OK, this is going to be my last response in this sad thread. First, the specs for Starship mean it can hold about $1 million in fuel in its tanks. So we can e

OK, this is going to be my last response in this sad thread. First, the specs for Starship mean it can hold about $1 million in fuel in its tanks. So we can externally estimate fuel costs. His aspirational goal is $2 million for a launch. His stated initial target is $10 million. There is room in his aspirational target for lots of things other than fuel. Second, you keep insisting on a ton of people doing unnecessary things. SpaceX already has a tracking system in place to keep track of everything in space and make sure that none of their about 4000 StarLink satellites hit anything. Adding a few hundred Starship rockets to this system does not require an army of dispatchers. You're now talking about rocket pilots despite the fact that essentially nobody bothers with rocket pilots, and they can't be used in SpaceX flights because human reaction time is too slow to do anything useful. Third, you've talked over and over again about packing billionaires in like sardines. But the target passenger is NOT billionaires. It is executives in companies who currently fly first class, but would rather avoid a 20 hour flight from Los Angeles to Dubai. Every day, literally tens of thousands of people fly first class over an ocean. The Concorde demonstrated that a sufficient volume of them are willing to pay more for a shorter ride in a less comfortable plane to enable regular commercial flights. Fourth, your set of requirements for civilian rating should be seen as negotiable. Elon's position is that Starship IS a rescue system. He has a point. For example external analysis has found that if the Space Shuttle had simply put the shuttle on top of the rocket, nobody would have been hurt in either accident. If he provides a compelling service, but only offers it where local authorities allow, authorities are likely to figure it out. Just look back on the history of how the Concorde was allowed to land in the USA despite our laws against sonic booms. And fifth, I DO NOT AGREE that I should accept, on your authority as an IT person, that automation cannot reduce the cost of people for a given task. History is full of counterexamples that represent far better evidence than your claim to authority. Granted, Jevon's paradox is common. We reduce the cost, which increases the demand, which leads to more overall usage. But on the per unit economics, the cost really does go down. Were it otherwise, nobody would be particularly interested in automation.