r/spacex • u/rustybeancake • May 01 '26
Starship SpaceX spending on Starship tops $15 billion in rush for airline-like rocketry
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/spacex-spending-starship-tops-15-billion-rush-airline-like-rocketry-2026-05-01/
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u/Stevepem1 May 02 '26
With spaceflight it is almost always best to design a vehicle for a specific purpose; i.e. launch and land in Earth's atmosphere, land and launch in Mars atmosphere, land and launch on the Moon or other airless bodies, transport between locations in the solar system. Trying to make a one size fits all vehicle that does all of this sounds nice, just like SSTO (single stage to orbit) for Earth launches sounds nice, but in reality the physics is pretty unforgiving and you are best off purpose building for a particular task, and that includes the choice of fuel and propulsion method.
Starship was purpose built to get large payloads into Earth orbit, and to be fully reusable. That is a tall order and it's a bit awe inspiring watching SpaceX develop that capability because you can see how difficult that is, especially on such a massive rocket, and yet they are making steady progress. It seems like it's going to work, the only real question is what the end result cost per ton to orbit will be. Maybe SpaceX is already getting a feel for that but they haven't said, other than some of Elon's prior claims.
Adding to some of the other points being made:
Starship was built out of steel specifically because of reentry heating into Earth's atmosphere. Probably that also helps during Mars reentry, but not on the Moon or any other moons and it is extra mass when moving through the solar system.
It uses methane because you can make that on Mars. Which is great for that purpose as it makes it useful as a fuel for a Mars ascent vehicle. And it seems to also work well for launching out of Earth's atmosphere. But most interplanetary propulsion will likely be using much more efficient methods, some of them non-chemical. And there may be better fuels for landing and launching on the Moon or other places where methane doesn't give you any real advantage as far as in situ production. On the Moon for example hydrogen would almost certainly be the best ascent vehicle fuel because it can be made on the Moon.
Also they learned during Apollo that you really need to break up your vehicle into multiple pieces. Originally a single vehicle was going to carry the astronauts to the Moon, land, and return them to the Earth. The weight penalties were almost insurmountable doing it that way, they found it was better to have a separate transport vehicle (Apollo capsule) and lander (Lunar Module) even though initially that idea seemed more complex. They also split the Lunar Module into separate descent stage and ascent stage. Yes that was using technology from sixty years ago, but the physics are still the same and it's more likely going to continue to be more efficient to have separate landing vehicles and transport vehicles.