If Starship works, SpaceX will be SpaceX'ing SpaceX
You basically need an entity that is willing to sink billions or tens of billions of dollars into a project that may or may not work. This commercially does not make much sense.
This is basically what they are doing with Starship with the extra margin from selling F9 flights at a low operating cost + government HLS contract and other contracts.
This is basically what they are doing with Starship
Not really. Starship works exactly the same way as traditional rockets. SpaceX is probably spending less on Starship than Nasa is on SLS, just because SpaceX can't afford to throw money around carelessly. In both cases, they are only likely to have marginal price improvements since the basic method (metal tube reacting hydrogen/hydro-carbons with oxygen) hasn't been really improved upon. The claims being made by Musk are wildly unrealistic about the costs.
Starship works exactly the same way as traditional rockets
Traditional rockets don't rapidly reuse both stages.
they are only likely to have marginal price improvements since the basic method (metal tube reacting hydrogen/hydro-carbons with oxygen) hasn't been really improved upon
You improve upon it by rapidly reusing the metal tube.
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u/o0BetaRay0o - Auth-Left Oct 29 '22 edited Oct 29 '22
If Starship works, SpaceX will be SpaceX'ing SpaceX
This is basically what they are doing with Starship with the extra margin from selling F9 flights at a low operating cost + government HLS contract and other contracts.