SpaceX's Starship Won't Take Humans To Mars And Here's Why

Hi Omz here, and welcome to OmzLaw. I’m sure followers of this channel are probably confused by now why I’m making a video about space; bare with me for the next couple of minutes, and for those just joining in, if you enjoyed this video, I doubt based on the topic today, but subscribing to the channel will really help me grow it. Also, feel free to check out all of my other content here.

Other Videos that continue this topic:
SpaceX's Starship Needs A Redesign - The Vast Distances Involved With The Mission

SpaceX Needs To Solve These Issues With Starship Before It Can Take Humans To Mars

SpaceX's Starship SN10 Sticks The Landing And The Various Gravitational Effects On A Journey To Mars:

I’ve probably pissed off some people by now because of the title of the video and the thumbnail, but let me just put out a huge disclaimer before I get massacred by any SpaceX fanboys; I am a huge supporter and follower of SpaceX ever since Elon Musk put out the idea years ago. I have the utmost respect for SpaceX, there isn’t really a live stream that I miss, and most of my Youtube page is filled with SpaceX enthusiasts and Youtubers like myself analyzing and debating every single thing that these people are doing in regards to Starship, Superheavy, Falcon, Dragon, and Starlink.

And this is why I wanna dedicate a section of this channel for Space news and developments. So why am I bashing the Starship? Today we're going to talk about the Gravity problem, and we’re going to explore what solutions SpaceX and other future companies or entities can explore in order to secure humanity’s place amongst the stars.

Angry Astronaut Thermonuclear Engine:

2 THE FUTURE with Jixuan & Sebastian Spinning Starship

Video Credit:
The Angry Astronaut

NASA

2 THE FUTURE with Jixuan & Sebastian

Amazon Prime Video for all of "The Expanse" footage & music

Touchstone Pictures & Spyglass Entertainment's "Mission to Mars"
Stanley Kubrick Productions' "2001 Space Odyssey"
Warner Brothers' "Gravity"

SpaceX

Canadian Space Agency

Boeing

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I do not own any of the videos or music used. All articles used fall under “fair use” and are for the purpose of commentary and education. This video is not monetized and complies with “fair use” regulations as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

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[nuriamartinezborras]

Hey, just want to say that astronauts stay more than 6 months in the ISS in zero-g and then when they re-enter the atmosphere they recibe more g’s than in the starship flip maneuver, so yeah, this has already been tested and it won’t kill anyone.

[phoe]

I´m undecided . . .
There are too many enthusiasts regarding SpaceX out there, ignoring all the elephants in the room, and all they say is "Elon will fix this."
"2theFuture" is my go-to example if it comes to blind futurism and (kinda weird) fanboying.
So it´s nice to have someone addressing it, but you too seem to believe only Musk delivers what he promises. In fact, there are many things he hasn´t delivered yet/at all.
Some of the things he promises almost contradict his supposed attitude.

[RayCromwell]

Don't ISS astronauts already experience 4-6 months of microgravity, and then a sudden exposure to a 1g gravity environment? You're telling me that decelerating from orbit and landing on hard earth (Soyuz capsule) is worse than decelerating on Mars and landing in 1/3rd gravity?

[livingexcuse]

Artificial gravity cable system does not work, they actually tested this during one of the Gemini missions, without a counter wright at the center, one craft just pulls the other one towards it by buckling the cable.

[nicholasthompson]

There are tons of points you made that already have answers. I mean, astronauts stay at the ISS in zero g for nearly 6 months, 5 or so, and they experience a return to much greater gravity, earth, suddenly upon reentry.

I don't mean to be rude, but more research could've gone into this.

[saumyacow]

Hey.. interesting video. First thing - the "suicide dive". This is baked into the design. The reason behind the suicide dive is that Starship is essentially a cylindrical object. It doesn't create a lot of lift to drag. As a consequence what they are actually doing in their Mars landing simulation for Starship is deliberately diving deep into the atmosphere in order to get enough air density to create enough lift. You see it in the video at 7:00. They come within 5 km of the surface, still travelling at around 1, 800 m/s. The lift generated is enough to "bounce" Starship back up to 10 km altitude. In so doing it bleeds more velocity and creates enough altitude that the final supersonic retro-propulsion phase has a chance to work.

The problem here is that this "late lifting" strategy is inherently unfriendly to human occupants (its been used and works well for robot landers). It generates high g forces. In the case of Starship those g-forces are anywhere from 4 to 6 gs, depending on the alignment of the planets and approach speed. (The simulation shows a mid-range 5 gs). This is inherently dumb. You take a bunch of civilians, subject them to zero g for 6 months and wham! 5 or 6 gs. You now have a bunch of invalids that need stretchering down off a very high vehicle and who are still several kilometres from safety and medical attention.

Despite what this Youtuber says, there's no feasible alternative to this using Starship itself. It is what it is, aerodynamically. There's a far better way to solve this problem and that is don't land Starship at all. Instead, transfer people to a special lander/ascent vehicle that takes over the role of getting humans safely from Mars orbit to Mars surface. Given a reasonable sized crew (4 to 6) you could build a vehicle that lands fully propulsively on Mars and still only consume a modest load of fuel (about 10-20 tonnes). Such a vehicle will also subject its occupants to far lower g forces. And it will overall be much safer than landing on Starship.

