When Will Space Tourism be Affordable?
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- Опубліковано 18 жов 2021
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Writing by Sam Denby
Research by Sam Denby and Tristan Purdy
Editing by Alexander Williard
Animation by Josh Sherrington
Sound by Graham Haerther
Thumbnail by Simon Buckmaster
Select footage courtesy Getty and AP; Select imagery courtesy Geolayers; Select music courtesy Epidemic sound
I can't wait for his special video in 10 years: Why it's getting increasingly difficult to find new topics with planes.
More like one year
@@kilyaded7332 Do not misunderestimate the power of Wendover!
@@jpheitman1 "misunderestimate"? Is that a thing?
Like, failing to underestimate?
🌕 SERCH ADITYA RATHORE-HE ALSO MAKES INFORMATIVE CONTENT LIKE WANDOVER PRODUCTION
🟪 SERCH ADITYA RATHORE-HE ALSO MAKES INFORMATIVE CONTENT LIKE WENDOVAR PRODUCTION
So we need an alien invasion to improve rocket development and one day make space tourism cheaper.
False flag Alien attack incoming 😅😅
Or WWIII Space war
@@IllusiveDude No, a Space War will doom us all for centuries.
@@quisqueyanguy120 quite right. Civilisation is a form of ‘snakes & ladders game’ ... one wrong move and it’s back to the Stone Age for everyone.
We had mutually assured destruction since the cold war, no earth-only war (however heavily fought in space) will be the driver for cheap space crafts. The only reason a war would jump-start the space transportation industry is if the territory fought over would not be earth - for example if we found both a reason and a method to mine other planets profitably there could be despute among earth's nations who "owns" and controls celestial bodies.
I love how he always finds a way to talk about planes
Airplanes > everything else
To be fair, this topic is very closely related to planes so it's not much of a stretch like sometimes in the past.
⚪ SERCH ADITYA RATHORE-HE ALSO MAKES INFORMATIVE CONTENT LIKE WENDOVAR PRODUCTION
Wendover showing airplanes : *THAT'S A LOT OF DAMAGE!!!!!!!*
Wendover showing spacecraft and rocket (which are technically aircraft) : *HOW ABOUT LITTLE MORE!!!!!!!!!!*
Spaceplanes are still planes!
Only Sam can make a Video about Space where half the Video consists of him talking about the aviation industry
"The problem for them though is that space doesn't have a World War II"
Not yet.
right? I thought the same damn thing... as well as 'careful what you wish for'
Well, it wouldn't be a WORLD war anymore, would it?
Not until the Martian invade. It will be named "The Great Space War".
After that, it'll be the Alpha Centurion, "Space War II".
China recently conducted a 'peaceful' hypersonic missile test.
So............
WWIII: ICBM Electric Boogaloo
You missed one major space-based industry which is already ramping up: low-Earth orbit constellations. SpaceX is aware of the demand problem you described, and their solution is Starlink: by creating their *own* demand for launch, they give themselves reason to scale up, which then has all the secondary effects you describe. Investors are paying attention, which is why they value SpaceX (including Starlink) at over $100 billion: that isn't for launch services, it's for what they can do in space.
Low orbit constellations are nothing new. GPS has existed for a while now.
@@tachy1801 this is even lower orbit though, and with an order of magnitude more satellites
i'm personally against it though, it's so much potential space junk (starlink satellites have straight up failed before) that collisions will be inevitable and once that happens it can get really bad if there are so many satellites in the same orbit
I was going to make this same comment :)
@@tachy1801 diffrence is that there is 10s of gps satellites and thousands of starlink satellites...
@@tachy1801 GPS is in geosynchronous orbit. Low Earth orbit constellations are fairly new. Edit: GPS is in Medium Earth Orbit. Also, LEO constellations aren't new, but large ones are.
One major limitation I see with the space travel industry is the lack of repeat customers. Commercial aviation works because people have the need to travel long distances to visit family/friends, for work, or for vacation. Planes simply replaced long distance railway, ship, and car/bus rides that already have huge demand. Hence, a normal person can be reasonably expected to fly multiple times a year, but the same can’t be said about going to space. Unless technological innovations come to a point where we regularly travel to another planet for work or to visit a relative, space travel’s demand will be severely limited, regardless of price. The price could come down to a few thousand dollars per trip, but demand will be limited unless the industry can create some sort of demand and reason to go to space again and again.
I think right now we need to think of space travel in the same vein as cruise ships. If we can create cruise ship like experiences then it'll be a success. Perhaps we can create some space station to play around in a 0g environment.
"The price could come down to a few thousand dollars per trip". If that happened, you'd see at least 10% of humans go at least once, which would be tens of millions of customers a year. I doubt it'll get anywhere close to that cheap until whatever comes after Starship.
Two words colonize space
This is a good point, feel like space is kind of a been there done that sort of thing, especially in a Virgin/Blue Origin sense. Also think Peter's point is valid as well, the whole cruise experience would be neat and could drive repeat space travel. But the cost, the ISS was $150B to build and that only holds seven people in a not exactly vacation friendly environment. A space station that was the size to operate at scale and offered appropriate amenities would be what, a trillion? Even if you brought up 50 people a week for ten million a head would take over 38 years to pay that off. At the ISS's cost/capacity, 7 people a week at $10M a head it would take 41 years to pay off.
@@highcouncil1302 that's four words
The problem with comparing space travel to air travel, is that currently there are no destinations for public space travelers to journey to. Ironically most early passenger flights in the 1920's were simple joy rides in WWI jalopies at traveling air shows and fairs. That's pretty much where the public space travel is today, simple joy rides with no real destination.
That is the point of the video. There needs to be a reason to go to space other than to go to space. Sam posits that reason will be some sort of industry (e.g. specialized manufacturing).
