Posts by Flocke Kroes 4552 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Oct 2007
There are child's toys with different shaped holes and corresponding blocks to push through them. For me, the fun was checking things like would the long thin block fit through the square hole diagonally. Older laptops have different shaped sockets for different connectors... USB-C takes away so much fun while easing the option to plug a video cable into a power socket.
The will of advertisers is dictated by the will of the majority of their customers so I quite agree that Musk cannot win this one.
Musk killing X is not unfair. He bought it, he can run it as badly as he chooses until it dies from bad debt. The thing I find entertaining is his destruction of X is not deliberate. He genuinely believes he is doing something constructive at X and the failure is caused by a small but powerful conspiracy working against him.
The failure comes from him directing hatred at minorities and the majority as individuals deciding to push back because: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out..."
The same doubt applied to Florida Man would have resulted in a video proving you wrong plus supporters linking to the video to demonstrate his exceptional abilities.
A tax write off means instead of paying a proportion of profits from one company to the government you use another company to flush it down the toilet. There way well be an argument for the two options being effectively the same. A greedier solution is to make a profit with both companies but have your accountants find a legal way to pay bugger all tax from both. At a certain scale it is cheaper to buy a law exempting you from taxes than pay the taxes you cannot otherwise avoid.
No way.
Musk's perceived wealth is number of Tesla shares multiplied by share price. That number is partly fiction: selling some Tesla shares drops the value of his remaining holding. To spend that money Musk must instead borrow it from some banks offering shares as collateral. His credit was so good he could get banks to lend Twitter version 2 the money needed to buy Twitter version 1. The banks agreed to this because they believed they could sell the debt to greater fools.
This all fell to pieces the day he trashed-talked Twitter V1 - after committing to buy for $44B. Somehow he worked out that he was massively over paying. The way out would have been to talk up the value of Twitter so V1 share holders would be reluctant to sell. This is actually something he is good at. Tesla is proof he can talk up share price well beyond company performance.
Instead he trashed Twitter V1's share price with considerable skill and enthusiasm. This made Twitter's previous share holders determined to sell - at the high price he had committed to. It also made Twitter V2's debt unsellable. No rich people were foolish enough to buy Twitter debt when he took control of the company. That became more impossible when he stopped his Twitter paying bills. It has become even more impossible now he is talking about Twitter going bankrupt.
Twitter borrowed more money than it needed to buy Twitter. The excess has been paying the interest but there is very little left. Musk is not going to bail out Twitter so the banks will be left with a bad debt.
Musk's credit rating is now shit. Any vendors not currently requiring payment in advance will do so after Twitter's bankruptcy. Loss of that credit rating actually hurts Musk hence the massively inept performance intended to blackmail advertisers into returning.
As the training data is "poorly worded, ambiguous, unenforceable, or in direct conflict with other standing laws" I would expect precisely those issues with laws generated by an LLM. The things you want the bot to do require understanding the subject matter so are well beyond the abilities of the current predictatext on steroids bots.
Here is an example showing how "next most common word" fails badly from lack of understanding the issues. You only need to know the rules of chess (without needing to be a competent player) to follow what is happening.
I should have written more clearly. The only launch vehicle for Orion is SLS. The only thing SLS will ever launch is Orion. As the two are so strongly linked I give the price of an SLS+Orion launch as $4B whether in the context of SLS or Orion.
The production lines for Space Shuttle Main Engines have been re-opened at enormous expense. There was so much sticker shock at the price the congress funded a giant contract to make SSMEs (RS-25s) cheaper using modern manufacturing techniques. There was so much sticker shock at the price of the contract that congress funded a contract to redesign RS-25s to be cheaper by eliminating re-use. NASA has been required to order enough engines to get to Artemis X. Including refurbishment of old engines and building redesigned new ones these engines average $250M each.
Boeing can only build half an SLS per year. There is no point paying billions to get them to go faster because NASA only has the budget to launch every other year. That launch rate cripples any attempt at a Moon base.
Have you got evidence for those numbers?
An SLS launch for $2B is about right, but it is a one trick pony that always includes a service module and an Orion taking the cost over $4B. Adding up R&D, GSE and three Artemis launches comes to $41B (warning: prices in a cost plus contract will grow to match any possible budget).