What we need to do is to accept that the "Mars direct" architecture is broken. We need "Mars indirect". That's how to deal with some of the issues mentioned here. Another thing is that if you abandon Starship as a human transport vehicle and consign it to the task its actually good for, which is heavy haulage, then you could design a "transit vehicle" whose sole purpose is to get humans from Earth orbit to Mars orbit and return them safely. Now, because this vehicle doesn't have to be subjected to the stresses of atmospheric entry, it can be optimised for safety, redundancy, reliability, serviceability and to the greatest extent possible, protection from radiation. One other thing. Having a vehicle purely designed for in-space transit frees you to design a vehicle (based around a truss structure) that provide reasonable levels of spin gravity (0.4 to 0.8 gs).

[kerbodynamicx]

Instead of saying “Starship will not go to Mars”, a topic such as “The extreme difficulties of a Martian trip on a SpaceX Starship” will sound much more comfortable to SpaceX fans.

[gbeck]

I’m just imagining how hard it is psicologicaly to upload videos for 5 months with lest than 100 subscribers. But don’t worry you have a high quality product. You will see that from one day to another your subscribers will explosively increase. I’m pretty sure.

[kennethferland]

I think the question is will Starship become a cost effective orbital launch vehicle at all. This is seriously in doubt considering how they are burning money so fast and yet taking far far longer then claimed. They not only need to get to orbit but get nearly perfect recovery and reuse to then launch huge numbers of times to amortize costs.

[thedarkknight]

Starship is impossible until it is not

[saumyacow]

7:04 "I'm sure the leading scientists at SpaceX have already figured this out". Well, no. Actually they haven't. They're trapped within the Mars Direct paradigm and there's no practical fix for Starship. See my other post for solutions though.

[notarealperson]

"where the hell is the james webb".... out in fucking space working flawlessly.

[panakidnd]

It's pretty stupid how you have to give a disclaimer for about two minutes because of how much people are pissed at you for doubting spacex. These fanboys are just ridiculous chugging down whatever overblown promise Elon throws at them.

[Immanatum]

Ok, Elon's policy briefly: "Fake it till you make it".
Every single "project" Musk presents has severe technical design flaws, which later transforms in ridiculously stupid realization - LVCC Loop, Hyperloop, Teslabot, Starlink, and, particularly Starship.

And just for record Jixuan&Sebastian or Angry Non-Astronaut is not a good choice to follow.

[WayneBagguley]

NASA has now successfully delivered JWST and Artemis/Orion to orbit the moon. Starship is yet to do anything beyond exploding a couple of times. Your jibe at NASA didn't age well. But you're right about Starship. It won't work, for many reasons. Who is going to build the nice, flat, concrete landing sites on the moon and Mars for starters.

[randycampbell]

Good video, (came here from CSS :) ) but I need to point out a few things:

1) It's "Nuclear Thermal" not "Thermo-Nuclear" the former is fully "Nuclear Thermal Propulsion" or "Nuclear Thermal Rocket" and involves fission reactors such as NERVA while the latter is fusion which we don't have yet ;)

2) Starship won't be powered by an NTR it's design is totally wrong for that purpose as you need the NTR engine to be away from other structural systems as they would tend to scatter deadly radiation back into the vehicle.

3) Thanks for pointing out that these "test" vehicles are very much not "Starship" due to the nature and complexity of the very basic design at the current time. I complain a lot about the lack of planning going into these 'test-flights' since more pre-work would save a lot of money if not time that isn't being done and has directly lead to most of the flight loses so far. The rushed iteration would make sense if the actual vehicle was more designed and built to survive more than one flight which these are not really as they are really no more than engine and tankage test vehicle instead of prototype vehicles. (Sufficient landing gear alone would probably have 'saved' SN10, as it was the non-sensical 'crash-gear' installed can be argued to have lead to the vehicle loss)

[blankblank]

It's very early in the development, it's only landed once..

[vinny]

2:5 "I think Elon has already thought about this problem"

The fact that you keep saying that means that the Cult Of Musk has done it's job.

No, Musk has not thought about this, he has not even thought about radiation as he stood on that stage telling people who know more about radiation than he does that radiations wasn't that big of a deal.

The gravity problem has not been overlooked at all. Every spacestation has serious training equipment to combat atrophy.

Also: spinning as a form of gravity does not work. If your craft is small you end up more gravity in your legs than in your brain: vomitorium.
If your ship is large enough to not get significantly different gravity then the ship is too large to exist.

Cables are a non-starter, and trusses need to be made of some magic material because in order to have something like 1G they have to spin so fast that the entire ship gets up to 1G, which in the case of starship puts it at 1200mT empty, and 2000mT fuelled (which it has to be to get to Mars). Can you make a truss that can support 4000mT under *tension*? That;s half the eiffel tower, hanging from a single truss.

No, gravity is not overlooked at all.

[nicolatelatin]

Watching this in July 2024 feels different

[drincmusic]

Me: reads the title of the video

Me: "why do people get hung up on this?"

Me: listens to the video.

Me: oh.