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Current significant open technical issues that I know of for Starship are 1.) Raptor engine production being significantly behind on schedule (granted, the sche

Current significant open technical issues that I know of for Starship are 1.) Raptor engine production being significantly behind on schedule (granted, the schedule is aggressive, but still behind), and 2.) TPS tiles disconnecting from Starship at moments they shouldn't. Issue 1 will likely only delay development and deployment of Starship (production isn't halted), but issue 2 can make-or-break the business model if no solution is found. As opposed to regulatory issues which are generally (!) a case of putting in the effort and time, with a relatively well-known time path to get permission to e.g. launch to LEO or Mars; this has been done before and will be done many times after. The only unkown issues that I believe are still open are mostly related to range and environmental issues, but I don't think those will be the limiting factor to getting the Starship launch vehicle ready for production payloads.

avmich 5y ago
While still unknown, issue 2 is hard to imagine breaking the whole plan. TPS were used before - Starship is bigger than Shuttle, but the principal possibility is solidly here at least. Again, it's hard to imagine Elon explaining in half a year the absence of launches by the inability to invent a good attachment of TPS. Let's wait and see. Regulatory issues may have a hiccup on the frequency of heavy flights - liquid propellants in Starship don't have infinite shelf life on LEO, so refueling Starships will need to be launched promptly, and that's something which was never done by humanity - the combination of flight frequency and the size of payload (fuel). So FAA may object. Worse, something bad could happen - like a failure of a Starship, requiring attention of designers again, which would temporarily put on hold all other Starship flights. However, even these issues have low product of probability and severity, so Mars flights are still possible soon. Again, we'll see soon. Now that the wait time to results is compressed from decades to months, we need to adjust to this unusual luxury.

avmich 5y ago

While still unknown, issue 2 is hard to imagine breaking the whole plan. TPS were used before - Starship is bigger than Shuttle, but the principal possibility is solidly here at least. Again, it's hard to imagine Elon explaining in half a year the absence of launches by the inability to invent a good attachment of TPS. Let's wait and see. Regulatory issues may have a hiccup on the frequency of heavy flights - liquid propellants in Starship don't have infinite shelf life on LEO, so refueling Starships will need to be launched promptly, and that's something which was never done by humanity - the combination of flight frequency and the size of payload (fuel). So FAA may object. Worse, something bad could happen - like a failure of a Starship, requiring attention of designers again, which would temporarily put on hold all other Starship flights. However, even these issues have low product of probability and severity, so Mars flights are still possible soon. Again, we'll see soon. Now that the wait time to results is compressed from decades to months, we need to adjust to this unusual luxury.