I find myself excited about starship for other reasons. It seems like there is a large range of outcomes for the starship development program—maybe the difficulty of having an effective, durable, and serviceable heat shield really will kill the fully-and-rapidly-reusable goal. Even in that case, though, a stripped-down stainless steel upper stage could reduce the costs of access to Earth orbit such that space-based solar power or sunshades to buy us time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions become feasible, even if the dreams of humans in space/on the moon and Mars colonization don’t pan out (I’m skeptical of the value of those human space presence goals anyways).

Edit: I have no idea if the more modest capabilities of starship/super heavy justify the current valuation, but they at least seem like they would be useful capabilities to maintain.

True. Another thing that I keep thinking is that currently the first stages of the rockets are not reusable. Even if they have to build a new starship per flight, they can just reuse the boosters and still be miles ahead of anyone else, with a Saturn V sized rocket ready to launch.

Plus they can expand the real state in the ISS much cheaper by just docking and leaving it there.