I think these videos and the fact that this rockets actually works is one of the inspirational things in my life (and I am almost 40). I grew up loving everything about space (sci fi books and movies, astronomy in school, etc), and it was very bewildering not to see any progress basically for the first half of my life. Now it seems that humanity is back in the game, and it is amazing!
Perhaps kids of my kids would be able to travel to the moon.
This launch got a massive amount of ad time for starlink. But as advertising goes, I'm not complaining about that one - just that saying that the PR was pretty thick there.
The original Starship payload was supposed to be 300 tons. The latest flight was 16. They’ve had to scale everything back because it’s been such a shitshow.
Yet they successfully operate the world's best satellite ISP and reuse their smaller rockets repeatedly. SpaceX is capable of landing a 400 foot corn silo right on top of the chicken coop.
Yeah, I don't think the public understands how far behind they are. SpaceX was supposed to have moon missions in 2023-2024 time frame. NASA has said that Starship's timeline is "significantly challenged" and expects the vehicle will be years late. Apollo for comparison took about 8 years from announcement to moon landing. Space shuttle took about 9 years from approval to first flight. Starship has been in development now about 9 years.
Despite it's iterative approach (and benefit of decades of space technology and learnings) it has been slower than both Apollo and Shuttle.
Keep in mind Starship hasn't even achieved orbit yet.
It's making the 2027 Artimis III moon landing increasingly unrealistic.
> don't think the public understands how far behind they are
The public watches cropped launch videos and then scrolls on to the next issue. Most Americans probably couldn’t say what Starship is.
> it has been slower than both Apollo and Shuttle
For a fraction of the cost.
> It's making the 2027 Artimis III moon landing increasingly unrealistic
The entire Artemis programme has been a boondoggle. But while SpaceX is building a new launch vehicle and tackling propellant transfer, Lockheed can’t stop fucking up a legacy heat shield.
(I’m still like 4:1 on Orion, not HLS, being the reason Artemis 3 is delayed [1].)
> Keep in mind Starship hasn't even achieved orbit yet
It’s in development for reuse at a scale of rocketry we’ve never done before. It’s weird to hold a literal moonshot R&D project to consumer timelines like this.
After this (11) test, if Block 3 and Pad 2 validate (12), we could see an orbital attempt in Q1 ‘26 (13). I’d be shocked if orbital insertion is not succeeded in 2026; the big question is how much refurbishment will be required. (Given SpaceX is basically the only group in the world to have solved this problem, I wouldn’t hold my breath.)
Beyond Artemis, it looks more likely than not that Starship will be delivering cargo to LEO by the end of 2027. This not only represents a major leap in capacity and cost advantage, it obsoletes several rockets on the books in Europe and Asia through the late 2030s.
If anything, I would still count this one in the "refreshing" column.
SpaceX has been having difficulties with several launches and with permitting - and yet, construction continues; Launches continue at as high a pace as they can get away with; make do with their earlier rockets in the meantime (cranking out starlinks launches at an insane pace). They have been more cautious but there is still visible progress. As opposed to others which might have disappeared for a few years, or folded altogether.
I'm pretty NASA signed the deal knowing full well that they were taking a big risk. The chances of Starship HLS being a Long Poll item for Artemis III were high. They chose Starship HLS knowing that it had a long and risky critical path.
And In fairness to NASA....and I may not have all of these details correct, but they didnt have many choices. the NASA Reauthorization Act required them to select two different landers for HLS, but the budget only funded one and under funded them at that. Starship was all that they could afford. Congress has since gone back and funded a second one.
> Apollo for comparison took about 8 years from announcement to moon landing.
Apollo is not reusable.
It seems to me you compare apples to oranges. SpaceX solves a problem no one have ever solved before. Obviously they going to have set backs and missed deadlines.
> Apollo for comparison took about 8 years from announcement to moon landing. Space shuttle took about 9 years from approval to first flight. Starship has been in development now about 9 years.
This comparison is very unfair. Nine years ago the big rocket was a dream, not even Starship at the time.
> During his presentation, Musk joked that his strategy for raising money might be to “steal underpants,” do a Kickstarter campaign … and profit.
Contra Saturn V, which had strong funding out the gate.
SLS took 11 years to first flight and cost $29 billion. First flight was perfect and went around the moon. Starship is estimated to have cost about $10B so far and has had 11 test flights and still hasn't achieved orbit.
SLS can reach the moon from the earth, Starship can't reach the moon on a signel flight and requires 10-40+ tanker flights to fuel one lunar mission. That's a lot of chances for failure.
Even after Starship finally achieve orbit, it's still years away from being able to attempt what SLS did on day one.
The claim is that Starship will eventually be cheaper because of it's re-usability because they target $10M per flight you are talking about $400M for a lunar mission. But $10M per flight is insanely unrealistic. Consider that the Falcon Heavy, which is much, much simpler than Starship, costs around $90-$150M per launch. If we generously assume $50M per launch and 15-20 tanker flights that's around $750M - $1B which is suddenly comparable or could be more expensive than SLS.
Considering that SpaceX does not currently have a fully reusable rocker and if they manage to make Starship fully re-usable each one would need to be spread out a huge amount of flights to start becoming economical.
What's obvious to me, and maybe not everyone here, is the design of Starship is optimized for LEO, not deep space missions. The re-usability features are earth-specific (heat shield tiles, flaps for atmospheric control, landing legs designed for earth gravity). All of this mass is dead weight for a deep space mission.
Notice the HLS variant of Starship depot ships don't re-enter the earth and don't have all this re-usability stuff.
The refueling requirement is a consequence of the design. Starship is too heavy to reach the moon on one launch. It's massive dry mass prevents it from leaving LEO without refueling.
It's design is also not optimized for Mars either. It's optimized for earth operations. Mars has only 1% of the earth's atmosphere requiring completely different aerodynamics. You still need orbital refueling to get there and also back. It needs in-situ propellant production on Mars just to return to earth.
All of this is enormous complexity that hasn't been even close to being demonstrated (remember, Starship still hasn't achieved orbit).
What they are doing is building a ship to deploy Starlink, and wasting NASA funding to do it.
Perhaps kids of my kids would be able to travel to the moon.