Comment by ceejayoz
2 days ago
> I just don't see how the fuel costs of getting things up to space winning out unless production is located up there.
Starship's in theory targeting something like a million bucks in fuel for a launch. For a military that spends more than that on individual missiles, that's peanuts.
Starship is also in theory targetting to reach Mars in 2022.
There's an unavoidable physical cap here.
It's fueled with methane and oxygen, and its size is known.
It can't be, say, $50m/flight in fuel for the same reason a 747's flight can't be; there's not enough space for that much fuel.
Sure, but that's true of Saturn V as well, and of Falcon 9, and Soyuz and any other rocket you want. That didn't make space deployment a viable military strategy so far, and I think we should be skeptical of any such claim about Starship.
Also, fuel is just part of the cost of a rocket.
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Co-development of the SpaceX Tardis makes deadlines irrelevant.