engines, a number made famous as “the answer to the ultimate question of life [and everything]” in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – both of which the CEO vocally enjoys. As ever, it’s thus almost impossible to tell jokes from serious, consequential plans – as is the case with Starship.

Nonetheless, origination aside, adding another three Raptor engines to Starship – boosting the count from six to nine – and stretching its tanks could be a substantial upgrade.

According to amateur modelers, who are generally able to estimate rocket performance with enough information about its structures, shape, and engines; an optimal nine-engine Starship’s tanks would be stretched about 25% to store an additional 300 tons (650,000 lb) of cryogenic liquid oxygen and methane (LOx/LCH4). That upgraded Starship would have a liftoff mass close to 1600 tons (3.5M lb) and stand about 55 meters (~180 ft) tall – 10% taller than current ships.

At stage separation, close to vacuum, a stretched Starship with three sea-level-optimized Raptors (RCs) and six vacuum-optimized Raptors (RVacs) should produce at least 2000 tons (4.4M lbf) of thrust – and possibly more than 2250 tons (~5M lbf) depending on engine performance. At that upper level of thrust, Starship – an upper stage – would be just 10% less powerful than the first stage of Falcon Heavy, the most powerful operational rocket in the world.

Regardless of its thrust, dimensions, or weight, what matters most is how a stretched, nine-engine Starship would impact that overall rocket’s launch performance. If unofficial modelers are to be believed, the results are significant: compared to a ‘normal’ Starship with a six-engine upper stage and 33-engine booster, the stretched ship could theoretically boost the amount of payload the rocket can launch to low Earth orbit (LEO) from about 150 tons to 220 tons or more (330,000 to 485,000+ lb) – an almost 50% improvement. In fact, per another recent comment from Musk indicating that Starship – unlike almost all other rockets – won’t temporarily throttle down on ascent, the total payload performance could be a bit less than 230 tons (~500,000 lb) – more than 50% greater than a shorter six-engine Starship.

If those estimates are accurate, upgrading Starship with nine Raptors and stretching its tanks is a no-brainer. It might slow development and make all nine-engine ships cost a substantial fraction more but a 50% improvement in payload performance would significantly improve the efficiency of Starship’s more ambitious Moon and Mars launch profiles, which require numerous orbital refuelings.

In effect, a 50% payload increase would allow SpaceX to complete most refueling tasks more efficiently, quickly, and cheaply. Even if the upgrade plans mean that all Starships will be stretched and carry nine Raptors, fully refueling the new Starship variant in LEO could require 7 tanker launches instead of 8-10. If SpaceX doesn’t mind maintaining multiple distinct Starship variants, which appears to be the case, then ships that are exclusively dependent on refueling (Moon and Mars landers in particular) could stay at their current size, with ~1200 tons (~2.6M lb) of propellant storage and six Raptors. A fleet of upgraded Starships could thus refuel their smaller siblings with just 5-6 tanker launches.

However, there’s a good chance that the extra mass required to stretch Starship ~5.5m (~4 tons or ~9000 lb) is minor enough that SpaceX will instead stretch all Starship variants. In fact, for variants like NASA’s HLS Moon lander and future Marsbound Starships, which depend entirely on refueling to reach their destinations, stretched tanks and more propellant storage could increase the amount of payload they could send to the Moon, Mars, and other high-energy destinations by quite a bit. Ultimately, it will be fascinating to hear more details from SpaceX and Musk on how exactly the upgraded Starship design might benefit those operations in the coming weeks and months.

Rocket payload seems to me to rise at the square of size.  A small increase in power and size produces a disproportionate increase in payload, and (since both Starship and its Super Heavy booster will be fully re-usable) a disproportionate decrease in the cost of lifting one kilogram to orbit.  Observe that the increase in fuel needed is small (25% for Starship, 10% for Super Heavy/Starship combined) relative to the 50% rise in payload.  And fuel will represent most of the cost of launching to LEO (low Earth orbit), since both booster and Starship will be re-used.  I haven't estimated how much this improvement will cut the cost of a ticket to Mars, but the decrease should be substantial.  It will also dramatically cut the cost of launching the Starlink internet satellite constellation.

Other aerospace developers spend decades designing and building new craft, and only when the new craft are in production, do they start on improvements and refinements.  SpaceX hasn't even launched either of its mammoth spacecraft to orbit, and yet it is already moving towards much lower per kilogram cost launches.  

A Starship with 3 vacuum engines being loaded onto the Super Heavy booster.
Source: Teslarati

New Starlink satellite "dish"

 As ever, SpaceX continues race forward at the speed of light, while its competitors are still putting their shoes on.  From Teslarati.

SpaceX has launched a smaller, more compact, second-generation version of its Starlink satellite internet dish.

SpaceX said on its Starlink support page that the new dish utilizes a square-shaped design that is more compact and lighter than the previous circular dish. The new, square Starlink unit weighs just 9.2 pounds, a 42.5% reduction in weight from the first-gen model, which weighed 16 pounds in total.

The Federal Communications Commission also gave approval for SpaceX to operate the new dishes yesterday, the same day the company launched the second-gen model of its internet satellite.

SpaceX has planned for several months to launch the newly designed dish in an effort to cut production costs and increase production output. In September at the annual SATELLITE conference, SpaceX CFO Bret Johnson said that the company was manufacturing around 5,000 Starlink dishes every week, translating to an annual capacity of a quarter of a million user terminals. Johnson also gave details on the new satellite design, stating that the new dish would reduce production costs drastically. It was also a good boost to the company’s financial sheet, as the new dish costs roughly half to build compared to the first-gen model.

The new dish features a 3×3, MU-MIMO router that can transmit three bandwidth streams to three different devices. This prevents network congestion and slower speeds, which some users, unfortunately, face when crowding a single modem or transmitter device with too many internet-using pieces of technology. The previous dish only had a 2×2 MU-MIMO router, meaning the new dish can now accommodate an additional device, a huge advantage for households with multiple internet devices.

There are also improvements with the dishes’ WiFi modem’s ability to handle various weather scenarios. The new modem can now operate in temperatures as low as -22° F (-30° C) and as high as 122° F (50° C) and is completely waterproof. The first-gen model was also waterproof but only operated to function indoors between 32°F and 86°F.

The new dish does have one drawback, however, which is the absence of a built-in Ethernet port. SpaceX will sell a separate Ethernet adaptor for the dish in its online shop. “Bypass functionality is coming soon, and we are actively working on development of a Starlink mesh product,” the company’s support page said.

The price of the dish is not increasing and will remain the same at $499. The internet service is currently $99 per month.

SpaceX has been selling its satellite dishes at a loss, and this advance will allow the dish itself (as opposed to the service) to be profitable.  Expect the roll-out of Starlink to accelerate.  Starlink isn't just a global ultra-high-speed network, it's also the way SpaceX will raise enough money to fund Starship and the colonisation of Mars.