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.
Space tourism is a new industry, yes. And we dont yet know what the pro's and con's of it are. A con is obviously environmental impact. The pro's could very much outweigh this in the long term.
Also, starship uses Methane, that produces CO2 and Water as an exhaust. Falcon9 uses Kerosene. Most new rockets in development are going towards methane. The SLS uses hydrogen, but the side boosters are loaded full of various toxic chemicals as it burns, so not good.
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.
This is true until we use propellant-less methods of reaching Orbit. But this is a very long way away.
Much simpler solution for the boosters though. But not as fancy to watch.
Its not. It adds more mass at the booster stage. If you have a booster that is big enough to launch very large payloads you end up with a vehicle about the size of a A380 if not larger. The Starship Booster is about as long, but wider than the A380 Fuselage. Those wings also slow you down during launch due to friction. So less wings is better.
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.
Automated assembly is one of the big things they need to solve yes. Including a bunch of orbital stuff. Its mostly the "how do you actually build and operate this giant thing" which is the biggest hurdle. This you can only solve, but building it. You cant build it, if you cant get it into orbit.
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.
NASA, ESA et al do what the governments say they must do. Nothing more, nothing less. The only reason why NASA did not blow up the satellite, is because there was already a neat organisation that would do it for them, the Airforce.
No one should ever be blowing up sats. Its just stupid politiking.
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.
I did mention that collisions are a real risk. But you dont know how to deal with issues until you start to deal with them. We are not going to move into the future if we sh*t ourselves every time 2 sats get within 10km of each other. This is like closing down an entire highway for a single car at a time. We need to improve the accuracy of how we track and direct objects in space going forward. Like it or not, there are going to be more sats in space. SpaceX is only one of at least 5 known constellations being planned. 2 of them are government and Oneweb is backed by Europe. So the options are, figure it out, or have everyone one do it except the USA. Im fine with either actually, SpaceX just seems to have a massive head start.
And the linked article is all over the place. It covers a lot of things from 2019 to 2022, some of them already out of date. Not sure what you want me to comment on. Point to a specific thing and we can chat about that.
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.
US business's need to comply to US regulations. And if they want international business, then they need to comply to international laws.
The reason why I am more pro private sector, especially in space is because the Private sector has been far better than the government sector in making milestones since the 80's and 90's, while doing so more economically and safer. If you want to talk risk mitigation, then you need to discuss how to regulate the various aspects of the industries. Governments dont have regulations, they wont care about the things you care about if its their own programs. It will be completely Okay to pollute all astronomy if its government owned sats. History tells us this much.
Heck, China literally drops toxic core stages on villages while their own private industry is working on reusability. What do you think would happen if CCP drops a rocket core on a village school? Oops, sorry, next launch on Tuesday. They will hang the CEO of a private company in a flash though.