NASA are getting three Starship HLS's (and the required number of RUDs, depots, tanker launches, ...) for $3B (firm fix price contract, payments on achieving milestones). The only way to get a single Starship launch up to $1B is to include complete project costs: R&D, GSE, test equipment, factories, ...
SpaceX can currently churn out about 7 complete Starships with boosters per year. Boeing might be able to do ½ an SLS per year. SpaceX's huge factories, test sites and launch complex did not blow up. Including them in a cost comparison to $2B SLS is comparing grapes to water melons. Bump an SLS launch to $13B if you want to get closer.
Some of the whiners are journalists who know better. Printing falsehoods and getting corrected generates more ad impressions than getting it right first time. It is hardly surprising that people without a strong interest in rockets get misinformed. How else do you think SLS has escaped tax payer fury for so long?
The order will be a little different:
After several more RUDs a Starship depot will go to low Earth orbit. The depot will be optimised to reduce propellant boil off and will not have Earth return hardware.
Several Starship tanker flights will fill the depot with propellant. Tankers will have extended propellant tanks and Earth return hardware.
Next up Starship HLS launches and docks with the depot. HLS will be optimised for Lunar descent and ascent but cannot return to Earth.
At a guess, next Starship HLS sets off on a slow but efficient trip to NRHO (near the Moon).
Probably next, SLS gets delayed a few times before launching Orion to meet HLS in NRHO.
Starship HLS does a return trip to the Moon.
Orion returns the astronauts to Earth.
The Orion capsule is the only vehicle available that can get Astronauts back from the Moon. It is such a bloated pig that not even SLS can get it to low lunar orbit. This puts strong performance requirements on HLS. An alternative HLS from Blue Origin (Blue Moon) got funding (grumble grumble). Blue Moon is a more traditional design that leaves its descent stage on the Moon but is too big for SLS and requires New Glenn (which might launch one day).
Orion costs $4B per launch and is the crippling factor preventing a sustained presence on the Moon. A crewed version of Starship capable of sending astronauts from Earth to NRHO and back is possible (requires propellant refill from a depot). Because Starship is intended to be fully re-usable, it has a target launch cost of $10M (price target will probably be nearer $70M). The return payload for Starship based missions will be about 50,000kg. Orion can return 4 astronauts and a few kg - like Apollo.
For LEO, a good amateur telescope will spot a Starship. For the start of a trip to the Moon, amateurs can follow the radio signal and would spot if the trans-lunar injection burn stopped significantly short. Japan, China and India would have no problem tracking radio signals all the way to the Moon. Medium sized observatories should be able to photograph major burns on the way to the Moon. Chandrayaan-2 and Chang'e 2 have photographed Apollo descent stages. They would easy see a Starship.
It would take flat-Earther level obstinacy to ignore the available evidence - so a whole crowd will screaming their lunacy when the time comes.
In reality:
Lack of FAA staff and resources led to multiple rockets getting scrapped on the ground instead of providing useful data by being launched - and scrapped in the air.
SpaceX has had to delay some improvements to Falcon 9 because the FAA are swamped. I am sure Rocket Lab, ULA, Stoke, and various new-space startups have similar issues that do not get as far as most websites specializing in Spaceflight. If Blue Origin were in any danger of launching something their excellent lobbyists might be able to sort this out.
No-one with a clue believed Artemis III would launch in 2025 (or 2024 for that matter). The difficult bit is guessing what will provide the longest delay: Starship HLS, the space suits, SLS or Orion. All of them will be late.
If you want to call something out, how about the bravery of the Artemis II crew. They will fly an Orion around the Moon with a life support system that has never been to Space. Orion has spent so much time waiting for SLS that some components died of old age. The Orion for Artemis I launched with a dead power supply because it would have taken months to dismantle the Orion to install a replacement. The SLS sat on the launch pad until the last minute hoping the hurricane would turn aside because SLS and its mobile launch platform are heavy enough to damage the crawler/transporter. There was a real risk that it would break down before completing the return journey and delay SLS and Orion even further beyond their use-by dates. The Artemis II SRB's have been poured so the clock is ticking on them already even though it was known at the time that the corresponding Orion would be late.
SpaceX are called out regularly over Artemis to cover delays from SLS. The big difference is HLS is a firm fixed price contract: SpaceX pick up the bill for any RUDs and do not get paid at all until achieving a milestone. SLS is cost plus. The project is actively delayed to increase the value of the contract. One SLS launch (ignoring R&D and GSE) costs more than 3 complete HLS missions including R&D and ground support equipment.
