Trent Telenko Profile picture
Oct 30, 2021 12 tweets 5 min read Read on X
CASEY HANDMER'S BLOG has a hugely important piece on Starship. If a space firm misunderstands this passage:

"A dollar spent on mass optimization no longer buys a dollar saved on launch cost. It buys nothing."

It's doomed

caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/sta…
His blog's comparison of NASA's SLS based Artemis architecture versus a Lunar program based on Starship makes the point.

This is a phase change difference in access to space akin from the X-Atlantic air travel jump from Charles Lindberg to the wide body jet in 5-years.
2/
For the logistical types, these are your current price points:

$100,000/kg for LEO bulk cargo
$1,000,000/kg(+) for deep space exploration.

Starship will do 100 ton (+) chunks for <$10m per launch.

It will be launching several hundred times a year w/in 5-years.
3/
Starship will be doing 1,000(+) flights a year in about seven to 10 years.

And no one in the NASA or the incumbent space industries world wide are doing jack to prepare for that reality.
4/
Casey Handmer's point is how will...

"NASA and industry will have to find a way to produce 100x as much stuff for 1/10th the price. Rovers will have to be $1000/kg and we will need 100 tons of them every year."

5/
That isn't where NASA is
Nor Boeing,
Nor Lockheed Martin,
Nor Aerojet etc. etc.

They are all pretending the SpaceX's Falcon & Falcon Heavy rockets don't exist
6/
Another of Handmer's point's --

"History is littered with the wreckage of former industrial titans that underestimated the impact of new technology and overestimated their ability to adapt. Blockbuster, Motorola, Kodak, Nokia, RIM, Xerox, Yahoo, IBM, Atari, Sears, Hitachi,
7/
...Polaroid, Toshiba, HP, Palm, Sony, PanAm, Sega, Netscape, Compaq, Enron, GM, DeLorean, Nortel.

What we are seeing here is an industrial/institutional version of Thomas Kuhn's Theory of Scientific Revolutions. People invested in the old ways
8/
amazon.com/Structure-Scie…
...will be displaced by those who believe in the new, relevant, scientific & technological paradigms.

And politics will follow this shift.

9/
Starship's success, and it is looking increasingly successful, will be akin to a seed crystal dropped into a supersaturated solution.

The first fully successful Starship orbital launch & return will kill stock values of every other space launcher firm overnight.
10/
And the NASA SLS architecture - long nicknamed the "Senatorial Launch System" for its major supporters - will not survive past the 3rd launch.

What there will be left of NASA after Starship enters regular daily service is conjecture. I too, like Handmer, hope it can adapt.
11/
But whatever comes after...it won't include the Senatorial Launch System.

/End

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More from @TrentTelenko

May 6
This is Grok analysis of one of my X threads is a good example of why farming out your thinking/analysis to AI is a really bad idea.

Grok accurately reflects a highly flawed US National Security consensus about small drones.😱

A Grok vs Drone Reality🧵

x.com/i/grok/share/B…
Grok focused on Ukrainian drone capabilities to the exclusion of actual fielded Chinese drone capability and literally eight decades old aviation technology like conformal fuel tanks which have also been applied to cruise missiles in the Chinese technological base for 20 years
2/ Image
The Chinese Sunflower-200 is it's clone of the Iranian Shahed-136. It appeared at Russia's Armiya-2023 show and in 2025 combat in Sudan.

The China Defense website says it has a 3.2-meter length, 2.5-meter wingspan, a flight speed of 160-220 km per hour with a maximum take-off weight of 175 kilograms, a combat payload of 40 kilograms and can fly up to 2000 kilometers.
x.com/clashreport/st…
3/Image
Image
Read 18 tweets
May 4
I cannot begin to tell you how heartened I am by this development in Ukrainian combat barrier doctrine.

1/
Compare the picture above to my complaints about Ukrainian fighting doctrine in the Summer of 2024.

2/
Or my B*tching about its lack in the Summer of 2023 for the Russian Army

3/
Read 7 tweets
May 1
1560 dead Russian mortars and artillery tubes was 2/3 done by drones per ISW.

Drones are the primary counter-battery system on 21st century battlefields.

US Army field artillery branch OTOH is showing up to the counter-battery indirect firefight with knives, AKA the M109A6.

1/
The M109A6 Paladin 155mm/L39 caliber self-propelled gun is the T-62MV obr. 2022 of the artillery world.

The gun is inferior to every other major power's fielded SPG world wide.

2/ Image
Image
The computerized fire direction system of the US Army Artillery is a overly centralized, decades old Star/mini-computer architecture, which has an electromagnetic signature so bright that it can be detected bouncing off the surface of the moon

3/ Image
Image
Image
Read 17 tweets
Apr 27
Just...Reapers are not flying "Deep ISR" over Yemen.

They are dying due to a lack of electronic warfare equipment over Yemen.

I believe @noclador is overlooking the event @RyanO_ChosenCoy is calling out - The fall of Assad's Syria.

1/3 Image
Ukraine's HUR sent two drone teams with 150 drones to Syria in in June 2024 to support the Turkish supported Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

2/3
By December 2024, Assad's regime fell because it could not counter Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) small drone airpower that Ukraine provided.

@RyanO_ChosenCoy is saying 25 such HUR teams with 80K drones would do in the Houthi from its lack of counter UAS capability.

See Grok⬇️
3/3 Image
Read 4 tweets
Apr 26
I see this F-35 procurement problems post is getting traction thanks to @elonmusk .

Let's add the F-35 problem list with bolts AKA fasteners.

1/
F-35 Fastener Corruption🧵 Image
I cannot begin to tell you all how fishy this passage from that article is:

"In addition to the F-35 production line at Ft. Worth, Texas, the commingling of the two types of bolts was also discovered at the Italian F-35

2/ Image
... Final Assembly and Check-Out (FACO) facility, but not the one in Japan, the DCMA reported."

Spot checking of aircraft production and depot level maintenance facilities fastener bins is a standard operating procedure for DCMA everywhere it has quality personnel.

3/ Image
Read 19 tweets
Apr 26
Well designed Cope cages work against FPVs.

Why the West, and particularly the US Army, is in deep denial over that reality is rooted in the US Army's denial that the FPV anti-tank drone is replacing the ATGM for cost/performance reasons.

1/
The Ukrainian missile crews salvaging brand new $20K Stugna ATGM to make more FPV drones underlines the battlefield kinematic superiority of multi-copter drones to boost-glide ATGM.

2/
The ability of FPV's to operate in the dead ground makes them 2x as effective as ATGM at a lower cost:

1st Gen. FPV Drone =(π)5 km^2 78,539,816 sq m w-100% of coverage of targets

Tow Missile = (π)4.5 km^2 = 63,617,251.23 sq m at ~50% coverage 32.1 Sq km

3/3 Image
Read 4 tweets

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