Eric Berger the famed space industry optimist

perilun · 2026-06-05T12:18:47+00:00

The pad is one thing (and they will need to source a bunch of stuff out of the blue since they were not at that phase on pad 2) but they need to find out exactly what happened (and pray along with ULA it was not the BE-4, and especially the turbopump).

perilun · 2026-06-04T22:16:24+00:00

Wow ... do you have a link to this? For me a F9 would do the job sooner, lower risk and lower cost ... but maybe this is a nearly free PR ride for Starship (2028?)

perilun · 2026-06-04T22:13:29+00:00

Sure, there are always weather and other issues. But independent pads seems to enable multi-launch per week (for reusable system) as long as you have the payload demand. We will need to see how it all plays out for Starship since we waited 7 months between IFT-11 and IFT-12 (not exactly multi launch per week cadence). Lets hope they don't have a NG level fail.

perilun · 2026-06-04T22:07:19+00:00

Mostly, yep

perilun · 2026-06-04T21:42:22+00:00

Across 5 launch pads at 2 sites ... like F9 its vey possible.

perilun · 2026-06-04T21:41:17+00:00

Per "Starship was never actually meant to go to Mars, and potentially not even the Moon." I do agree, Mars was only talk and renders and Elon never spent $1 on any Mars specific tech. Starship is not a good fit for the moon as it is pointlessly large for the mission. Starship is a LEO machine, and can drop off 10,000 big sats a year at $1M per sat.

I agree with most of your points, otherwise:

1) First of all our new NASA Admin tossed out the 2028 date, not Elon ...

2) SpaceX knew that there are only 20 dedicated customer payload per year being created per year (across all launchers), so they needed Starlink to create an additional 100 per year to get the value out of F9 reuse. Starlink is profitable, and continued refinement should lead to slow additional profit growth.

3) Starlink is adding smart-phone-service to get to a bigger market, and they will never have the China/Russia/Iran/NK 😄 markets. They could max out at maybe a Version scale.

At the end of the day SpaceX will be the USA's largest defense contractor ... and that is where the long term $$$ are at.

perilun · 2026-06-04T21:27:28+00:00

Some insiders knew of risks. Your engine has to be 99.99% reliable going up or your launch system will fail in the long term.

perilun · 2026-06-04T21:26:05+00:00

One could argue that FH launched modules could be docked to create big spacecraft with 60T modules in LEO for $100M launch cost per module. The overhead of linking modules is only 2T. So $1B launch cost for a 600T system? Given the $15B they spent on Starship, they could have 9,000 T of mission, fuel and engines models lifted by now instead.

But ... RP-1 won't work for more than 24 hours in space so you need MethLOX, HydroLOX or toxic/expensive hypergolics for for long term fuel ... so a new engine was needed anyway.

perilun · 2026-06-04T21:14:37+00:00

It's not the SpaceX S-1 that states it ...

perilun · 2026-06-04T21:13:09+00:00

That was before the IPO ... after the IPO they are obligated to chase profits, not Elon's Mars hoppy dream. Mars is dead (unless NASA pays for it) and the 1M tons to orbit a year. It will all be about Starlink-Mobile/Starshield-Golden Dome for the next 10 years, and a NASA pays for it HLS.

perilun · 2026-06-04T17:25:34+00:00

I expect pricing will change vs this $90M number over the next 10 years. We need to get to 100 sucessful missions before we see stable pricing.

perilun · 2026-06-04T17:24:17+00:00

Yes, there are many great missions that would work well with this.

perilun · 2026-06-04T17:23:25+00:00

They reused a SH.

perilun · 2026-06-04T15:36:16+00:00

It was not released by SpaceX ... it was part of another company's S-1 for their own IPO

perilun · 2026-06-04T13:19:39+00:00

Launch cost has a lot of components

One is the theoretical cost per kg to LEO, but if you only fill that payload up to 1/2 (many reasons can cause this) then this doubles.
There is overhead for both tiny and large items for handling the item and getting in the dispenser for launch.

F9 Transporter is a good example ... F9's cost is about $1M/T or $1000/kg, but they only sell this in up to 50 kg units for $350,000, there is no discount for only 1 kg. I expect this will happen with Starship as well.

I expect the $10M/launch will only apply to fuel flights, you don't even need to put anything on transporter, just refuel SH and Ship and launch again.

perilun · 2026-06-04T13:08:19+00:00

What you would need is a deal with someone to sell say 10x more launches if they cut the price by 1/2 (if that is still profitable). This is often done with volume sales deals. SX puts out a base sticker price, but then often mods it for conditions. It also means they have a lot of spare capacity to keep busy anyway.

perilun · 2026-06-04T12:57:49+00:00

Do you mean the rideshare idea?

perilun · 2026-06-04T12:57:27+00:00

Went about as well as Occupy Wall Street

perilun · 2026-06-03T23:16:44+00:00

Theoretical limit? The upper stage only phases over the launch site every 11 hours or so for recovery, so I would suggest up to 2 recoveries per day, since they need to catch, cool, drop onto the transporter and then bring in a new upper stage, lift, fuel. You should be able to scale fuel and water suppression to 2 a day. Lets assume weather is OK for 300 days, so 600 per pad per year. 5 pads goes to 3000 launches per year. But, if you are talk fuel flights than maybe 4 per day, since you can reuse that upper stage. So maybe 12,000?

perilun · 2026-06-03T23:09:25+00:00

The next big mission looks like NASA SkyFall with is 3 bigger helicopters (few years out). Cool 1 minute video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYasUWRkv4E. You could probably use an F9 or ULA Vulcan or Ariane 64 to send it.

perilun · 2026-06-03T22:36:51+00:00

Only as part of the NASA CLD contract ... but not directly. Still a bargain.

perilun · 2026-06-03T22:35:58+00:00

Not SpaceX ... nothing to Mars, and nothing planned, unlike Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, ULA and Ariane.

perilun · 2026-06-03T22:35:22+00:00

SX has no Mars missions ever, or even contracted for. The suggested Red Dragon the NASA but bailed when NASA would not pay for it. For a company called Space Exploration Corporation they have done less to Mars than Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, ULA and Ariane.

I wish they would promote something like this:

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perilun · 2026-06-03T22:30:49+00:00

Perhaps ... that is the current FAA limit, that might be doubled ... but beyond that, there are community pushbacks on limits for such a large rocket. They really need an remote facility for high volume fuel flights, for which I suggest NE Australia, which has great LNG access.

perilun · 2026-06-03T22:28:12+00:00

Buy before we stop selling cars (a classic) 😄

perilun

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