NASA engineer: ""SpaceX made BIG MISTAKE with Starship''. Musk Reacts...

When the idea of Starship was published to the world, a lot of the hype surrounding it seemed reminiscent of the conception of the Space Shuttle. Reusability, cheap operation, fast turnaround, just like an airliner, and high flight cadence are the things that NASA engineers had long pursued in the Space Shuttle project. Sadly, those goals will never come true. Two fatal accidents on the vehicle and its retirement in 2011 are the bitter evidence for NASA's failure to make the reusable spacecraft low-cost and safe. However, in the 21st century, there is a unicorn who dared to take NASA's dream from death and even bring it to a higher level. And what they have achieved on their journey has shocked the entire space industry. It's SpaceX with their ambitious Starship rocket project. As a loser, some NASA engineers cannot admit the truth, and it explains why they call Starship a mistake. Find out everything in today's episode of TechMap. Although sharing the same idea as the Space Shuttle, what sets the Starship project apart is Elon's vision goes far beyond what NASA can think about. Instead of serving for the LEO mission with astronauts on board, Starship will aim to carry 100 civilians and millions of tons of cargo to construct a self-city on Mars. While the entire cost of the 14-year lifespan of the Shuttle would be around $45 billion, with the cost for each flight being $54 million, Starship will fly thousands of times to get the cost of $25 million per launch. Not to mention the goal for an unbelievably fast turnaround of Starship between launches, given that the super-heavy booster can theoretically be ready for flight in an hour. To be fair, the Space Shuttle was not a roaring success, but it also was not a failure. It provided a reliable heavy lift capability for three decades and had only two failures out of 135 missions. There are few space launch systems with such high reliability. However, spaceflight is famous for its low rate of death, meaning among 565 people who have flown to space, just 18 have died either during a mission or in training accidents. Therefore, the death rate of 2-slash-135 for Shuttle is a big matter. Furthermore, once the Starship rocket is highly expected to commercialize space travel, safety has become the big elephant in the room. Those are exactly what NASA engineers, typically those who have experienced the Shuttle program, are concerned about so much. The primary challenge arises from Starship's utilization of multiple engines. It comes from the motivation to generate enough thrust to lift heavy payloads and achieve higher velocities, and if one or more engines fail, the remaining will provide a backup. This also allows for finer control and adjustment of the spacecraft's descent profile. Based on past experience, critics argue that managing numerous engines poses greater complexity and potential issues, such as fuel leaks, pipe ruptures, combustion instabilities, software glitches, and more. When the former Soviet Union and the United States were competing to be the first to land on the moon in the 60s, both built gigantic boosters to get the job done and both used different approaches. The U.S. won that race with their Apollo missions by using the Saturn V rocket that employed five gigantic engines in the first stage to get the vehicle off the ground. Other than occasional minor engine problems, there were no catastrophic failures. At the same time, under secrecy, the Russians built the N-1, an even larger rocket with 30 engines in its first stage. Unfortunately, the N-1 exploded during four launch attempts. The program was discontinued in the 70s, within a few years of American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin taking their first steps on the moon. SpaceX has also been struggling to control Raptor engines during Starship flight tests. The fact that several engines failed after liftoff during launch or descent is very normal in those flights. If one day the company can master the control of over 30 Raptor engines, meaning Starship gets operational, one more challenge will be raised, how to lower its cost per launch down to under $10 million. Elon supposedly talked about getting to 3-4 Starship launches per day at some point in the foreseeable future, approximately 1,000 flights in a year. When do you think that will happen? Assume those include both fully orbital flights and suborbital point-to-point flights. My guess is the best way to ramp up to 1,000 flights as planned is to focus on the suborbital travels competing with the air cargo. Nevertheless, in the video, SpaceX revealed the next four Starship generations changing everything. I have analyzed the possible obstacles if the company targets this market. Briefly, the rocket's high g-force harms the sensitive payload and the logistics of spaceflight are more complex than that of the airplane. In the comment section of that video, one viewer named Steven shared their awesome ideas. I agree point-to-point rocket transportation for the masses is unlikely. Speed doesn't matter as much when you consider how long it's going to take to get to your destination because the rocket landed in the middle of nowhere. You can't just have a launch and landing site in the middle of or even on the close outskirts of a city. Logistics is definitely the Achilles heel of the point-to-point idea. A hypersonic technology like Hermes is the future, probably. It won't happen in the next five or ten years, but if things go well, 20 to 30 years is possible. The military will have and use this technology long before civilians do. No, point-to-point rocket transportation will be a military thing only if it happens at all. Because there are great challenges with logistics there too. So, if SpaceX really wants to achieve its ambitious goal and price, it should consider carefully this point. Another factor contributing to the rocket's cost per launch is the cost and the time required for refurbishment after each flight. As I said, the estimated total cost of a shuttle through its lifespan is $45 billion, resulting in $54 million for each launch. But, the incredible amount of refurbishment has pushed these numbers to a much higher with $196 billion and $450 million respectively. This procedure involved detaching and refurbishing each of the three RS-25 engines, and since the propellants used for the RCS thrusters were so toxic that no other activities could be carried out on the shuttle while they were being handled. The job on heat shield consumed the most with each of the 35,000 tiles having to be inspected individually between each flight. As a result, this turnaround process usually took around three months instead of around two weeks as planned. Suppose super-heavy boosters are ready to fly in an hour. In that case, each part of the vehicle must meet the highest possible safety and reliability requirements to reduce downtime for checking and fixing all of them. NASA made a serious error in the shuttle's era as they ignored possible safety hazards just in order to meet the ambitious launch dates. This leads to the Space Shuttle experiencing two fatal disasters. With the Starship aiming to make its first flight to Mars in 2029, it's extremely important. Fortunately, it does seem like SpaceX is already starting off on a better foot than NASA in this journey. SpaceX is a private company with more freedom over time and budget, allowing them to meet their own deadlines. They can apply the iterative approach to mass production of the Starship's prototype, freely blowing them up in the flight test to gather data. In contrast, shuttle engineers risk human lives in real flight without certainty. One thing that SpaceX has shown over the years is its ability to make quick innovations to the design of its rocket. This is the result of the vertical integration, given that everything on Starship is designed and manufactured by only SpaceX, so they can make sure every part will work perfectly together as intended. Shuttle's workload was spread across many different companies all over the country, raising the cost of the program but also adding an extra layer of complexity. NASA had certain stipulations for the Space Shuttle, often requiring outdated hardware to be used instead of developing a newer and more effective solution. And the most notable point is SpaceX's outstanding thinking and enterprising spirit. Engineers can tackle a problem and spend eternity trying to find the best solution, but of course that is impractical. Thinking outside the box and trying new innovations is risky but will lead to advancements. Engineers have to look past their safety net and explore. There will be failures along the route, but after they are ironed out, the advancements will be amazing. And that just about wraps it up for today's episode. Thank you and we look forward to seeing you next time.