Are you suggesting the space tourism could be available for regular people? Or even just quite rich people? The carbon footprint would be horrendous.
Space tourism is the most wasteful use of resources I can think of. Until we’ve completely decarbonised energy supply with buckets of spare capacity, it shouldn’t be allowed.
You need a better imagination. One F9 flight uses the same amount of fuel as a single international flight. Lots of celebrities and rich people fly themselves all over the world. There are a lot of much more wasteful things than rocket flights. Some rockets, such as Blue Origins current tourist ride rocket use hydrogen and oxygen only. The Starship only has CO2 and water as an emission, which is far better than airline emissions.
A long haul international flight carrying hundreds of people, maybe. You know some people think that we should we cut down on international travel as much as possible?
But space tourism isn’t going replace travel, it’s a whole new wasteful industry that gives a few people a quick joy ride in space.
As for the fuel, starship burns kerosene, similar to aviation fuel. Hydrogen isn’t free energy, you either produce it from fossil fuels, releasing CO2 or have to put energy into electrolysis for green hydrogen.
Every rocket launch invests in future capability that will drop costs further down the road. We are practically seeing this happen right now.
Costs are going down, but there’s a limit to how much you can reduce fuel usage, governed by rocketry equation. It’s never going to not use a shit load of fuel.
I wouldn’t say sucked, was just really big. For some missions, like assembling the ISS, having a crewed vehicle with an enormous cargo bay was useful, but it was kind of overkill for a lot of things.
The basic principles of its reusability seemed to make more sense than boosters and vehicles landing like Thunderbird rockets though. I don’t know why no one took the concept further.
The issue with the Shuttles mode of reusability is that it needed a lot of additional mass to land. Those wings where heavy and are useless in space. Starship uses lighter flaps just for control on the way down. The Space Shuttle Orbiter was very very heavy all by itself.
Its a bit like a flying car. You can make a good car, or you can make a good plane. But if you combine them you end up with a bad car that flies badly. That was the space shuttle. It was a great first attempt, but there are better ways to do it.
Much simpler solution for the boosters though. But not as fancy to watch.
Likewise, if they don’t solve the other technical issues, it won’t matter how low the launch costs are. Being “solved in principle” isn’t really good enough, and I’m not sure that’s exactly true either.
There have been extensive studies done on space based solar. China is launching their first test bed later this year / next year. USA military has done massive studies on this. And now ESA is on it. All 3 of these institutes have enough confidence in the technological readiness that they are pushing forward on it. Europe specifically wants zero carbon 24/7 energy. There are a lot of technical issues to solve, but most of them are along the lines of, "how do you assemble a 4km wide solar collector in space". You solve this by launching people in space. None of them are fundamental show stoppers.
I think you might be underestimating the challenges. They might not be show stoppers, but need to be solved as much as launch costs, which takes considerable time and resources. Also, I believe automated assembly is one of the things they are working on to make it feasible large scale.
And that was one of the main drivers for the first treaty on responsible use of space.
Russia, the US and China have both blown up satellites in orbit generating millions of pieces of deadly debris.
Which should be stopped.
But it did not, because no one regulates governments. If you put all your power in governments, then you have no regulations at all. If you put your power in corporations, then at least you still have regulations from government. Your options are no regulations vs regulations.
NASA, the ESA, JSA etc don’t blow up satellites in orbit. That would be the military and the US hasn’t done it since the Cold War.
Are you suggesting we give the power of anti satellite weapons to private companies and then regulate them not to use them?
This argument makes no sense, and has nothing to do with my point, which is whether systems like Starlink present a significant risk.
There are currently about 2000 Starlink satellites in orbit, but plans are to increase it to 40000. And there’s at least 6 other companies wanting to do the same. That compares to about 5000 total operational satellites in orbit now. The US Space Surveillance Network is tracking about 22000 objects in orbit, including the operational satellites. Although there are many more objects too small to track.
Anyway, I’m not just pulling my concerns out of my arse, there are several experts who cite Starlink as the current biggest collision risk, and they’re just getting started:
In August 2021, Hugh Lewis, the head of the Astronautics Research Group at the University of Southampton, U.K. and Europe's leading space debris expert, told Space.com that Starlink satellites represent the single main sources of collision risk in low Earth orbit.
According to computer models, at that time, Starlink satellites were involved every week in about 1,600 encounters between two spacecraft closer than 0.6 miles (1 kilometer). That's about 50% of all such incidents. This number rises with every new batch of satellites launched into space. By the time Starlink deploys all 12,000 satellites of its first-generation constellation it could reach 90%, Lewis said.
Lewis also expressed concerns that Starlink's operator SpaceX, a newcomer into the satellite business, is now the single most dominant player in the field whose decisions can affect safety of all operations in low Earth orbit.
https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html
Starlink sats are very low. They fly far below the ISS or Hubble. If there is a collision, they will deorbit in weeks. Everyone is scared of satellite collisions, and rightfully so. Its not cool when things break up there. But this is a problem humanity needs to figure out. Because China and Russia are also planning there multi-thousand sat constellations, and they wont care about US astronomers or collisions concern half as much as SpaceX does.
Incorrect, they are in orbit below most other satellites, but above the ISS and Chinese stations. You may be confusing their initial orbit with their operational orbit.
I’ve already said, I’m just as concerned about other companies doing the same thing. And I’d be equally concerned about similar plans from national agencies.
You seem to be a big fan of SpaceX and are defending it to the hilt, but I’m just talking about the general idea of putting tens or hundreds of thousands more satellites in LEO. Because a lot of experts say it’s risky. SpaceX are just ahead at the moment.
I notice you don’t say anything about the link I gave, btw.
They should ALL be better regulated, through international treaties.
The US tends to avoid signing international treaties when it does not suit them. And China wont be signing anything that they dont want to either. No way to force them other than war. And I dont suspect Russia will be signing anything with the US or Europe any time soon.
So we are still back to completely unregulatable governments, or regulated private industry.
I will rather go for private industry that can be held accountable for their actions.
The US reluctance to sign treaties it doesn’t like applies just as much to US businesses as it does to national agencies.
You seem determined to make this into a private sector vs public sector argument, as opposed to talking about the risks of this kind of system. Interesting.
PS. Good to hear about the new possible launch.
Be prepared for a lot of scrubs. This is not criticism, its just rockets.
The SLS is based off the space shuttle that had about 1 scrub for every launch attempt. They got every second attempt right, so lets hope Sat goes well.
Of course, it’s not easy.