Starship velocity seems to have really slowed - over a decade in and no commercial revenue yet.

I wonder if it's a lack of talent? Lack of investment?

It's the cyber truck of space.

It's what happens when Elon jumps into the k-hole and convinces himself that because he owns a company that successfully did a thing, his genius will make those companies do an even better thing. He's wrong. And he can stay wrong for years and decades even.

Starship is too big for orbital payloads, and too heavy to go beyond orbit. Yes and only if it actually achieve target payload capacity, it takes 15 refueling missions to refuel to do anything other than an orbital mission. If it doesn't achieve target payload capacity, it's cooked.

Doing something 10x as big is 100x as difficult. And the last 10% takes 50% of the work. With that in mind, Starship is right on schedule. Something will be operational by 2030.

Motivation has declined with realization that it's not about Mars, but normal military industrial complex drudgery..

https://ioc.exchange/@muskfiles

It's a harder problem.