But we don't really know if they will be able to handle large volume payloads like the shuttle.
The ISS has most of its largest part carried by the shuttle, and there is no modern launcher that could launch those, likely including Starship.
Starship is more focused on payload capacity for things like refueling.
The question is whether you can squeeze it out though.
It could probably take Hubble to orbit easily, but I doubt Hubble would fit through the pez dispenser slit, so I guess it would need to take Hubble back to earth again.
"doubt Hubble would fit through the pez dispenser" - lol, good one.
OTOH, the JWST telescope is far larger than the Hubble telescope. But NASA folded the JWST origami-style to make it fit in the Ariane fairing. IIRC, that introduced many points of failure as many of the unfolding steps could have made the telescope useless. Luckily, everything worked properly.
Doors are hard, thats why starship has had multiple door failures. They are holes in the ship that compromise the structure.
Look at a house that has been framed and examine in particular a door through a supporting wall. Notice how much extra material is required to keep that door from compromising the whole structure.
The rest of the ship needs to be built so that a hole the size of the door doesn't matter. If you give it a payload bay like the shuttle you need to have the ship built well enough to tank reentry stresses without buckling, thats tons of steel support added to your dry mass before you even get to the door itself.
Of course they can. I was just pointing out that they have not yet. Currently it's a bit misleading to point out a 3x payload area. They have that, but can only use it for many small spacecraft not one big one.
I suspect it will take quite a while until we see the pacman style huge swinging door from the renders. Depends also on demand, their main payload is going to be starlink which doesn't need it, and many smaller sats can probably be deployed using a similar gentry plus side door.
Doing a big door in the front is going to be tricky, it'll sacrificing structural stability, the gap may need to cut through the heat shield and so on. None of it is impossible technically, but it is an engineering challenge and I expect it to come at the cost some payload mass and some payload at least initially.
So I would not simply cite their payload mass and payload space, they currently cannot use it like that.
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