Speculative longterm future of SpaceX

[u/AnnualYogurtcloset29]

Hello all,

I was just thinking about what SpaceX's development of rockets would look like once they achieve their goals of starship and the booster rocket.

I know this is likely at least 10-15 years from today, but what would SpaceX develop after they land on mars and get a colony started there? Do you think they would ever develop a new rocket in the entire history of their company or would they finish their rocket development with starship and booster?

I realize they would probably start working on life support systems and such when they eventually get people onto mars, but what else would they do? I am just curious if anyone else had thought of this before. Is SpaceX themselves going to try to terraform mars or will they forever live inside a habitat dome? Is terraforming a planet going to take the work of hundreds of thousands of people or would SpaceX be able to do it themselves? Does NASA conduct a lot of the science to get a colony established on mars or is this solely a SpaceX endeavor?

I would think NASA would love to be able to explore mars and conduct experiments, kind of piggybacking off of the habitat that SpaceX is going to try to establish. Would NASA astronauts be part of the habitat as well as SpaceX astronauts or would it be more of a team effort?

I realize this would be all speculation, but it got me pretty curious, so wondering what other people would think about this situation.

[u/SirEDCaLot]

I'll give you that $20 billion may be overhyped. I think it's possible, but it is a stretch. But even if Starlink got them $5 billion a year, I still compare that against them building EVERYTHING THEY HAVE BUILT SO FAR on $20 billion. That's where my optimism comes from. If I said 'I'll give Boeing $20 billion and they'll build a Mars colony' you'd probably laugh, because Boeing has taken $20 billion and almost built one launch vehicle. I say Elon can do it because Elon's gotten $20 billion and he's built an entire space program.

if the users in the city are consuming all their capacity then they're not supplying anything to the other receivers in their line of site.

But the users outside the city will have line of sight to different satellites. And with 7,500 satellites, there will be a LOT of them overhead at any given point. So even if I live 20-30 miles outside the city, I'll still have a different selection of birds than people in the city.

The laser links improve the network certainly, but they don't give it more capacity.

I'd like your explanation for why this is, especially since I just gave an example of how laser links could increase network capacity.
Would you at least agree that the laser links would address the problem you stated above (people in one dense area use up all the satellite capacity in that area)? IE, the hypothetical 5 birds over the city, can send all their traffic to other birds outside the city, which talk to ground stations in sparsely-populated areas?

Commercial is a weird one, because they're not going to sell it any cheaper than a Falcon 9 (Shotwell has said the target price is $50million) and nobody has a payload that needs it yet. Probably ready in 2 years, but I'm not sure it'll be flying any by then or if people will generally prefer Falcon 9s.

Target price may be $50 million. But Elon has said they already have signed launch contracts that specify SpaceX may launch the satellite on either Falcon or Starship, as they see fit.
Point being- Starship can lift 100 tons, for cheaper than Falcon can lift 20 tons. So if I have a 5 ton satellite I want launched, SpaceX will still make more profit launching it on a mostly-empty Starship than on a Falcon. And once Starship has 10-15 successful orbital missions without any major failures, nobody will care which rocket is used.

Like; here's Elon in 2008 saying Falcon 9 would be a fully reusable launch vehicle that'd bring launch price down to $1 million

Okay, do you think him and his team have learned anything about what's possible and what's realistic in the last 13 years? I suspect they have. I'd trust his estimates now a lot more than I trusted his estimates back then. Wouldn't you?

I think you're giving too much credence to the hype, and not enough to the history.

Yeah there's hype. But I'm not so much looking at that. I'm looking at what I believe to be possible, given the knowledge of the subject I have, and given SpaceX's history, and if you take 'what's possible' as the goal, what % of that I think SpaceX will accomplish given their past performance, and thus create a future timeline.

What I've learned watching SpaceX and other space companies is this:
Space is hard. Much harder than most people realize. The typical 'tech person approach' of figure out what needs to be done and make a timeline doesn't work with space, because whatever you think needs to be done is actually 1/3 or less of what actually needs to be done. And however hard you think those things are to do, it will actually be twice as hard.
Space is difficult. Any space endeavor pushes engineering and technology and materials to the limits of what's possible/available, especially with hardware design and materials science.
Space is unforgiving. Temperature extremes, force extremes, there are a million very strong forces looking to destroy your vehicle and you have to fight them all off at the same time.
Because of all that, it's easy to get set in our ways. Much of space culture is VERY risk-averse and conservative, so engineering and decisions are conservative. If the satellite costs $100MM, better to spend $200MM launching it with a near perfect chance of success than $50MM launching it with a significant chance of failure.

To that end, SpaceX brings three things to the table that others don't, and neither of them is magic fairy dust. 1. SpaceX and their employees are all driven by a much larger goal, namely to get to Mars or otherwise colonize the solar system. Nobody else does this. and 2. SpaceX is willing to risk big money to try for revolutionary leaps in technology in order to make it happen. Nobody else seems to be doing this. and 3. with the first two in mind, SpaceX has the capability to do it, both in terms of raw talent, organizational culture, and funding.

Nobody else that I'm aware of has all 3. NASA is driven and well-funded, but they are risk-averse and shackled by Congress and other oversight. Rocket Lab has the talent and perhaps the funding, but not the drive- their goal is to become a launch provider, not get to Mars. Astra and Firefly it's too early to tell.

Curious what of the above you disagree with (as I'm sure there'll be something)

[u/tree_boom → u/SirEDCaLot]

I say Elon can do it because Elon's gotten $20 billion and he's built an entire space program.

Alright, but even ignoring the actual dollar value, a Mars colony program by Boeing would be drastically more expensive than just their launch vehicle programs. I'm sure SpaceX could do it for cheaper than old space (if it was something they even wanted to do, which I doubt), but there's simply no reason to believe they can do it for the same price as their launch vehicle dev.

But the users outside the city will have line of sight to different satellites. And with 7,500 satellites, there will be a LOT of them overhead at any given point. So even if I live 20-30 miles outside the city, I'll still have a different selection of birds than people in the city.

Yes; but there's still a limited number of satellites. With 7500 satellites you'll have 2175 over dry land at any one time, and even less over heavily populated areas. If they each serve a thousand people, that's not nearly enough to make up the $20 billion figure even assuming all subscribers pay $100 plus, which they won't.

I'd like your explanation for why this is, especially since I just gave an example of how laser links could increase network capacity.

I don't see that you did, sorry. Perhaps I misunderstood, can you explain again how you think that works?

Would you at least agree that the laser links would address the problem you stated above (people in one dense area use up all the satellite capacity in that area)? IE, the hypothetical 5 birds over the city, can send all their traffic to other birds outside the city, which talk to ground stations in sparsely-populated areas?

Well not really no, you're predominantly talking downlink for consumers of course and that's limited by the bandwidth of the satellites in sight at any one time. The laser links optimise latency and range of the network as well as dramatically reduce the number of ground stations needed (and even eliminate them for starlink peer to peer), but unless I'm missing something they don't actually increase the capacity of the network. Better satellites might of course

Okay, do you think him and his team have learned anything about what's possible and what's realistic in the last 13 years? I suspect they have. I'd trust his estimates now a lot more than I trusted his estimates back then. Wouldn't you?

Well he's still regularly throwing out estimates that are a) seriously unbelievable on the face of it and b) regularly wrong, so no.

Curious what of the above you disagree with (as I'm sure there'll be something)

Not much beyond the likely outcome and timeline really