SpaceX BFR - Earth to Earth - Anywhere on Earth in 60 minutes or less.

[Deleted]

Musk needs to chill a bit or he is going to come off like futurist back in the 60s.

Except of the (in)famous Elon-time, he have always delivered, so give him the credit he deserves.

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Thunderf00t is good at shitting on stuff but he's not actually interested in trying to addressing the concerns he is raising.

I never undrestand why he did sell out his Thunderf00t "brand-name" as a reasonable critic who use facts, to cheap clickbait liar. This guy is a physicist he know what's going to hapen if a very long vacuum tube get punctured, not mutch.....but insted he use a short vacuum tube and use a gigantic hole in relation to the scale and a steel ball for maximum "seal" to maximize the damage.

[Azadina]

I looked this up, a boeing 777LR can hold 145 tons/ 47000 gallons of kerosene. This can get you 15800km (which is more or less global coverage, not that many places you cannot fly from Dubai on that range). The BFR holds 240 tonnes of fuel which includes are ratio of kerosene(don't get confused, this is not the jet fuel above but some specially refined stuff) to oxidiser. Musk has stated the fuel bill for a falcon heavy is 200000$ which holds I think a similar amount to the BFR. Worth noting this is less kerosene than the 777 but for 300 people, or 400 on the lesser range models.

Lets just pretend the fuel bill is 200000 dollars, per 120 people, potentially getting you anywhere in the world is not that expensive.

My burning question is this. Re entry at 18000mph is a bit of a cunt. Smart chaps at NASA have been working on this for a long time. The shuttle has a nearly ablative skin of ceramic tiles. They lose a few every time it lands. What is the solution to this, as a rocket that may be asked to make several trips per day.

Perhaps so, but that's not where the ticket price stops. For one example, I can guarantee that taxis don't use 20 euros worth of fuel for 15 minute trip, and yet that seems to be the rate they charge.

[Afrospinach]

Perhaps so, but that's not where the ticket price stops. For one example, I can guarantee that taxis don't use 20 euros worth of fuel for 15 minute trip, and yet that seems to be the rate they charge.

Well no, but the economics are not that far out when compared with regular air travel believe it or not. Planes are expensive to maintain too and have an upfront cost of ~300 million.

[Grimbold21]

I'm more concerned, well no, curious about the infrastructure cost. The equivalent of airports and adjoining/auxiliar infrastructure would need to be built all over the world.

[Nerraw]

I'm more concerned, well no, curious about the infrastructure cost. The equivalent of airports and adjoining/auxiliar infrastructure would need to be built all over the world.

I assume a lot of it can be outsourced once the concept has been proven as reliable.

[Skroe]

A bet against Elon Musk and specifically SpaceX has been a stupid bet to date. He's perhaps a bit optimistic on the schedule, but not by much. The Falcon Heavy was only delayed by a few of years. This contrasts with nearly a decade for the SLS and four years for the Boeing 787.

Stop making stupid bets, people.

[Grimbold21]

I assume a lot of it can be outsourced once the concept has been proven as reliable.

But i imagine it's a lot of money to build rocket platforms and whatever other infrastructure is required for these landing locations

[Skroe]

Well no, but the economics are not that far out when compared with regular air travel believe it or not. Planes are expensive to maintain too and have an upfront cost of ~300 million.

And that's the irony. A Falcon Heavy (or BFR) would have a unit cost of less than a 747 or 777, (but probably more than a 737). But the plane gets resued, the rocket does not.

Reusability is everything for the economics of spaceflight. SpaceX has achieved the near impossible already in this regard. A decade ago, the Space Shuttle had a $10,000 per kg to Low Earth Orbit cost (with a maximum payload of around 25,000 kg). The Delta IV heavy has a cost of around $9000 per kg to LEO (with a maximum payload of around 28,000kg, with some wiggle room). SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, which flies in 2 months, has a cost of $850 per kg (with a maximum payload of 54,000kg to LEO).

Yes. SpaceX has achieved a ten-fold reduction of per kg cost in a decade while doubling capacity. If you told somebody that in 2005, they'd laugh at you. The Space Industry had been chasing cutting the $10,000 / kg cost to $2000 / kg for 20 years by that point. SpaceX did better.

