Instead the US could buy a fleet of 3000 SpaceX BFRs. Spacex BFRs will be completely reusable rockets. They have the potential of flying hypersonically anywhere in the world ten times per day.
What would a nation rather have? 355 ship navy or 285 ship navy and 3000 SpaceX BFR.
3000 SpaceX BFR would not only convey more military capability it would transform the world with hypersonic flight. Moving people and cargo anywhere in the world in less than one hour.
Each BFR has 38 Raptor engines. Raptor engines are the same size and will be similar in price to Merlin engines. Merlin engines are about $6 million each. Ballpark pricing for a BFR should be about $250 million each. 3000 SpaceX BFR would cost about $750 billion. Volume production would bring the price down to about $200-400 billion.
SpaceX rocket engine factory can make about 400 engines per year or enough for about 10 BFR per year. There would need to be about ten to twenty times the current SpaceX engine factory.
In 2017, the US had about 7300 commercial passenger jets.
Chinese airlines are likely to buy more than 7,000 planes worth $1.1 trillion over the next 20 years.
Fully exploiting revolutionary fully reusable rockets
Having passenger jet like flight with fully reusable rockets should be fully exploited.
If the BFR rockets are refueling and flying again the same day, then there should be thousands of floating landing and launch pads.
There would need to be pipelines and supplies for the natural gas based fuel engines to the launchpads. Natural gas consists of over 90% methane.
3000 rockets making three or four orbital flights and returns per day could put 1 million tons into orbit per day.
400 hundred people could be carried on every flight. 4 million people could fly to and from orbit every day.
At $3000 per ticket for flights this would be $12 billion per day for tickets to go anywhere in the world or in orbit.
Commercial airlines carried just over 60 million metric tons of freight in 2017.
The US Air Force has talked to SpaceX about taking cargo at hypersonic speeds anywhere in the world.
One full flight of 3000 BFR would move 1 million men and material to the other side of the world in one hour.
There were 90 orbital rocket launches in 2017.
It will be a huge leap from what we can do now to a fleet of 3000 SpaceX BFR by 2045.
100 million tons of liquified natural gas would be enough for over 400,000 launches. Each launch using about 240 tons of methane.
The US can embrace the power and transformation of a totally SpaceX BFR world.
Instead the US is clinging to the garbage Space Launch System. $3 billion per year and the first launch in 2021. Constellation and SLS programs for about 15 years without a test launch. This is trying to reuse 1980s Space Shuttle booster technology.
Space Launch System is $1-2 billion per flight once per year.
SpaceX BFR can be ten thousand flights per day with flights at about $5 million each.
Think of the SpaceX BFR as a hypersonic 747.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
⊕1 for “logistics assessment”. Tho’ Friar Tuck below does point out that “if you’re flying 3,000 flights a day anyway, there is going to be a worldwide infrastructure of spaceports to use.”, it is also somewhat empty in answering the logistics problem. The military problem of getting a quarter million blokes and their materiel to some particular spot on the Earth, someplace almost certainly far from a conveniently placed spaceport, distant from refueling and reoxidizing logistical support, removed from suitable heavy equipment to crawl-move the landed BFR’s ••• AWAY ••• from the landing area, so that the incoming, once every 10 seconds, will have a place to land. In fact, that is the real gotcha: refueling and nominal pre-flight certification to make another trip — even if just a short hop to a “real spaceport”. ________________________________________Remember, a BFR has a takeoff mass of over 4,400,000 kg. But of course, that is for the first AND second stages. Getting 400 troops half-way around the world will require both stages, and the first stage in the advertised design, separates, turns around, and lands someplace reasonably close to where it took off. The second stage though is “the lander”. it weighs in at 1,335,000 kg, containing the full payload and enough fuel to jet out of the atmosphere, turn around, and decelerate to a safe reëntry speed, then decelerate progressively to a soft landing. With “just enough” fuel. It isn’t likely to have enough fuel to take off … again … and make it back to the originating spaceport. Or for that matter, even one under a thousand kilometers away in a “safe country” away from the conflict.So yah.Logistics.GoatGuy
Specifically, when I was winging between far flung cities, to have day-to-few-weeks long face-to-face meetings, I cherished the oft-complained about intercity trip time, as some of the only time “on the job” free from interruptions, phones, email, coffee breaks, distractions and the “in-box”. Time to think. Time to give hard consideration to the upcoming (or just finished) round of meetings.To what would need doing, what probably was the winning path forward. Time to visualize with a pad of paper, and a fûqueing pencil, the tactical plan.Time to recline and just quietly think. Never once did I “rent a movie” or watch the one broadcast in the cabin. It was a time for planning and retrospection. ________________________________________This is what to me seems missing in the modern generations of (especially) technologists and acolytes of technology: fast, faster, faster yet. No down time. Arrive, bully pit, strut and preen. Gloat over endless nuanced use of newest tech to make the whole preening process more efficient, faster, with less superficial “time waste’. Yet, the ideas proffered? Rarely — very rarely — as nuanced as advertised. Usually knee-jêrk thoughts, the kind of plays you’d expect from ex-pro-football players and washed out coaches. But every generation gradually weeds out its loud and pointless, leaving better thinking women and men to reluctantly embrace leadership, interpersonal challenge and hard-won compromise. Just saying,GoatGuy
No, it is a non-issue. There is no measured AGW from CO2, the “evidence” for it is all created by technically unjustified adjustments to actual measurements.
⊕1 for “logistics assessment”.
Tho’ Friar Tuck below does point out that “if you’re flying 3,000 flights a day anyway, there is going to be a worldwide infrastructure of spaceports to use.”, it is also somewhat empty in answering the logistics problem.
The military problem of getting a quarter million blokes and their materiel to some particular spot on the Earth, someplace almost certainly far from a conveniently placed spaceport, distant from refueling and reoxidizing logistical support, removed from suitable heavy equipment to crawl-move the landed BFR’s ••• AWAY ••• from the landing area, so that the incoming, once every 10 seconds, will have a place to land.
In fact, that is the real gotcha: refueling and nominal pre-flight certification to make another trip — even if just a short hop to a “real spaceport”.
________________________________________
Remember, a BFR has a takeoff mass of over 4,400,000 kg. But of course, that is for the first AND second stages. Getting 400 troops half-way around the world will require both stages, and the first stage in the advertised design, separates, turns around, and lands someplace reasonably close to where it took off.
