There aren't enough customers to justify building something like Starship, so SpaceX created their own biggest customer with Starlink.
They are also hoping to provide Earth-to-Earth passenger service to compete with airlines on long distance routes, which would be orders of magnitude more launches than any other use. It seems quite unlikely that they could compete on safety though.
Not enough customers yet - if they can get it working its just a total money printer. Orbital refueling, tourism, cheap microgravity research, manufacturing and material processing or even early solar farms and habitats!
Or you might even just start by launching 20 tons of coffee beans, roasting them in orbit and selling them as "Space Coffee" - it migh still be worth it with the per launch costs they have mentioned.
DOD is already talking to SpaceX for rapid cargo transport applications.
“A military team is working with SpaceX to flesh out the prospect of shipping routes that pass through space, the head of U.S. Transportation Command said Oct. 7.”
“That group could demonstrate as early as 2021 whether quickly sending cargo around the globe via space is feasible, Army Gen. Stephen R. Lyons said.”
“Think about moving the equivalent of a C-17 payload anywhere on the globe in less than an hour,” Lyons said at a National Defense Transportation Association event. “Think about that speed associated with the movement of transportation of cargo and people. There is a lot of potential here.”
Isn't that going to trigger icbm monitoring systems? NASA works in concert with hem and schedules, etc., but military use that needed readiness like this seems like it would be asking for accidents.
This is a very good point. If transportation through space becomes routine, does that affect the ability to detect nuclear first strikes, and what does it do to the calculus of mutually assured destruction?
Hopefully this can be solved with comparable improvements in monitoring and/or adjustments to second strike capabilities.
ICBMs are far smaller and designed to travel far faster than any rocket carrying people would presumably go. It doesn't seem likely they could be easily confused.
MIRV warheads are smaller than regular nuclear warheads. The launch platforms for MIRVed nuclear warheads are the same as those for regular nuclear warheads. But on a MIRV, instead of one regular nuclear warhead there are multiple small nuclear warheads.
I'm thinking of things like r36m, but I guess it is used for non-mirv too. Warhead size is irrelevant as they use Mylar radar decoys or something right? Those can appear as any size so I was focusing on the launch vehicle size for monitoring.
Speed may be a differentiator like you originally said, I'm not sure if they need to end up around the same speed anyway for reentry or not (ones targeting high altitude blast for EMP maybe don't need to reentry at all?).
Anywhere on the globe in less than an hour... plus months of planning and days of preparing the launch vehicle. How fast can one "scramble" a Starship off the ground?
I assume fast turn around times from the Boca Chica (Texas) spaceport. Pick whichever Starship SN is refreshed and ready to go. Less Space Shuttle, more Southwest Airlines. Vehicles on the ground are vehicles not generating revenue.
Given the drone ship landings of the Falcon first stages, I wonder: could you land a Starship on a US aircraft carrier?
And the obvious next question: given Musk is happy to take ship names from pop culture and sci-fi, might he name one of the Starship vehicles “Enterprise”, and could the Starship Enterprise land on the USS Enterprise (CVN-80)?
The cost is likely to fall in the 1%-3% range of that of a C-17. The War Department could buy 100-200 of them for the cost of 2 C-17 Globemaster IIIs.
I would be interested to see if some form of portable, quickly constructed landing pad could be deployed, much like the mats used as runways during WWII.
Do they need a landing pad? They have to be capable of landing on unimproved martian or lunar rock, with enough spare capacity for either the fuel for a return flight (from the moon) or a local fuel generator (from Mars).
That should work, but it will likely not be able to safely launch again even if you managed to refuel it.
The engine power needed to launch in Earth gravity, even with a small hop fuel load might be too much for engines so close to the ground & with thick atmosphere preventing the exhaust from dissipating.
Oh... I forgot about the noise from launch, which is loud enough that echos could damage the vehicle if not damped.
Some form of tower to stand off the exhaust would be required.
So, the one way cost to get a C-17 full of cargo anywhere in the world is about $500,000
1 Million round trip.
I had the cost wrong, I thought it was per vehicle, it's per launch... $2,000,000. If it could fly back, it's only $4,000,000 per round trip.... just 4 times the cost of a C-17 delivery and return.
A C-17 load that doesn't require a ground stop in a foreign country or a tanker based in another country to refuel that same cargo plane. Advantage indeed.
Realistically this means Orbital DropShip Trooper as a role designation is probably 10-20 years out. Launch a Starship, kick out the drop pod "over" the target and then coast suborbital to landing zone (or go orbital and return to launch site).
A one-hour deployment capability anywhere in the world would revolutionise special forces.
Yuri Gagarin technically performed the first “orbital drop” style manoeuvre if you want to get into the semantics. The Soviets were concerned about the efficacy of the landing systems and made the decision (and designed the capsule to facilitate this) have him egress the and parachute to a nearly guaranteed safe landing rather than accept the risk of his death in an accident on landing.