SpaceX plans to use Starship for point-to-point travel on Earth.
Until there are fully developed cities on Mars and ships can get there within 24 hours, I'm not interested traveling in space.
@@FastSloth87 No, they don't. That is just PR bullshit. Watch Adam Something's video about "Starship Earth": youtu be / jQUiIdre-MI
@@dachicagoan8185 Nothing is travelling to Mars within 24 hours anytime soon, it takes about 6 months to get there with the rocket engines of today.
Not sure you should have skipped from Atlas V to Space X. The Space Shuttle was designed primarily to be reusable (and it was) and from a cost perspective, it failed albeit we learned a lot from the re-entry forces damage before each rebuild. While I agree that it's the lowest hanging fruit, I think the way you just skipped from Atlas V to Space X in the sentence feels like a disservice to just how difficult the engineering of reusability is.
There is even more to it than that. The falcon heavy cost he said was fully expendable. SpaceX is cheap because they made rockets cheaper, the reusability is the cherry on top
Space Shuttle started flying in 1981
Atlas V started flying in 2002
Everything about the Space Shuttle, except you know, the Space Shuttle, was NOT reusable.
Everything about the Space Shuttle, except the Shuttle and the booster casings, were not reusable.
"The airline business was too expensive, then a world war happenned."
It shouldn't be that hard to kickstart a world war, we were pretty much headed that way before covid hit.
Yea but the orange Cheeto that was in office has left so the threat has exponentially reduced
It won't happen, all the people in charge figured out a long time ago it better suited their interests to team up against the common folk than it was to fight each other. Billionaires in China and billionaires in America have little reason to fight each other and so long as they keep the cheap consoomer crap flowing the ordinary people in both countries won't care about their lack of freedom.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 ,,, Fighting without dropping any blood just means the war that should have been in 30 years, will be in 10 or less. It’s just provoking an enemy who now sees you’re extremely antagonistic to them. I can’t deny I want to go to war with them though.
🔺 SERCH ADITYA RATHORE-HE ALSO MAKES INFORMATIVE CONTENT LIKE WENDOVAR PRODUCTION
@@kriss_b china has been on the path to war since obama what the hell have you been smoking, they're even more aggressive now with the new guy the americans have
The Wendover drinking game: Take a drink every time Sam says ‘Therefore’
Who’s got some more rules for this?
Take a sip whenever he finishes a sentence with a pause between the last. Three. Words.
Wendover marathon - take a shot for every video about planes
@@sarahmoores2724 I wonder if the ICU takes bookings? If so it might be best to make one beforehand
🔸 SERCH ADITYA RATHORE-HE ALSO MAKES INFORMATIVE CONTENT LIKE WENDOVAR PRODUCTION
Take a drink for every second he says something aviation related and a drink for every second there is a plane in the vid
Asteroid/Space-based mining might also be a reason for industries to base themselves in space.
Would be tax-free
Hundreds of trillions of dollars in mineral resource wealth just floating around out there? Yeah I'd say that that's a big enough financial incentive to drive space development, and take in mind that was just one decent size floating rock. Luna also has resources for us to use and also if you reference Sci-Fi if you drag an asteroid into a stable orbit and then hollow it out by mining the internal structure of it you basically get a free orbital structure.
@@GoldPicard and then you spin it up, for artificial gravity around the equator🤩
One of the biggest problems with that is actually the insane amount of the material that would most likely be found (hence the unfathomable size of some of the asteroids/(Planets), destroying the price of the material(s) and making them basically worthless due to how pricing on earth works :) 🤙🏽🤙🏽
Nun the less I’m all for space no matter the cost !
So you're saying if the Cold War have gone into a full-blown war with the Space Race, we would be having cheap tickets much earlier?
Yes
If so then we just have thousand and thousands more ICBMs. Which can be used by private companies 50 years later to build their own launch system by using those surplus rocket engines and hardware to assemble into their own rocket. Cost to space probably go down but it looks messier compared to how SpaceX is doing with its reusable rocket, because it could prevent SpaceX from forming, other company will dominate the market with surplus engines from Cold War's ICBM.
Even surplus hardware will be outdated fairly quickly & the private companies will have to innovate to keep up the competition, & would have also probably reached what SpaceX has done earlier as well.
There will be a reason to be a space tourist WHEN a space hotel is made.
And *that* is waiting for low-cost transportation.
See the chicken-egg problem here...?
The most expensive hotel ever made.
Just the cost of manufacturing such a thing and up keeping it would bankrupt all but the most rich. And I doubt even elon musk would make such a stupid move.
@@user-xe9gl8wo9s I don't think it's that much of a deal-breaker. I'm not talking about normal hotel size. A viable project would be a 3-room orbital station with 2 common areas for viewing and activity. It would be very expensive but the research into easier maintenance would be pretty good. It would probably be barely profitable, but better than a sub orbital trip to space if you can charge stay per week. If you have the ability to launch the station and put it together, that cost is fixed so then you just need to launch passengers and supplies in the same or two launches. I can actually see something like this happening in 2040 or 2050, especially at the rate we are going now.
@@2KOOLURATOOLGaming the devil is in the details.
And there's far more incentive to simply hire out the international space station or something.
When people start competing to be the first to have sex in space
5:41 Ah yes, SpaceX's Starship Launch System, otherwise known as SLS
Glad someone else caught that 😂
yeah that might not be their fault, a lot of professional articles called the rocket that and so anyone trying to do actual research would get screwed over if they dont know better and are approaching this without prior knowledge
I don’t understand. What is wrong?
@@partypandamonium9116 It is not wrong, just that SLS is another rocket in production. So spacex just calls theirs Starship
Or maybe it was a deliberate jab at SLS
The major reason space travel is so expensive is simply due to the fact that the cost of energy to reach space is way more than conventinal aircraft.