[According to the article: "SpaceX, run by the stable genius Elon Musk.." Musk is too busy running Twitter into bankruptcy to do much damage at SpaceX.]
If you do no have an HP printer then you do not have a light to light up and show you are out of HP ink/toner. I bet many of your are. Now you have a free app to tell you to buy some and where you can order genuine HP consumables. When the ink/toner arrives the app can advise you to buy a printer to use up the consumables so you can buy more. After all, what is the point of you owning a computer if you are not buying things from HP?
The video is a continuous stream of garbage for the first seven minutes - I assume it goes down hill from there. I will just deal with the point mentioned here:
The commentator on the video admitted to re-syncing the audio. The crowd at SpaceX (not mission controllers) cheered at separation not - as edited - after the first stage explosion. The commentator then presented later SpaceX commentary of Stage 2 progress as mission controller cluelessness about the fate of stage 1. He also says SpaceX would have got better telemetry from GEO satellites than by relying exclusively on Starlink. SpaceX launches normally use their own ground stations within a few hundred km of the rockets. This launch was in an odd direction to line up with the DoD's extensive missile tracking equipment north of Hawaii. SpaceX did use their ground stations for IFT2 when they were within range. GEO satellites are tens of thousands of km away and were never within range (without a drastic loss of bandwidth). Most of the track was over the ocean (guess why) away from Starlink ground stations. A proportion of Starlink satellites now forward data to each other with laser links and have some useful coverage over oceans.
I promise you every statement made in the first 7 minutes is just as bad. The presenter knows better but is deliberately writing garbage knowing it will get links because Musk is an arsehole and views from people debunking utter crap.
Twitter had two profitable quarters and were on target for more after paying off fines for past bad behaviour.
The new owner has loaded the company up with debt requiring $300M/quarter interest payments, run up debts at every opportunity, restored the behaviour that incurred fines, driven away customers, alienated much of the user base, got rid of the staff required to show compliance with consent decrees and publicly stated that anyone foolish enough to work at X will lose salary and severance pay in an upcoming bankruptcy.
Extwitter has only remained operational this long because it borrowed more than sufficient for the buy out. The excess was used to pay interest and there is not much left. Even Musk can see the bankruptcy coming which is why he his busy blaming anyone but himself despite his hard work and effective strategy for turning the company around.
NASA priorities are SLS, Blue Moon then anything essential for Artemis except the deep space tracking network. Hubble would be low down on the list but there is one opportunity for a privately funded mission.
telephone salespersons: I would far prefer a DTMF tree to risking whatever order results from communicating with an LLM. It is possible an LLM can hallucinate product features better than a human can lie about them.
solicitors: Been tried and found negligent.
psychologists: Who wants to get sectioned based on the opinions of three LLMs?
further education teaching professionals: Ask a novel question, get back a hallucination.
market and street traders and assistants: Please do not add LLMs to vending machines. Without the physical security of an armored vending machine, LLM street traders will be robbed faster than humans.
legal professionals: try telling a judge "ChatGPT said it was legal".
credit controllers: Let's have LLM advocates put their money into this first.
HR admin roles: consider the training data.
PR professionals, management consultants and business analysts: OK
market research interviewers: get enough silly responses already. If the interviewee thinks they are talking to a machine there will be a bigger chance of testing limits of credulity.
local government administrative occupations: I have received good service so far, but I write to them and make sure they have all the documents they require. The potential speed with which an LLM can respond creates an opportunity to search for exploits.
LLM is OK when the consequences of failure are trivial or land on other people.
In science, the test of truth is an experiment. The problem with experiments relating to religion is they often violate CIOMS guidelines for ethical research on human subjects. For example the indigenous people of the Amazon tested Christianity by crucifying missionaries. They got a null result: none of the missionaries came back from the dead. This experiment has obvious replication issues. A Christian could argue that crucifying missionaries is not counter to CIOMS because it is in the best interest of the missionaries - they go to heaven. Try taking that argument to UKRI and see if they will give you a research grant.
Hardly anyone claims politicians have become more trustworthy. (Perhaps some politicians make such a claim about themselves.)
What we have here is some people (possibly including politicians) giving false information about how to vote. We also have ex-Twitter distributing this false information despite being informed that it is false. Elections are organized according to laws. If there was any doubt, ex-Twitter could ask a lawyer.
