SpaceX will soon fly Starship on its first orbital flight. When does reusability change everything?

this video is sponsored by surfsharkvpn hey hey marcus house with you here and today we are exploring that commonly asked question when will starship reusability begin to change the course of spaceflight this is definitely not an easy task you've only got to look at how much the starship design has changed over the last year or two the goal of the entire 120 meter starship stack is for it to be fully and rapidly reusable it is the new holy grail of rocketry the first batch of suborbital prototypes have already proven that a lot of the radical requirements for this starship are well within spacex's capabilities keep in mind though we are still at a very early development stage let's assume the best case scenario for the first orbital test flight with booster 4 and ship 20. that would mean successful re-entry control and splashdown with those vehicles being discarded it won't be until future ships that spacex will even attempt to reuse either stage the re-entry heat mitigation is key and the thermal protection system will almost certainly be problematic until it is tested extensively from the recent faa document we now know that only around five super heavy starship launches will initially be allowed over a single year from starbase in boca cheeca that's of course unless something changes there this isn't a lot of chances to rapidly prototype new changes and test them out even if additional launch infrastructure is coming to the cape soon it'll still be a struggle reaching the launch frequency required based on that it looks like the introduction of the offshore ocean launch platforms is now inevitable the launch frequency needed to support testing is substantial especially later when conducting refilling flights with tankers needed for ships heading to the moon or mass the engineering and work involved just to set up one of these launch sites is quite a long road in itself even without full reusability starship will likely be much more cost effective on a mass to orbit basis than any other rocket and that is simply due to the cheap materials and the sheer size of this monster in the short term opportunities to launch such volumes could become a bottleneck though the big question is at what point could we see reusability break even compared to simply creating simpler expendable versions of starship vehicles so orbit capable rocket launchers have provided us with the most spectacular events in human history and they are also some of the most expensive events too since the beginning of rocket history engineers have been trying to find ways to recover and reuse as many spent rocket components as possible to make this process less expensive the road to reusability has been a long one as not surprisingly returning refurbishing and re-flying rockets is a little tricky the first thing to consider when reusing rockets is that everything needed to enable this adds more mass to the vehicle the extra propellant needed to return and land aerodynamic surfaces or control mechanisms such as grid fins heat shields and reinforced engines and tanks all this flies with the payload to orbit or at least a good part of the way the total amount of payload compared to the launch mass especially in this case can be a little disappointing the atlas lv 3b the rocket to carry the first us astronaut to orbit weighed in at 120 metric tons while being capable of only delivering 1360 kilograms to low earth orbit that's a tiny 1.1 percent of the entire vehicle mass the vostok 8k 72k on which yuri gagarin launched to become the first human in space weighed about 290 tonnes and carried 4.7 tonnes to orbit that's just a little better at 1.6 but still a ridiculously small fraction with nowhere near enough margin to allow return propellant or any of the other many systems needed to reuse a vehicle so when looking at this graph here we can get a good idea about the payload share of those two very early rockets compared to later designs interestingly here when looking at starship in reusable mode versus an expendable configuration we see a difference of about 1.5 percent that difference there is basically all of the payload share that vostok could carry what we can achieve now with current technology is much more advantageous of course it's still up to spacex to demonstrate that this is possible and practical but you get the idea the history of spaceflight shows us a steadily increasing payload share and this is due to a number of reasons the first step recovery is something which has been considered since even before the space race initially of course it was for the recovery of any astronauts or scientific payloads that might be on board the first images and video taken in space by the us were achieved with the recovered v2s flown at white sands new mexico unlike today this footage had to be physically recovered and developed even these famous views of the s4b separation often used to show the staging of saturn v vehicles are actually from the sub-orbital saturn 1b launches in this case the camera was ejected from the first stage after re-entry and then later recovered from the ocean these early examples of recovery did nothing in the way of making rocket launches more economical instead the lessons learned and the experience gained from these endeavors was invaluable across many fields of expertise just think about how far we've come since then a spacex launched today with falcon 9 or falcon heavy would see video broadcasted live at the same time as seeing these monsters blazing their paths to drone ships or launch pads to be recovered and reused to a degree spacex innovated this technology standing on the shoulders of giants the first considerable examples of reuse of course is the reuse of humans on board a space vehicle yep i know what you're thinking come on marcus you can't count that well hey we may not be talking about rocket components but returning humans safe and sound was a huge part of the early learning curve in simple terms recovering and reusing anything that has mass including these squishy human bodies is also included after all if we expended the crew it might be slightly harder to find people who are willing to fly hey rocket launchers are the experience of a lifetime but that sure would make a mission less appealing so let's take a look at one of the first major plans to develop a rocket with the option of reusing parts besides the crew we are obviously talking about vonavon brown's ferry rocket conceptualized in 1952 as a reusable rocket on paper this wasn't completely unrealistic it was planned to run with hypergolics and was estimated to launch 25 tonnes to a 1700 km orbit with a total mass of 6400 tonnes that is a tiny 0.4 payload chair the colossal sea dragon concept developed by robert trowe while