Even super sonic jetliners like the concorde cost a lot more than conventional jets are due to fuel costs as breaking sound barrier rquires way more energy compare to conventional aircraft that runs at a constant mech 0.8-0.9, which is the most economical speed for conventional airliners.
And for space travel you need to maintain a constant speed of 9km/s to leave earth oribit is simply the fundimental reason space travel is so expensive. You can't cheat physics.
That's kind of a bad way too look at it. You don't need any energy to stay in orbit; once you're there, you stay there until you decide to leave orbit. That's totally different to atmospheric flight where every second costs energy.
Well, not without a space elevator, at least.
The fuel costs are negligible compared to the cost of the rocket and maintaining it
@@sac3528 yeah thats not how space "works".
Gravity doesn't suddenly stop existing. And also there is no clear border to the atmosphere. Even at Low Earth Orbit you will experience drag. Drag from "air" and also increased drag/push from the sun.
As an example the ISS need around 7t of fuel each year to stay where it is: in orbit
Space will always be expensive for that reason, but if you only had to pay fuel costs than the Falcon 9 would be under a million.
The first 60 seconds of this video highlights the most fundamental step forward to space travel and one often overlooked. This is already routine.
We have seen it with air travel, we have seen it with car ownership, we have seen it with personal computing and personal communications.
Yeah. And look where it brought us.
@@lonestarr1490 To the highest standard of living the world has ever known?
@@belland_dog8235 *in the west, yes. But also a collapsing climate.
@@lonestarr1490 To a moment in time where I can access more information on anything, at any time, anywhere from a handheld device that costs less than a single month in academia? Share that information with 1, 10 or 1000 people in any country within seconds? Have complete freedom and independence on my movement, choice of destination for work or leisure? you talking about that place?
@@lonestarr1490 koolio friend, if you don't min, you can leave the internet to reduce your carbon footprint
we won't miss you
They'll price it $15,999.99 and call it a promotion.
Maybe a coupon day or something
.99 cents festive off
Does it have free shipping?
Not their problem that you didn't work hard like Musk or Bezos and become a billionaire.
[sarcasm off]
@@onglt27 Beat me to it. 😁
"A little known island called Wake Atoll".
BATTLEFIELD THEME INTENSIFIES
It is always dangerous to watch a video by a channel you love on a topic you're familiar with. But not with you. As a long-term fan of the space industry and specifically the launch scaling problem, this video was breathtakingly accurate. Many analysts WITHIN the industry actually get the elasticity problem wrong or miss it altogether, regularly. Great job. You did miss SpaceX's bet though, Starlink. That is, leverage a side industry, whose elasticity is known, and where the company has a competitive advantage BECAUSE of its core business.
Drive up demand internally with a novel project with lots of potential.
If it works, you've now got a higher launch frequency AND the revenue to fund even larger bets.
You can now afford larger crapshots.
He's also assuming that SpaceX are a rational business entity. But while they certainly put on that appearance, the truth is they aren't actually sane.
He states that "SpaceX doesn't know whether investing a billion dollars in reducing launch costs by 10 million dollars would be worth it".
And while he is correct that they don't know, he's implying that *because* they don't know, they won't do it. And if they were sane, they wouldn't. But they're not.
Because the thing is that even without Starlink SpaceX would still be pouring billions into Starship, despite not knowing if it would pay off financially.
@@lazarus2691 that's a lot of speculation based on a positive opinion of SpaceX and Musk. You may be right, but everything's possible under that lens. I prefer the economic analysis approach
@@linerider195 I would say it could still be true with a cynical look on things. Paying the crapshoot could be worth the risk if SpaceX could support a technocracy on Mars. That would make Elon Musk immensely wealthy.
@@xWood4000 I am not sure I'm following you sorry, what do you mean?
These prequel episodes of "The Expanse" are getting really good!
Except there would be a baby bonus instead of a baby tax as everyone would be super old
Could you imagine being a worker in a space factory? It would be like a worker on an oil platform but 100x as hardcore
“The industry needs their WWII”
Taiwan: *sweats intensely*
.
Important missed topics: SpaceX rideshare program for small satellites like Cubesats, Starlink, Mars missions, Moon missions, off planet telescopes. There's no reason that industry has to be the catalyst alone, far from it. It's going to be multiple factors. I could easily see a space based hotel or resort be a thing in the long run, or a special training facility. Also he didn't even cover the pure cost of propellant or SpaceX's new rapidly reusable rocket catching system that they are building. Seems like he could at least briefly have touched on a few of those.
It seems like what we need is a bigger space station. This would allow companies to send researchers to space to perform R&D for their products
I think the rocketry tech still has a lot of room to advance and become much cheaper in the near future, starship if it can deliver even part of what it promises could kickstart the space industry further
I hope too, estimates are all great and even the ones that wants to be more sceptic agrees if done right the cost per kg will be lower that Falcon Heavy which is the current leader in coat but it all comes to that if development goes well without bankrupting SpaceX since developing a rocket is the hardest part but i belive in SpaceX team and wish good luck to them in their mission to make space more available for humanity
@@fallendown8828 Bankruptcy is a risk but I do not think it is massive, Nasa gave them the lunar lander contract so I don’t think Nasa can afford to lose them and tons of people want to invest into SpaceX. Still definitely a risk if things start to really stall though.
Another part he glossed over is the simple fact that airtravel solves a problem for tourists, how to get from A to B. While space travel is merely recreational.
The incentive is just that much stronger to make airtravel economic. Even if they manage to make spaceflight as cheap as a business class airticket by some miracle, the market is still going to be very small.
People just aren't massively going to pay thousands of dollars for a few minutes of weightlessness. The problem we have is the lack of a second habitable planet in the solar system.