According to words from ex-Twitter's owner, free speech means whatever is legal in each country - even though his actions contradict those words at every opportunity. Australia had better collect those fines quickly - there is a long queue of creditors dragging ex-Twitter through the courts. Not everyone is going to get paid unless the courts decide ex-Twitter=Musk. This is actually a possibility in which case his Tesla and SpaceX shares are up for grabs.
Independent access was somewhere between a reason and an excuse. Another incentive was as a jobs program. Falcon 9 first launch was 2010. It was optimized for cost and a threat to Ariane's commercial launch business. Europe was not prepared to 100% fund independent access to space and wanted at least 50% from commercial launches.
Ariane 6 got funding in 2016 because the proposed costing matched Falcon 9 before re-use (later that year) while providing independent access to space and securing existing jobs. Falcon 9 re-use broke the funding model - as did escalating Ariane 6 costs. Earning another bad timing award, Europe switched funding methods by offering launch contracts to commercial companies while Amazon bought a batch of Kuiper launches on Ariane 6.
If (when?) New Glenn misses the deadline the next launch window will not be for a couple more years. It is remotely possible New Glenn will fly other payloads before 2026 and by the time ESCAPADE is ready again New Glenn will be a low risk rocket. NASA will be getting a $70M launch for $20M + two years storage costs.
The Tesla had right of way but the road layout was dangerous. The visible part of the road was clear when the truck driver started to pull out. The Tesla had time to slow down and prevent the accident.
The fun bit about this ruling is it does not depend on Tesla terms and conditions. The key feature is Musk statements that he must have known were false (evidence and a judge's ruling like "funding secured"). Sometimes a bus load of street fighter lawyers cannot save you from stupid comments on social media.
Firmware.
Fingerprint readers are small computers with their own built-in software. When software is effectively part of the hardware it is called firmware. Firmware is usually supplied without source code or documentation. Changing firmware is impractical for anyone but the manufacturer of the device. Replacing the firmware may be a simpler option - if you can get hardware documentation.
This attack could be addressed by a firmware update. Firstly that update must effectively be created by the manufacturer and secondly updating the firmware should not be easy. (If it were, secure devices could be made vulnerable by back dating the firmware.)
Secure communication is tricky. Clue bats have been applied sufficiently often that most programmers know to use a library created by specialists and not to roll their own. The more difficult stage is to get programmers to RTFM. A hint of blame should go to managers not allocating enough time to reading the manual. Another hint of blame should go to every defective use of secure communications libraries on the internet that programmers use as templates instead of understanding how authentication works.
The biggest problem is people thinking it is sane to use an authentication device where the key is a part of their body (hard to change) and a copy of the key is left on every door handle and keyboard they touch.
TwitX terms of service specify California law. One of the defendants can wipe this out with failure to state a claim. The other, venue change then anti-SLAPP. Musk has just advertised that X SLAPPs weaker than an ant while admitting in a court filing that X puts adverts next to Nazi content against the wishes of clients. Truly the level of business genius we have come to expect.
Engine development was a generation ahead of launch for IFT1 and IFT2. Some of the changes were for ease of manufacture but the reduced part count improves reliability. Previous engine changes may fix problems that will be identified during the mishap investigation.
This was SpaceX's first full attempt at hot staging. Now they have real flight data to compare with I expect their simulations will improve. It might be possible to fix hot staging and the boost back burn with a software update. If not, it did not take long for welders in Boca Chica to install new baffles in the tanks to get the belly flop landings to work.
For IFT2 the heat shield tiles over the circular welds were glued on. They are attached more securely for the current occupants of the rocket garden. The attachment is now tested with a suction cup device.
I am sure SpaceX can have another Starship ready in four weeks that will explode later in the flight. There is no shortage of Starships and such explosions would be worth it for the data collected for IFT4. In real life, the FAA are not staffed, funded or resourced to keep up. I would be surprised if they are ready in two months and not surprised if it takes three. SpaceX will not sit on their hands during the wait so there will be more improvements for IFT3 and IFT4.
The tone of the article provoked responses, some of which contained information I had not found elsewhere. It is a part of how journalism has functioned for decades.