The second stage though is “the lander”. it weighs in at 1,335,000 kg, containing the full payload and enough fuel to jet out of the atmosphere, turn around, and decelerate to a safe reëntry speed, then decelerate progressively to a soft landing. With “just enough” fuel.
It isn’t likely to have enough fuel to take off … again … and make it back to the originating spaceport. Or for that matter, even one under a thousand kilometers away in a “safe country” away from the conflict.
So yah.
Logistics.
GoatGuy
Specifically, when I was winging between far flung cities, to have day-to-few-weeks long face-to-face meetings, I cherished the oft-complained about intercity trip time, as some of the only time “on the job” free from interruptions, phones, email, coffee breaks, distractions and the “in-box”.
Time to think.
Time to give hard consideration to the upcoming (or just finished) round of meetings.
To what would need doing, what probably was the winning path forward.
Time to visualize with a pad of paper, and a fûqueing pencil, the tactical plan.
Time to recline and just quietly think.
Never once did I “rent a movie” or watch the one broadcast in the cabin.
It was a time for planning and retrospection.
________________________________________
This is what to me seems missing in the modern generations of (especially) technologists and acolytes of technology: fast, faster, faster yet. No down time. Arrive, bully pit, strut and preen. Gloat over endless nuanced use of newest tech to make the whole preening process more efficient, faster, with less superficial “time waste’.
Yet, the ideas proffered? Rarely — very rarely — as nuanced as advertised. Usually knee-jêrk thoughts, the kind of plays you’d expect from ex-pro-football players and washed out coaches.
But every generation gradually weeds out its loud and pointless, leaving better thinking women and men to reluctantly embrace leadership, interpersonal challenge and hard-won compromise.
Just saying,
GoatGuy
No, it is a non-issue. There is no measured AGW from CO2, the “evidence” for it is all created by technically unjustified adjustments to actual measurements.
Have you ever tried to solve a complex problem via telecommuting? Something that isn’t just on a spreadsheet or powerpoint file?It is good, better than a phone call, but it is far inferior to actually being there.
This is awesome!
Have you ever tried to solve a complex problem via telecommuting? Something that isn’t just on a spreadsheet or powerpoint file?
It is good, better than a phone call, but it is far inferior to actually being there.
I know Spacex has ideas for a giant nuclear powered rocket, but developing something like that is going to be crazy expensive. Let alone convincing the government that launching nuclear reactors into the upper atmosphere is a good idea. Better to have BFR, create a backup planet, and generate funds necessary to create a nuclear rocket. But your right and I would be very surprised and disappointed if we dont see some form of alternate propulsion by the end of the century.
… love it! … Finally a concrete proposal for something useful for all that stratosphere (and ionospheric, and thermospheric / exospheric) exhaust. There’s only one small gotcha. None of the sulfur fuels I can think of are significantly energetic. Take for instance, the exothermic reactions:S + O₂ → SO₂ + 295 kcal/mol (18.5 MJ/kg)C + O₂ → CO₂ + 393 kcal/mol (37.4 MJ/kg)H₂ + O → H₂O + 241 kcal/mol (56.0 MJ/kg)Pretty clearly, sulfur is at the bottom of that list. You can look up LLV (lower heating value) calculations aplenty on the Internet, and find similar results. Butadiene is good (especially as a rubber); it can be blended conveniently enough with sulfur, and is a quite energy-rich ‘fuel’ in solid rocket booster. Could add a bunch of sulfur in, but unfortunately then the stability of the whole thing comes into question. Anyway.⊕1Just saying,GoatGuy
I apologize for my hasty opinion. I was tired of the SpaceX narrative endlessly promoted as if it is the only good idea in rocketry since the invention of sliced bread. That the US has spent a LOT of money — in retrospect uselessly — and with further projection uselessly in the future as well, is of course an egregious abuse of pölïtical power, thwarted ambition and sycophancy in the halls of Science and the Academy. CALL OUT the dogs for what they do, not the projects they endlessly hobble. Watch “Pentagon Wars”. https:\watch?v=ir0FAa8P2MU (repl with slash) … especially at 8:00 for a minute. Its online, its free, its delightfully amusing, and its darkly prescient of the SLS fiasco.SHUTTLE DEVELOPED technologies incorporated in SLS are not the issue. They are not behind the galling, outrageous fact that SLS has been delayed for what, 15 years? More? Musk, to give him AND HIM ALONE credit, has shown something I’ve long believed: that it does NOT take decades to develop any significant system, when you can just put more people of quality “on it”, and give them a hierarchical mandate of, “It flies December 31st, or people are fired.”. • No cozy tenure positions, • No blue ribbon panels,• No congressional steering groups,• No lobbyists pitching for manufacturing framistat nuts in Alabama• No third rate “university” co-marketing engineering department involvement• No mile-long laundry list of required contractors,• No three-mile long list of stipulations, certifications, documentation requirements• No multi-billion collar pre-pre-pre testing labs. • No Air Force critical(ly stupid) alliances.• No “Pentagon Wars” guidance.That, Mr. Wang, is what you’re railing against. Not SLS itself. Not THE ROCKET. We’re not even railing against use-once-although-that-is-wasteful rocketry, really. Are we? Sure, it is Elon’s keen grasp of “something new” and further “something appealing to the conservationist” that brought reuseable rocket booster cores to the table. Modern computing’s speed, modern engineering’s miniaturization of tilt sensors, absolute azimuth solid-state laser gyros and so on, well … getting a spent core to land is hardly difficult today, compared to 1965. Or even 1990. And lest we forget, the reuse most definitely takes a sizeable chunk out of the ultimate payload of the Musk-o-dyne rocket’s capabilities. Sure, BFR is so much bigger … that maybe that re-landing overhead doesn’t matter. But, before we dismiss the prudence “of the old days” for having use-once rockets, remember that they didn’t dare design them to be too big. Because they didn’t, and because both microelectronics and all the necessary “satellite stuff” was harder than Hêll to minimize, use-once rocketry seemed like a good alternative to the total-reuse Space Shuttle idea. Just saying,GoatGuy
Amen.I’ll cheer whomever can get us out of the cesspit of (needless) nihilism and drama the XXI century has become.Or as you say, cabin fevered wrongness.
⇒ No one deeply gives two pôops…⊕1 friend.⊕1
This is awesome!
I know Spacex has ideas for a giant nuclear powered rocket, but developing something like that is going to be crazy expensive. Let alone convincing the government that launching nuclear reactors into the upper atmosphere is a good idea. Better to have BFR, create a backup planet, and generate funds necessary to create a nuclear rocket. But your right and I would be very surprised and disappointed if we dont see some form of alternate propulsion by the end of the century.
