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It'll be very interesting to see how and if that's going to work out. There will have to be a lot of actual demand for that launch capacity, and it'll have to b

It'll be very interesting to see how and if that's going to work out. There will have to be a lot of actual demand for that launch capacity, and it'll have to build up fairly quickly, else SpaceX may not be around anymore when those payloads are ready. I guess lots of companies could do with some zero-g R&D, but actually building a platform to do this, how long will that take? Asteroid mining seems to be a long way from becoming practical, there aren't that many short-term military launches. What's going to keep them afloat for the first decade-or-so of this? Will they get their costs down far enough to make space tourism viable? I mean, despite all the violent optimism from the Elon Musk fan base, I'm pretty stoked to see how this will pan out. Historical game changer and within a decade everyone will wear Made-on-Mars space foam sneakers to their annual vacation to orbit? Incremental and boring like, neat, Netflix has its own fleet of broadcasting satellites and Adidas is saving 3% annually due to some R&D they do in orbit? Or will it fizzle out entirely, great tech but arrived too early?

onion2k 5y ago
There will have to be a lot of actual demand for that launch capacity... Demand is often a chicken-and-egg problem. Having the capacity available will go a long way to creating the demand. There are plenty of incredibly wealthy people who could be persuaded to build the first moonbase, space hotel, low-gravity manufacturing plant, manned Earth observatory ... and a practically endless list of things we've not thought up yet ... but they can't do those things now because even if they paid the money there just isn't the launch capacity to do it. Putting the capacity in place fixes that problem and frees those people to start spending.
xiphias2 5y ago
The demand for cheap satellite internet that Starship can provide is clear. Just look in another thread about Starlink of people complaining that the demand is not met fast enough.

onion2k 5y ago

There will have to be a lot of actual demand for that launch capacity... Demand is often a chicken-and-egg problem. Having the capacity available will go a long way to creating the demand. There are plenty of incredibly wealthy people who could be persuaded to build the first moonbase, space hotel, low-gravity manufacturing plant, manned Earth observatory ... and a practically endless list of things we've not thought up yet ... but they can't do those things now because even if they paid the money there just isn't the launch capacity to do it. Putting the capacity in place fixes that problem and frees those people to start spending.

xiphias2 5y ago

The demand for cheap satellite internet that Starship can provide is clear. Just look in another thread about Starlink of people complaining that the demand is not met fast enough.