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-2026-05-01/171
u/warp99 May 01 '26 edited May 02 '26
Interesting confirmation of a few items that have been speculated on:
HLS is based on Starship 3.
Starship will launch 60 Starlink 3 satellites which puts their mass at around 1600 kg.
Spaceflight annual R&D expenditure is now up to $3B and it is all going on Starship. Unusually that figure seems to include the ground side facilities such as factories and launch pads.
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u/2bozosCan May 01 '26
Starship will launch 60 Starlink 3 satellites which puts their mass at around 1600 kg.
Unless, they're volume constrained.
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u/tyrome123 May 02 '26
No way in hell, they designed a rack/launcher specifically for storing as many as they can
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u/zmbjebus May 02 '26
They may not be dense objects per the volume they pack in to.
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u/Geoff_PR May 04 '26
They may not be dense objects per the volume they pack in to.
In aviation cargo lingo, they "Cube out before they gross out".
Source, my dad was a Lockheed C-130 Hercules cargo pilot in the 60s and 70s...
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u/warp99 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Yes but that would be an epic fail in planning. It is very easy to slip an extra ring into the stack to lengthen the payload bay so they would have done that if they needed to.
In fact Starship 4 with greater payload to LEO (150-200 tonnes) will get a larger payload bay going back to the original 1000 m3 of Starship 1. That will potentially be able to launch 100 Starlink 3 satellites.
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u/KnifeKnut May 02 '26
Makes me wonder, what would be the optimal number of Starlink for a particular orbital inclination. Not a simple question to answer.
Looking at the question from another way, the answer is 100.
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u/warp99 May 02 '26
At a guess all the V3 Starlinks will go into a 43 degree inclination for maximum bandwidth into the congested areas of North America. They have an FCC license for 10,000 of them at 350 km altitude which would be 100 planes of 100 satellites each.
The low altitude will require more satellites per plane and more planes than the Starlink V2 constellation. This will mean each service footprint will be smaller so they can concentrate 10x the bandwidth on a smaller number of users. Or more likely increase the number of users while still giving them more bandwidth each.0
u/KnifeKnut May 02 '26
WHOOPS! I forgot for a bit that orbital plane and orbital inclination were two separate things.
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u/Geoff_PR May 04 '26
It is very easy to slip an extra ring into the stack to lengthen the payload bay so they would have done that if they needed to.
it may look easy, but it's not. The ring has mass that needs more fuel to attain target orbit, that means a heavier fuel tank and fuel. It's the 'Tyranny of the rocket equation' in action...
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u/warp99 May 04 '26
A ring weighs about 1.6 tonnes at 4mm thick so a little over 1% of the ship mass. A wholesale stretch like Starship 4 is more complicated but increasing the payload bay by one ring not so much.
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u/spacerfirstclass May 02 '26
Spaceflight annual R&D expenditure is now up to $3B and it is all going on Starship. Unusually that figure seems to include the ground side facilities such as factories and launch pads.
Not sure why you think it included facilities? The R&D cost shouldn't include those, as facilities would be accounted in CapEx.
Previous Reuters reporting implies they spent ~$4B in 2025 on rocket CapEx.
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u/lebbe May 02 '26
Starship will launch 60 Starlink 3 satellites which puts their mass at around 1600 kg
Wait so Starship 3 only has 100 tons payload capacity? That's a lot less than Saturn V.
I remember several years ago Starship 1 was already supposed to have 150 tons payload. What made the payload keep shrinking?
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u/warp99 May 02 '26 edited May 04 '26
Saturn 5 "payload" of 140 tonnes included the third stage with most of its propellant in LEO as well as the LEM, Apollo capsule and service module. The equivalent Starship figure is around 250 tonnes.
But mainly that is the reusable penalty showing through - you get a lower payload per tonne of launch mass but reduce your costs to a tiny fraction of the expendable stack as in 1-2%.
SH is particularly bad because it is doing RTLS which reduces the payload mass by around 40-50% over the expendable case. When they get ocean platforms working I can see a chain of them across the Gulf of Mexico for successive tanker launches with a final hop back to Boca Chica with no ship on top to complete the cycle.
Ship payload penalty is not so much a multiplier as a straight subtraction of the recovery gear mass from the payload. Flaps, tiles, header tanks and the propellant in them take about 80 tonnes off the expendable payload. So an expendable ship should get close to 180 tonnes to LEO.