working for aerojet in 1962 was already more compelling in that regard it was planned to weigh in at about 18 000 tons and be capable of delivering 500 tons to low earth orbit this behemoth of a rocket would have been launched only at sea gulping 150 tons of propellant every second to produce 10 times the thrust of a saturn 5. because of all that launching at land was you could say off the table he even considered steel as the way to go due to it being cheaper and easier to work with and on top of that steel was much more likely to survive the non-propulsive re-entry of the first stage that sounds very familiar there doesn't it there's a very good reason that spacex ditched the idea of more expensive materials in preference of stainless steel sadly of course the massive rockets such as the sea dragon never made it to production it would have been an incredible thing to witness though fast forwarding from the 1960s to the 1980s well after the apollo program the space race was over and the focus shifts from a no expense spared mad dash to the moon to a time when budgeting and efficiency comes into play introducing the space shuttle this was the first reusable spacecraft that was supposed to make all of our low earth orbit dreams come true but it turned out to be not quite that simple there are many things to account for here recovering and refurbishing the massive solid rocket boosters seemed like a good idea at the time but that turned out to save much less than was expected the shuttle itself had a big flaw too it was crude from the very beginning and therefore creating rapid prototypes and testing as we see today was simply not possible a major cost problem with the shuttle was that the tile replacement was a more arduous task than originally expected almost every single tile and there were over 20 000 per shuttle had its own unique shape replacing these by hand turned out to be a lot more expensive and time-consuming than was originally accounted for the knock-on effect not just being cost but also the amount of available shuttles that nasa could ever have ready to fly at any one time spacex with the starship program is trying to learn from these lessons of the past by using as many standardized hexagonal heat shield tiles as possible and reinstalling the majority of them with a robotic arm that is a crucial aspect of making the starship affordably reusable and it can still make or break the program so yes there is a reason behind us all almost obsessing over the condition of ship 20's prototype heat shield thanks to the people like those at nasa space flight and mauricio at rgv aerial photography we've watched quality checks being performed with repairs being done down to individual tiles standardizing the tiles makes a huge difference but keep in mind that having a heat shield on a vehicle this large is simply unprecedented this may be the hardest part to perfect while minimizing the launch mass as much as possible assuming the heat shield holds up and the starship survives re-entry well what comes next well that we already know unlike the early space flights that were recovered by parachutes and later the shuttle that was landed similar to a traditional aircraft starship will require propulsive landings more propellant needed for that but why do we need to do this instead of landing similar to the shuttle well unlike the shuttle that only needed to return to the surface of the earth after a mission to low earth orbit starship is designed to not only have the capability to land on earth but also the moon and mars in either case there is either no atmosphere at all or atmosphere so thin that an aircraft-style landing is simply impossible also touching down on a nice sealed landing strip would be required and there is no such prepared surface on the moon or mars propulsive landings are really the only option left so the extra fuel mass is needed there fast forwarding from the shuttle era it took a lot of time for the industry to evolve into an environment where a new commercial space race could start making its mark just think about the delta clipper and blue origins goddard vehicle beginning to perfect propulsive landing technology that was all cool but still somewhat sub-orbital spacex were the first to land propulsively with orbital class rocket boosters this action is still absolutely astounding every time we see it this is still not far enough though and the next step is right here we'll talk more about that in just a moment but before that a huge thanks to surfsharkvpn for sponsoring this video a virtual private network or vpn is a service that both encrypts your data and hides your ip address just like the ocean the internet is a big place containing various predators if you want to keep your head above water using surfsharkvpn is a great place to start with this great service you can view geographically blocked content and keep your data and private information safe all at the same time maybe your favorite program is just not available in your country fire up the vpn and you can fix that problem up straight away you just change the country you're accessing the internet from and that is it just refresh your browser and you will now appear to be located in that selected region you may well be surprised by the amount of extra online and social media content that can be accessed just with this feature there is more than just the vpn included though you could be concerned that people might be stealing your data or tracking your online activity with shark's clean web kill switch and camouflage mode not even your internet service provider will know that you're using a vpn another great feature is that having just the one subscription gives you unlimited use and you can use surfsharkvpn across all of your devices simultaneously if you would like to support me and are considering a new vpn or changing your existing vpn go to surfshark.deals slash marcus and you will get 83 off and three extra months for free the link is in the description below so yes being a private business focused on efficiency spacex saw the need for recovering and reusing rockets their legacy clearly demonstrates how valuable this move is as they are currently responsible for about half of all launches globally today thanks to the fleet of reusable falcon 9 rockets spacex has become the world leader dominating the industry and really if we exclude early falcon development they've accomplished this in just a little over a decade just let that sink in possibly the most important aspect of the falcon 9 is that propulsive landings which led to reusability went from being impossible to something that we've become rather accustomed to with all of these falcon 9 re-flights and even the human-rated crew dragon capsule having reused as an option these days reusability is less of an exception and slowly becoming the expectation