It's a shame posts like this get a negative reception here because there's a valid case to be made that Starship is in the very least troubled or possibly even

It's a shame posts like this get a negative reception here because there's a valid case to be made that Starship is in the very least troubled or possibly even a doomed boondoggle. We've had 9 flights and are still pretty far from entering commercial usage. This is expensive too. I've seen estimates that each launch is costing ~$500 million. One can make the case that Starship is a classic second system effect [1]. Just like IPv6, which decided it was making breaking changes anyway so why not break all the things (all while not solving the one real problem but that's another story). We see this all the time. The question is: what problem is Starship solving? Yes it has a larger LEO and geostationary payload but this seems to be a pretty limited market thus far as demonstrated by there only being 11 Falcon Heavy launches total thus far. Launching multiple satellites at once only works for launching on the same or very similar orbit for the same constellation like Starlink. As soon as you drastically change the required orbit, you're talking about a separate launch. Is it to go to the Moon or Mars? Notably, Elon called the Moon "a distraction" [2]. That doesn't bode well. After all, if your launch system was suited for that, wouldn't you want NASA to pay for it to prove it, basically? Fundamentally, it doesn't make sense to have a vehicle like this to land on the Moon (or Mars) and have your astronauts be 40 meters in the air, having to get down and back up. And going to Mars I don't htink will happen for decades, if ever commercially. With the right political circumstances we may get Apollo like flights to demonstrate superiority but I think colonization is a joke. Mars is actually a terrible place to colonize. It's like the moon but worse in every single way. And to even get there SpaceX needs to perfect in-orbit refueling, which is technically challenging and not something they've even started yet since they haven't even got to stable orbit yet. Oh I disagree with the author about NASA doing this earlier, talking about Saturn rockets. Saturn was an expensive low-yield bespoke rocket not suited for mass production. Every Saturn V was essentially a one-off. The industry workhorse here is the Falcon 9. It's reliable and high volume (>100 launches a year). Starship may yet sink SpaceX. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect [2]: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1875023335891026324 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1875023335891026324