Amen.
I’ll cheer whomever can get us out of the cesspit of (needless) nihilism and drama the XXI century has become.
Or as you say, cabin fevered wrongness.
OK, I get it, a big military airlift can happen in an hour, great but what then? If you land in some place other than a rocket field with BFRs available you’ll have a hell of a time getting your BFS back to its base.
Carbon neutral is one thing, but redistribution of massive quantities of water vapor and CO2 (LNG+O2 products) into the upper atmosphere is another. An environmental assessment of this plan would make interesting reading. If this market is worth pursuing, then its worth looking at alternate approaches that don’t require propellant combustion during atmospheric transit. Again, its the 21st Century, man. Time to start looking beyond 100 year old technology.
OK, I get it, a big military airlift can happen in an hour, great but what then? If you land in some place other than a rocket field with BFRs available you’ll have a hell of a time getting your BFS back to its base.
To Russia and China I would like to say “game of thrones” style: the BFR is coming. ..
… or stay home and avoid this whole catastrophe. Seriously. Who has an hour to waste getting between Singapore and London? They aren’t even in the same time zone! Instead, telecommute with telepresence. Instantaneous travel and avoid the massive energy use with associated pollution and noise. Dude… its the 21st Century. More with less, not more with more. On the other hand, I’m all in with 4 million people leaving the planet each day as long as they aren’t allowed to return.
Surely way before reaching any market need for 3000 rockets. They will most likely start developing ITS-like rockets a few years after BFR is proved successful on its most basic deliverables, namely being able to put 100 tons of payload in orbit, land and be reusable a few times and have a market demand.They will then transition to production and refinement mode, making improvements and increasing the payload, as they did with F9. BFR certainly won’t stay at 100 tons to LEO.And once they are satisfied with the platform and know the challenges to make it, they will go over a much more ambitious one, akin to 2006 IAC’s plans.By 2040 we should expect to see significantly bigger rockets as the production models.
Well, if the methane is being produced in the same way as it will be produced on Mars (via solar panels & water/CO2 combination), then it will be carbon-neutral in total process.
Carbon neutral is one thing, but redistribution of massive quantities of water vapor and CO2 (LNG+O2 products) into the upper atmosphere is another. An environmental assessment of this plan would make interesting reading. If this market is worth pursuing, then its worth looking at alternate approaches that don’t require propellant combustion during atmospheric transit. Again, its the 21st Century, man. Time to start looking beyond 100 year old technology.
US total Nat Gas consumption is 27.5 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) @ eia dot gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=50&t=8Which is 564,681,725 tons of LNGSo 100,000,000 tons of is about 18% of all the current US consumption of Natural Gas. So it is quite a bit, but not impossible especially if it replaces some consumption of jet fuel.
If they are already doing commercial flights on a daily basis then there will already be many launch pads around the world. Technically they don’t need launch pads and landing pads because they are designed to not need them, such as when the land on Mars. Question is how will they refill to get back out of there?
… or stay home and avoid this whole catastrophe. Seriously. Who has an hour to waste getting between Singapore and London? They aren’t even in the same time zone! Instead, telecommute with telepresence. Instantaneous travel and avoid the massive energy use with associated pollution and noise. Dude… its the 21st Century. More with less, not more with more. On the other hand, I’m all in with 4 million people leaving the planet each day as long as they aren’t allowed to return.
Surely way before reaching any market need for 3000 rockets.
They will most likely start developing ITS-like rockets a few years after BFR is proved successful on its most basic deliverables, namely being able to put 100 tons of payload in orbit, land and be reusable a few times and have a market demand.
They will then transition to production and refinement mode, making improvements and increasing the payload, as they did with F9. BFR certainly won’t stay at 100 tons to LEO.
And once they are satisfied with the platform and know the challenges to make it, they will go over a much more ambitious one, akin to 2006 IAC’s plans.
By 2040 we should expect to see significantly bigger rockets as the production models.
Well, if the methane is being produced in the same way as it will be produced on Mars (via solar panels & water/CO2 combination), then it will be carbon-neutral in total process.
It’s hard to shoot down with a missile, but what if you use a laser ?
US total Nat Gas consumption is 27.5 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) @ eia dot gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=50&t=8
Which is 564,681,725 tons of LNG
So 100,000,000 tons of is about 18% of all the current US consumption of Natural Gas. So it is quite a bit, but not impossible especially if it replaces some consumption of jet fuel.
If they are already doing commercial flights on a daily basis then there will already be many launch pads around the world. Technically they don’t need launch pads and landing pads because they are designed to not need them, such as when the land on Mars. Question is how will they refill to get back out of there?
I thought at max payload they were at a redundancy of one engine failing to operate but in that scenario it should just be able to reverse course and land where it took off. By catastrophic I mean a kaboom that also takes the rest of the rocket out. The primary goal of the raptor was reliability so maybe they did make something bulletproof. So far being an astronaut is incredibly risky.
I thought Brian was talking about BFRs built and operating in general by 2040.Oh wait, he is, I can tell by seeing the big space stations in the article.
so… 3000 BFRs to move 1 million men to the other side of the world in ONE hour.that means you need to have 3000 launch platforms in the US and 3000 LANDING platforms on the other side of the world.
That much carbon pollution that high up is a huge problem. They’ll need to figure a way around that
When intelligent says a very high vay target is in position xyz for the next 5 hours. Landing 10 BFR’S in that location with overwhelming forces so fast no there can do much before they hear the Sonic booms is a great capability. Much better than just bombing and killing a whole lot of innocent people.
I’ll believe when I see it.
True but so is the SLS yet NASA has spent over $10+ billion on a throw away rocket. The end game goal of BRF being highly reusable is the game changer here.
No one is talking about payload to LEO. The BFR will allow our military to deploy troops and equipment anywhere on the world within 1 hour. Extend that out to 100’s of BRF’s and it means all kinds of new quick strike capable. Even cheaper anti-ICBM capable systems can be placed into orbit because they don’t have to be so optimized for weight.
” Shooting down a rocket like the BFR would be very hard ” <– I agree, why I wrote –> ” even if any such ever were blown up “
” If MUSK’s team weren’t shilling for his own egocentristic ideals of what reuseable space flight ‘looks like’, the BFR actually might have a reinvented set of SRBs itself. ” <– No, because they are competent and not over-ruled by politics.
