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>The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high. This does not benefit "humanity" at all, even if they do succeed. If a human colo

>The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high. This does not benefit "humanity" at all, even if they do succeed. If a human colony on Mars is established, and all of humanity is wiped out on Earth, does it really benefit "humanity" or only the 0.000000001% of "humanity" located on Mars? And life on Mars is going to be difficult, it isn't habitable, and is in fact quite hostile to life. I seriously doubt any colony on Mars would be viable long-term. If life on Earth is wiped out, the colony on Mars will very likely wither and die soon after without continued support from Earth. Any colony on Mars is going to be so exponentially more fragile and fraught with problems for sustaining life, that the suggestion that it's somehow going to save humanity is ridiculous.

bryanlarsen 1y ago
The primary benefit of Starship is a sizable reduction of the cost of getting mass to orbit, not Mars dreams.
- leptons 1y ago
  That's a bit of a re-branding. How does "getting mass to orbit" benefit all of humanity more than what we have now? Not that much, I think, but maybe you have some inside scoop that the rest of us don't know about.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > That's a bit of a re-branding No, it isn't. Starlink's entire commercial value is in being able to perform high-mass / low-latency launch to LEO. There is some fun stuff on the Moon. And a long-term pitch on Mars. But the commercial branding has always been about LEO. > How does "getting mass to orbit" benefit all of humanity more than what we have now? Better Earth observation. Better space observation. Communications outside our ecology versus based on wires strung through it. Let's reverse the question. For the environmental impact of space launch, what else do we do that's more-agreeably useless?
    - leptons 1y ago
      Bullshit. Every story I've ever heard about "Starship" is how it is going to Mars to take humans there to build a colony. I've never once heard that "Starship" will be used to launch even more starlink satellites. They even made movies about it: https://www.google.com/search?q=spacex+movie+mars&oq=spacex+movie+mars https://www.google.com/search?q=spacex+movie+mars&oq=spacex+... Google tells me exactly this: >"Yes, SpaceX's Starship is being developed with the explicit goal of transporting humans and cargo to Mars, with Elon Musk aiming for the first uncrewed test missions to send robotic Tesla bots by 2026 and crewed missions potentially beginning around 2029 or 2031. The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and is the world's most powerful launch vehicle, intended to eventually establish a self-sustaining city on the planet." It's pretty wasteful to blow up starship after starship after starship when they could have spent that money launching normal rockets for their satellite deployments. Of course spacex probably wants to rebrand starship now that Mars is looking like the very stupid plan that it was. There are better things humanity could be doing with the time and money spent blowing up "starship" after "starship". And really, why name it "starship" if it's just meant for LEO? Because it wasn't intended for LEO, that's why. It's a rebrand. Just call it "LEOship" if it's just going to be launching satellites. It's yet one more case of Musk over-promising and under-delivering.
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > Every story I've ever heard about "Starship" is how it is going to Mars to take humans there to build a colony Could this reflect your media diet? > never once heard that "Starship" will be used to launch even more starlink satellites That's kind of wild. I understand getting the PR stuff first, but every newspaper I read mentions Starlink whenever SpaceX comes up, unless it's about a launch explosion or Artemis. > pretty wasteful to blow up starship after starship after starship when they could have spent that money launching normal rockets for their satellite deployments V3 doesn't fit on smaller rockets. And Starship's launch costs promise to be much lower than the Falcons. > why name it "starship" if it's just meant for LEO? Because it wasn't intended for LEO, that's why Starship isn't an interstellar platform...
        1y ago
  - chermi 1y ago
    Umm, a lot. Do you know how many cubesats falcon has launched? Did the space station help humanity? Now imagine a bigger one(s) faster. Bigger satellites- do you know how much of James Webb design and difficulty was around packing into tight space? Bigger satellites, big enough for new wavelengths. Big interferometer setups. Microgravity for bio and pharma crap. Better for particles far enough away to be unaffected by earth magnetic field. Do you agree science is good for humanity? Do you like James Webb? The other things mentioned above? I'd guess yes to all based on your username. How is getting more mass into space of questionable benefit? If starship works, which everyone on earth should be hopeful and excited about, we get more mass for cheaper into space. It's the equivalent of new funding(falcon has brought down launch costs sooo much) while also unlocking previously inconceivable experiments/instruments. Who doesn't like more science funding? Who doesn't like new experiments and instruments?

