> Case in point: Falcon Heavy. It ended up being delayed so long that improvements in the Merlin engine greatly reduced the payloads that Falcon Heavy was origi

> Case in point: Falcon Heavy. It ended up being delayed so long that improvements in the Merlin engine greatly reduced the payloads that Falcon Heavy was originally built for to the point there are a couple of launches a year at best. Did you mean that "improvements in the Merlin engine greatly increased" the payloads that Falcon 9 can deliver, therefore reducing the need for Falcon Heavy? Because if that's what happened, then there wasn't a delay as such and it's quite disingenuous to put it as such. > All of this for <$20B in investment, which is about the development cost of SLS. $1B is <$20B, and the cost of SLS will be much more than $20B. This sentence is particularly disingenuous if not outright dishonest. > SLS hasn't even launched yet and will probably cost ~$1B/launch anyway. SLS has been in the works for longer than Starship, has it not? And Starship supposedly will cost much less per ton to orbit than Falcon 9 / Falcon heavy, which means "~$1B/launch" is just nuts. > Starship is incredibly ambitious but if it doesn't reach orbit before 2025 I won't be surprised. Meh. They'll reach orbit when they reach orbit, but you've not shown any arguments for why it would take them that long. > Blue Origin has had just as much money thrown at it and was founded years before SpaceX yet it still hasn't reached orbit and its BE-4 engines have been delayed years. BO hasn't even reached orbit at all, while SpaceX sure has! What are you on about?!