SpaceX's EXISTING hardware - the Falcon 9 first stage namely in any of its configurations - can see a reduction to around $200-$350 per kg, completely based on SpaceX optimizing its industrial/manufacturing pipeline, maximizing re-usability, and improving turn-around times on refurbishing first stages. It is, in other words, a ground based management and production process it must go through to drive costs down further, not a big technological breakthrough. It's hard to understate how big a deal that is. Since we're gamers, to offer an analogy, it's not terribly different than how Sony offers a loss-making and expensive first edition of PS3, and then over the next decade slowly changes the internal guts (and finally offers major external revisions, i.e. the slims) to simplify their production pipeline and make it more profitable at lower cost.

Driving the cost down to $20 or $10 per kg would take a new rocket and new technology, but SpaceX has ALREADY accomplished more than that. For a 170 lb male (77 kg), that would be a "payload" cost of $770 to $1440. In other words, flying on such a rocket to the other side of the world, before additional fees, would be cheaper than a round trip coach flight from New York to Sydney.

So again... betting against SpaceX? Stupid. They have the capital. They are already the #1 annual launch provider in the world. Their technology is over a decade ahead of their competitors (and that includes governments). They have an enormous backlog of booked flights, which means stable revenues well into the future. They hold all the cards.

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But i imagine it's a lot of money to build rocket platforms and whatever other infrastructure is required for these landing locations

A launch pad is about $40 million. NASA's Apollo and Shuttle heritage facilities cost far more than that, but that was due to the technical requirements of project Apollo, then the Shuttle. The Saturn rockets were assembled vertically on a crawler, which necessitate the Vertical Assembly building. The Shuttle Stack was also assembled vertically on a crawler. Both were then moved, vertically to launch pads with complicated cooling and escape mechanisms.

The Falcon 9, by contast, like most Russian rockets (but not most American rockets) is assembled horizontally, trucked to the pad, then rotated vertically. The type of "clean" pad used by the Falcon 9 is far cheaper than the Apollo/Shuttle kind.

[Osmeric]

I don't really see how rockets could become economic enough to be used on Earth to Earth travel.

The energy cost of flying halfway around the world in a subsonic jet is surprisingly high, so it's not utterly implausible a fractional orbital vehicle could be made to work out economically, given very high levels of reusability and rapid turnaround (neither of which a first generation BFR is all that likely to have, though, but baby steps.)

[Skroe]

Thats why all the astronauts die of radiation poisoning in space.....oh wait they dont, lol

They don't it LEO, and LEO and Sub-orbital flights will be safe.

But elsewhere in the Solar System dangerous radiation is common place. The surfasce of Mars, and most moons worth visiting for extended stays offer astronauts no production. The gulf between worlds offers no protection. Any Astronaut to land on Europa would be be stricken with fatal exposure in a day.

[Osmeric]

They don't it LEO, and LEO and Sub-orbital flights will be safe.

I don't think I'd call this suborbital though. To get to the other side of the world you launch to something that is very close to LEO, then do an entry burn to put you back into the atmosphere. A true suborbital launch -- a high arching earth-intersecting elliptical orbit like ICBMs would use -- would kill the passengers on entry due to the extreme deceleration needed.

[Skroe]

People have called him a con artist, it's ridiculous how many people are just haters. Probably the most important person we have had this century genuinely trying to progress humanity with no political agenda, and people just spew nonsense.

Are you joking? SpaceX is single handedly taking on - and presently beating - ULA (a Boeing / Lockheed consortium), which for the past 20+ years, first as independent companies and then as a government-brokered consortium, have been the sole source provider for government launch services. And they have shook down tax payers for tens of billions of dollars and won uncompetitive contracts.

Don't forget: SpaceX's $61 million Falcon 9 is more capable than ULA's $240 million Atlas V. And the $90 million Falcon Heavy is twice as capable as the $480 million ULA Delta IV Heavy.

SpaceX has a decade technology lead on ULA. While ULA sat on its hands and profiteered (and did not invest in new technology), SpaceX was innovating. That is why if ULA starts today, it will be the late 2020s before they catch up to what SpaceX has achieved. And they are not starting. They are hoping Congress (namely Senator Richard Shelby and the Alabama, Lou) protects them.

SpaceX is going for the throat. I expect Lockheed and Boeing to throw their hands up on the rocket-building industry in the 2020s and exit the market, selling ULA off to Orbital ATK (Nothrop now) and spinning off other aspects of it. The Atlas V and Delta IV both have end days (Atlas V limited by how many RD-180s from Russia it has left, the Delta IV goes away by 2024).

The end of ULA will mean the end of tens of thousands of jobs in Southern States and tens of billions of dollars in federal dollars to Southern states.