this trend has led to many others like rocket lab relativity space and of course blue origin wanting to explore reusability as an option as well looking into the future starship's combination of a reusable booster a starship incorporating extensive heat shielding accurate propulsive landings and its gigantic size it's starting to look like we really have our first recipe for a rapidly reusable spacecraft that can change the industry entirely how long could it be though before all of this comes to fruition let's look at the cost and just keep in mind here that this gets a little messy very quickly we are required of course to make some reasonable assumptions and feel free to debate these in the comments below anaes working with me here built a small business case tool to compare expendable starships to the reusable ones the red section contains all the information that is relevant for the expendable variant the blue section contains additional information needed to consider the reusability and the grey section is for global parameters like the interest for the investment itself the results shown in the graph is the cost per kilogram depending on the year when development prices need to be paid off the prices drop when considering a longer period because the development cost can be covered by more flights the time frame here considers the years from now to 2030 along with the total target payload of 100 000 metric tons delivered to low earth orbit since the reusable system starts later it'll do more flights after becoming operational compared to the expendable system to get an idea how much more payload the expendable starship could carry the launch trajectory model here estimates around 55 more than in a reusable configuration as you can see with a moderate 10 reuses or so already proven by falcon 9's first stage the reusable configuration gets cheaper quite quickly despite the vehicle being double the cost to create for the reusable system we considered two more years of development time and additional cost during that time there's no payload delivered so that's why there is no rate for the first three years one hundred thousand metric tons packed into the remaining seven years or so to compensate for the lost time means absolute fast-paced business that's nearly 100 flights per year does that seem unrealistic well elon likely wants to see more much more he is talking here a mega ton of payload yep that is one million tonnes and that's based on a starship build cost of say 10 million us dollars per vehicle and then each vehicle being reused 1000 times that certainly makes things look much better so with all of this in mind we think that ultimately starship will work as intended provided that demand for payload deliveries to orbit rise by orders of magnitude at the moment there are not many customers eagerly waiting for this capability besides spacex themselves with their starlink and mars ambitions i guess the hope is that spacex will drive down the cost to orbit so much that it will unlock space to a much larger market while in the meantime offsetting the cost of starship development via styling and falcon 9 flights getting back to the original question though when will starship reusability begin to change the course of space flight just five launches per year for the coming test flights is quite low therefore it may not be until mid 2023 that initial orbital flights and refilling tests could be finalized to the point that launch infrastructure at the cape or even rudimentary offshore platforms could be utilized if all goes well by 2024 a first uncrewed test launch towards mars in 2025 and onward this i think would be a realistic point that the technology should be well proven and customers could be piling up with their launch contracts in parallel with the standard starship and tanker testing spacex's human landing system or hls contracted with nasa will be almost ready to launch at this time it seems that 2024 is most likely already off the cards for nasa so this would make sense there in 2025 it is at this point that starship development is potentially in a position to really start to pay back its investment it's of course also when spacex's rocket revolution will kick into full force as the demand for commercial starship flights increase spacex can focus on using each launch as an opportunity to tweak the design lower dry mass and improve engine efficiency that would all be for autonomous flights of course over a longer period of time and a great deal of testing this would naturally lead to starship being qualified for human rated flight at that rate a crude starship could be ready to go for the mars 2028 launch window that said an actual crude mission to mars within the decade could still be a leap away for a host of other reasons so although i'm not betting on humans landing on mars anytime soon thanks to spacex's hls i'm betting that we could again see boots on the lunar surface well before the end of the decade ultimately leading to a fleet of reusable spacecraft primed to go to mars and beyond if that isn't a drastic change in the course of space flight i don't know what is so there we go thanks a lot for watching all the way through there really appreciate you sticking around to the end that helps us all so much i'm interested to know what you think about all this are many of these predictions realistic are we being too generous maybe we're being too conservative let me know thanks a heap to those that support what we do here these deeper midweek videos are made possible by the many patrons and youtube members that directly help support what the team and i are doing here also thanks to those that have been ordering this new shirt you guys are just amazing this one has certainly been quite popular this more limited edition shirt here is made in anticipation of the first test flight and we eagerly await spacex to light that starship candle if you like what we're doing and you'd like to help assist us more with what we do directly the patreon link there is on screen or the join button is below there if you prefer youtube memberships either way you get access to chat with us more directly 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Channel: Marcus House

Views: 372,319

Rating: 4.931479 out of 5

Keywords: Spacex super heavy, spacex boca chica, spacex super heavy booster, Spacex launch tower catch, falcon 9 booster landing, Spacex starship progress, Spacex, marcus house, spacex launch, starship launch, Spacex orbital launch, spacex starship full stack, elon musk spacex, Spacex starship update, Spacex starship, falcon 9 launch, elon musk, spacex news, spacex reusable booster landing, Spacex starship landing, spacex reusable rocket, Spacex launch table, Starman spacex

Id: SJZs9svGKGw

Length: 19min 34sec (1174 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 28 2021