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Re:Science upside for Starship on Monday November 22, 2021 @10:26AM (#29307320)
If and when that happens I'll re-evaluate. I don't buy the SpaceX marketing about the Starship for a millisecond. (And I'm baffled why a government contractor that isn't publicly-traded is marketing to the public in the first place.)
Re:Science upside for Starship on Monday November 22, 2021 @10:24AM (#29307298)
Cheap by the metric SpaceX is optimizing for, i.e. mass to LEO / price of launch.
Re:Science upside for Starship on Monday November 22, 2021 @10:12AM (#29307122)
There's a strong "Mars settlement is impossible" sentiment going on, which is different.

I am all for exploring space. I just loathe the fact that we have billionaires with no technical training calling the shots.

(Well, maybe not "exploring". There isn't much to see! I'm very much for using space.)

Re:Science upside for Starship on Monday November 22, 2021 @10:09AM (#29307082)
We have always had too much launch capacity. You will notice that every program estimates prices based on how many launches occur a year, with the price going down the more launches there are. Large launch vehicles are less expensive per mass to orbit than small ones. There are huge economies of scale.

It isn't that SpaceX has a lot of launch capacity and so fills it with Starlink satellites. SpaceX has a lot of launch capacity because they're launching so many Starlink satellites. They only make large launch vehicles and they can only hit the prices they do if the launch regularly. If they stop manufacturing their own demand the price will rise precipitously.

SpaceX is currently subsidized by investor money. The steady state remains to be seen.

One of the reasons the Saturn V was discontinued was that there was no need for such a large vehicle. It was cheap per unit mass to orbit but there was not enough demand to justify it.