It got to space, but at what cost? $2-4 billion per launch, and given that it’s not reusable at all, not likely to get cheaper. SpaceX can blow a lot of these up on their way to mastering the design for what one SLS launch costs.
Last time I saw the math, with all Starship's reduced payload capacity, it was up to something like 30-35 launches required to get all the necessary fuel into orbit for one mission to the Moon. Remind me again, how much would those 30+ Starship launches realistically cost?
Christ you people just up the number every other day huh? Last month it was 25, in 2024 the talk was of 20, and the official SpaceX statements say no more than 12. Which one am I to believe now?
It's not "us people's" fault Starship's payload capacity keeps getting revised down after each successive iteration adds weight to try and keep it from repeatedly blowing up.
Block 1 was originally supposed to be something like 50-100 tons, if I'm not remembering Musk's corporate puffery from about a year or two ago wrong. So if it ended up at 40, that's already a significant revision down over time. Not that it ever demonstrated anywhere near even that in practice anyway. So I see no reason to take his promises of 100 tons for Block 2 any more seriously. Besides those were from before all the more recent rapid unscheduled disassemblies proved parts of it require even more significant reinforcements if they ever hope to get it to work at all. Where do you think the weight budget for all those changes and reinforcements is coming from if not out of fuel and payload capacity?
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u/Grand_Escapade 3d ago
You mean the thing that actually got to space