SpaceX knows this, which is why it's been waging a hyper-political war against ULA, first by winning NASA contracts, then by winning Air Force contracts. It is making a case that not only is it a better company to give money to for the benefit of taxpayers, but that there is no actual reason ULA should exist. ULA of course, fights back, usually through soft-corruption like things. But the clock is ticking.

Elon Musk is visionary, but he's not stupid. He knows powerful forces protect ULA. And he's currently beating them. That's great for his company, and nigh-apocalyptic for high paying, good jobs in Reddest of the Red States. When ULA has to drive up costs to pay its union machinists who machine disposable rocket parts to the stunning precision needed in the spec, but that loses to SpaceX rapid manufacturing a better engine, that is reusable, via 3D printing, how can ULA compete?

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I don't think I'd call this suborbital though. To get to the other side of the world you launch to something that is very close to LEO, then do an entry burn to put you back into the atmosphere. A true suborbital launch -- a high arching earth-intersecting elliptical orbit like ICBMs would use -- would kill the passengers on entry due to the extreme deceleration needed.

Yeah it's not sub-orbital. It'd be orbital.

[Osmeric]

Yeah it's not sub-orbital. It'd be orbital.

The alternative, I think, would be a vehicle on skip trajectories. Not sure if these can get to the other side of the world, but then can go intercontinental distances, and the delta-V is much lower than to LEO. A winged skip vehicle could be equipped with conventional jet engines for horizontal landings at existing airports.

All these ideas have problems with noise (launch, sonic boom during entry).

[Skroe]

Important to note is that ideas like this what are crazy can inspire young people to pursue a career in engineering or science in general. Something we have a shortage off pretty much anywhere.

I also find it good that these ideas are not coming first from a military perspective as many things often have been in the past.

Nice dream, but not really true.

The idea for the SpaceX Falcon 9... a rocket with many small engines that lands vertically was one of the proposals for the EELV (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle) program that the Air Force pursued in the wake of the Chllaneger disaster. The Air Force wanted to launch payloads of the same mass that the Shuttle could carry, without the Shuttle. The EELV program was that endeavor. And early proposal (distinct from the DC-X) conceptually resembles the Falcon 9. The Air Force decided that the endeavor was too ambitious and went with the more conventional Atlas V and Delta IV plan. But the engineers involved in that landing rocket a decade later were some of SpaceX's first hires.

Additionally before the Columbia accident, the NASA and the Air Force were pursuing the Space Launch Initiative to develop technologies, and then vehicles, to eventually replace both the Shuttle and the EELVs in the then far future of 2012-2015. Many great technologies came from this before it was reorganized post-Columbia as part of the Vision for Space Exploration. The one pertinent here was the TR-106 Low Cost Pintile Engine by TRW (later Northrop). It was a revolutionary design and in effect is the prototype of the Merlin-1 engine used on the Falcon 9. This is not a co-incidence. After the Space Launch Initiative was reorganized and the TR-106 program shut down, the engineers left Northrop and were also among SpaceX's first hires. It's lead designer, Tom Mueller, then of TRW, was a SpaceX founder.

Lastly SpaceX is doing all sorts of business, but it's bread and butter, the one that pays the bills and will for years to come, is bidding and winning Air Force launch contracts. The Falcon 9 is a distant relative of the proper EELV program, however it is not part of that program. After passing qualifications by the USAF, it was classed last year as an EELV on the basis of performance and design. The EELV has gone from deep skeptic to one of SpaceX's biggest government supporters in just two years. NASA, in fact, is far more suspect of Musk than the USAF. But make no mistake, while SpaceX does wondrous civilian space works, it is defense dollars that it aggressively worked for, and defense dollars that will keep the lights on for years to come.

Much of SpaceX's tech and it's business, in other words, owes something to the defense sector. And that is natural and fine. It represents an ideal case of how public-private partnerships SHOULD work. The government provided money to begin research on some revolutionary technologies. 15-20 years later, a private company ran with it and became a supplier of a service to the government.

That's a great story.

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The alternative, I think, would be a vehicle on skip trajectories. Not sure if these can get to the other side of the world, but then can go intercontinental distances, and the delta-V is much lower than to LEO. A winged skip vehicle could be equipped with conventional jet engines for horizontal landings at existing airports.

All these ideas have problems with noise (launch, sonic boom during entry).