Uhuh. Sure. Whatever, go back to sleep, you aren’t really aware anyway.
It’s hard to shoot down with a missile, but what if you use a laser ?
There goes our atmosphere
At what point do SpaceX get enough money from BFR to move to ITS, or an even bigger rocket? “SpaceX rocket engine factory can make about 400 engines per year or enough for about 10 BFR per year. There would need to be about ten to twenty times the current SpaceX engine factory.” After 10 or 20 BFR’s are in service and if they’re making good money, keep the current factory for parts and servicing of the current fleet of BFR’s, earn enough money, and then get back into R&D for the ITS. Or something even larger that can carry even more people and kit into orbit. I don’t know how many BFR’s and how much of Starlink would have to be deployed before they earn this kind of money, but surely the next factory doesn’t have to just stay with the current BFR design. Elon wanted to build an ITS! He wants bigger, stronger, faster. Surely someone’s crunching the numbers on when the *next* factory will be built — and just what kind of monster that thing will construct!
I thought at max payload they were at a redundancy of one engine failing to operate but in that scenario it should just be able to reverse course and land where it took off. By catastrophic I mean a kaboom that also takes the rest of the rocket out. The primary goal of the raptor was reliability so maybe they did make something bulletproof. So far being an astronaut is incredibly risky.
At what point do SpaceX get enough money from BFR to move to ITS, or an even bigger rocket? “SpaceX rocket engine factory can make about 400 engines per year or enough for about 10 BFR per year. There would need to be about ten to twenty times the current SpaceX engine factory.” Why the current factory or design? Why not capitalise after the first 10 or 20 BFR’s are built, and move up to the even more efficient ITS or something even larger that can carry even more people and kit into orbit — and beyond?
Yep, a few tens of BFRs working at any given time still seem like a crazy amount of payload capability.10 of them launching twice a month would take 100 x 10 x 24 = 24000 tons to orbit every year…That’s more than all the payloads launched to orbit since the start of space launches as of late 2017 (approx. 13,367669 kg).Source: space dot stackexchange dot com/questions/88/what-is-the-total-mass-sent-into-orbit-over-all-historyAdmittedly we haven’t been very ambitious in space, but that’s a lot of stuff up there.
I would say that the average American fighter jet costs ‘undefined’ times as more than a BFR launch. You are dividing by zero there with the cost of the nonexistent BFR launch – it doesn’t exist. Your tense is improper.
Second that thing fires up its generator, it’s done for. The US subs can wait for months and identify anything moving through the area. They don’t have to do squat just wait. The diesel sub will need to recharge eventually.
Counting on america being the best will only lead to failure.
only in terms of operation times! stirling engine submarines would catch our subs by surprise! They cannot outrun or catch up to American subs, but if an american sub went in to a stirling engine subs range, it would be done for.
US nuclear attack subs are still superior to any diesel electric out there. The Seawolf and Virginia class are as silent as it gets, oh and they also carry a Tomahawk payload. They are also part of the US Navy.
The rhetoric and the Musk distaste don’t have to go hand in hand. Almost no one truly, deeply gives two poops about whether it’s Musk or Bezos or Trump Himself that jailbroke us out of this gravity well.We need to go to space. Strife over who or what made it happen, aka a matter of pride, is the kind of thing that’s kept us down here. The sooner we’re out there the sooner we can get some breathing room to get rid of that kind of cabin fevered wrongness.All of technology is just a means to realize human nature. Just like evolution had its cambrian explosion, so has art (and will continue to), so is computation and data storage, so will more seamless biotech symbiosis, so will body and genetic mods, and so will government. Things that seem far away and outlandish in fiction and science fiction only stay that way till they happen and then they are considered with contempt.
I am thinking just a few dozen (maybe 50-100) is plenty for any military applications, even if the final cost is closer to 1 billion per BFR. I don’t see how the military does not purchase a few if it works as intended, even as just a means of a delivery system for other weapons platforms. It would give them a payload of 2-3 B-2s that could be taken to 1000km up, well outside any air-defense systems reach. It would work simply as a space bomber, dropping whatever, since from that high up at that reentry speed, a 20 ton hunk of metal will wipe out any target as large as a skyscraper. Drop 20 or so 5-10 ton chunks of tungsten (like 2-3 BFR launches worth) on an airbase or one 40 ton chunk on a power plant and it will be unusable for the foreseeable future.
I’m sorry this just sounds nuts to me. I suspect that at a peak there will be less than two orders of magnitude numbers of BFRs in operation at any one time and that is still a crazy large amount of capacity.
Also, Please excuse me for doing my research, If you are interested in the subject don’t take my word for it, Don’t take anyone’s word for anything, Decide for your self, Do your own research, Do not be swayed by the first headline you see, Rocket science, and military strategy require a clear mind, and plenty of research.
You could fit over 1000 smart guided warheads in the BFR’s payload that can fly down and wipe out an entire army.
the average American fighter jet costs about 100 times as much as a BFR launch.
BFR will cost about 3 million per launch, it seems that Everyone fails to understand that most warheads carried by ships and planes cost around 3 million dollars, considering the Ridiculous cost of modern military equipment, delivering a 100 tun payload ( or warhead If you are in to that kinda thing) for as cheep as 3 million is a game changer, America spent tens of millions trying to make take off times of a single plane lower so it could conduct a rescue from a stadium ( which failed) This rocket could take off and land just about anywhere if you are willing to torch your landing zone, it could even clear a space for troops to set up shop on its way down. basically making its own beachhead with its landing burn. the military advantage of the BFR is larger then the BFR its self.
You are right, but, the BFR does have a lot of promise.Nerds like myself can appreciate the possibilities
A naval ship has more points of failure then most rockets, including thousands to tens of millions of parts depending on the ship, And Every person on the ship, is an additional point of failure. the ocean is changing fast, And soon many arias of the ocean will be To dangerous even for large ships, due to largely to large gas release from the sea floor, And increasing stealth capability of stirling engine submarines which can Completely defeat the American navy.
this thing will have 31 engines on the first stage, and 9 on the second stage, Space x’s falcon heavy has 27 engines on the first stage, So this is not a huge increase, not only that, by producing more engines, they make them safer, more powerful and easier to produce, with less points of failure than traditional rocket engines. Where others feel it is unsafe to make progress, Space x is making rocket flight safer by advancing the field and material sciences required for deep space exploration.
