<story><title>SpaceX is now building a Raptor engine a day, NASA says</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/spacex-is-now-building-a-raptor-engine-a-day-nasa-says/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Moissanite</author><text>This is what baffles me about the current space-travel fetish. We know what&amp;#x27;s up there - &lt;i&gt;basically nothing at all&lt;/i&gt;. Even if you go to another planet and mine for raw materials, bringing material back isn&amp;#x27;t even remotely economically feasible and is unlikely to become so in any of our lifetimes.&lt;p&gt;Going to space in the 1960s made sense from the perspective of scientific advancement, and let&amp;#x27;s be honest, showing off. Now, we realize that the world has serious problems - but the people with influence are decidedly un-serious and so would rather continue to show off instead of fixing the mess they helped to create.</text></item><item><author>tsimionescu</author><text>That plan will not work, as there is nothing that could possibly be gained by flying thousands of rockets to Mars: there is nothing worth having on Mars.</text></item><item><author>cryptoz</author><text>The Mars plans &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; medium-term, though, and they need many thousands of Starships+Boosters for that plan to work. In the short-term, SpaceX is &amp;#x27;behind&amp;#x27; on launching Starlink, especially v2 which is needed to fulfill the promises of the network and be profitable (and v2 can only launch on Starship).&lt;p&gt;In the short term, they need hundreds of full stage rockets, and in the medium term, thousands. That&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;tens of thousands&lt;/i&gt; of engines needed in the next ~10 years. I don&amp;#x27;t think 1&amp;#x2F;day is fast enough and I&amp;#x27;m sure they will increase that rate as soon as possible.&lt;p&gt;Also for testing, SpaceX doesn&amp;#x27;t want to be afraid of blowing up rockets and losing engines, so the first few hundred engines will likely not be reused.</text></item><item><author>GuB-42</author><text>This is great but... what are they goig to do with so many Raptors?&lt;p&gt;SpaceX is following a &amp;quot;fully reusable&amp;quot; strategy, I am not even sure if the BFR booster has an expendable option, Starship may be expendable but it is clearly not the configuration they are pushing for. And yet, SpaceX is producing these engines as if they were consumables.&lt;p&gt;We only need so many launches, especially super heavy rocket launches before we run out of payload. And if they build as many rockets as they have engines for, where are they going to store them? What about the launch pads? Etc...&lt;p&gt;I am not criticizing SpaceX strategy, I know that Musk is a fan of assembly lines, for a lot of good reasons, so maybe they are just making so many engines just because they can, or so that they can blow them up later during testing (another SpaceX hallmark), but I am curious about their medium term strategy (i.e. after Starship is operational but before crazy projects like Mars settlements).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>signatoremo</author><text>Huh? We do not know what is up there. That’s the whole point of exploration. We don’t even fully know what our planet has.&lt;p&gt;The world is and will always be a mess. That’s the nature of human being, we have different ideas, priorities, mindset. We can’t stop progress in an area just to fix some other areas. Besides, it is baffling that space is always singled out when it comes to fixing earth’s issues. Why not says, divert all resources of the video gaming industry to fixing climate; stopping all sporting competition, especially professional ones, for the same goal? That’s of course straw man and unrealistic argument, but space skeptics repeat the same argument on every single space discussion.</text></comment>
<story><title>SpaceX is now building a Raptor engine a day, NASA says</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/spacex-is-now-building-a-raptor-engine-a-day-nasa-says/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Moissanite</author><text>This is what baffles me about the current space-travel fetish. We know what&amp;#x27;s up there - &lt;i&gt;basically nothing at all&lt;/i&gt;. Even if you go to another planet and mine for raw materials, bringing material back isn&amp;#x27;t even remotely economically feasible and is unlikely to become so in any of our lifetimes.&lt;p&gt;Going to space in the 1960s made sense from the perspective of scientific advancement, and let&amp;#x27;s be honest, showing off. Now, we realize that the world has serious problems - but the people with influence are decidedly un-serious and so would rather continue to show off instead of fixing the mess they helped to create.</text></item><item><author>tsimionescu</author><text>That plan will not work, as there is nothing that could possibly be gained by flying thousands of rockets to Mars: there is nothing worth having on Mars.</text></item><item><author>cryptoz</author><text>The Mars plans &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; medium-term, though, and they need many thousands of Starships+Boosters for that plan to work. In the short-term, SpaceX is &amp;#x27;behind&amp;#x27; on launching Starlink, especially v2 which is needed to fulfill the promises of the network and be profitable (and v2 can only launch on Starship).&lt;p&gt;In the short term, they need hundreds of full stage rockets, and in the medium term, thousands. That&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;tens of thousands&lt;/i&gt; of engines needed in the next ~10 years. I don&amp;#x27;t think 1&amp;#x2F;day is fast enough and I&amp;#x27;m sure they will increase that rate as soon as possible.&lt;p&gt;Also for testing, SpaceX doesn&amp;#x27;t want to be afraid of blowing up rockets and losing engines, so the first few hundred engines will likely not be reused.</text></item><item><author>GuB-42</author><text>This is great but... what are they goig to do with so many Raptors?&lt;p&gt;SpaceX is following a &amp;quot;fully reusable&amp;quot; strategy, I am not even sure if the BFR booster has an expendable option, Starship may be expendable but it is clearly not the configuration they are pushing for. And yet, SpaceX is producing these engines as if they were consumables.&lt;p&gt;We only need so many launches, especially super heavy rocket launches before we run out of payload. And if they build as many rockets as they have engines for, where are they going to store them? What about the launch pads? Etc...&lt;p&gt;I am not criticizing SpaceX strategy, I know that Musk is a fan of assembly lines, for a lot of good reasons, so maybe they are just making so many engines just because they can, or so that they can blow them up later during testing (another SpaceX hallmark), but I am curious about their medium term strategy (i.e. after Starship is operational but before crazy projects like Mars settlements).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Me1000</author><text>People were talking about &amp;quot;the world&amp;#x27;s problems&amp;quot; in the 60s too. Fortunately we still went to the moon and inspired generations of people to quite literally reach for the stars. The idea that we could simply reallocate the relatively small number of resources currently used for spaceflight, and that would make some meaningful impact in the world&amp;#x27;s problems is silly. There will always be new problems on Earth to solve.</text></comment>