But how long does this actually last? The amount of people that can afford to pay that is minimal, I dont see space tourism driving any serious markets for an extremely long time (if ever).
And there is a reason point to point transfer isnt being mentioned anymore. The logistics and regulatory hurdles are going to be massive, and I seriously doubt we see that outside of maybe military tests for cargo transport.
average American wedding is close to $30K, so i think there is a large market at the top. Plus corporations with their outings/offsite/etc. for S/E/VPs flying business class to nice places, influencers/promotions/raffles, midlife crisis and retired doctors, lawyers, execs as well as tens (if not a hundred) of thousands of young FAANG employees making $500K+/year. It is just that Virgin Galactic and Bezos unfortunately don't do justice to the coming space tourism.
>The logistics and regulatory hurdles are going to be massive
That really hinges on whether Starship will reach airline level of safety which is a huge undertaking and naturally at least several thousand of launches away. Those coming several thousands of launches anyway are planned for bringing into orbit those several millions of tons destined in particular for Mars. I.e. i just don't see any spare capacity from Starship. As far as i see it will be utilized 110%.
All of this plus even if it wasnt too loud, you need countries to let you fly your rocket over their airspace constantly.
We can mention the launches to put millions of tons on Mars, but personally Ill believe that when I see it. That is going to have a massive cost, and I dont see that happening particularly soon at all, even if Starship gets to be completely operational.
extended weekend around Moon in cattle class for say $100K/person. Suborbital flight LA to Shanghai in 1 hour for $5-10K. Though it seems that the first years the SpaceX Mars program will gobble almost all the capacity (according to that recent update Elon wants to launch non-stop several times a day to get several million tons into orbit), except for the high margin and/or already contracted stuff like NASA Moon.
>The real problem for Starship (IMHO) is Falcon 9.
F9/Heavy are cheaper than competition, yet not that cheaper to enable new revolutionary uses. They also will never be made to the airline level of safety/robustness/operational simplicity/etc. which is one of the goals of Starship and its Raptor 2 engine.
In particular - according to that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor#/media/File:Rapt... the full flow allows them to run turbines under 600 C for fuel and under 500 C for oxygen pump on Raptor 2 - it feels like cheating :) being like steel temperatures, and they of course are using Inconel which gives them great reliability here, like in order of magnitude better than on other engines. That naturally translates into capability to perform many reuses with very frequent launches with minimal operational costs.
If anything i think with Elon having blazed the path there is an opportunity to quickly start and ramp up SpaceX copycats(s) as whatever capacity the industry would produce at the Starship level low prices and high convenience the demand will still be bigger.