I'm still going to be interested to see if Starship is ever an economic success.

These test launches are expensive and it's going to take a long time to recoup that R&D, in large part because of... the Falcon 9. You have to look at what problem Starship is solving. Typoical answers are:

1. Greater payload capacity. This is true but is there demand for that? This is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem but we can point to the Falcon Heavy as a useful data point. There have only been ~13 launches thus far. Some might say "you can launch multiple payloads in one launch" but you really can't unless they're on pretty much the exact same orbit. Starlink works fine for this because they are on basically the same orbit.

2. Maybe it's "reusable second stage". This is only a fraction of the total cost, like an order of magnitude less than the impact of the reusable first stage and Falcon 9 already has taht. And it's proven; or

3. Which brings us to "landing humans on the Moon or Mars" but it's not really a suitable vehicle for that. Think about it. How are you going to land? They're reduced launch weight with the chopstick catching mechanism for the first stage such that it can't land on its own (unlike Falcon 9) so we'd need the second stage to be able to land on its own and take off again. We're nowwhere near even testing that. And it's going to take a lot of testing for human-rating flight.

But OK, let's look past all that and say it lands on the Moon. Well, how do the astronauts get out and back in? They're 30-40 meters off the ground.

I just don't know how this program succeeds.

1. You raise some valid points, but it's pretty common that when you lower the price for something ($ per KG to LEO) you raise the demand. The planned price drop is so severe that it becomes practical to send full weight objects into space without spending money and time on reducing weight.

2. Still a huge reduction in price. A full StarShip launch is expected to be much cheaper than a full Falcon 9 launch (per launch) because the cost is just fuel (about $300k) and some maintenance.

3. Putting legs back on for the Mars landing vehicle (a small fraction of the # starships launched btw) is totally practical.

Testing-

Yes, there is a lot more testing to go. I personally prefer testing and data-driven approvals than the traditional Paperwork based approval methods.

1. I think starlink alone means there is demand for that. Starlink is an appreciable fraction of satellites in orbit... Apart from starlink, satellites spend a lot of money on being as light as possible, at the very least there's a tradeoff here where you get to make the same satellite cheaper by being less mass efficient.

2. I wouldn't dismiss the cost savings from a reusable second stage.

3. They already have experience with legs from Falcon 9, and they're already landing this rocket very precisely with their tower. I would expect the development timeline for legs to be short. Much shorter than the development timeline for human rating the rest of this, for instance...

3.5. Winches and ropes are light and cheap, lowering things to and raising things from the surface doesn't strike me as a particularly difficult problem... apart from maybe the human-rating aspects of the system.

I think Starship has a good theoretical basis for being an economic success. On the other hand I don't have much faith they will successfully execute at this point.

They're massively behind schedule and presumably above anticipated cost. They aren't showing signs of having successfully designed a safe, reliable, and cheaply built vehicle. They've been making what externally seem like stupid mistakes like having their rocket fail in basically the same way twice in a row. They are making political enemies left right and center whether it's by having a fascist CEO committing election related crimes, or littering the same down-range islands with rocket parts from failed launches. They are almost certainly driving away talent by virtue of the same CEOs political roles and crimes, and by virtue of doing things like taking SpaceX engineers and having them work on twitter.

> This is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem but we can point to the Falcon Heavy as a useful data point. There have only been ~13 launches thus far.

Falcon Heavy is only useful for specific missions as it doesn't improves cost economics to LEO over Falcon 9.

> "you can launch multiple payloads in one launch" but you really can't unless they're on pretty much the exact same orbit

This is not true. First of all, many things often go into the same orbit and many orbits are pretty standard.

Second, as you avg kg to orbit goes down, there is an ever greater intensive to use low mass high efficiency engines to do an orbital transfer after launch.

SpaceX just doesn't do that because they do actually need many sats in the same orbit. But its very possible.

> This is only a fraction of the total cost

Its not that small a fraction as you suggest. Internal cost at SpaceX for a Falcon 9 flight is somewhere between 15-30 million $. And of that at least 5-10 million $ are the upper stage. So its actually a huge fraction of the cost.

And the engine on the Upper Stage is also the longest lead most complex to manufacture part.

So you are right, the first stage was a bigger deal in absolute terms but the second stage re-usability is still a gigantic opportunity.

> but it's not really a suitable vehicle for that.

Seems like NASA disagree with that assessment.

> We're nowwhere near even testing that.

They did test launch and landing of the second stage on earth many times. Why do you suggest we are nowhere near testing that.

> And it's going to take a lot of testing for human-rating flight.

Seems like a good place to be for a company that does a lot of testing as part of its development.