> You are fully aware that the launch cost of the JWST is an insignificant part of the mission budget.
The reason for that is the folding contraption.
And the sunscreen.
And the very delicate instruments.
And the requirement to be extremely lightweight.
All those things combined is what led to the decades long development timeline, and the incredible cost.
If you instead have 150 metric ton of payload capacity to orbit, you don't care that you could shave 100 grams of one component. Not even several metric tons of extra weight would be an issue, when you have so much spare capacity you could just add an extra 10-20 metric ton of fuel to compensate.
Starship allows a paradigm shift in spacecraft design where weight is no longer your most important target. Nor your second or even third.
Instead you can use off the shelf components that might be twice the weight, but 1/10th the cost.
If JWST was designed today with Starship just around the corner, the final cost would have been a lot lower.
Yes, the cost would probably still have been much higher than the launch cost, but it would probably have been a lot closer $1-2 billion than the $10 billion it costed in the end.
I mean if you could hit the nail on the head more accurately and clearly: I’m not sure how.
People really don’t understand that launch costs are only a small part of reducing launch compexity, which is the side effect of larger payloads.
A lot of payloads aren’t even worth launching because of the high cost, but the payload that are worth launching are going to drop in complexity as putting them into orbit without stage deployment or super lightweight materials or any of the other massively limiting compromises we totally take for granted are going to effectively be history — that is exciting!
Starlink is not intended to replace terrestrial connectivity. It is intended to provide service to everyone on the planet that can not get terrestrial connectivity, and those areas that can never get terrestrial connections, like oceangoing vessels and airplanes.
But let's crunch some back of the envelope numbers.
SpaceX currently are allowed to launch 7500 Gen2 Starlink satellites. A Falcon 9 can fit 22 of them in one launch, requiring ~341 launches. The satellites have a planned lifetime of 5 years, meaning the entire constellation would have to be replaced in that time frame.
So costs then. Musk has given out $15 million as best case marginal cost for Falcon 9 back in 2020. But let's be conservative and say $25m per launch currently. That's $8525m in total for launches.
The satellites themselves are estimated to cost between $200-300k each for the original v1, but the v2 probably costs a bit more, so let's say $500k each. That adds up to $3750m for the satellites.
So the totals then is $12275m over the span of 5 years, or ~$2.5 billion yearly.
The subscription cost is currently $110, but it fluctuates depending on the capacity in an area, so let's just use $100 as a simple round number. Each subscriber would bring in $1200 a year in revenue, so that means SpaceX would need ~2.1 million subscribers to cover the cost of replacing their currently allowed 7500 Gen2 satellites. It doesn't include the SpaceX operated ground stations that connect to the rest of the internet, but they're probably a smaller part of their total costs. The user terminals are now being sold at a profit.
As of last month, SpaceX announced they had over 2 million subscribers, and reports from earlier this year indicated that they have passed the operational break even point for Starlink, which means my conservative numbers are much higher than the real numbers.
There's also a lot of countries where it's not available yet, and given that it's a global system, the marginal cost for connecting a new country is very low, only requiring ground stations to be built.
So to conclude, yes, the numbers add up and they're in a good spot right now. Once they get Starship operational the numbers should change dramatically though, since launch costs are the main cost right now, and Starship would reduce that significantly.
Not necessarily. Tesla actually developed a proprietary alloy for their giga casting that removed the need for heat treatment, as the large castings tended to deform during it. On the plus side, also meant they could remove that process step.
Article didn't give any details how Toyota would handle it though.
> In contrast, Tesla redacts all narrative and does not confirm injury severity. In over 700 cases, around 95% of their reports, they choose not to investigate whether an injury or fatality occurred.
The primary reason why all those Tesla cases lack those details, is that they're reported basically immediately when they happen, because all Teslas are connected to the mothership and report back when it happens.
The NHTSA page even explicitly points it out under the data limitations section, under "Incident Report Data May Be Incomplete or Unverified".
> This means that a reporting entity with access to vehicle telemetry may quickly become aware of an air bag deployment incident subject to the General Order, but it may not become aware of all circumstances related to the crash, such as surface conditions, whether all passengers were belted, or whether an injury occurred.
This is also the reason why Tesla are so overrepresented in the data. Almost no other automaker has connected cars, or are like the GM On-Star a subscription service that not everyone has.
All other reports have to come in manually though actual crash investigations, which can take time. Or not happen at all if nobody thinks those systems might have had been activated/relevant. For example, a car using driver assist technology getting t-boned by a manually driven car at an intersection will likely not raise any alarms about automated systems during crash investigations. But for Tesla they're reported, because they immediately know those cars were in a crash.
So in conclusion, as NHTSA has said, none of the data has been normalized, and lacks important contextual information to properly analyze it, and should thus not be used by itself to draw any conclusions.
As can be seen on page 16 of the order, outlining request format 1, each reporting entity is required to submit a initial incident report and a follow up updated report 10 days after receiving notice of the incident. This is registered in Column D, Report Type, as 10-day update.
As can be plainly seen in Column D, Report Type, and Column B, Report Version, the vast majority of Tesla reports are on version 2, the second updated report issued 10 days after initial notice of the incident. Most of the remaining, newer, reports are on version 1, a report issued 5 days after notice of the incident as it has not yet been 10-days since the corresponding released NHTSA dataset.
