Comment by FL33TW00D
8 hours ago
Doubled or tripled NASA's budget? NASA has spent 32 BILLION on SLS with nothing to show for it. Each launch is expected to cost 2.5 BILLION https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System.
Starship is just orders of magnitude less than this. NASA is a moribund jobs program.
> Starship is just orders of magnitude less than this.
Starship does not exist.
Starship is the name given to a design for a fully reusable superheavy launch vehicle intended to take 100t to LEO.
The things being launched by SpaceX are not Starship.
They are impressive, but are not Starship.
They are called Starship, but are not Starship.
Let me be clear. I am not saying that Starship will not exist.
What I am saying is that today, right now, Starship does not exist and SLS does.
You implied that Starship does exist, and is cheaper.
Nobody, not you, not me, not Lord Ketamine, can predict when it will exist or how much it will cost with any degree of accuracy.
I genuinely, sincerely, and earnestly WANT Starship to exist, but as of today, April 24th, 2025 it does not.
We can argue technicalities all day long but to me, this exists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMGiNKcVSek
The payload on that flight was a single stuffed toy banana, for scale.
On all test flights with a payload exceeding the mass (~300 grams) of a single stuffed toy banana (for scale), the flight has failed.
Flight 7: 20,000 kg payload (starlink mass simulators) - engines fail after 7m39s
Flight 8: 8,000 kg payload (starlink mass simulators) - engines fail after 8m04s
Flight 9 is not currently planned to carry a payload.
None of this is a technicality. It is technicreality.
2 replies →
For one, where is Starship and when did it last launch?
For another, this hypothetical spacecraft (which does not yet exist) would not be wherever it is in terms of completion had NASA not existed.
1. More recently than SLS :) 2. Agree 100%.
lol - fair.