This is likely to be just funding for additional development of Starship—rather than a separate rocket. I don't know where Business Insider got "7500mph" from either, since by necessity, to reach...
This is likely to be just funding for additional development of Starship—rather than a separate rocket. I don't know where Business Insider got "7500mph" from either, since by necessity, to reach any other point on Earth, you'd have to effectively reach just shy of orbital velocity, which is ~7.8km/s (~17,000mph). Perhaps they did the math on "United States to Afghanistan in 1 hour" and computed the supposed velocity?
Personally I think the whole "partnering with U.S. military" angle that Musk is taking by cozying up with the U.S. government is lame. Technically there's nothing stopping this being generic cargo, but I'm not exactly enamoured with the idea of a global superpower that is the United States having the ability to transport weapons across the Earth. They need to stop being the world's police.
But then they won't have an extra excuse to have such a giant military, and then they won't have an excuse to have such a big budget. And what is the Senate supposed to do, fund healthcare and...
They need to stop being the world's police.
But then they won't have an extra excuse to have such a giant military, and then they won't have an excuse to have such a big budget. And what is the Senate supposed to do, fund healthcare and education with those dollars? That's crazy talk.
Yeah, it would make sense for it to be a military version of the Starship, though if it’s not for human space flight then it likely could be done sooner and fund it in the meantime. SpaceX has...
Yeah, it would make sense for it to be a military version of the Starship, though if it’s not for human space flight then it likely could be done sooner and fund it in the meantime. SpaceX has been a government contractor for a while now, including military missions, so in some ways it’s a small step to being a full-blown defense contractor.
But yeah, scary for anyone else, though US allies might benefit, and it might be used for humanitarian missions like disaster relief, as other US military capabilities sometimes are.
I’m wondering, if they end up building this thing then would the Space Force end up flying it?
Landing is the hard part. If you skip landing, the US already has plenty of ICBM’s.
Also, just because you can fly somewhere that quickly doesn’t mean you can load or unload that quickly. And the cargo would need to survive high acceleration. That might limit how useful it could be. You would need a landing site and people there to do the unloading, and if you’re going to prepare for that, why not send cargo in advance?
I can imagine this possibly working as a drop-off / fly-over system. For example, you have a rocket with supplies pre-positioned at Cape Canaveral, and you want to deliver them to Afghanistan. You...
Landing is the hard part. If you skip landing, the US already has plenty of ICBM’s.
I can imagine this possibly working as a drop-off / fly-over system. For example, you have a rocket with supplies pre-positioned at Cape Canaveral, and you want to deliver them to Afghanistan.
You could make a suborbital jump that passes over Afghanistan, and drop one or more cargo containers mid-flight, then land on a droneship, perhaps in the Pacific. Meanwhile the cargo containers parachute down towards the targeted landing zone.
The general idea for this is already possible (MIRVs on ICBMs) and really one of the biggest problems is that if you're launching a cargo rocket like this halfway around the world, on a few hours notice, in the vicinity of a country you're possibly at war with...it looks a hell of a lot like an ICBM launch to anyone watching.
SpaceX is all about reusing their rockets, and if you land somewhere far from normal supply lines (which almost by definition is the main place this would be useful) the logistics involved in getting the rocket refurbished and refueled in order to take off again are...non-trivial. Especially considering you probably just landed in an active war zone. (if it isn't, what's the rush?)
If each individual cargo container was relatively small, they might be individually transportable by cargo plane, which would allow eventually bringing them back and reusing them as well.
I haven’t done any calculations but it seems like slowing down enough to drop cargo with a parachute is almost stopped, from a rocketry point of view, so the rocket wouldn’t be leaving the country...
I haven’t done any calculations but it seems like slowing down enough to drop cargo with a parachute is almost stopped, from a rocketry point of view, so the rocket wouldn’t be leaving the country after that. Though, sticking the landing is still pretty hard.
In the sort of emergency where cargo is needed so quickly, reusing the rocket seems optional. Maybe in 2.0.
This is likely to be just funding for additional development of Starship—rather than a separate rocket. I don't know where Business Insider got "7500mph" from either, since by necessity, to reach any other point on Earth, you'd have to effectively reach just shy of orbital velocity, which is ~7.8km/s (~17,000mph). Perhaps they did the math on "United States to Afghanistan in 1 hour" and computed the supposed velocity?
Personally I think the whole "partnering with U.S. military" angle that Musk is taking by cozying up with the U.S. government is lame. Technically there's nothing stopping this being generic cargo, but I'm not exactly enamoured with the idea of a global superpower that is the United States having the ability to transport weapons across the Earth. They need to stop being the world's police.
But then they won't have an extra excuse to have such a giant military, and then they won't have an excuse to have such a big budget. And what is the Senate supposed to do, fund healthcare and education with those dollars? That's crazy talk.
Yeah, it would make sense for it to be a military version of the Starship, though if it’s not for human space flight then it likely could be done sooner and fund it in the meantime. SpaceX has been a government contractor for a while now, including military missions, so in some ways it’s a small step to being a full-blown defense contractor.
But yeah, scary for anyone else, though US allies might benefit, and it might be used for humanitarian missions like disaster relief, as other US military capabilities sometimes are.
I’m wondering, if they end up building this thing then would the Space Force end up flying it?
Landing is the hard part. If you skip landing, the US already has plenty of ICBM’s.
Also, just because you can fly somewhere that quickly doesn’t mean you can load or unload that quickly. And the cargo would need to survive high acceleration. That might limit how useful it could be. You would need a landing site and people there to do the unloading, and if you’re going to prepare for that, why not send cargo in advance?
I can imagine this possibly working as a drop-off / fly-over system. For example, you have a rocket with supplies pre-positioned at Cape Canaveral, and you want to deliver them to Afghanistan.
You could make a suborbital jump that passes over Afghanistan, and drop one or more cargo containers mid-flight, then land on a droneship, perhaps in the Pacific. Meanwhile the cargo containers parachute down towards the targeted landing zone.
The general idea for this is already possible (MIRVs on ICBMs) and really one of the biggest problems is that if you're launching a cargo rocket like this halfway around the world, on a few hours notice, in the vicinity of a country you're possibly at war with...it looks a hell of a lot like an ICBM launch to anyone watching.
SpaceX is all about reusing their rockets, and if you land somewhere far from normal supply lines (which almost by definition is the main place this would be useful) the logistics involved in getting the rocket refurbished and refueled in order to take off again are...non-trivial. Especially considering you probably just landed in an active war zone. (if it isn't, what's the rush?)
If each individual cargo container was relatively small, they might be individually transportable by cargo plane, which would allow eventually bringing them back and reusing them as well.
I haven’t done any calculations but it seems like slowing down enough to drop cargo with a parachute is almost stopped, from a rocketry point of view, so the rocket wouldn’t be leaving the country after that. Though, sticking the landing is still pretty hard.
In the sort of emergency where cargo is needed so quickly, reusing the rocket seems optional. Maybe in 2.0.