If we did we would have already had economic spaceflight by now.
14:00 Yotutube's auto-generated subtitle feature is impressive but occasionally they totally shit the bed:
"now Lost baby sweater weather Marine and Scream and gentle hands in khi bot"
@14:05 stay spacious and free my Palace apples
There is already a space-based industry: Satellites.
It's currently too small (or rather, launches are too infrequent) to induce the scaling effect that you mention, but this is why SpaceX is developing StarLink. Let's hope that it works (and doesn't cause Kepler syndrome...)
It's Kessler Syndromme ;) but you're right to fear.
On a brighter note, regulations are (slowly but surely) coming into place and the plan is to forbid launch of stuff you can't dispose of, could it be by allowing it to re-enter Earth athmosphere or by parking it into a graveyard orbit. Refueling in space is also becoming a thing and there are some studies to catch and recycle larger space debris.
So Kessler syndrome IS a danger, in doesn't mean nothing is done about it though.
*Kessler
I do not think starlink is a threat to bring about Kessler syndrome. Those are scheduled to fall back to Earth at the end of their life, and they are low altitude satellite, that should their thrusters fail before deorbiting atmospheric drag will bring them down naturally in a few years or maybe a decade. worst comes to worst, say all their sats fail, you only need a decade or two to clean them up. high altitude sats are the ones to really worry about as they are high velocity (you need to be faster to achieve higher orbit) and their orbit decays very slowly
@@rasaecnai
Yeah I guess , although they might cause some space debris even though they’re at a lower altitude
@@proger1960 space debris is inevitable since we are exploring space. whenever you bring stuff there = space debris if you think about it. that is alright so long as they can fall back down.
kessler syndrome was a concern that space would be so polluted that they would lock us in and stop further space exploration. Starlink bringing that about is unlikely, even at 40k sat constellation. it is alright to be concerned but it should be in proportion, otherwise it is fear mongering.
5:55 the other reason is SpaceX building most of the rocket in-house, and not having parts subcontracted to a dozen companies who each are taking a chunk of profit.
.. I think that was what he meant by ‘insourcing’ but the usual term is something like ‘vertical integration’ but of course that means something completely different in rocket assembly 😀
@@CTCTraining1 true
♦️ SERCH ADITYA RATHORE-HE ALSO MAKES INFORMATIVE CONTENT LIKE WENDOVAR PRODUCTION
"So you want to go to space, and you're not a billionaire"
Elon Musk watching: I'm invisible from the naked eye.
Im so sad I found the perfect video to watch at the end of my lunch
Same.
it was dinner for me
It would have been a rocket lunch.
🔶 SERCH ADITYA RATHORE-HE ALSO MAKES INFORMATIVE CONTENT LIKE WENDOVAR PRODUCTION
@@pramilashaktawat4429 Sorry, I don’t like overly political and heavily militarized clickbaity content with poor english.
I want Blue Origin to do something relevant.
@@TheFalseShepphard this guy, apparently
@@TheFalseShepphard You should. Even SpaceX should have a worthy competitor. One entity, no matter how (currently) well meaning, should have a total lock on anything.
This is why two providers were contracted for Commercial Crew, but sadly, Boeing hasn't been a worthy competitor yet, either...
New glenn is going to help blue origin take the crown from spacex, then starship is going to get the crown back
Liked before even watching because that’s the type of production Wendover has accustomed us to 👍🏻
I can't believe you didn't mention Starlink. In 2020, despite only have 6 customers, SpaceX launched 25 payloads, half of which were their own Starlink launches. SpaceX is creating their own demand, they need more launches to provide better internet service on Earth, which provides them more funding for more launches to orbit. They already have 1,600 Starlink satellites in orbit, the FCC has already approved 12,000 Starlink satellites to be launched. As of March there were only 4,000 man made satellites in orbit overall. Starlink alone makes a 3x increase in that number.
More satellites arnt a 100% plus
Yeah big oversight IMO
@@phantom__1117 Sure, but if one is just looking at the angle of scaling then it's a completely valid argument. Though SpaceX seems to have taken efforts to at least try and address the worst issues found with Starlink, so I suspect that their particular constellation won't be the biggest issue... It might be those that follow instead thus.
Satellite internet already exists, and there is NO chance starlink is better than an optic cable.
@@user-zb8tq5pr4x yes but can it get everywhere
Have to disagree on some arguments such as rocket companies aren't investing in scaling up rockets. If you follow the Starship prototyping you realize that SpaceX is trying to exactly do that - revolutionizing space travel by dramatically reducing cost and having several launches per day. Also what you say at 16:10. The industry to watch is EXACTLY that of space launches, specifally Starship. There are massive UA-cam Channels such as Everyday Astronaut that only exist because people are rooting for SpaceX to revolutionize space travel.
Yeah youre right. This guy dosent really know what hes talking about here. He has alot of false facts and does alot of unlogical comparisons.
"Launch more rockets."
With more launches will inevitably come more data points for spaceflight fatalities. The world's reaction to this will be of great significance to the trajectory of civilian spaceflight.
The biggest thing missing from this video: resource intensity. Getting into space is so incredibly resource intensive it will not become feasible in the near future, however you look at it. It's why airlines hardly make a profit (without receiving huge incentives from governments) and why supersonic flight got canned (and probably never will come back): high energy requirements, for something that just doesn't create that much tangible benefit (moving a persons body). On the other hand of the spectrum you have the success story of the Semi-Conductor industry: constant material intensity for ever more performance (until recently). It's hardly theoretically feasible to create a space industry of the same size as the air-travel is today, and even less so something we should really strive for considering the on going climate-crisis.