I am projecting lower prices with high volume construction. Even if is 3000 at $350 million that is $1.05 trillion. Less than what China will spend on commercial passenger jets for the next 20 years
I write it. You know that.SLS is based on shuttle era technology. SLS and Constellation before have not had one test launch.Propulsion for the SLS core stage will be provided by four RS-25 engines. Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, California, is upgrading an inventory of 16 RS-25 shuttle engines to SLS performance requirement.Two shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters will be used for the initial flights of the SLS. To provide the additional power needed for the rocket, the prime contractor for the boosters, Northrop Grumman, of Redondo Beach, California, has modified the original shuttle’s configuration of four propellant segments to a five-segment version. $25 billion from Constellation and SLS programs. ZERO test flights.The idea is what we take what will soon work and dial it to eleven.
Why not use the BFS to also discharge stratospheric sulfate aerosols? To truly appreciate Musk, you must learn to think really ‘”big” like he does.
Fighter jets are much more maneuverable and with some vessels on the water with the condition that they are not an easy target would do a much better jobs in controlling a marine territory. However the BFR maybe use in some cases for a quick transport, especially because it can land vertically. Yet again it is an expensive option compared to marine transport and military cargo planes. Enough with the Chinese backward mind running in a superficial one direction blinded by the notion of bigger, more and more advanced is better!
I thought Brian was talking about BFRs built and operating in general by 2040.
Oh wait, he is, I can tell by seeing the big space stations in the article.
How many jet engines on how many jets a day, with millions of firings per day – what is the catastrophic rate of failure for these? Also having more engines gives you some redundancy if one fails. Engineering problems like these are dealt with frequently.
You’re assuming conventional not 3D printed engines with lots less to go wrong.
38 engines on a single rocket? That represents a lot of points of failure, let alone the cost of manufacturing so many engines for a single rocket. Engines are the most expensive component of an airliner.
I’ll believe when I see it.
” Shooting down a rocket like the BFR would be very hard ” <-- I agree, why I wrote --> ” even if any such ever were blown up “
” If MUSK’s team weren’t shilling for his own egocentristic ideals of what reuseable space flight ‘looks like’, the BFR actually might have a reinvented set of SRBs itself. ” <-- No, because they are competent and not over-ruled by politics.
What is the catastrophic failure rate of a raptor engine? 3k ships with 31 engines firing 2x per flight 10x per day, 1,860,000 engine firings per day.
Uhuh. Sure. Whatever, go back to sleep, you aren’t really aware anyway.
Brian Wang is elons free lobbyist and publicist.
Shooting down a rocket like the BFR would be very hard. You have to get it during takeoff or landing. Once in LEO, it’s very difficult to shoot something like that down, it literally has to be directly overhead., very few missile systems can fire at something 200-400 km up and the ones that can are very unreliable. Also, the BFR should be able to operate in high LEO (think 500-1000km) for high risk lower payload mission, where it would be completely out of range, just launch them from the middle of the US and they would be untouchable.
While I’m optimistic about BFR as a functional and successful space launcher, this exceeds my expectations of what’s realistic by 2040.A few tens of launchers, servicing a flourishing market putting hundreds of thousands tons of payload per year in LEO, cislunar and interplanetary space? Lunar and Mars bases by 2040?Sure, seems feasible if BFR works and delivers its payload and some basic reuse capabilities.A few tens more servicing the Space Force, launching conventional weapons, cargo and people to space and back. Yeah, why not?But 3000 hauling millions of tons or passengers per day… that stretches the imagination. And poses some insurmountable problems, like the required infrastructure for receiving and launching that many rockets (e.g. so many launch pads far from cities to avoid horrid noise pollution), the logistics for their safe operation, the amount of emissions they would make and well, any reasonable market need.I’m aware that commercial air-flight grew to such a huge market, payload and passenger size over several decades. But these are wholly different beasts, requiring a lot more in terms of infrastructure, safety procedures and as I said, a basic market demand.My biggest concern really is that the rockets and ships will arrive and that there won’t be anyone willing to pony up the cost of the castles in the sky.
That’s not the way this works, it’s not the way any of this works. Treating this assemblage of words as seriously as I can. 3000 BFRs move 1,000,000 men to Afghanistan, for example, 1. Are there 30000 adequate landing spots for BFRs in the area of operations? 2. Once the BFRs land – how do we get them back? They require minimal inspection and refurbishment – which isn’t to say none. 3. Do we land them half full of fuel so they can come back, that adds a rather large element of risk to the landing 4. A one dimensional assault is much easier to defend against. And rockets are in many ways even easier than boats. How fast can 330 armed troops disembark from a BFR? One hit to the rocket has a reasonable chance take out everyone still inside, especially if it’s half full of fuel for the return journey. 5. How do I provide heavy weapons to a BFR assault, what replaces naval gunfire, tanks and air support? 6. Great I have 1,000,000 men on the far side of the world, what’s my logistics train to keep them in beans and bullets? BFRs? – if you have an answer to 2 & 3, then what’s the cycle time between flights, how long to reconfigure from passengers to cargo? 7. What’s the average number down checked between flights for more extensive maintenance? How many of the 3000 are ready this week? I could go on, but it’s almost lunch time. But what do I know, I only studied aerospace engineering and drove warships, including doing amphibious assault planning for over a decade.
At what point do SpaceX get enough money from BFR to move to ITS, or an even bigger rocket? “SpaceX rocket engine factory can make about 400 engines per year or enough for about 10 BFR per year. There would need to be about ten to twenty times the current SpaceX engine factory.” After 10 or 20 BFR’s are in service and if they’re making good money, keep the current factory for parts and servicing of the current fleet of BFR’s, earn enough money, and then get back into R&D for the ITS. Or something even larger that can carry even more people and kit into orbit. I don’t know how many BFR’s and how much of Starlink would have to be deployed before they earn this kind of money, but surely the next factory doesn’t have to just stay with the current BFR design. Elon wanted to build an ITS! He wants bigger, stronger, faster. Surely someone’s crunching the numbers on when the *next* factory will be built — and just what kind of monster that thing will construct!
At what point do SpaceX get enough money from BFR to move to ITS, or an even bigger rocket? “SpaceX rocket engine factory can make about 400 engines per year or enough for about 10 BFR per year. There would need to be about ten to twenty times the current SpaceX engine factory.” Why the current factory or design? Why not capitalise after the first 10 or 20 BFR’s are built, and move up to the even more efficient ITS or something even larger that can carry even more people and kit into orbit — and beyond?
