4 ms·

They did experiment with carbon fiber if I recall correctly Stainless steel is much more cost effective

• jjk166 1y ago
  And they abandoned it to try to eliminate the need for a heat shield. This plan did not pan out. The whole point of a reusable launch system is the cost of the vehicle is amortized over many launches, so you can use expensive, high performance materials.
• Symmetry 1y ago
  Partially it was that stainless steel was cheaper. A bigger issue was that making large carbon fiber structures takes much larger than with steel and so it would really have eaten into their iteration time. But also while the strength to weight savings from carbon fiber are a big deal at regular temperatures the heating from Starship reentry erased that.