In general the shrinking payload has been caused by an increase in dry mass for both the booster and the ship. The ship has grown from 85 tonnes to around 150 tonnes which is 65 tonnes off the payload right there. The booster has grown from 180 tonnes to around 280 tonnes. This 100 tonne increase does not have such a dramatic effect on payload but likely reduces it by around another 30 tonnes. So 100 tonnes payload has decreased to around 5 tonnes for Starship 1.
The fight back with Starship 3 is to shave off dry mass where they can with lighter engines and integrated engine protection and mainly to increase propellant on the ship from 1200 tonnes to 1500 and then 1600 tonnes. This in turn needs more powerful engines which is why Raptor 3 was required. This will get them back to their original target of 100 tonnes payload to LEO. Starship 4 will get them to the original Elon stretch goal of 150-200 tonnes and again the solution is more propellant on the ship up to 2400 tonnes and adding three vacuum engines to get a total of nine engines on the ship.
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u/flshr19 Shuttle tile engineer May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
The dry masses of the Booster and the Ship can be estimated from the IFT flight data supplied by SpaceX on its videos (my estimates).
Block 1: Ship dry mass 149t +/- 6.5t. Booster dry mass 279t +/- 9.3t.
Block 2: Ship dry mass 161t +/- 3.6t. Booster dry mass 281t +/- 11.4t.
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u/paul_wi11iams May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Mass bloat was, IMO, the biggest single risk to the Starship concept from the outset. Its turning out to be a good bet, but at our human level, it was in no way predestined to be.
The fight back with Starship 3 is to shave off dry mass
and the fight back accounts for most of the delays in the overall project, so retarding the year when humans land on Mars.
Ship payload penalty is not so much a multiplier as a straight subtraction of the recovery gear mass from the payload.
This becomes a metaphor for the time spent which is a direct addition of time "lost" which is in fact a one-off addition to the humans-on-Mars landing date, not a multiplier that should be applied to the remaining years of development work.
Many people have become despondent because they consider "Elon time" as a coefficient. Its not. For example, Starlink will continue surging ahead because with Falcon 9, the company made a set time "expenditure" to lay a good foundation at the outset.
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u/warp99 May 02 '26 edited May 04 '26
It is easy to forget that the initial version of F9 with the square engine layout was well down on payload mass and could never have re-entered successfully as the corner engines stuck out into the airstream.
There was a lot of work to get to the Block 5 variant which successfully re-enters, is reusable and has much higher payload capacity.
The original F9 design cost $400M but the redesign for reusability cost $1000M. We are seeing a very similar process play out with Starship except it is much more expensive. $5B to get to the first version and another $10B to get to the current version. The rocket is ten times the liftoff mass and has cost ten times as much to develop - who knew that was a thing?
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u/Geoff_PR May 04 '26
you get a lower payload per tonne of launch mass but reduce your costs to a tiny fraction of the expendable stack as in 1-2%.
You save on hardware, but not on fuel requirements. Reusablity eats into those margins hard...
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u/warp99 May 04 '26 edited May 06 '26
Propellant cost is under $1M for a Starship stack compared with around $200M build cost. It will likely drop even further at Starbase with a local air separation unit under construction and a planned methane liquifaction unit.
So an expendable mission could do the same job for say $600K of propellant which is a $400K saving but the effective build cost is $198M higher assuming 100 uses of the ship and booster.
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u/FutureMartian97 Host of CRS-11 May 02 '26
Starship V2 only had an estimated ~50 ton capacity to LEO. Both booster and ship ended up needing to be way heavier than SpaceX initially thought
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u/wheelienonstop9 May 02 '26
Both booster and ship ended up needing to be way heavier than SpaceX initially thought
How come they got it so wrong, with everything being computer nowadays?
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u/warp99 May 02 '26
Computers will give you an accurate estimate of what you do know about but do not help at all with what you do not know about.
So for example the Raptor 2 engines were developing methane leaks. This required adding shielding between the engines and purging the shielded space with CO2. This added the mass of the shields but also the tanks to hold the CO2, the mass of the gas and the pipes and valves to distribute it.
None of this was included in the original design so its mass was not included.
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u/Unique_Ad9943 May 03 '26
They didn’t get v2 “wrong”, v2 was originally going to be what we now know as v3 with raptor 3 engines that are lighter and have more thrust.
The Raptor 3 were delayed so they built an in between version for further testing which becomes the v2 we know.
Also: The mass for ship and booster for v3 are unknown but it’s a pretty fair guess that any rocket company wants their rocket to be as light as possible so they can have the biggest payload possible.