Yep, a few tens of BFRs working at any given time still seem like a crazy amount of payload capability.
10 of them launching twice a month would take 100 x 10 x 24 = 24000 tons to orbit every year…
That’s more than all the payloads launched to orbit since the start of space launches as of late 2017 (approx. 13,367669 kg).
Source: space dot stackexchange dot com/questions/88/what-is-the-total-mass-sent-into-orbit-over-all-history
Admittedly we haven’t been very ambitious in space, but that’s a lot of stuff up there.
I would say that the average American fighter jet costs ‘undefined’ times as more than a BFR launch. You are dividing by zero there with the cost of the nonexistent BFR launch – it doesn’t exist. Your tense is improper.
I wonder … who writes this stuff? Things like “US clings to Space Shuttle era SRBs”. Sounds a lot like “sour grapes”¹ to me. If MUSK’s team weren’t shilling for his own egocentristic ideals of what reuseable space flight ‘looks like’, the BFR actually might have a reinvented set of SRBs itself.The Space Shuttle marketed SRB² reuseability. Landing in the ocean. Later, a ship would retrieve the boosters. Radio beacon. None were actually reused though. Too much concern — especially with the Endeavor disaster — of salt-water and first-flight stress of the reused SRB. Indeed: in a sense, isn’t this what BFR is all about? — increasing rocket-fuel burners so that the BFR can rise against Earth’s pull?”Not invented here, we MUST do everything differently, its Musks amazing vision (everyone genuflect, now), and we don’t need no stinking SRB badges.³”Sour grapes.________________________________________Further there is the ‘vision craziness’ of 3,000 Big Fûqueing Rockets (the original moniker, never mind the Internet’s insidious revisionism of it), each taking off 3× a day, for 10,000 BFR flights a day. Each carrying 400 humans. One presumes … without space suits, without means to survive should there be a depressurization-in-flight event. 4 MILLION people a day whisking to parts far-flung on this Earth. Think of the H₂O vapor load to the stratosphere! 10 MILLION TONS of upper atmosphere water vapor release, a day. Global warming?Anyway…Just saying,GoatGuy________________________________________¹ Fable of the Fox and the Grapes: walking under an arbor bursting with ripe grapes, the fox jumps up, again and again. Can’t get the grapes. Finally, he sulks off and is heard to grumble… “they were probably sour, anyway.”² SRB → solid rocket booster, using a pumpless, intimately mixed solid compound combining fuel (typically special rubbers) and oxidizers (typically ammonium perchlorlate (NH₄)₂ClO₄) plus energetic rate-of-burning agents (powdered aluminum and magnesium). Being a ‘fire and forget’ type device, in theory at least it is simple to make and except for occasionally spectacularly blowling up, mostly a fault-free and intrinsically inexpensive-for-the-delivered-results technology. ³ “We don’t need no steenkin’ batjezz” from 1948 film, “Treasure of Sierra Madre”. № 37 on IMDB’s top–100 list of movie quotes.⁴ Noctilucent or “lit at night” clouds are anomalous stratospheric clouds naturally visible during the sub-arctic Winter and sub-antarctice Winter months. It is now known that mankind’s rocketry has substantially increased these clouds by injection of rocket-fuel combustion byproducts — mostly water vapor, but CO₂ too. There are only a few score rocket launches a year nominally. Not 10,000 of them.
Second that thing fires up its generator, it’s done for. The US subs can wait for months and identify anything moving through the area. They don’t have to do squat just wait. The diesel sub will need to recharge eventually.
I couldnt even finish the article your obvious lack of knowledge about this is ridiculous. The big falcon ship is estimated to cost around 350 million not 250 and you cost of the boosternis seperate and the only estimate ive seen for that is 250 million
Counting on america being the best will only lead to failure.
only in terms of operation times! stirling engine submarines would catch our subs by surprise! They cannot outrun or catch up to American subs, but if an american sub went in to a stirling engine subs range, it would be done for.
US nuclear attack subs are still superior to any diesel electric out there. The Seawolf and Virginia class are as silent as it gets, oh and they also carry a Tomahawk payload. They are also part of the US Navy.
The rhetoric and the Musk distaste don’t have to go hand in hand. Almost no one truly, deeply gives two poops about whether it’s Musk or Bezos or Trump Himself that jailbroke us out of this gravity well.
We need to go to space. Strife over who or what made it happen, aka a matter of pride, is the kind of thing that’s kept us down here. The sooner we’re out there the sooner we can get some breathing room to get rid of that kind of cabin fevered wrongness.
All of technology is just a means to realize human nature. Just like evolution had its cambrian explosion, so has art (and will continue to), so is computation and data storage, so will more seamless biotech symbiosis, so will body and genetic mods, and so will government. Things that seem far away and outlandish in fiction and science fiction only stay that way till they happen and then they are considered with contempt.
I am thinking just a few dozen (maybe 50-100) is plenty for any military applications, even if the final cost is closer to 1 billion per BFR. I don’t see how the military does not purchase a few if it works as intended, even as just a means of a delivery system for other weapons platforms. It would give them a payload of 2-3 B-2s that could be taken to 1000km up, well outside any air-defense systems reach. It would work simply as a space bomber, dropping whatever, since from that high up at that reentry speed, a 20 ton hunk of metal will wipe out any target as large as a skyscraper. Drop 20 or so 5-10 ton chunks of tungsten (like 2-3 BFR launches worth) on an airbase or one 40 ton chunk on a power plant and it will be unusable for the foreseeable future.
I’m sorry this just sounds nuts to me. I suspect that at a peak there will be less than two orders of magnitude numbers of BFRs in operation at any one time and that is still a crazy large amount of capacity.
Also, Please excuse me for doing my research, If you are interested in the subject don’t take my word for it, Don’t take anyone’s word for anything, Decide for your self, Do your own research, Do not be swayed by the first headline you see, Rocket science, and military strategy require a clear mind, and plenty of research.
You could fit over 1000 smart guided warheads in the BFR’s payload that can fly down and wipe out an entire army.
the average American fighter jet costs about 100 times as much as a BFR launch.
BFR will cost about 3 million per launch, it seems that Everyone fails to understand that most warheads carried by ships and planes cost around 3 million dollars, considering the Ridiculous cost of modern military equipment, delivering a 100 tun payload ( or warhead If you are in to that kinda thing) for as cheep as 3 million is a game changer, America spent tens of millions trying to make take off times of a single plane lower so it could conduct a rescue from a stadium ( which failed) This rocket could take off and land just about anywhere if you are willing to torch your landing zone, it could even clear a space for troops to set up shop on its way down. basically making its own beachhead with its landing burn.
the military advantage of the BFR is larger then the BFR its self.