The thing is space scales better with larger spacecraft, in much the same way as ships. There's a reason ships keep getting bigger, even choosing to be too large to pass through the panama canal - economics. The drag on a ship's hull scales with the square of its mass, and the cargo capacity with the cube. So a larger ship is more efficient. The same sort of thing works for rockets, more or less. The larger the rocket, the more cost efficient it can theoretically be to use it. And where the climate is concerned - space offers a number of advantages. First of all, space based manufacturing and resource extraction offers huge benefits for the climate. Transporting cargo on earth uses a huge amount of carbon, but nowhere near as much as making the cargo in the first place. It's well worth making stuff off earth, with space mined materials, and transporting it here, meaning the energy used to make it was never used on earth. Not to mention the industrial non-carbon pollutants and environmental damage that manufacturing causes. And then of course, there's all the land you free up for conservation, reclamation, and agriculture (of which we'll need every square inch as the climate crisis gets worse). Secondly, you can use nuclear reactors to your heart's content in space. No politics, no environmental concerns. Uranium is extremely safe to take to space, if it hasn't been run in a reactor yet, and if it melts down on the surface of some asteroid, that's fine. That means power can be way cheaper in space than it is here. And, of course, solar's more efficient there as well. All this to say you're working from some rather inaccurate assumptions about the economics and technical challenges of space.
The energy of the rocket is expensive, but nothing compared to the rocket itself. The Falcon 9 with a commercial crew uses about half a million dollars in fuel to send 4 people into LEO. That is over $100,000 in fuel costs alone, but it's not the 10s of millions of dollars it is right now. No one said space travel will be cheap. It will remain at least an order of magnitude high than air travel, but still doable.
The resource intensity of getting to space is mostly induced by throwing away your equipment every time, making hardware is really expensive. Fuel wise it's not that different a ballpark number then aircraft flying to the other side of the planet. Which kind of makes it obvious that reusability could vastly depress prices over time, air cargo is a thing after all. And as noted in this video, there are some products that you could make at much higher quality in space, so high quality manufactured goods is definitely a good reason.
More efficient fiber optics for instance means less power used to run the internet, exactly what we could use during the climate crisis. And another option would be solar power in space, in geosync orbit they get almost continuous sunlight for the entire year, vastly reducing the energy storage problem renewables usually have to a far far more easy to meet amount.
As such, space is one way one could try and meet the upcoming crisis, if it was but cheap enough to get there.
Inventing new fun ways to destroy the climate faster is really not something we should be spending billions on right now...
Thus why inventing something that could help like Space Solar Power might be very helpful. As it does away with the need to store power with vast battery arrays or other things and can just continuously send renewable power to Earth.
Right now that Real Engineering is doing so many pieces on Aviation my boy Wendover fled to space ;)
Nah he evolving
Love your videos and the work you do!
That's a key point. Novelty won't support space travel, but industry eventually will.
Imagine when labels just say "made in space"
Awesome video but I think you Overestimate the degree to which the industry has adopted reusability. SpaceX is only reusing first stages, and the “last generation” atlas that you mentioned, will remain in use for years. And it’s replacement MIGHT eventually get reusable engines. Falcon 9 is the only partially reusable rocket flying. While more are on their way, few are expected to get here soon. With that being said I think you’re right, prices can’t truly fall without the economies of scale enabled by industry, but I think there’s more that we can get out of reusability too.
Yeah this wasn't a good breakdown on current cost compared to future cost. UA-cam search turns up dozens of videos on the subject alone. He could have done a better job with this one.
I'm invested in the full picture. Love these possible futures
There is a music CD that I love. Who knows the Touhou Project, knows "Magical Astronomy", whose backstory is related to space travel based on tourism.
That story is set in (roughly) the third quarter of the 21st century. When the CD was released (in 2006), it was considered that perhaps it was too good to be true.
The fact that that could be true for our timeline... it's just beautiful.
Ooo a space rocket video...
“So speaking of airplanes...”
...
You've missed the real demand change: the world's richest man currently operates the world's cheapest and fastest turnaround reuseable rockets, and he wants to colonise Mars, preferably starting last week. Even trying will greatly exceed the scale-up required.
Oh, and he's currently trying to launch the world's largest satellite constellation by a factor of about 500 as a side project. This alone has doubled SpaceX's launch requirements.
Sending people to mars will take decades and there is no economic incentive to scale. You need an economic incentive to scale, otherwise it's just limited to the limited goodwill/charity of an individual. And while internet satellites are cool, they still represent limited demand.
Musk is not even remotely world's richest man lol
@@user-zb8tq5pr4x google it, he's going back and forth on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd spots with Bezos and gates
@@pranavkondapalli9306 Except he's not. It's a bunch of hot air. The vast majority of musks "wealth" is in tesla stock, which is actually completely worthless. Tesla is insolvent as a company, and when the hype bubble bursts, musks "wealth" will drop by 99%
@@mathboy_ Or, you need a madman with deep pockets, a constant source of funding from, say, a satellite internet megaproject, and an ideological commitment to doing it come hell or high water. Currently ~3bn people have no internet, and tens of millions in the first world have utter garbage. You don't need to capture much of that market to make a metric fuckton of money, if only you could get the satellites up there cheaply.
Or, to quote one of the Apollo astronauts: There is no good reason to go to space. And every civilisation that made that rational choice is dug up, documented and remembered by the ones that made the irrational choice.
Very informative and interesting video. Keep up the good work.
8:20 There's palpable glee in Sam's voice when he announces the future success of space travel depends on logistics.♥ 😃
0:26 Inspiration 4 was definitely a front page story.... It was covered extensively on cable news as well
Yeah, like, I see what he's getting at, but he's just off the mark here.
"These events are becoming commonplace"
Inspiration4 was literally _the first ever_ civilian launch to orbit, not yet 'common'
I thought the title was "When Will Space Terrorism be Affordable?" and I was like : NEVER PLEASE
Regarding growing demand for launches, the massive internet constellations (such as Starlink) are adding a lot of launches, and if successful the Starship will create it's own demand for lunar and Mars exploration, not counting possible intercontinental fast travel.
