There is no way in hell a huge ICBM would get international overflight rights.

The logistics of such system would be hell, too - Concorde only had limited routes due to noise. A rocket of Starship's size is another thing entirely. You'd basically have to launch and land it offshore so the logistics getting to and from the launch site and into the vehicle would kill all benefits.

Not to mention the simple things like weather, closing airspace, and the lack of cross-range capabilities, which would make emergency landings or evading bad conditions on the landing site pretty difficult.

The Pentagon wants to use Starship for military transport. Getting troops anywhere on earth within an hour would be a huge advantage.

That wouldn't be possible - first, Starship cannot take off without significant support infrastructure, so it'd be a one-way trip.

Additionally, have you seen the hatch on the Lunar Starship? That thing is ~30m above ground and only has a small platform. Loading and unloading that thing would be slow and dangerous compared to simply dropping cargo from a flying aircraft that doesn't even need to touch down or just driving on and off the ramp in case of landed planes.

The concept of rocket transport isn't new either - it has been considered several times and always turned out to be a bad idea.

To see where some of this comes from, look here: [0]

[0] http://www.astronautix.com/i/ithacus.html

> Starship cannot take off without significant support infrastructure, so it'd be a one-way trip.

Well it needs fueling infrastructure but if the mission is designed sich that there is enough fuel left to fly to some air craft carrier protected barge nearby the rocket might not be stuck there

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/04/us-military-rocket-cargo-pro... I remembered wrong, they are looking at more than just Starship. You’re right but I’m assuming they want a militarized version that solves these problems.

I thought there was potential for medivac rockets.

Land near combat and take off to America or Europe for surgery.

That, anyway, will not happen. Once one has landed somewhere not a spaceport, it will not be launched again without a huge production. More likely the valuable engines will be removed and shipped home, the rest left as so much scrap metal.

If dry weight is 85 tons, with ~11 tons of engines, that leaves 74 tons of scrap. At 15 cents a pound, that's worth $22k. Maybe more as souvenirs.

The flaps & actuators might be worth taking, but the top ones are inconveniently high up unless you tip it over. Probably the electronics is worth shipping home if it's easy enough to strip off.

I don't know why the thrust plate isn't titanium. A 30 ft diameter thrust plate would in any case be inconvenient to ship home, from most places.

Oh my gid, do you understand that these rockets carry Millions of liters of fuel? Thats the energy of a small nuclear bomb.

Unlike planes, they carry oxidiser and fuel, so they do not burn, they detonate. Minimal safe exclusion zone is measured in square miles!

Simpler? The fuel is chilled 2/3 of the way to absolute zero, and the engines are at several thousand degrees. Tiny manufacturing error and everyone dies.

> Unlike planes, they carry oxidiser and fuel, so they do not burn, they detonate.

This isn't true. They cause a conflagration. They do not detonate. The fuel and oxidizer are not well mixed.

It can be quite hard to tell the difference, particularly from on board, moreso if you are dead.

>The fuel costs are not that different than a transatlantic 787 flight [...]

LOL, not even in the same order of magnitude ...

A 787 holds 127,000 litres of kerosene and a Falcon 9 holds 175,000 litres of kerosene. That 787 will travel 13,500km on that fuel (1/3 the circumference of the Earth), whereas the Falcon 9 can go all the way around the world on its fuel.

Not all "kerosene" is the same. Jets use Jet Fuel A which is ~$5/gallon while Merlin engines use RP-1 which is ~$100/gallon.

Also, on the latter, you need a similarly sized tank of liquid oxygen that the jet gets for free from the atmosphere.

$5 and $100 kerosene emit the same amount of CO2 per liter.

Starship's methane is cheaper than Jet A.

Liquid Oxygen is an order of magnitude cheaper than Jet A or methane.

Sure, but we were talking about fuel cost.

>Starship's methane is cheaper than Jet A.

Is this true yet? I'm honestly unaware of it. I've heard they were planning on it to be quite cheap when they find a way to extract it from the atmosphere, but don't know how far they are through that.

A Starship can't land at any random commercial airport, a 787 can. The 787 can also divert to any other airport due to aircraft issue, weather, or whatever. Starship doesn't have anywhere close to the same cross-range capability.

Does it need to? Sure, if it is trying to make the 787 and other such aircraft obsolete, it needs to have infrastructure everywhere, but there are a dozen far flung coastal cities for which it could be useful. NYC to Tokyo, Sydney, or Shanghai would be useful. Might be a while before SpaceX could fly to China but other coastal destinations that currently are exhausting flights would have a customer base if the price/time ratio was right.

Yes, the infrastructure for rocket travel doesn’t exist... yet. That can change.

We are moving from being able to crawl to walk with this new capability. What happens when we can run?

Airports do not have minimal safety distance measured in miles.

Catastrophic failure of a plane causes a fire, catastrophic failure of a rocket causes a detonation the size of a small nuke.

So you are saying space ports will need to be far out from civilization, and connected to cities by some sort of high speed transport, maybe one located underground for safety reasons?

> Catastrophic failure of a plane causes a fire, catastrophic failure of a rocket causes a detonation the size of a small nuke.

Rockets do not detonate. They cause rapid burning. The fuel and oxidizer are not well mixed so cannot detonate.

I meant 'they explode" in laymans terms

The terms "nuke" were used which conveys the entirely wrong message. Even if you release the energy of a nuke, if you release it slowly you can even generate electricity from it. What matters is how fast the energy is released and a rocket explosion releases energy relatively slowly.

Building airports is already difficult, because they require a lot of space and cause a lot of noise. People also oppose them for environmental reasons or simply because they don't like them. Spaceports are going to be worse in every aspect.

I don't see spaceports appearing in the densely populated areas of Europe or US East Coast or in LA, and definitely not in the Bay Area. You have to build them in remote areas or in international waters, and then you have to pair them with a conventional airport or with high-speed rail.

The main issue would be how far off the coast the launch and landing platforms would need to be to minimize negative impacts to the local population.

Airports aren't naturally occurring. They have to be built.

They already have plans for this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0

There is a reason Musk and co have stopped pitching the point to point transfer on Earth. Aside from technical challenges, this is a massive regulatory and logistics problem

They didn't stop pitching it, they just focused the pitch on the sole customer really interested in it for now: the Military.

https://spacenews.com/spacex-wins-102-million-air-force-cont...

Musk was pitching this idea (but for cargo) just last week.