You are usually very healthily critical of things that are said by people. However, when it comes to Elon Musk, you seem to assume that whatever he says will be true. In this article you use one of his statements as proof that the price of the payload will drop to the level that Elon Musk says. I find this different treatment of sources quite dissonant.
Apr 25, 2023·edited Apr 25, 2023Liked by Tomas Pueyo
Two things this article brings to mind. 1) Early U.S. we settled around the waterways for precisely the reasons you mention. In KY, for example, corn was converted to bourbon and ham so it would not spoil. Waterways were used to take them to market. Eventually railroads became transportation hubs and then population really began to disperse when the roads/automobiles came. 2) The discussion of weight and how engineers worked to make every ounce count reminds me of the early years of the microcomputer industry when programmers worked to make every bit of memory count. It was in short supply and thus you had to make efficient/effective use of every bit of memory available to you. Today that is not a problem and if you look at the code of many programs they are not efficiently written.
Cheap & highly detailed space imagery will help insurgent movements greatly. Right now the biggest militaries have the best and most recent images. When Guerilla X can watch the regime's trucks on his/her phone, some things will change.
The Chicago futures market will change, but incrementally. Right now corn futures move on USDA reports which are less timely. Traders will have subscriptions to services that estimate corn yields in near real time.
If we ever enforce existing treaties on fishing, monitoring which ships are where in real time and what kind of nets they have out will be much easier; this will decrease Chinese fishing yields but may save threatened fish stocks.
Space terrorism will be easier too; see the wikipedia article on Kinetic bombardment, which emphasizes that cost of getting munitions into orbit has been a limiting factor. Our militaries will love this but it will be possible to disguise kinetic bombs as legitimate StarShip cargo within a few years; the more volume of space transport there is, the less checking of contents there will be (think shipping containers now).
Cheaply and quickly available methane plume detection from space will enable realistic methane waste fines & taxes in jurisdictions willing to enforce them; meanwhile groups like the EU will be able to add them as import taxes.
Commercial capture of space debris will become a necessary service; check out "Kessler Syndrome" for details. Likely to go from $0 profit to highly profitable as we near the Kessler catastrophe. Who pays? In his 2009 article, Kessler notes "the future frequency of collisions will produce debris at a rate that is proportional to the square of the number of objects in orbit".
Great article especially the historical context with transportation and how the cost went go down with constant innovation. But for SpaceX to exist, we should remember Nasa paved the way (with government undertaking the initial risk) and provided the tech and know-how that eventually brought down the cost with iterations/failures/learning/improvement cycle. The same happened with initial colonial expansions (Spanish empire funded the many voyages like the one Columbus undertook) and eventually private enterprise like British East India company took over (with private investors) and made the cost of shipping cheaper and transportation/navigation tech more advanced over the course of 2-3 centuries.
I am intrigued by this article but it also makes me think of how we’ve abused our opportunities in the past environmentally ... with space junk accumulating now what would this do to our future space environment now that we can put up “disposable” devices ?
When water was clean and ubiquitous the solution to pollution was dilution.... that didn’t work so well long term .... how does this translate to cheap space cargo ? Do we get daily reports of weather, UV Index, and falling space debris in your area today?
Most of what I've heard about Starship has been about sending humans to the Moon and Mars. I'm a big believer in space exploration, but I think we have to send the right person for the job, and in every case I can think of, the right person is a robot.
Your emphasis on launch cost, rather than sending people to horrible places, makes Starship more interesting. I hope it succeeds!
Correction: Spaceship should launch far more than 100 tons to LEO - it is targeting a launch capacity of 150 tons in a reusable configuration, or 250 tons in an expendible configuration. This is 100% to 357% more than the Falcon Heavy's 70 tons to LEO
Construction surveying, mapping the ocean floor, shipping & aviation logistics, understanding traffic patterns, building smart cities and self driving vehicles
I know this data is coming from the US Dept of Transportation, but I don't understand how the per container mile cost can be just $0.16. Diesel is $3-$4 per gallon and most trucks give 6-9mpg. It should be a lot more than $0.16. I found this breakdown of costs interesting (even though it's a bit dated): https://www.pinterest.com/pin/16747829848767210/
I’m an aerospace engineering student and I can confirm that this is an important constraint being relaxed, but space is way way more complicated than the mass problem alone.