Economies of scale can only take you so far. Fuel costs in space travel are important (and fixed, you can't optimise hydrocarbon or lox production any more), and the quality control for manned spacecraft means mass production will be hard, even if costs can be reduced somewhat. Pollution will also be important when you're burning tons of fuel per passenger and that'll get taxed a lot.
If you make a part 2, you may consider mentioning the inherent inefficiencies in reusable rockets. When you want to land a rocket you add massive weight for fuel, landing legs, strengthening the airframe in new places and refurbishment costs. All those costs could have been spent on more payload instead, so reusable rockets is very difficult to do.
If you have a payload worth $200 mil, a rocket worth $50 mil and potential savings of say $20 mil from reusability, its going to be a hard sell to a customer.
But a reusable rocket is cheaper because you dont need to pay 50$ milions for a new one when it lands. Then it is only, say 5$ milion for fuel. Ask Spacex.. :p
90% of the cost is the engines, SpaceX saves 9 engines every time they land a booster, there's a reason they're the cheapest way to get big stuff to orbit.
SpaceX had 25 launches in 2020. You should count Starlink as a customer...even though it is an internal customer.
But, yes, 2x isn't quite the scale necessary and your general point still stands.
I'd argue that SpaceX is coming close to investing for the scale necessary--and way more than any other (current or prospective) launch provider.
Love you Wendover! Thank you!
To extend the Salt Lake City to Los Angeles example, that is currently one of the most competitive air routes in the USA. The SLC-LAX nonstop route is served by 6 airlines: American, Delta, United, Southwest, JetBlue and Alaska. Including alternate airports, the market is also served by Allegiant and Avelo for a total of eight competitors in one market! The space industry needs scale, scale brings competition, and competition drives down the price.
SpaceX‘s president and COO Gwynne Shotwell calls this 'residual capability' and her deep understanding of how to build profitable business on it will probably be a major reason that SpaceX will succeed in bringing costs down. Interviews with her are rare but her plans for SpaceX are clear and very solid. They all boil down to creating demand and profits that enable lower costs and subsidize going to Mars.
I laughed so hard at your comment. Shotwell is the one who talked about point-to-point rocket travel on Earth, right? What a freaking joke.
For the time being, SpaceX being its own customer for launching Starlink satellites makes the most sense. It’s the most straight forward business need for more launches
@@lanzer22 Yes, just do dozens of useless launches for a useless satellite constellation. It's straight forward, but it's dumb af.
@@lebrigand4115 Lots of people laughed at ideas as impossible in the past, in fact rockets going in to space at all was one of those. If one just looks at the physics involved there is nothing fundamentally illegal about point to point rocket travel though, the landing rocket boosters kind of make that obvious really. Any kind of fully reusable system is effectively also a point to point system.
Now if they can ever make it cheap enough and safe enough to find many passengers, well who knows about that. You'd need plenty of scale to have much of a chance to make that happen, but fuel wise rockets are only a few times more then planes really. So if supersonic passenger lines can work as they did to a limited degree, this one might as well.
@@Quickshot0 When you take into account the 20+ miles boat ride to the launch pad, the whole boarding process (including putting every passenger in a space suit and diapers to accomodate for the high G acceleration), the fuelling of the rocket once everyone is on board (this alone take hours), the flight, the whole unboarding, and finally the 20+ miles boat ride from the landing pad to your destination, you might as well take a plane: it's faster, cheaper, and you're 1000 times less likely to die.
"Space doesn't have a WW2!" Fingers crossed for WW3, I guess?
15:04
That Artemis book was talking about exactly this
One other point to be made is accommodations. When talking about commercial air travel, some of the price was due to the accommodations the initial wealthy travelers demanded for it to be competitive. The average plane ticket in the early years may have been xyz, but the accommodations that were offered were comparable to modern day business class products which have a huge price jump from economy seats, so comparing the two can give you the wrong picture in some cases. Many aspects of why air travel can be so cheap is because of the almost lack of human rights you get during the entire experience...
Never forget airline tickets at the height of PanAm were expensive too (maybe not 16k) but point is it begins high and settles low. Let’s hope govt regulatory bodies keep it competitive.
*Let's hope govt regulatory bodies refrain from passing laws that reduce competition.
@@SamSam-qk5zr indeed. Govt can work with or against private sector, just depends who is lobbying for what 😂
You didn't talk about the upcoming space race. The whole rocket/space industry got into light for a space race and we probably are gonna see another soon (USA- China). Also we got non-government space races too. These should push the development and lower the price.
this is the favorite part of my week
I haven't watched this channel in forever, He's like a different person on HAI.
So what you're saying is that we need a WW3 *in spaaaaaace*
Space force!!!!
why would you compare human rated prices of the space shuttle with non human rated falcon 9 rockets? And current rocket designs are not safe enough for mass transit like airplanes.
Falcon 9 and dragon is human rated. They've already made several launches with people on board
In his defense he low-balled the shuttle price super hard. Most estimates put it at closer to $30k/lb.
The key however is innovating fast enough to hit the window where it's still more cost effective to transport materials into space, manufacture and then return the finished product to earth than to implement whatever clever technical solution someone eventually devises to get around the problems introduced by Earth's gravity.
Very insightful video good work!
Another way of looking at this (in terms of it's evolutionary differences compared to aviation) is that aviation grew due to demand for communication, and though space travel (in terms of the vast majority, into orbit) is developing to facilitate the same thing, it's growth will not become a consumer staple as air travel is the in person version of air mail, whereas travel to space is the equivalent of going on a trip to visit the mail sorting office.
yes
gg
yes
@@Kodlaken no
はい
This is one of my favourite videos of yours, with all being exceptional. Thank you for this and hopefully inspiring more people in the progress for all, in this case space.
