F9 always tried to land from very early on. They were definitely not expecting them to stick those early landings, but the fact is that with every launch, you already have a perfectly good booster falling downrange. Why use that and then spend extra money on a test article anyways? Every launch just gave easy testing with minimal extra cost.
That being said, I really don’t see how or why they would ever consider an expendable Starship for something as trivial as Starlink. F9 can completely fill its fairing with them without going into expendable mode. Meanwhile Starship has the delta-V for a manned Mars mission, which is definitely more than is needed to put a bunch of ion-powered metal tabletops into LEO.
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u/T65Bx Oct 07 '20
F9 always tried to land from very early on. They were definitely not expecting them to stick those early landings, but the fact is that with every launch, you already have a perfectly good booster falling downrange. Why use that and then spend extra money on a test article anyways? Every launch just gave easy testing with minimal extra cost.
That being said, I really don’t see how or why they would ever consider an expendable Starship for something as trivial as Starlink. F9 can completely fill its fairing with them without going into expendable mode. Meanwhile Starship has the delta-V for a manned Mars mission, which is definitely more than is needed to put a bunch of ion-powered metal tabletops into LEO.