bryanlarsen 1y ago

The primary benefit of Starship is a sizable reduction of the cost of getting mass to orbit, not Mars dreams.

leptons 1y ago
That's a bit of a re-branding. How does "getting mass to orbit" benefit all of humanity more than what we have now? Not that much, I think, but maybe you have some inside scoop that the rest of us don't know about.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > That's a bit of a re-branding No, it isn't. Starlink's entire commercial value is in being able to perform high-mass / low-latency launch to LEO. There is some fun stuff on the Moon. And a long-term pitch on Mars. But the commercial branding has always been about LEO. > How does "getting mass to orbit" benefit all of humanity more than what we have now? Better Earth observation. Better space observation. Communications outside our ecology versus based on wires strung through it. Let's reverse the question. For the environmental impact of space launch, what else do we do that's more-agreeably useless?
  - leptons 1y ago
    Bullshit. Every story I've ever heard about "Starship" is how it is going to Mars to take humans there to build a colony. I've never once heard that "Starship" will be used to launch even more starlink satellites. They even made movies about it: https://www.google.com/search?q=spacex+movie+mars&oq=spacex+movie+mars https://www.google.com/search?q=spacex+movie+mars&oq=spacex+... Google tells me exactly this: >"Yes, SpaceX's Starship is being developed with the explicit goal of transporting humans and cargo to Mars, with Elon Musk aiming for the first uncrewed test missions to send robotic Tesla bots by 2026 and crewed missions potentially beginning around 2029 or 2031. The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and is the world's most powerful launch vehicle, intended to eventually establish a self-sustaining city on the planet." It's pretty wasteful to blow up starship after starship after starship when they could have spent that money launching normal rockets for their satellite deployments. Of course spacex probably wants to rebrand starship now that Mars is looking like the very stupid plan that it was. There are better things humanity could be doing with the time and money spent blowing up "starship" after "starship". And really, why name it "starship" if it's just meant for LEO? Because it wasn't intended for LEO, that's why. It's a rebrand. Just call it "LEOship" if it's just going to be launching satellites. It's yet one more case of Musk over-promising and under-delivering.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > Every story I've ever heard about "Starship" is how it is going to Mars to take humans there to build a colony Could this reflect your media diet? > never once heard that "Starship" will be used to launch even more starlink satellites That's kind of wild. I understand getting the PR stuff first, but every newspaper I read mentions Starlink whenever SpaceX comes up, unless it's about a launch explosion or Artemis. > pretty wasteful to blow up starship after starship after starship when they could have spent that money launching normal rockets for their satellite deployments V3 doesn't fit on smaller rockets. And Starship's launch costs promise to be much lower than the Falcons. > why name it "starship" if it's just meant for LEO? Because it wasn't intended for LEO, that's why Starship isn't an interstellar platform...
      - 1y ago
- chermi 1y ago
  Umm, a lot. Do you know how many cubesats falcon has launched? Did the space station help humanity? Now imagine a bigger one(s) faster. Bigger satellites- do you know how much of James Webb design and difficulty was around packing into tight space? Bigger satellites, big enough for new wavelengths. Big interferometer setups. Microgravity for bio and pharma crap. Better for particles far enough away to be unaffected by earth magnetic field. Do you agree science is good for humanity? Do you like James Webb? The other things mentioned above? I'd guess yes to all based on your username. How is getting more mass into space of questionable benefit? If starship works, which everyone on earth should be hopeful and excited about, we get more mass for cheaper into space. It's the equivalent of new funding(falcon has brought down launch costs sooo much) while also unlocking previously inconceivable experiments/instruments. Who doesn't like more science funding? Who doesn't like new experiments and instruments?