SpaceX Starship is basically the big gamble the video talked about. It is huge and designed for very rapid launches (perhaps more than once a day). A single Starship realizing its full potential would outpace the entire global launch market. However the reason this gamble is being made is propably not cold economic calculation bit rather musks personal obsession with going to mars.
Strongly agree with your overall point that in order for the space industry to be sustainable it needs to become profitable.
I will say though that SpaceX is a bit of a special case because they're already scaling up well beyond what the existing and near-term demand can support. Elon Musk wants a colony on Mars, that requires scaling up, therefore they're scaling up (building Starship). Simple as that.
Long-term, I agree that's not sustainable. Hopefully, Musk's dream of a Mars colony will become the space industry's "world war 2" moment, as you suggest, creating the economics of scale necessary for the industry to take off and make things like low cost space tourism viable. Because as rich as Musk is now I'm not entirely sure he can bankroll that level of investment all on his own.
I think that for a permanent Mars colony to happen in Musk's lifetime manufacturing, mining, tourism, etc all need to be happening to drive down costs and develop the technology.
IMO for Spacex to build a Mars colony they should continue to focus on launch ability and efficiency, paving the way for other companies to build up space industries. Additionally, they can focus on space habitation. Meaning building out structures that other companies can use for their manufacturing facilities as well as for human habitation. This will further their goal of building a Mars colony. They might even be able to secure a contract for building a Lunar colony first.
Starship generates it's own demand by incorporating orbit refueling. That makes one mission use a dozen of launches, but still costing less than legacy rocket launches.
@@bergonius that sounds silly. Drive a car in circles for no reason than to bill myself for the gas. Need profit to go to space in the first place.
SpaceX is sucking from the teat of government. This isn’t profit, but welfare. There is just one plausible profitable concept for space currently. With direct benefits for us on earth. Space based solar power. But the powers that be are investing nothing to explore this.
@@TheBooban Amazing, everything you just said was wrong
3:55 Crazy, seeing a massive get and cargo getting carried by a donkey at the same time.
Sounds like India, developed but also undeveloped
*jet
Very good video. The analysis, comparison and conclusions are spot on. Like. EDIT: I appreciate the lack of stupid jokes that I hear on other channels.
9:57 “space doesn’t have a WW2”
*US, China, Russia* : write that down! write that down!
🙈😰💀💀💀💀
I love your videos, but there's quite a bit wrong with this one unfortunately. SpaceX's reduction in costs comes from two sources: Reusability AND scaling production. Even if ULA had partial reusability tomorrow they couldn't launch Atlas V any cheaper or faster.
You talk about companies not wanting to take a gamble due to lack of data, but SpaceX is already taking that gamble with Starship. Their rockets are designed to be mass produced and Elon constantly talks about how the process is just as important as the rocket itself. SpaceX could sit on F9 and FH for another decade before anyone else had a rocket that could compete; instead they began working on Starship before FH first launched. Also as other people have pointed out, Starlink is SpaceX producing their own demand.
Your video applies to pretty much every company besides SpaceX. Also BO isn't a rocket company, it's a law firm. Please don't group suborbital hops with orbital rocketry.
SpaceX really didn't reduce the launch cost that much. Using the shuttle is a poor comparison, as the shuttle was designed to carry humans and cargo. When you actually factor in the human cargo the Shuttle is cheaper then SpaceX's contracts.
@@TheOwenMajor the contract cost includes the devolpment costs though. And 2 crew dragons and several cargo dragons still come in less than the shuttle
@@TheOwenMajor no the shuttle was not cheaper in any way. Stop talking about stuff you know nothing about
Hopefully NASA can actually follow through on it missions to expand the 'space' for space with the likes of the moon and Mars missions without each administration changing its missions.
The fact that Biden has not cancelled Artemis tells me there is something critical about the Moon now. I believe that China’s interest in the Moon is all the difference. The Moon is a giant, convenient hardware store. The terrestrial entity that controls the Moon first controls what humanity does in space for centuries, perhaps forever.
Constellation was sucking more money, and doing less than SLS. Sometimes a program *deserves* to die...
The problem is the corruption in Boeing. Boeing is whats holding us back.
there is already a space-industry evolving: information industry: building leo-constelations of satelites for the internet is worth multiple billions / year and consts comparatively little to launch the sats :)
One option. Build a new research station and use the old iss as a one week adventure vacation. Iss has history value.
We need a new research station anyway. 7 total - 2 iss crew, 5 visitors at @ $2 m per week. $10 million per week? We can probably expand capacity if needed.
You missed the big topic of Earth-to-Earth travel via rockets _instead_ of planes.
This is the goal of only SpaceX as of now (I don't recall anyone even mentioning it), but they aim to be price competitive with airliners for a way shorter trip across the globe.
Lmao really , I mean the concept is cool but the the immense noise and most humans not being fit to go to space will limit that.
It hasn't been talked about in the last 5 or so years, probably because it's far far down on the list since the Starlink idea came about. And it won't be safety rated for that until years of regular problem free flights.
I think that idea is almost canned at least for a very good while, Starlink and other big projects can take demand over high cost intercontinental rocket flights, no matter what it will be considerably more expensive than a jet for a long time. We have less need for fast travel to other countries when we have tele meeting's perfectly capable of doing most urgent international business matters vs flying people over on the soonest flight.
@@BadTakesGuy
*However that’s rare and only certain people are capable of that , going to space for most is still a very far far future idea mate.*
@@BadTakesGuy
True but again going to space for most will still require a lot of marketing as going to space may seem fun but again it’s boring in the long run. Spaceflight and humans flying on airplane isn’t the same thing fam.
