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As I understand the plan, Starship is the ticket to launching incredible numbers of Starlink satellites very cheaply, which will lead to enormous profits, which
by marssaxman 3y ago
As I understand the plan, Starship is the ticket to launching incredible numbers of Starlink satellites very cheaply, which will lead to enormous profits, which will fund the development of an even larger successor rocket, which will allow colonization.
- rtkwe 3y agoIf that's the plan no one told SpaceX's PR team to use a different rocket design on their pages or Musk himself as recently as 2020. AFAIK he's never said anything about a successor rocket to BFR/Starship being the actual colonization vehicle. https://www.spacex.com/human-spaceflight/mars/ https://www.spacex.com/human-spaceflight/mars/ https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1217990326867988480 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1217990326867988480 https://www.space.com/elon-musk-starship-spacex-flights-mars-colony.html https://www.space.com/elon-musk-starship-spacex-flights-mars...
- marssaxman 3y agoPerhaps I am reading too much into it - I'm no insider! - but the original 100-tons-to-Mars "ITS" proposal called for a rocket 12 meters in diameter, quite a bit larger than the current 9-meter Starship; then Elon Musk made some tweet back in 2019 after the Starhopper test suggesting that the "next gen system" would actually be 18 meters wide. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1166856662336102401 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1166856662336102401 I can't find anything about any of this on spacex.com. Maybe they've changed the plan or maybe they're just not thinking so much about Mars colonization lately, who knows.
- rtkwe 3y agoHe's been much more consistent about "Starship" to Mars than a single tweet about a "next-gen". Maybe they are but Starship is what they're currently saying will take people to Mars and he's said that for a while.