Did you see what SpaceX did last month?
The catching of a 20 story rocket booster with chopsticks was amazing. It is also a major step forward in space travel.
Why was this important? As with most things, it comes down to cost.
Of course, before we can call this a major success, it is important to do it more than once. Like was promoted in the film The Thomas Crown Affair, anyone can do something once. It is doing it repeatedly that takes talent.
That said, if SpaceX can duplicate the feat, we are looking at a major change in space travel.
SpaceX Revolutionizing Space Travel
We are looking at the future unfolding.
Going back to the days of the Space Shuttle, the two keys when it came to space flight was the time between launches and the cost. With the Shuttle, it was a number of months between with the cost of near half a billion dollars.
This is what SpaceX is fighting.
One of the overlooked attributes of the feat was the fact that the rocket was lowered onto a refueling station.
While catching the booster was impressive, we need to bring in the utility. The reason for the catch is not simply to save retrieving the booster. Instead, we are looking at trying to get the booster ready to fly again.
That is the ultimate goal. If a booster can be caught, refueled, and launched again the same day, consider what the means for space travel.
Instead of being something that is expensive and slow, we are moving towards rocketry being closer to air travel.
Consider the turn around time on many airplanes. They will arrive in a city and often fly out a few hours later.
The goal is to do that with rockets.
Source
Plummeting Costs
The chart above shows how the per kilogram cost to launch into space with the Shuttle was $52K. We are looking at an estimated cost for Starship is $200.
Elon Musk says his goal is to get that to around $10.
This is what will revolutionize space travel. To have any type of space industries, the ability to get cargo into space is imperative. This becomes an economical problem as much as anything else.
We were able to get cargo into orbit since the 1960s. The challenge is the cost.
How many industries can be built in space? That is something we are still toying with. There is space manufacturing, hotles, and mining. These are the ones we know about today. How many others can follow?
At the core of this is rocketry. There is no way around it. The ability to move cargo from point A to B was always a concern. On Earth, this meant trucks, ships, and planes. With space, we are talking rockets.
This is already showing up in industries on Earth. For example, Starlink by SpaceX is part of the next generation telecommunication systems that are being created. Blue Origin is another company seeking to construct a global telecommunications system made up of satellites.
It seems that each week SpaceX is launching another rocket with 50-60 satellites.
Over the next decade, we will see a massive shift in this arena. Space is the next frontier.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
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