> Nobody is arguing that Starship is sufficient, just that it is necessary. No, it's the yet-to-be-invented tech that is necessary. Your unstated prior is that

> Nobody is arguing that Starship is sufficient, just that it is necessary. No, it's the yet-to-be-invented tech that is necessary. Your unstated prior is that this non-existent tech will in turn require heavy-lift capacity, and there is no evidence for that. Maybe we can bootstrap space manufacturing off 2 Arianne 5 launches, or 50 starship launches, nobody knows because it's all make-believe atm. What Starship is good for, is frequent supply runs to a dependant Mars base, with today's technology - but that's nor what people are saying because that's not sexy.