[adamm255]

Can someone give me sources for how to debunk this? https://youtu.be/75a49S4RTRU?si=dcGFgcIWNz3nDwxw

For me, it’s compelling but I’m no expert. Anyone got any background that can prove this guy is wrong?

[JumpCrisscross]

I’ve liked some of his other videos and made it in twenty minutes. He has three arguments: SpaceX is late and over budget on HLS, booster recapture is the easiest part of Starship’s technical risks and Starship is bad value for money.

On the first two he’s right. Starship was, per SpaceX’s proposal to NASA, supposed to be almost ready by now. It’s not. But neither is any other leg of Artemis, and there is no unforgivable delay in the timeline. (To the degree there are stupid delays, it’s because the FAA was playing water cop.)

Recapture is the easiest technical challenge of the programme. Partly because SpaceX already demonstrated most of the tech with Falcon 9. Partly because in-orbit refuelling is unprecedented. The lunar lander was one of the easiest parts of the Apollo programme, by similar measure—that doesn’t make it unimpressive.

The last—bad bang for the buck—is a value judgement. Do we want a heavy lift booster or more Mars rovers? If we want sustainable access to space, we need cheaper launch. If one doesn’t care about that, rovers are better spend, but at that point I can start arguing for feeding the hungry with those bucks.

I stopped watching when the criticism of Falcon 9’s price came up. Why should SpaceX, a private company, undercut itself? It’s already the cheapest (PSLV gives it a run for some orbits), most reliable and most frequent launch provider in the world. It makes sense to capture the delta as profit, in part to fund things like Starship. (There is also no inflation adjustment.)

In summary, the technical criticisms are accurate but out of context. The value judgement is subjective. If you don’t value cheap, frequent space launch of course Starship won’t make sense for any amount of money.

EDIT: Kept watching. The energy math on second-stage reëntry is okay as a first estimate. But we don’t have final numbers for anything. And there are a lot of unknowns, e.g. final dry weight, how much energy the heat tiles can store and dissipate, if transpiration cooling could work, how plasma could dissipate energy, whether compression heat could be redirected away from the craft, whether firing mid-descent could reduce heat, et cetera. We certainly don’t have enough data to reject it ex ante. And the second stage being unreadable doesn’t tank Starship, though it probably does Artemis.

[nulld3v]

> I stopped watching when the criticism of Falcon 9’s pricing came up. Why should SpaceX, a private company, undercut itself? It’s already the cheapest (relative to mass; PSLV gives it a run for some orbits), most reliable and most frequent launch provider in the world. It makes sense for them to capture the delta as profit versus cut prices for the sake of it. (There is also no inflation adjusting done.)

Exactly, this is such an egregious claim that it proves there is no way this guy is arguing in good faith.

He says SpaceX only saves a tiny bit of money due to reuse because the retail price for F9 expendable is only a bit more than F9 reuseable.

That's like saying because the Big Mac costs $6.29 and the Big Mac combo costs $11.69, then therefore the drink and fries must cost McD's $5.40 to make. Just ridiculous.

[DylanSp]

Nitpick about history: the LM was definitely not one of the easiest parts of Apollo. It was the long pole in the schedule for a good while; part of why Apollo 8 was flown as a lunar orbit mission was because the LM wasn't going to be ready for testing in Earth orbit until at least early '69, and NASA wanted to test the CSM beyond LEO anyways.

[pomtato]

With all due respect, that's one of the most misguided(i wanna say retarded but.. HN) takes I've seen in a while. How could he even compare the SLS (which costs per launch about as much as it took to develop the entire reusable Starship system) to Starship?

The guy is just blinded by his hatred for Elon to even acknowledge one of the historical achievements SpaceX engineers worked their asses off for.

[tim333]

It's more sarky and negative. eg the phrase

"musk wasting some $3 billion dollars of taxpayer money"

appears (2:49)

but that's not the deal. The actual deal, from Wikipedia:

>On 16 April 2021, NASA selected only Starship HLS for crewed lunar lander development plus two lunar demonstration flights – one uncrewed and one crewed – no earlier than 2024. The contract is valued at US$2.89 billion over a number of years.

and as far as I know they are still working on that. Compared to the last moon landings:

>According to The Planetary Society, The United States spent $25.8 billion on Project Apollo between 1960 and 1973. Converting 1965 dollars to 2024 dollars, that is $255 billion

it's a bargain. It was also a fraction of what Bezos and the other bidder quoted. Starship is not just a NASA funded project. SpaceX use their own funds and it will be used for things like Starlink commercially and maybe also Mars.

Thunderf00t on youtube goes on and on slagging Musk. I thought I'd count how many videos he's done slagging him but got bored counting at 37. There are better things to spend time on.

[ThrowawayTestr]

TF has had terminal Musk derangement syndrome for a while now. You can safely ignore him.

[cryptonector]

TF seems to have an axe to grind with all things Musk.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

What did he say that was wrong?

[larkost]

I think he is probably right, if you think of Starship has a government-paid program to produce a moon lander. The Starship program has blown though the NASA money to produce the basic version (but not yet the additional money agreed for a more advanced design), but has yet to deliver on any of their contracted goals.

So by its own contract, it is just about to be over-budget, behind schedule, and thus a failed project. You can argue about the pandemic blowing their timing, but the fact remain.

But SpaceX is not treating the Starship as solely a moon landing project. They are using NASA's money presumably alongside other SpaceX and Starlink monies to produce a workhorse for a number of projects alongside the moon lander part. In the closer-term it will become the launch vehicle for Starlink (the next-gen of which is too big to be launched on other vehicles), and in the (very) long-term as a vehicle to Mars.

So SpaceX probably sees the Starship project as behind schedule (par for the course, both for space projects, and for Elon Musk), but not out-of-budget. Whether their customer, NASA, agrees with this outlook is something you would have to ask them.

So I think that the video's points are true, but lack some context.

[floating-io]

You're ignoring that this is a fixed-price contract. It will never be over-budget from NASA's perspective.

Also, for a project like HLS, you don't fail until you stop trying (or get someone killed, but SpaceX has been pretty good at not killing astronauts).