Comment by bdamm
4 days ago
Going to the Moon or Mars is a trojan horse.
Starship's true purpose is to compete with airlines in trans oceanic flights.
Musk has said so many times but then he intentionally obfuscates it with all the Mars and Moon talk.
But remember that you heard this before it was widely realized to be true; Starship isn't about going to Mars. Starship is about going to China.
Far too dangerous and noisy for that to ever happen, surely.
And too fragile/explodey for niche military uses (long range troop drops?)
If you're thinking of passenger service, perhaps it is a bit unattractive in the short term. No good launching and landing spots.
But for military use - think logistics. Rapid delivery of equipment to unusual places. This applies to civilian purposes as well. All kinds of use-cases for speeding up cargo.
The entire economics of Starship and rapid reusability was presented at the beginning of the Starbase work, way back when Hoppy was a thing. He's been sticking to the plan since then. You might want it to be fiction, but he's been very good at figuring out business plans to leverage his ultimate goals.
> But for military use - think logistics. Rapid delivery of equipment to unusual places.
Surely it's too fragile/explodey for military use - the whole thing's a very volatile fuel tank - could it survive being shot at, even a single high-powered rifle bullet (during landing, or even post-landing) without going boom?
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>You might want it to be fiction, but he's been very good at figuring out business plans to leverage his ultimate goals.
Not very good on delivering tech though, which is what makes it more fiction than not.
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> Far too dangerous
Falcon 9 is clearly proving that doesn’t have to be the case.
That sounds even stupider than using it to go to mars. I really hope it stays a fantasy like most musk projects.
None of that makes sense.
Transportships even reduce speed to reduce costs.
If the payload doesn't pay for all of this, it was a huge R&D investmen from the american people to Musks scifi ideas
The American people didn’t pay for the R&D if SpaceX, Musk did and then customers did. Customers (including the federal government) that saved millions on every purchase.
NASA gave SpaceX 400 Million just for the development of Falcon 9 and there is a video were Musk said SpaceX was bancrupt if NASA wouldnt have stepd in.
NASA also another 6 Billion upfront to SpaceX for Dragon and HLS.
So yes the american paid for the R&D of SpaceX.
SpaceX took the 'risk' but either succeeding or not in your main business is hardly a risk if you need to succeed anyway to have that business.
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