> If we knew that a Starship design would definitely work (i.e can it reach orbit? can it come back down? can all of the complexity be managed well enough to ma

> If we knew that a Starship design would definitely work (i.e can it reach orbit? can it come back down? can all of the complexity be managed well enough to make it economically feasible?) then someone would have done it already. I think that's really underselling the technical difficulty of the project (Full Flow Staged Combustion has never worked before in a meaningful sense) and the innovation (The belly flop maneuver isn't an obvious thing to do with a rocket). It feels a lot more obvious after the first Starhopper flight was such a success, but all successful things do in retrospect.