Here's a business opportunity. Six years ago I was at a Business Plan Pitch by someone who wanted to use a special photography to spot the build-up of cyanobacteria in large bodies of water. The problem was back then they needed airplanes to fly overhead to take the pictures. The pictures were accurate to within 1-2 meters. But the cost was expensive due to cost of flying. Getting that camera into space (you need higher resolution too, but that is happening), and this becomes viable, IMHO.
Many farms would also benefit from detailed photography, that currently depend upon airplanes. Drones are cheaper, but for large acreage, still not as viable. But from space? They might be.
Real time, complete coverage of the Earth in multiple electromagnetic spectrums (visible light, infrared, radar, radio etc.) with high resolution gives so many options.
1) Environmental &plant health tracking.
2) Animal movement tracking for research, herding, conservation and fishing
3) Real time economic activity tracking without having to wait for quarterly or monthly disclosures
4) Emissions tracking, allowing more precise and efficient emission taxation.
5) Climate modelling improvements and weather forecasts
6) Earth resource exploration
7) Real time traffic tracking and optimization
8) Law enforcement, finding missing persons. Flight MH370 would have been found immediately with constant real time radar coverage of the Earth.
9) Disaster management.
10) Military applications obviously.
11) Big nightmare: Space based, almost inescapable mass surveillance by everyone, not limited to territorial or communication access anymore.
Most importantly, our ability to store, categorize and analyze the satellite generated data is improving immensely as well.
This is another example of the network effect: Every new technology can potentially connect with every other technology, with the total number of connections growing quadratically with the number of technologies.
12) Bonus: Keeping track of rocket launches adding to the big satellite family.
In the epic flood of 1993 in Iowa, passable roads kept changing as floodwaters drained through rivers. A road open one hour could be flooded the next, and vice versa. Information was shared informally between people, and always slower than the water. What if you could see the water from space?
With the mass constraint gone, business will thrive. Real time monitoring of the earth is something we at Quub are striving to achieve. The danger is in the resolution. Take it too far and the tools no longer serve the public good but become the oppression inherent in the will of the State. The limit of two meters per pixel is sufficient for almost all real time data coming in. Think of it as a motion picture view and not a still life. The data moves through time and that is where we will find some gold.
You are usually very healthily critical of things that are said by people. However, when it comes to Elon Musk, you seem to assume that whatever he says will be true. In this article you use one of his statements as proof that the price of the payload will drop to the level that Elon Musk says. I find this different treatment of sources quite dissonant.
Two things this article brings to mind. 1) Early U.S. we settled around the waterways for precisely the reasons you mention. In KY, for example, corn was converted to bourbon and ham so it would not spoil. Waterways were used to take them to market. Eventually railroads became transportation hubs and then population really began to disperse when the roads/automobiles came. 2) The discussion of weight and how engineers worked to make every ounce count reminds me of the early years of the microcomputer industry when programmers worked to make every bit of memory count. It was in short supply and thus you had to make efficient/effective use of every bit of memory available to you. Today that is not a problem and if you look at the code of many programs they are not efficiently written.
Cheap & highly detailed space imagery will help insurgent movements greatly. Right now the biggest militaries have the best and most recent images. When Guerilla X can watch the regime's trucks on his/her phone, some things will change.
The Chicago futures market will change, but incrementally. Right now corn futures move on USDA reports which are less timely. Traders will have subscriptions to services that estimate corn yields in near real time.
If we ever enforce existing treaties on fishing, monitoring which ships are where in real time and what kind of nets they have out will be much easier; this will decrease Chinese fishing yields but may save threatened fish stocks.
Space terrorism will be easier too; see the wikipedia article on Kinetic bombardment, which emphasizes that cost of getting munitions into orbit has been a limiting factor. Our militaries will love this but it will be possible to disguise kinetic bombs as legitimate StarShip cargo within a few years; the more volume of space transport there is, the less checking of contents there will be (think shipping containers now).
Cheaply and quickly available methane plume detection from space will enable realistic methane waste fines & taxes in jurisdictions willing to enforce them; meanwhile groups like the EU will be able to add them as import taxes.
Commercial capture of space debris will become a necessary service; check out "Kessler Syndrome" for details. Likely to go from $0 profit to highly profitable as we near the Kessler catastrophe. Who pays? In his 2009 article, Kessler notes "the future frequency of collisions will produce debris at a rate that is proportional to the square of the number of objects in orbit".
