The stated goal was always to have a lot of ships, and also to have them be reusable.

Starship is a fuel-hungry beast - it can get to LEO by itself, but it needs a lot of tanker launches to go beyond. And if your goal is a Mars colony, you don't want to be limited to one launch per launch window.

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timeninja 2 days ago | parent [-]

Still, LEO is halfway to anywhere in the Solar System, so that's exciting.

	▲	HPsquared 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Also you can assemble things in LEO from multiple launches. Once you're up there, you have a lot more freedom in terms of size and shape.