I think it depends on the destination. If such a vehicle does have jet engines, it could do the "last leg" like an airplane and re-entry over water. Like if a US-launched vehicle were to have a destination of Tokyo, Sydney, Dubai or Beijing, it could re-enter over the Pacific or Indian oceans and then fly 30 minutes to an hour to it's final stop.

I think the problem becomes when you want to land in deep-inland destinations. It may just be worth getting a connecting Aircraft flight for something like that. Chicago would be one of the hardest cases. Even with like Sydney to Paris or Sydney to Berlin have substantial water within a reasonable aircraft flight time.

Maybe it's just a semi-coastal City to semi-coastal city vehicle. Maybe it isn't a system that really should be landing or launching in Chicago.

[Osmeric]

Longer term, I think the better bet for a space impact on long distance global travel would be space-based lasers for powering electric aircraft. The laser wavelength would be chosen to be attenuated in the lower atmosphere for safety, and the aircraft would use batteries to reach/descend from cruising altitude. An intensity of several hundred suns would be needed on the receiver, perhaps a near-circular array on top of a blended wing/body airframe.

[Nerraw]

Maybe it's just a semi-coastal City to semi-coastal city vehicle. Maybe it isn't a system that really should be landing or launching in Chicago.

To me it feels like something that would be supported by a proper Hyperloop network. BFR if you're going intercontinental, Hyperloop if you don't need to go quite that far.

[Aeula]

I'm sure my non-existent grandkids will be overjoyed at the news.

[The Stormbringer]

With the current cost of rocket fuel, this should be extremely expensive. That said, if this happens to become a thing in my lifetime, you can guarantee I'll take it. A trip into space, even if it's low earth orbit, would be worth it before I die.

[Acidbaron]

Nice dream, but not really true.

The idea for the SpaceX Falcon 9... a rocket with many small engines that lands vertically was one of the proposals for the EELV (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle) program that the Air Force pursued in the wake of the Chllaneger disaster. The Air Force wanted to launch payloads of the same mass that the Shuttle could carry, without the Shuttle. The EELV program was that endeavor. And early proposal (distinct from the DC-X) conceptually resembles the Falcon 9. The Air Force decided that the endeavor was too ambitious and went with the more conventional Atlas V and Delta IV plan. But the engineers involved in that landing rocket a decade later were some of SpaceX's first hires.

Additionally before the Columbia accident, the NASA and the Air Force were pursuing the Space Launch Initiative to develop technologies, and then vehicles, to eventually replace both the Shuttle and the EELVs in the then far future of 2012-2015. Many great technologies came from this before it was reorganized post-Columbia as part of the Vision for Space Exploration. The one pertinent here was the TR-106 Low Cost Pintile Engine by TRW (later Northrop). It was a revolutionary design and in effect is the prototype of the Merlin-1 engine used on the Falcon 9. This is not a co-incidence. After the Space Launch Initiative was reorganized and the TR-106 program shut down, the engineers left Northrop and were also among SpaceX's first hires. It's lead designer, Tom Mueller, then of TRW, was a SpaceX founder.

Lastly SpaceX is doing all sorts of business, but it's bread and butter, the one that pays the bills and will for years to come, is bidding and winning Air Force launch contracts. The Falcon 9 is a distant relative of the proper EELV program, however it is not part of that program. After passing qualifications by the USAF, it was classed last year as an EELV on the basis of performance and design. The EELV has gone from deep skeptic to one of SpaceX's biggest government supporters in just two years. NASA, in fact, is far more suspect of Musk than the USAF. But make no mistake, while SpaceX does wondrous civilian space works, it is defense dollars that it aggressively worked for, and defense dollars that will keep the lights on for years to come.

Much of SpaceX's tech and it's business, in other words, owes something to the defense sector. And that is natural and fine. It represents an ideal case of how public-private partnerships SHOULD work. The government provided money to begin research on some revolutionary technologies. 15-20 years later, a private company ran with it and became a supplier of a service to the government.

That's a great story.

Somehow i was expecting a response from you when not accrediting the advancement to the military, but grateful for the insights none the less.

[Osmeric]

With the current cost of rocket fuel, this should be extremely expensive.

Actually, rocket propellant can be very cheap. It would mostly be liquid oxygen by mass, and that stuff is literally pennies a pound. Liquid methane is slightly more expensive, but also very cheap.

The cost of rocket launches is due to hardware and labor; the propellant cost is down in the noise.

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Somehow i was expecting a response from you when not accrediting the advancement to the military, but grateful for the insights none the less.

His motives are irrelevant if he has the facts on his side. You come across as a poor loser in the exchange.