Great article especially the historical context with transportation and how the cost went go down with constant innovation. But for SpaceX to exist, we should remember Nasa paved the way (with government undertaking the initial risk) and provided the tech and know-how that eventually brought down the cost with iterations/failures/learning/improvement cycle. The same happened with initial colonial expansions (Spanish empire funded the many voyages like the one Columbus undertook) and eventually private enterprise like British East India company took over (with private investors) and made the cost of shipping cheaper and transportation/navigation tech more advanced over the course of 2-3 centuries.
I am intrigued by this article but it also makes me think of how we’ve abused our opportunities in the past environmentally ... with space junk accumulating now what would this do to our future space environment now that we can put up “disposable” devices ?
When water was clean and ubiquitous the solution to pollution was dilution.... that didn’t work so well long term .... how does this translate to cheap space cargo ? Do we get daily reports of weather, UV Index, and falling space debris in your area today?
Most of what I've heard about Starship has been about sending humans to the Moon and Mars. I'm a big believer in space exploration, but I think we have to send the right person for the job, and in every case I can think of, the right person is a robot.
Your emphasis on launch cost, rather than sending people to horrible places, makes Starship more interesting. I hope it succeeds!
Reducing the cost of obtaining Helium 3 (Tralphium) could speed up warp speed engines research and open new research fronts.
Correction: Spaceship should launch far more than 100 tons to LEO - it is targeting a launch capacity of 150 tons in a reusable configuration, or 250 tons in an expendible configuration. This is 100% to 357% more than the Falcon Heavy's 70 tons to LEO
Construction surveying, mapping the ocean floor, shipping & aviation logistics, understanding traffic patterns, building smart cities and self driving vehicles
I know this data is coming from the US Dept of Transportation, but I don't understand how the per container mile cost can be just $0.16. Diesel is $3-$4 per gallon and most trucks give 6-9mpg. It should be a lot more than $0.16. I found this breakdown of costs interesting (even though it's a bit dated): https://www.pinterest.com/pin/16747829848767210/
I’m an aerospace engineering student and I can confirm that this is an important constraint being relaxed, but space is way way more complicated than the mass problem alone.
Here's a business opportunity. Six years ago I was at a Business Plan Pitch by someone who wanted to use a special photography to spot the build-up of cyanobacteria in large bodies of water. The problem was back then they needed airplanes to fly overhead to take the pictures. The pictures were accurate to within 1-2 meters. But the cost was expensive due to cost of flying. Getting that camera into space (you need higher resolution too, but that is happening), and this becomes viable, IMHO.
Many farms would also benefit from detailed photography, that currently depend upon airplanes. Drones are cheaper, but for large acreage, still not as viable. But from space? They might be.
Prediction of earthquakes volcanic eruptions based on geographic and gravity etc alterations. Flood plain evaluation. Damage assessment
Real time warfare applications
Weather monitoring Pollution source monitoring Space junk garbage collection
Power generation.
Re business ideas:
Real time, complete coverage of the Earth in multiple electromagnetic spectrums (visible light, infrared, radar, radio etc.) with high resolution gives so many options.
1) Environmental &plant health tracking.
2) Animal movement tracking for research, herding, conservation and fishing
3) Real time economic activity tracking without having to wait for quarterly or monthly disclosures
4) Emissions tracking, allowing more precise and efficient emission taxation.
5) Climate modelling improvements and weather forecasts
6) Earth resource exploration
7) Real time traffic tracking and optimization
8) Law enforcement, finding missing persons. Flight MH370 would have been found immediately with constant real time radar coverage of the Earth.
9) Disaster management.
10) Military applications obviously.
11) Big nightmare: Space based, almost inescapable mass surveillance by everyone, not limited to territorial or communication access anymore.
Most importantly, our ability to store, categorize and analyze the satellite generated data is improving immensely as well.
This is another example of the network effect: Every new technology can potentially connect with every other technology, with the total number of connections growing quadratically with the number of technologies.
12) Bonus: Keeping track of rocket launches adding to the big satellite family.
In the epic flood of 1993 in Iowa, passable roads kept changing as floodwaters drained through rivers. A road open one hour could be flooded the next, and vice versa. Information was shared informally between people, and always slower than the water. What if you could see the water from space?
With the mass constraint gone, business will thrive. Real time monitoring of the earth is something we at Quub are striving to achieve. The danger is in the resolution. Take it too far and the tools no longer serve the public good but become the oppression inherent in the will of the State. The limit of two meters per pixel is sufficient for almost all real time data coming in. Think of it as a motion picture view and not a still life. The data moves through time and that is where we will find some gold.