Comment by hparadiz
2 days ago
The biggest problem right now with Starship is the heatshield problem. If it's a one and done flight it's actually still worth it but full re-use without solving the heat shield problem is not actually possible (right now). It turns out slamming into Earth's atmosphere at orbital velocity or higher is one of those things that pretty much every material we've thrown at the problem has had problems being used forever. We need to do experimental flights in order to provide more data to materials folks working on this. Honestly I respect the hell out of anyone working on this problem because it's the next big tech hurdle we need besides landing a booster. And this one is still not solved.
I would agree. The heatshield is tricky. But they have shown they can survive without parts of the heatshield. But its a problem for rapid re-usability.
That said, I think Starship architecture can be useful even if this issue is not fully solved.
Starship can be much, much cheaper then SLS even if they throw away the upper stage.