SpaceX launches are so cheap that ULA and Ariane are mostly out of the market. ULA has second/independent provider status for DoD and Starliner. Ariane had EU independent launch. ULA+Ariane have Kuiper because Bezos does not want to fund a competitor - no matter what the cost or delay. SLS has no commercial customers at all - partly because of the ½ a launch per year cadence and partly for the ~$2B cost. I really do mean approximate cost. I have not seen a commercial price advertised. OIG currently think an SLS/Orion launch is $4.5B but they are not sure they have tracked down all the costs. Think about that - NASA finds SLS costs so shameful that they make an effort to hide them.
Falcon 9: $67M. Falcon heavy: $97M-$150M. Starship: same price as a Falcon big enough for the job.
When you could buy them: Ariane 5 $150M-$200M (2x Falcon 9 launches). Atlas V: $110M-$153M. Delta IV: $350M-$440M (Falcon Heavy).
If you can wait: Vulcan $100M-200M. Ariane 6: $75M-$115M (one or two Falcon 9s depending on how much you pay)
Falcon paid off US government funding with taxes from foreign launch contracts. It has also provided a cheap alternative to ULA with the lowest insurance rates in the market while providing downward pressure on ULA pricing. Without Dragon, the US would have to choose between Soyuz, Shenzou and SLS/Orion for rides to the ISS.
SLS costs do not include R&D ($18B) or ground support equipment ($2B). As it is a one trick pony, include $6B for Orion R&D. Going forward, a new mobile launch platform will be required. Going backward, SLS is built off Constellation and Space Shuttle R&D not included is the costs I mentioned. Compare that to $4B fixed cost on achieving milestones for R&D, two Lunar Starships and as many RUDs as required from SpaceX.
Can you begin to see why cost plus SLS attracts negative opinions?
Starship is not a new upper stage on a tried and tested reusable booster. The new booster is 2.5x the diameter with a different fuel, pressurization, engines and combustion cycle. As Falcon tanks empty the space at the top of the tanks (ullage) is filled with cold helium from high pressure tanks. Starship uses hot methane and oxygen from the engines. If the propellant sloshes the ullage cools and the pressure can drop below the minimum required at the engine inlet. This was never a possible problem with cold helium.
Boosters are going to explode, crash into the sea and 'land' on the sea before any attempt is made to catch one. Even then, the first few boosters that survive will likely be analyzed to destruction before any relaunch. Hopefully the rocket will be earning its keep launching Starlinks long before then.
The only people relying on landing and re-use working first time are Blue Origin.
That demonstrates ArianeSpace are excellent at operating rockets. Design is harder to asses because their design was constrained by a very damaging funding model. Half the funding (commercial launch) was taken by SpaceX and partially returned by Amazon/Kuiper. ESA have promised a more sane funding system. We are beginning to see if Ariane are any good at turning design into late launches. (All new rockets launch late but some are later than others.)
Read your link more carefully. All 63 actions came from SpaceX and TechCrunch does not say anything to the contrary, but could have been more clear. Only 57/63 were required for IFT2, which Tech Crunch misses. Most (if not all) of the 57 were published in very vague form around the time of that article. At the time SpaceX were saying they were ready to go because the FAA were happy with the 63 proposed changes (the FAA gave back the same list of changes they got from SpaceX). The FAA spoke up: they were happy that the changes were sufficient but at the time SpaceX had not proved to the FAA that the 57 had been completed. That was the story you will find from the time explained more clearly on specialized Space related web sites like NASA Spaceflight or Spaceflight Now.
If you listen before you speak you might not show so much ignorance.
At separation the booster is on its way to the sea between Florida and Cuba. The plan was to turn around, relight the middle ring of ten engines and go most of the way back to Texas before a controlled drop onto the sea. One of the ten engines did not relight then one of the center three went out followed by several more on the middle ring. The FTS must have worked out that the booster would leave the cleared area so it terminated the flight. Weather radar showed a circle of debris in the area cleared for the flight.
The oxygen level on the upper stage showed a sudden drop. The FTS must have worked out it could not get all the way to the reserved area north or Hawaii so it terminated the flight. Weather radar showed a long line of debris falling in the cleared area in the Gulf of Mexico.
All debris remained inside the cleared area. Extending the cleared area will not prevent booster engines shutting down during the boost back burn. It will not prevent the large loss of LOX on the upper stage either.
Musk thinks rocket science is hard so he listens to rocket scientists. He thinks building cars is medium difficulty so he half listens to automotive engineers. He believes social media is easy so he does not listen to anyone at TwitX. The results speak for themselves.
