He has a vision. And he’s willing to spend a lot of money on it. That’s something, anyway.
Elon and freedom exceed Kim and North Korea
Shorter version with commentary.
Elon Musk SpaceX STARSHIP UPDATE: Highlights and Reactions!! 23:38
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj_go6_5zkE
Highlights for the no click crowd :
Musk’s speech :
Money spent - only a small fraction goes into space - all the rest is spent on Earth creating jobs.
We all are used to seeing a launch every once in a while, but the ships will be launched multiple times per day - 2.5 minutes up, 4 down, refueled checked, launched again. Minimum is 3 launches per week carrying tonnage to orbit (one week will carry more tonnage than all the launches since Sputnik). Ships does several orbits then lands and is reused again like the boosters.
Mars needs about 1 million tons of stuff to become self-sustaining, needing 100% of all the things needed to survive.
Ships lift to LEO 100-150 tons - goal is 200 tons to LEO ; **refilled** with O2, not refueled with methane ; energy to Mars is only a bit more than needed to go to the moon ; will have 2X thrust of Saturn V ; launch tower took 13 months to design and build completion and is a complex as the ship or booster.
Raptor 2 engine will cost 1/2 as much as Raptor 1 ; 230 tones of thrust going to 250 ; much simpler engine ; is reusable.
Texas Starbase R& D launch site does not yet have all the approvals needed, but they have build launch tower at Cape Canaveral - it has full approval, so if Biden does not approve of Texas, they will move everything to Fla in 6 -8 months.
As soon as they are confident of Starship, they will be using it as test bed to launch Starlinks.
Future announcements by other people we will be super excited about - we have to wait for it. “Let’s make this real!!” he said at end.
Q& A:
Starship might be cheapest way to transport high value stuff and people around world - would take 1 hour to anywhere on globe. Planes take 20 hours same distance (add in landing and refueling).
Need high flight rate ans lots of Starships to get costs down. Development cost of the Starship have been 5-10% of costs to develop Saturn V.
Will get to orbit this year ; aim to produce 1 Raptor 2 engine per day - right now at 5 a week. Produce one booster a month with 33 engines each - orders of magnitude more efficient than anyone else
Once this works will be able to get 100 tons to USEFUL Leo for $10 million.
Went into geek territory with detailed descriptions of Raptor 2 engines (330 BAR engine pressures). Biggest challenge now is to keep combustion chamber from melting.
Life support to moon doable with bigger Dragon capsule ; Mars life support a whole other kettle of fish.
Possible launches in March from several platforms.
Ends with high-tech animation of how whole system will work 18.39 min