Comment by SideburnsOfDoom
19 hours ago
> Starship is going to be huge when it's finally operational.
Any day now. Yep, real soon, honest!
19 hours ago
> Starship is going to be huge when it's finally operational.
Any day now. Yep, real soon, honest!
I don't understand this attitude. They're progressing steadily on something that's never been done before. They'll almost certainly be launching satellites next calendar year, and at a pretty good clip by Q4.
Don't repeat mistakes of people that were making fun of SpaceX landing rockets before they started to land.
Starship has so much innovation in there, the raptors itself etc.
It launches, it flies, it re-enters and it lands. The engines work. The heat protection work. Even when they push it to the limits by intentionally experimenting with different heat protection, omitting tiles etc. Even when they are in R&D stage.
I believe they can make it work with little refurbishment between flights. Even if all didn't work like they planned, they still have a very, very good vehicle.
I mean something must go off the rails very very badly for the Starship NOT to enter the service.
It has to make money. The Space Shuttle was a technical marvel as well and was massively subsidized by the US taxpayer.
Falcon9 has basically no market: the only thing that keeps it flying is Starlink.
The whole AI/orbital datacentres/launch thing is a giant grift.
Falcon 9 has easily enough market launching commercial satellites to keep it flying outside of Starlink. It's the most efficient launcher in the world from a cost perspective. Falcon 9 was making money before Starlink existed.