Fair enough. Starship is still in its infancy though so I wouldn't completely give up hope yet.
Balex
joined 1 year ago
Apparently you don't know how to have a conversation... Doing a quick search it seems like Starlink is around the break even point for operating costs and revenue, so if you'd like to provide sources to refute that, that'd be great.
What makes you think Starship isn't going to Mars?
You have yet to actually provide any counter points other than plugging your ears and saying "Nu uh!"
What? 😂 This flight wasn't supposed to go to the moon. It's a test flight. They're developing the most powerful rocket to have ever flown and recover every part of it. They're also using a power cycle for the engine that has never been used before. So no, what SpaceX is doing has never been done before.
A reused rocket mission from SpaceX is at least an order of magnitude cheaper than any other major launch provider. And to this date SpaceX has flown 216 reused rockets, and at least one of those was used for a manned mission.
There's only 8 (or 9 depending on who you ask) planets in the solar system. So Musk would have 2 fingers to spare. And we haven't even "landed" on all of them (not sure how you'd land on a gas giant...)
Also to make it clear, it was never planned to even make it to LEO. SpaceX has made it very clear that they wanted to get close to the energy experienced during an actual reentry without actually making it to orbit.
You do realize that most of the money NASA has given SpaceX has been in the form of contracts to launch missions for them? I'm pretty sure very minimal tax dollars are going to Starship development right now, especially compared to other launch providers (ULA, Blue Origin, ect.) It's because of SpaceX that America is able to launch Astronauts to space without using Russia since the Space Shuttle was retired.
The fastest turnaround time for a space shuttle was 54 days pre Challenger disaster and 88 days post Challenger disaster. It was very expensive and time consuming to reuse the space shuttle (they basically had to completely disassemble and reassemble the whole thing) which is one of the main reasons it has stopped flying. Falcon 9 on the other hand has a fastest turnaround time of 3 weeks. So not sure where you got your numbers from, but it seems to me that the Falcon 9 is a much better vehicle in terms of reuse.
Uh... Who has done this before?
As someone who has floored it in a Tesla with no racing experience, it really isn't hard to stay in the lane.