People are not super-excited about the SpaceX Starfall test tomorrow. This is a hockey puck shaped space vehicle that will be released from a Falcon 9 flight that goes to orbit or near orbit. It is a heat shield capsule that will hold about 1000 kg of payload and has some cold thrusters and parachutes in it.
This seems on the surface to be boring. Heat shield capsules with parachutes and even cold thrusters have all been around for 50-60 years.
What is new? It will be mass produced and inexpensive.
The heat shield will be reusable heat shield like on SpaceX Starship. The hundreds of times larger heat shield on Starship is all part of a Starship that costs $20-40 million to build. The hockey puck capsule will be one million or less in volume.
By why is that so important ?
Would space hotels for thousands of people at a time be exciting? Every week a thousand people could go up and back down. 50,000 tourists could go to orbit every year. They each might pay $100,000 per person. This would be $5 billion per year in revenue. It could even scale up to 5 million tourists per year at $20,000 per person or about. $100 billion per year.
However, what could be holding this back? How about safety ? How could the Starship be evacuated in the ride up or ride down in the one in 100,000 or smaller chance that something happened to the rocket.
If everyone or every one in groups of 3-4 were in escape pods then they could all return safely. One hundred pods with heat shields and parachutes. Each for $1 million a piece. It would $100 million of capital but they would be reused. The Titanic Ocean liner did not have enough lifeboats for all passengers.
On the top of this article, there is a 2001 like space station. There is a SpaceX Starship in the center hub and another Starship is coming in to dock. This hotel could hold 1000 people or more. There are some mini space shuttles around the outside but those Sierra Space dreamcatchers would cost billions. If you had to evacuate without the Sierra Space Dreamcatchers, you would have to race hundreds of feet, through ladders or various air locks. Everyone would be evacuating as well. It would take 10+ minutes, which would be a long time if the space hotel got hit by meteors. With Starfalls everywhere you would be about 20 feet from an escape pod.
We want to have passenger travel with rockets to fly anywhere in the world in under one hour.
How do passengers get out when they cannot land in an emergency. Current planes can try to glide down. Rockets like Starship have not chance to glide to a safe landing.
Get super excited about something is affordable, simple and can get the job done for low cost safe return.
People get excited about going up 1000 times lower cost and 1000 times more volume.
Get excited about get out and get back safely at low cost and for millions of people and getting billions of cargo where they need to go 20 times faster.
The people on the Titanic were not excited about the lifeboats when they got on the Titanic. They were bored by the lifeboats. However, half of the people were super-excited about lifeboats when they were getting off the Titanic. They would have all been super-excited to have affordable lifeboats for everyone.
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.