Wave length (1.55µm) times beam width is about telescope diameter times separation (1.6E9m)
Psyche telescope diameter = .22m: width = 11km
Earth transmitter diameter = 1m: width = 2.5km
Earth receiver diameter = 5m: width = 500m
As Psyche is moving a few km per second the Earth telescopes must be pointing in slightly different directions. Psyche receive is probably a little off center but Earth can carry a much more powerful laser.
In part you are right about much of the less connected parts of the world not having the money for one terminal per family. The most obvious target market is rural US which combines high income with customer hostile lousy service. Airlines and ships will pay real money for world wide connectivity. From there each terminal must be shared between a larger and larger number of people to become cost effective. Internet connections for the poor have shown some value. Some farmers were in a better negotiating position after they were able to access international pricing for their crops.
LEO has other giant advantages over GEO. The shorter distance allows more bandwidth at less power. The small antenna size creates a wide beam that drastically limits the number of GEO satellites that can share frequencies. It is like switching from the Vatican's old 250kW transmitter sending one signal to the whole of Europe to 10,000 smaller local radio stations.
The economics work out for mass produced satellites and cheap launch. Kuiper does not have either at this time but Bezos has shown the required commitment to haemorrhage money for years to take control of a large market.
I am glad that there will be a choice of LEO ISPs even if it is a choice between a crocodile and a shark.
The Apollo design started with one big rocket taking everything required for a journey to the Moon and back in a single launch. That constraint and the end of the decade deadline drove design decisions that included a capsule for re-entry and a command module that only went as far as LLO also an ascent vehicle that separated from the lander. These decisions fitted the technology available at the time.
Starship's original intent was a Mars colony transport. The big feature to make that possible is to refill the stage 2 tanks in LEO. I would love to take credit for this but believe it or not it was not my idea. It was not even SpaceX's idea. NASA were looking at it as a progression of the Apollo program. Congress decided not to fund it. They went further and senator Richard Shelby banned discussion of propellant depots because that would be a direct threat to the existence of the Constellation program self licking ice cream cone. Even a US senator could see the value of re-tanking in LEO.
I do not claim authorship of the Starship HLS design. It came from genuine rocket scientists at SpaceX looking at how a Mars transport could be adapted to handle a journey from NRHO to the Moon and back. They had very different constraints from the Apollo program engineers and more modern technology. That took them to a very different design to Apollo. Real rocket scientists from NASA went through the proposal in detail and were happy with it.
Ripping up the Moon's surface is still a possibility that may require some iterative development. There are some cunning techniques to avoid a repeat of Boca Chica 2023-04-20 on the Moon. First they plan to reduce the gravitational field by a factor of 6. Next they will leave the 3600t booster on Earth. On top of that, HLS will not be landing or taking off with full tanks. SpaceX has already demonstrated launch and landing an HLS sized vehicle from a concrete pad. They could do that on Earth with short legs.
Blue Origin have a contract for an HLS with a more Apollo like configuration. Let's see who gets back from the Moon first.
Mercury & Venus: No way home.
Moon: Landing legs and take enough propellant for getting back to NRHO. Send a tanker Starship to NRHO with enough propellant for HLS Starship to do a return trip to the Moon and for the tanker to get back to Earth. (First two Artemis missions are contracted as 2x single use HLS Starships. Re-use is limited by lack of inspection and repair facilities in NRHO)
Mars: Requires a propellant factory on Mars. The upper stage has enough delta V to go from Mars surface to Earth without a booster.
Belt and outer planets: No plans for re-use at this time because no-one cares about Belters.
Another possibility is to stay in GTO and take photos every apogee. Modern cameras can handle the 1.6km/s velocity difference and getting back to Earth is much easier from GTO than GEO.
Either that or the Space Force have planned a mission through a wormhole to make an alliance with the Peacekeepers.
The idea had been around for a long time but there were no large benefits over the previous system of each branch of the military doing their own thing and co-operating when convenient. Florida Man wanted a headline so demanded a Space Force. The Air Force dusted off the least bad proposal from previous administrations and implemented it before any politicians had time to 'help'.
Really crank up that stupidity. Instead of a 747 carrying a 30t Launcher One imagine an aircraft capable of carrying 550t of Falcon 9 and propellant (Mriya=190t). This super plane flies south west to get closer to the equator and leave a stretch of ocean to the east so a launch failure does not crash into Spain. Next the aircraft pulls up and remains vertical for 30ish minutes while transferring propellant to the Falcon 9 because Falcons cannot support the weight of their propellant while horizontal.