Brian must have some good stuff in his pipe…
You are right, but, the BFR does have a lot of promise.
Nerds like myself can appreciate the possibilities
A naval ship has more points of failure then most rockets, including thousands to tens of millions of parts depending on the ship, And Every person on the ship, is an additional point of failure. the ocean is changing fast, And soon many arias of the ocean will be To dangerous even for large ships, due to largely to large gas release from the sea floor, And increasing stealth capability of stirling engine submarines which can Completely defeat the American navy.
this thing will have 31 engines on the first stage, and 9 on the second stage, Space x’s falcon heavy has 27 engines on the first stage, So this is not a huge increase, not only that, by producing more engines, they make them safer, more powerful and easier to produce, with less points of failure than traditional rocket engines. Where others feel it is unsafe to make progress, Space x is making rocket flight safer by advancing the field and material sciences required for deep space exploration.
I am projecting lower prices with high volume construction. Even if is 3000 at $350 million that is $1.05 trillion. Less than what China will spend on commercial passenger jets for the next 20 years
Why not use the BFS to also discharge stratospheric sulfate aerosols? To truly appreciate Musk, you must learn to think really ‘”big” like he does.
I write it. You know that.
SLS is based on shuttle era technology. SLS and Constellation before have not had one test launch.
Propulsion for the SLS core stage will be provided by four RS-25 engines. Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, California, is upgrading an inventory of 16 RS-25 shuttle engines to SLS performance requirement.
Two shuttle-derived solid rocket boosters will be used for the initial flights of the SLS. To provide the additional power needed for the rocket, the prime contractor for the boosters, Northrop Grumman, of Redondo Beach, California, has modified the original shuttle’s configuration of four propellant segments to a five-segment version.
$25 billion from Constellation and SLS programs. ZERO test flights.
The idea is what we take what will soon work and dial it to eleven.
As I have said (probably not here)- Musk is the new Howard Hughes.SpaceX and other commercial ventures are surely figured into our defense plans. Where armies go, vendors follow. If we go big on space, we will have it all locked in.
Fighter jets are much more maneuverable and with some vessels on the water with the condition that they are not an easy target would do a much better jobs in controlling a marine territory. However the BFR maybe use in some cases for a quick transport, especially because it can land vertically. Yet again it is an expensive option compared to marine transport and military cargo planes. Enough with the Chinese backward mind running in a superficial one direction blinded by the notion of bigger, more and more advanced is better!
How many jet engines on how many jets a day, with millions of firings per day – what is the catastrophic rate of failure for these? Also having more engines gives you some redundancy if one fails. Engineering problems like these are dealt with frequently.
You’re never going to convince the people who control the money to kill the acquisition of 65 more ships for the Navy (on top of or including all the submarines…?) for 3000 fragile and dependent albeit highly strategic craft. It’s pure overkill; if the BFR can fly anywhere in the world 10 times per day, then why do you need to strive for 3000 of them *right now*? Instead, if each BFR is $300 million (which seems a bit low) and an average ship is $13.9 billion (which seems a bit high), then each ship equates to 45 BFRs. Cripes, I’d take that trade any day! And, so would the people in power. Imagine giving SpaceX almost $14 billion for BFR development.
38 engines on a single rocket? That represents a lot of points of failure, let alone the cost of manufacturing so many engines for a single rocket. Engines are the most expensive component of an airliner.
Wars these days are only fought against poor people – Yemenis, Syrians, Afghans, and the like. Anyone rich enough is likely to have a nuke, or their friends might have one, and starting a war with them would be dumb. If you’re fighting poor people, you don’t need globe-spanning rockets to do it.
I highly doubt the BFR’s will be used in direct combat military operations. Now, if the Space Force builds some serious capabilities with them, we won’t need 285 ships will we? A ship is just a target from orbit.
… what about sonic booms from BFR’s ??
” Do you want Kessler syndrome? That’s how you get Kessler synrome! ” <– It’s not merely not, your idea is ridiculous. BFRs in P2P service are not in a whole orbit anyway.” rockt is visible form the other side of the world ” <– Below the horizon is below the horizon.” A few BFR gunships getting blown up over whateverstan and space closes for us all for the next 1000 years. ” <– No, even if any such ever were blown up, the fragments promptly de-orbit from drag, they are low to start with and have a horrible ballistic co-efficient.
What is the catastrophic failure rate of a raptor engine? 3k ships with 31 engines firing 2x per flight 10x per day, 1,860,000 engine firings per day.
Brian Wang is elons free lobbyist and publicist.
Shooting down a rocket like the BFR would be very hard. You have to get it during takeoff or landing. Once in LEO, it’s very difficult to shoot something like that down, it literally has to be directly overhead., very few missile systems can fire at something 200-400 km up and the ones that can are very unreliable. Also, the BFR should be able to operate in high LEO (think 500-1000km) for high risk lower payload mission, where it would be completely out of range, just launch them from the middle of the US and they would be untouchable.
Do you want Kessler syndrome? That’s how you get Kessler synrome!A ship on sea can stay undetected 40 miles away from the enemy but a rockt is visible form the other side of the world. Capable air defense systems area already seeing proliferation. A few BFR gunships getting blown up over whateverstan and space closes for us all for the next 1000 years.
While I’m optimistic about BFR as a functional and successful space launcher, this exceeds my expectations of what’s realistic by 2040.
A few tens of launchers, servicing a flourishing market putting hundreds of thousands tons of payload per year in LEO, cislunar and interplanetary space? Lunar and Mars bases by 2040?
Sure, seems feasible if BFR works and delivers its payload and some basic reuse capabilities.
A few tens more servicing the Space Force, launching conventional weapons, cargo and people to space and back. Yeah, why not?
But 3000 hauling millions of tons or passengers per day… that stretches the imagination. And poses some insurmountable problems, like the required infrastructure for receiving and launching that many rockets (e.g. so many launch pads far from cities to avoid horrid noise pollution), the logistics for their safe operation, the amount of emissions they would make and well, any reasonable market need.
I’m aware that commercial air-flight grew to such a huge market, payload and passenger size over several decades. But these are wholly different beasts, requiring a lot more in terms of infrastructure, safety procedures and as I said, a basic market demand.
My biggest concern really is that the rockets and ships will arrive and that there won’t be anyone willing to pony up the cost of the castles in the sky.