Also note that reporting entities are allowed to voluntarily issue subsequent reports marked as Report Type, Update. Tesla has intentionally chosen to not do any investigation to evaluate the operational or safety characteristics of their incomplete product in use. That is completely and utterly unacceptable for a safety-critical product.
In addition, even if you were not colossally wrong on the nature of the reports, safety-critical systems require a positive proof of safety. You do not get to bet lives on unproven systems. If no proof is available, and no conclusions can be drawn, then it is not acceptable for use. This is the absolute basics of safety-critical system evaluation. The absence of information or inconclusive results is not a defense as you seem to think, it is a admission of guilt.
In conclusion, you are completely wrong in both the particulars of report submission and the generalities of what conclusions can be drawn from the Tesla reporting methodology.
Wait, is this true for EVs? I've written off purchasing an EV entirely because I don't want a connected car and I thought they all were. If there are ones that aren't connected, that changes the equation quite a lot.
While I don't know about the details of what all the other EVs have, most of the legacy auto EVs model year 2020 and earlier were basically built on ICE platforms, and mostly have the same features except having an EV drivetrain.
Many models coming out now are on new dedicated EV platforms, so you'd really have to check them to see what connectivity features they might have.
Nothing about EVs require connectivity though, it's just Tesla that have caused a shift in direction in many other automakers.
The secret sauce isn't in the batteries themselves but the engineering of the entire drivetrain, the battery management system and so on.
Tesla is consistently in the top of EV drivetrain efficiency for their models, allowing them to go farther with less batteries, with the IONIQ being one of the few EVs that have been able to fight Tesla for the top spots.
> Tesla is consistently in the top of EV drivetrain efficiency for their models
From your link this doesn't seem to be true. The short range, non awd model 3 has great efficiency. Other model 3s are also good but clearly not anything particularly far ahead as there are a bunch of other models from other manufacturers with similar or better efficiency.
Looking at other Tesla models makes it clearer that they aren't anything particularly special. Even the model y, which is basically model 3 with minor body tweaks is basically middle of the road, model s and x are even worse.
Oh, so because of their high efficency they consistently cheat on their customers?
Their EPA ranges were found to be overstated across models, then there was that recent thing with falsified dashboard data.
I wouldn't say Tesla has advantages in any field, quite the opposite and mostly because of the Elon factor, which basically is just another synonym for NIH.
Electric cars being heavier have an impact in that it causes more wear and tear on roads. But they're absolutely dwarfed by the wear semis cause.
Even when the electricity comes entirely from coal, electric vehicles are more efficient than ICE vehicles, so every EV deployed reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
> and rockets
Rockets impact on emissions is a rounding error on the global scale. The number of launched would have to increase by 1000 times to start approaching the airline industry, and with the move to methane fueled rockets it's possible to synthesize the fuel from CO2 in the atmosphere using carbon free energy, creating a closed loop.
> Tesla should help the US build public transports
It doesn't work like that. You can't just say "let's build more public transport" and it will magically happen tomorrow. There are a ton of barriers to expanding many forms of public transport, primarily public funding, which they do not control. And when it comes to thing like rail, that's compounded even more by right of way.
The fact of the matter is that the US is a car heavy society, and building EVs is the fastest way to reduce transport emissions without (ignoring incentives) directly having to rely on public funding.
As an added bonus, building up an EV production line allows you to relatively easily export them to other markets around the world. You can't export a rail line to another place.
> Electric cars being heavier have an impact in that
In that moving a heavier weight takes more energy. We don't need to slightly reduce our energy consumption, we need to drastically reduce it. Meaning that in any country that did not make the same mistake as the US (being to build their society around individual cars), heavy EV are clearly not enough. We need to use public transports, (e-)bikes, and small EVs for those who don't really have a choice. As far as I understand, a Tesla is basically a sports car. There is no place for sports cars where we are going. Of course I understand it is harder for the US, both because of culture (SUVs are the norm, right?) and infrastructure.
Still it's never too late to start building better infrastructures, I suppose.
> Even when the electricity comes entirely from coal, electric vehicles are more efficient than ICE vehicles
What do you mean by "more efficient"? That a Tesla produces less CO2 using electricity made from coal than a small ICE vehicle? How in the world did you get to that conclusion?
> so every EV deployed reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
It's more complicated than that. If you throw away a recent, small ICE vehicle in order to deploy an EV, I am pretty sure it doesn't reduce much. You have to consider the entire life of the vehicle (and seriously, coal?).
> The number of launched would have to increase by 1000 times to start approaching the airline industry
Which is the goal of SpaceX and every other company going in the space business, right?
> it's possible to synthesize the fuel from CO2 in the atmosphere using carbon free energy, creating a closed loop.
At scale, I very much doubt it remotely adds up. And all the carbon free energy you use to do that, you don't use it to replace fossil fuels elsewhere. It just doesn't work.
> It doesn't work like that. You can't just say "let's build more public transport" and it will magically happen tomorrow.
Fair enough. On the one hand you need less companies like Tesla and SpaceX, and more public investment into transport infrastructure.
> As an added bonus, building up an EV production line allows you to relatively easily export them to other markets around the world. You can't export a rail line to another place.
That is an interesting, US-centered approach. First, all the countries that have good public transports should just not import Teslas. Because those countries don't depend that much on cars, they can just improve their public transport infrastructures.
Maybe the US could learn a bit from those countries when they look into their public transports ;-).
