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A comment on US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink. Parent comment

Re:US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink by stephenr on Wednesday December 13, 2023 @12:40PM (#38631030)
You do understand that "Starship" is the literal name of a prototype space craft that is currently in development, but has not yet made a successful launch to orbit, rather than just a generic term, which may include the earlier, well-proven Falcon 9, right?

SpaceX themselves have said that the future of their satellite internet business essentially depends on being able to put up a bigger model to replace the current ones, so much bigger that they can't feasibly use their existing, well-proven rockets to launch them.

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Re:US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink by moralestapia on Wednesday December 13, 2023 @12:50PM (#38631214)
Sure, but if you were to bet on a company to achieve that goal and it comes down to SpaceX vs. <literally who>?, it's not far fetched to go with the first.
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Re:US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink by stephenr on Wednesday December 13, 2023 @01:08PM (#38631504)
"Well it looks like no one else is going to achieve what you said you could do, and you got kinda close so fuck it, keep the money" doesn't really sound like how you should expect a government subsidy to be managed.

For the record: I'm not commenting on whether the government was right or wrong to cancel the subsidy for SpaceX. I'm simply explaining why SpaceX's inability (so far) to get Starship to orbit is referenced, and more specifically, why the launch reliability of Falcon 9 is specifically not relevant in a sentence that says "Starship".

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