That’s not the way this works, it’s not the way any of this works.
Treating this assemblage of words as seriously as I can.
3000 BFRs move 1,000,000 men to Afghanistan, for example,
1. Are there 30000 adequate landing spots for BFRs in the area of operations?
2. Once the BFRs land – how do we get them back? They require minimal inspection and refurbishment – which isn’t to say none.
3. Do we land them half full of fuel so they can come back, that adds a rather large element of risk to the landing
4. A one dimensional assault is much easier to defend against. And rockets are in many ways even easier than boats. How fast can 330 armed troops disembark from a BFR? One hit to the rocket has a reasonable chance take out everyone still inside, especially if it’s half full of fuel for the return journey.
5. How do I provide heavy weapons to a BFR assault, what replaces naval gunfire, tanks and air support?
6. Great I have 1,000,000 men on the far side of the world, what’s my logistics train to keep them in beans and bullets? BFRs? – if you have an answer to 2 & 3, then what’s the cycle time between flights, how long to reconfigure from passengers to cargo?
7. What’s the average number down checked between flights for more extensive maintenance? How many of the 3000 are ready this week?
I could go on, but it’s almost lunch time. But what do I know, I only studied aerospace engineering and drove warships, including doing amphibious assault planning for over a decade.
I think, maybe before we create a traffic jam in LEO, we install some infrastructure to clean up orbital debris. One big accident, a cloud of metal and some snowballing collisions and the future may not be so bright. When discussing military applications, that scenario is likely to play out immediately.
I wonder … who writes this stuff? Things like “US clings to Space Shuttle era SRBs”.
Sounds a lot like “sour grapes”¹ to me. If MUSK’s team weren’t shilling for his own egocentristic ideals of what reuseable space flight ‘looks like’, the BFR actually might have a reinvented set of SRBs itself.
The Space Shuttle marketed SRB² reuseability. Landing in the ocean. Later, a ship would retrieve the boosters. Radio beacon. None were actually reused though. Too much concern — especially with the Endeavor disaster — of salt-water and first-flight stress of the reused SRB.
Indeed: in a sense, isn’t this what BFR is all about? — increasing rocket-fuel burners so that the BFR can rise against Earth’s pull?
“Not invented here, we MUST do everything differently, its Musks amazing vision (everyone genuflect, now), and we don’t need no stinking SRB badges.³”
Sour grapes.
________________________________________
Further there is the ‘vision craziness’ of 3,000 Big Fûqueing Rockets (the original moniker, never mind the Internet’s insidious revisionism of it), each taking off 3× a day, for 10,000 BFR flights a day. Each carrying 400 humans. One presumes … without space suits, without means to survive should there be a depressurization-in-flight event. 4 MILLION people a day whisking to parts far-flung on this Earth.
Think of the H₂O vapor load to the stratosphere! 10 MILLION TONS of upper atmosphere water vapor release, a day. Global warming?
Anyway…
Just saying,
GoatGuy
________________________________________
¹ Fable of the Fox and the Grapes: walking under an arbor bursting with ripe grapes, the fox jumps up, again and again. Can’t get the grapes. Finally, he sulks off and is heard to grumble… “they were probably sour, anyway.”
² SRB → solid rocket booster, using a pumpless, intimately mixed solid compound combining fuel (typically special rubbers) and oxidizers (typically ammonium perchlorlate (NH₄)₂ClO₄) plus energetic rate-of-burning agents (powdered aluminum and magnesium). Being a ‘fire and forget’ type device, in theory at least it is simple to make and except for occasionally spectacularly blowling up, mostly a fault-free and intrinsically inexpensive-for-the-delivered-results technology.
³ “We don’t need no steenkin’ batjezz” from 1948 film, “Treasure of Sierra Madre”. № 37 on IMDB’s top–100 list of movie quotes.
⁴ Noctilucent or “lit at night” clouds are anomalous stratospheric clouds naturally visible during the sub-arctic Winter and sub-antarctice Winter months. It is now known that mankind’s rocketry has substantially increased these clouds by injection of rocket-fuel combustion byproducts — mostly water vapor, but CO₂ too. There are only a few score rocket launches a year nominally. Not 10,000 of them.
As I have said (probably not here)- Musk is the new Howard Hughes.
SpaceX and other commercial ventures are surely figured into our defense plans. Where armies go, vendors follow. If we go big on space, we will have it all locked in.
You’re never going to convince the people who control the money to kill the acquisition of 65 more ships for the Navy (on top of or including all the submarines…?) for 3000 fragile and dependent albeit highly strategic craft. It’s pure overkill; if the BFR can fly anywhere in the world 10 times per day, then why do you need to strive for 3000 of them *right now*?
Instead, if each BFR is $300 million (which seems a bit low) and an average ship is $13.9 billion (which seems a bit high), then each ship equates to 45 BFRs. Cripes, I’d take that trade any day! And, so would the people in power. Imagine giving SpaceX almost $14 billion for BFR development.
Wars these days are only fought against poor people – Yemenis, Syrians, Afghans, and the like. Anyone rich enough is likely to have a nuke, or their friends might have one, and starting a war with them would be dumb. If you’re fighting poor people, you don’t need globe-spanning rockets to do it.
I highly doubt the BFR’s will be used in direct combat military operations. Now, if the Space Force builds some serious capabilities with them, we won’t need 285 ships will we? A ship is just a target from orbit.
… what about sonic booms from BFR’s ??
” Do you want Kessler syndrome? That’s how you get Kessler synrome! ” <-- It's not merely not, your idea is ridiculous. BFRs in P2P service are not in a whole orbit anyway. " rockt is visible form the other side of the world " <-- Below the horizon is below the horizon. " A few BFR gunships getting blown up over whateverstan and space closes for us all for the next 1000 years. " <-- No, even if any such ever were blown up, the fragments promptly de-orbit from drag, they are low to start with and have a horrible ballistic co-efficient.
Do you want Kessler syndrome? That’s how you get Kessler synrome!
A ship on sea can stay undetected 40 miles away from the enemy but a rockt is visible form the other side of the world. Capable air defense systems area already seeing proliferation. A few BFR gunships getting blown up over whateverstan and space closes for us all for the next 1000 years.
I think, maybe before we create a traffic jam in LEO, we install some infrastructure to clean up orbital debris. One big accident, a cloud of metal and some snowballing collisions and the future may not be so bright. When discussing military applications, that scenario is likely to play out immediately.