We’re looking 100s of years down the line for humans to get up to space in the masses , and we don’t know if humans want to leave Earth to actually go to some other hostile planet unless Earth becomes a lost cause. Even if Earth gets worser it’s still better than living on Mars or the Moon for sure , unless we can “ tera-form “ it which would also take 100s of years.
I think a key point that was missed was the entire premise of starlink! Spacex is using it to drive both the industry/demand side of the equation to justify a higher launch cadence as well as using the revenue to fund further investments into scaling.
There’s also a start up that’s working towards reducing cost of space travel by 3D printing everything, eliminating the need for welding and such. I forget the name of it, but that might help with the scalability so others can get into the race also.
Relativity Space
@@kyrakrieger1862 thank you! Couldn’t remember and was too lazy to look it up.
It’s crazy that it used to be $1400 to fly from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, and this year I’m flying from Boston to Tokyo for $1200.
The 5:39 example is technically true but it overlooks the fact that reusable shuttles are simply massively more expensive and dangerous than disposable (or reusable) rockets. The shuttles originally projected $600/lbs (inflation adjusted) but turned out to be $7,700/lbs. A better comparison would be with Saturn V rockets (Apollo moon rockets), which were proven and had an adjusted cost of $700/lbs!
Saturn V was about $2500 / lb. They were HOPING to eventually get it down to $700. FYI Falcon Heavy cost per lb. is HALF Falcon 9, but they don't fly as much so weight is not the ONLY factor
@@bindingcurve Good to know, thanks. And I agree that other factors like total number of launches are important. I'm just pointing out the shuttle program is not the best example to make for the video's premise of "space travel is cheaper".
@@kenellorando Also when it comes to price per lb., bigger rockets are better, but someone has to want to put up something that big (heavy).
Kinda funny how you mentioned the environmental impact of delivery services in your ad at the end, but failed to mention it in your video about space travel. One rocket launch produces up to 300 tons of carbon dioxide, which is just insane. This is not something you should just gloss over, ''cheap'' space tourism would destroy the earth.
Right, space launches should be for research purposes only and only when it is necessary. There is no need to make this an industry with consumer based intent. Rockets shouldn't be treated as a new gimmick.
Rockets should absolutely be treated as the new gimmick because we could easily out-source almost all of our carbon generation to space manufacturing and mining which wouldn't pollute the Earth anyway. All it takes at this moment is somebody with money to decide to get the process started.
Space mirror launch costs are probably just barely getting cheap enough that it's probably cheaper than buying up a comparable area of land, which might be significant for geoengineering purposes.
WENDOVER: please do a short film on the current status and future prospects of autonomous VTOL flying vehicles.
I realized that the secret to making a million is saving for a better investment. l always tell myself you don't need that new Aston Martin or vacation in Hawaii just yet and that mindset helps me make more money Investing.
At a time like this, some are wondering whether bitcoin is a good investment. Anyone considering investing should remember that all investments involve some risks, whether they're stocks, commodities, or Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
For real is bitcoin a good investment? I'd love to have a diversified growth portfolio of about ($50k -$100k) that I can be aggressive with
I wanted to trade Crypto but got discouraged by the fluctuations in price
@@jacobjohnston1177 That won't bother you if you trade with a professional like Mrs Meltem Demirors
I got Mrs Meltem Demirors info, how good is she ?
Sounds like what you're saying is we need a SPACE WAR.
Love the background music!
Hopefully soon. It’s be so cool
Space tourism is going to be extremely important in the long term. So many new technologies are going through rigorous testing because of the tourism industry. Lots of that tech will be used for more impactful industries (like growing 3D printed organs in low-gravity environments).
Once Starship is fully operational, the cost for a launch will decrease exponentially. Full and rapid reusability of a rocket has never been done before until starship. The sheer cost per ton to LEO and the payload to LEO will be what makes space accessible for everyone. This also makes Mars colonization a realistic goal in the near future, which is SpaceX’s ultimate goal.
You are gravely missinformed and optimistic about that joke of a ship
lol did you even watch the video? he talked about how reusability is not enough
I'm yet to see a good reason to have a permanent presence of any kind on Mars
@@Macieks300 right, another huge advantage is how quickly they can build both the starships and the raptor engines, helping it scale. Large scale also opens up access to the industry in space he talked about, whereas currently it is too expensive to even begin.
@@avengerXable how so? Please elaborate
Yay a big UA-camr mentioned starship
I think you missed something. Starship isn't going to be taking off from a government facility. At least not frequently. It will at first be taking off from their own facility in Boca Chica. Or from their converted oil drilling platforms.
I think you forgot about Starlink. SpaceX's plan is to scale itself, it'll tap into a massive untapped market and not only will it pay for itself it'll pay for all of SpaceX's scaling
Starlink will never pay for itself, it's a stupid idea that will crash and burn.
@@lebrigand4115 I mean if you're not smart enough to understand it you could just say so
I've always wondered, won't it hamper launches for other agencies?
@@karenamma7716 I think you can just plan around them
@@belland_dog8235 what if there's a launch which needs to be planned to exact seconds? Unless we don't actually need that accuracy
When we find out who the hell is Half as Interesting
The topic of Zblane cables is extremly interesting, i wish i would have found more about it, to read into it
I wonder if they could work on nanotube technology in space and if they could maybe they could create space elevators and this way we could create launch pads in space where when we want to try to go farther from earth a rocket can launch from that point instead of having to go through our earth's atmosphere? At the same time while supplies and workers are going up to this station other research and industries can be going up via rocket until the proper technology can provide a space elevator and I believe that nanotube technology may work better in space and if so this may change how we can get more and more things into space and hopefully the price can be lower? Could you imagine having certain things like space cities and what it may be like to have a surgery in space?