Brian Wang has run the numbers.
Reusable rockets have significant economic advantages at scale against aircraft for long haul. It’s partly because they don’t have to fight drag through the atmosphere for the whole trip.
Category Archives: Space
About That “SpaceX Rocket” That’s Going To Hit The Moon
It turns out that it’s probably Chinese.
But people wanted to believe it because SpaceX.
Elon’s Thursday Starship Presentation
What Eric Berger is hoping to learn.
[Thursday update]
It’s at 2100 EST, on Youtube.
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
Bob Zimmerman will be live streaming it as well.
[Friday-morning update]
Here is Eric Berger’s report.
What I heard last night that was new to me (maybe he’s said this before) was that it was less than a million per flight on the margin, and it could deliver 150 tons to LEO (I had thought the number was a hundred tons). That’s a fifty percent increase, and a one-third reduction in cost per pound.
[Late-afternoon update]
A report from NASA Spaceflight.
[Bumped]
[Saturday-morning update]
More on Musk at Politico, in which Yours Truly is quoted and cited.
First Light
I’m glad that Webb is working, but I continue to believe it was a mistake.
[Update a while later]
To clarify, I think it was a mistake to do it in the way it was done, but now that it’s operational, obviously it would be a mistake to abandon it now.
Elon
…seems to be taking the loss well.
Being Dragged Into The 21st Century
The Pentagon is still too reluctant to rely on commercial space services.
SSTO Hype
I missed this from a couple weeks ago.
They say it’s SSTO, but they talk about it as point to point. Hard to believe that it could handle noise restrictions at most airports.
I haven’t talked to Livingston in years, but maybe worth a call to find out more.
Hard To Believe It’s Been Four Years
Moonfall
Fact checking what sounds like a monumentally dumb flick.
Aerojet
An interesting report on the internecine battle within the company in the wake of the FTC disallowing the acquisition by Lockmart. I found this amusing:
Aerojet has traditionally structured itself as an engineering company with high fixed costs and low margins, Thompson said. But if private equity buys the company, it will want to see more robust financial returns, which could come at the cost of innovation.
“This really comes down to whether the financial interests or the engineering interests within Aerojet prevail in the struggle,” he said. “My heart is with the engineering interests. My brain, which knows the history of these types of struggles, assumes the financial interests will ultimately prevail.”
Yes, for me, the first word that comes to mind when I hear the word “Aerojet” is “innovation.” Not.