That is the easy bit. The New Zealand government jumped through hoops to get permission to launch a small US rocket from Mahia. That level of agility is far beyond the UK government's dreams.
Because you are looking in the wrong direction.
The waste products of getting oxygen out of regolith are silicon, iron and aluminium - ingredients for solar panels. Searching for solar power from regolith shows several sites covering the same story. Using iron to support aluminium mirrors gets the thermal energy for half the process and solar panels generate the electricity for the other half of separating regolith into metals and oxygen. The missing part is a supply of cold to liquify the oxygen for storage (not impossible but I haven't come across anyone demonstrating tech to make a good thermal connection to the low temperatures available for half of each moonth).
I suppose humans on the Moon might like a little oxygen but that is a rounding error compared to what is needed for rocket propellant. Oxygen is the heavy half of propellant whether you pick hydrogen or methane for the fuel. Sending excess fuel to the Moon and getting the oxygen locally is a big step in the right direction. Hydrogen from the Moon is a more difficult problem and carbon is even worse - unless someone finds a large deposit of carbonates.
Some laws of software
1) Anything not tested should be assumed broken.
2) Anything not covered by automated tests will be broken real soon now.
3) Any breakage left lying around will cause a work around.
4) Any bug fixed late will cause a work around to fail.
Argument was valid for a week because SpaceX average two launches per week. Argument was less valid for a quarter where you need to maintain a higher proportion of non-Starlink launches over a run of 25. That has already happened according to Shotwell - a far more reliable source than Musk. This article is about a Musk statement for the year. Reversion to the mean will not save you this time. Massively more likely that Musk is just lying, and I would go with that if SpaceX had split off Starlink and were advertising an IPO. This is journalists remembering old statements about when an IPO would suit SpaceX and noticing the conditions have just about been met.
https://www.starlink.com/business/maritime.
They took the low hanging fruit first, brought in step ladders some time ago and are moving on to cherry pickers. By the time Amazon has an operational system they will find Starlink at every profitable level of the market. That will not stop Jeff. He will shovel cash into a furnace for a decade to take control of a large market.
SpaceX are not turning away any launch customers. If a new customer turns up that means one less Starlink launch. The launch cost is only this low because overheads get divided by the large number of launches. Costs are set to drop because the number of launches next year will be higher. Part of that comes from increased rocket performance allowing more return to launch site missions. That saves waiting for (and paying for) a drone ship.
There is more to LEO vs GEO. LEO is nearer so the ground antenna size can be smaller, radio power can be lower or bandwidth can be higher (reality is a mixture of all three). On the downward side, the cell size is smaller for LEO. Starlink gets to multiply the bandwidth by a larger number of cells in the same area covered by a GEO satellite.
LEO also gives the opportunity to talk directly to a cell phone. Not that valuable in the US where supporting one phone call uses bandwidth that could support a number of high paying Starlink customers (lower power and antenna size means fewer bits hogging the same amount of time as a large number of bits from a Starlink dish). The capability becomes more valuable when you have satellites that would otherwise be idle over poor countries. $100/month is to much in most of the world but shared between more subscribers it makes a reasonable back haul in remote areas.
Starlink started with the easy target market, Americans. It is adapting the effectively free coverage elsewhere to what those markets can use. It isn't the huge income Musk was talking about but no-one with a clue takes his Tweets seriously - certainly after "funding secured".
Buying a Falcon 9 launch costs about $70M because it would cost you more to buy from someone else - if they had a working rocket and would not just pinch your satellite. Popular guesses at the internal cost of a Falcon 9 launch are under $20M. Add in $5M ish for a fairing full of Starlinks and multiply by 60ish launches per year gets you to $1.5B - near enough Starlink revenue for a back-of-envelope calculation.
The real problems with Starlink lie elsewhere: The US has a good supply of wealthy rural customers barely served by complete arse-hole ISPs (even compared to Musk). That does not apply so well to the rest of the world, which is what Starlink needs to scale. That and a CEO who does not work hard to alienate half the planet on Twitter.
The next step up would be a cheaper rocket carrying larger number of bigger satellites. A much simpler problem to solve than a personality transplant for the CEO.
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