SpaceX’s decision to build launchpad with Starship tanks proves the rocket will be cheapest ever built
Capitalism in space: The decision by SpaceX’s to build the tank farm for its Starship/Super Heavy launchpad at Boca Chica using Starship tanks, rather than inexpensive off-the-shelf storage tanks, strongly suggests that the company’s manufacturing facility for building those tanks makes them very inexpensive, and also suggests that the final rocket will be as cheap to launch as SpaceX has promised.
SpaceX is effectively taking identical rocket parts, slightly tweaking a handful of those parts, and turning what could have been a rocket into a propellant storage tank. This is significant because relative to all other rockets in history, even including SpaceX’s own Falcon 9 and Heavy, building storage tanks with unchanged rocket parts on a rocket assembly line would be roughly akin to hiring Vincent van Gogh to paint lane lines.
Ever since Elon Musk made the radical decision to switch from composite structures to stainless steel, Starship has always aimed to be radically different than any large rocket before it. Crucially, by using commodity steel, the CEO imagined SpaceX would be able to build Starships fairly easily and for pennies on the dollar next to even SpaceX’s exceptionally affordable Falcon 9. In the last 18 months, it’s become apparent that SpaceX has built a factory capable of churning out one or two massive steel rockets per month and is willing to consign at least four or five of those Starship prototypes to all-but-guaranteed failures for the sake of data-gathering and iterative improvement.
Technically, the most logical conclusion would be that Musk was right and that SpaceX has quickly developed the ability to build steel rockets larger than any other launch vehicle on Earth for perhaps just $5M or less apiece.
The analysis at the link is detailed and worth reading. If correct, this decision by SpaceX proves that Starship and Super Heavy will be the cheapest rocket ever flown, even though it will be the largest ever flown, and also completely reusable.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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Capitalism in space: The decision by SpaceX’s to build the tank farm for its Starship/Super Heavy launchpad at Boca Chica using Starship tanks, rather than inexpensive off-the-shelf storage tanks, strongly suggests that the company’s manufacturing facility for building those tanks makes them very inexpensive, and also suggests that the final rocket will be as cheap to launch as SpaceX has promised.
SpaceX is effectively taking identical rocket parts, slightly tweaking a handful of those parts, and turning what could have been a rocket into a propellant storage tank. This is significant because relative to all other rockets in history, even including SpaceX’s own Falcon 9 and Heavy, building storage tanks with unchanged rocket parts on a rocket assembly line would be roughly akin to hiring Vincent van Gogh to paint lane lines.
Ever since Elon Musk made the radical decision to switch from composite structures to stainless steel, Starship has always aimed to be radically different than any large rocket before it. Crucially, by using commodity steel, the CEO imagined SpaceX would be able to build Starships fairly easily and for pennies on the dollar next to even SpaceX’s exceptionally affordable Falcon 9. In the last 18 months, it’s become apparent that SpaceX has built a factory capable of churning out one or two massive steel rockets per month and is willing to consign at least four or five of those Starship prototypes to all-but-guaranteed failures for the sake of data-gathering and iterative improvement.
Technically, the most logical conclusion would be that Musk was right and that SpaceX has quickly developed the ability to build steel rockets larger than any other launch vehicle on Earth for perhaps just $5M or less apiece.
The analysis at the link is detailed and worth reading. If correct, this decision by SpaceX proves that Starship and Super Heavy will be the cheapest rocket ever flown, even though it will be the largest ever flown, and also completely reusable.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
It’s basically the Sea Dragon approach — mak’em big, mak’em cheap.
V-Man, I really wish they’d given Sea Dragon a shot. Partly because it might have led to low-cost shipping of materials to orbit, but also because my inner ten-year-old would have given anything to see one of them launch.
Remember, they scrubbed ever trying to launch SN12-14, as well, so what to do with three partially built tank assemblies? Hmmmmm? What to do?
I was watching one of Elons speeches from a few years ago. I was interested in his statements about using steel. Going back into the 90’s everyone has been trying to make composite’s work. Some might remember one of the many space shuttle replacements the x-33 which was also going to do vertical landings. X-33 couldn’t get the composite’s to work. composite’s were also what was going to make Spaceship 1 and 2 so great we can see where that has taken us.
Just interesting where the whole industry was trying to make new technology work Elon went with a much more time tested material and see how well its working. This seems like lesson almost every defence contractor could learn from.
Leading-edge tech often ends up becoming bleeding-edge … and being bested by the mundane., like the flashy swordsman vs. Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I remember a similar, counterintuitive use of stainless steel back in the day, on the XB-70, in the form of honeycomb skin structure to keep the weight down. I even have a piece of that skin from Air Vehicle #2 (the one that crashed) on one of these – a gift from my Mrs.
https://roncole.net/products/north-american-xb-70-valkyrie-honeycomb-laminate-skin-relic-display
That “bird” has stuck with me; I was living near Dayton, in junior-high when it was incorporated into the Museum of the Air Force. It is impressive even on the ground, albeit obsolete as a military asset before it was completed.
OOPS – seems that link was busted – the “f” at the end is a typo. Feel free to edit if you wish, Robert – I didn’t re-post the link and risk giving the appearance of spamming it.
And this is the 11×17 version – I have the smaller, 8×10 version.
Jester Naybor: Link fixed.
Thanks, Robert.
Behind The Black, like John Batchelor’s podcasts and Instapundit, has become a regular stop for me.
Now could Musk help build tanks for Buffet’s plan for Texas power back-ups? In terms of Starship…Soviet SLBMs were often liquids that dealt with the sloshing from ‘Crazy Ivans’ by being ampulized. Could separate, always full landing bladders walled off from the main tankage help quash the slosh? Venturi effect might be entrained and drawn off the main tankage via afterburner? One last thought: without vacuum Raptors-the bottom of the skirt looks empty. Could the jetstream of rocket exhaust cause a zone of low pressure such that below a certain altitude-the Earth’s atmosphere shoves Starship into the ground?
Jeff:
Rocket fuels are cryogenic and there is no such thing as a flexible bladder at their storage temperatures. That said, much comment has been made of the Starship prototypes transitioning from ascent tanks to “header” tanks as part of the transition to horizontal flight and ultimately for the flip maneuver at landing, which I interpret as essentially your idea, just effected as a small dedicated landing tank vs. a reserve segment in the main tank.
Yes-that is what I meant…but I do remember work on an origami bladder that can take cryogenics in the news recently. Thus the post. Last year there was origami shock absorbers that may be good leg inserts.
Combine them-and the harder you land-the harder you thrust! No throttle-the best part is no part, right?