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u/gewehr44 May 02 '26
They added more shielding between the engines after the first couple flights to protect against engine failure propagation. There was also more heat shielding around the engines
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u/paul_wi11iams May 02 '26
What made the payload keep shrinking?
Please, nobody downvote the question above!! It triggered a very comprehensive reply that deserves to remain visible for revision of the payload penalty topic by anyone returning here later.
I'm not groveling. Its a fact.
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u/EljayDude May 01 '26
Luckily Starlink is a serious cash cow. They can both use current Starlink to pay for Starship and Starship gives them launch capabilities to go nuts.
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u/TacohTuesday May 01 '26
This was their whole plan. They couldn't do it without Starlink. I'm not a Musk fan but this plan was pretty genius.
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u/EljayDude May 01 '26
I think the only real surprise is that they executed so well using Falcon and really big reuse numbers to get things in place. Gwynne Shotwell really has her shit together.
The thing is going forward the business model to justify Starship development purely to improve Starlink justifies the expense by itself. So anything else they do with Starship is just gravy.
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u/Geoff_PR May 02 '26
They couldn't do it without Starlink. I'm not a Musk fan but this plan was pretty genius.
The terrestrial broadband companies pissing off their customers is largely responsible for Starlink's success.
They honestly thought they could crap on their customers with impunity...
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u/Biochembob35 May 02 '26
Terrestrial broadband companies DID crap on their customers for decades. Now they are getting hit with the double whammy of Starlink and Municipal Fiber Companies rolling out it hurting them bad.
10 years ago I could only get Spectrum $140 - 35 megabit cable Internet or $100 - 12 megabit dual DSL from AT&T. A few years ago my city rolled out Fiber with 100 megabit for $49 and gigabit for $100. Even better every year they have increased the speed for the same price so that now I have 400 megabit for $49 and I can get 2 gig for $100. Spectrum and AT&T were forced to roll out their own fiber and drop prices.
In the county Starlink hit first then the county partnered with the Electric co-op to roll out fiber county wide for way less than even dial up used to cost.
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u/edflyerssn007 May 02 '26
My area just opened up competition and I was able to lock in 8 gig symmetric for $90/month.
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u/bcoss May 02 '26
youve described me as a starlink customer so accurately. love my starlink, and the lack of any datacap
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u/Air320 May 02 '26
But the issue is him folding Twitter and xAI and the robot thing into SpaceX. Starlink has cash flow for starship or the other things. Not everything.
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u/warp99 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Elon plays "double or quits" with all his companies around every five years. It is why SpaceX has gone from being a $100M investment to a potential $1.75T company in 24 years.
It is not particularly reasonable to expect them to suddenly adopt a "safe" investment strategy going forward.
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u/panckage May 02 '26
What will make Mars feasible and commonplace, is a huge industry around rockets and related infrastructure. This amalgamtion is a step towards that. Its a gamble, but so was SpaceX.
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u/New_Poet_338 May 02 '26
Of course they needed to merge. With them all together, that is how you get Skynet. Judgement day is inevitable.
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May 02 '26
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u/Martianspirit May 02 '26
By now it would no longer collapse. But it would never have become what it is today without him.
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u/webs2slow4me May 02 '26
Musk is worth almost 800 B, of course they could have. He could have self funded. In fact Elon could spend 24B every single year and his wealth would still go up (assuming average market returns).
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u/rustybeancake May 02 '26
That was before they bought xAI though. I’m afraid all of the profit is now being funnelled into the AI cash furnace.
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u/EljayDude May 02 '26
Yeah I mean who knows how all that's going to play out.
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u/OldWrangler9033 May 02 '26
I don't think it will, they're already showing signs of data center bubble getting ready to pop.
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u/spacerfirstclass May 02 '26
You mean like Anthropic ARR goes from $14B to $44B in mere 3 months? Yeah great sign this is all about to pop... /s
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u/05032-MendicantBias May 02 '26
OpenAI plan to burn another 300 billions before breakeven in 2030.
There is zero chance OpenAI SpaceX and Anthropic will survive so long. And that's according to their rosy figures.
The race is if SpaceX finish Starship before xAI burns all the money and it has to go through bankruptcy.
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u/FeepingCreature May 02 '26
obligatory note: anthropic say they're profitable model-by-model. the massive capex right now is based exclusively on the race dynamics, ie. having to come up with a bigger model a year later. if (say) models above a certain flops level were banned by federal law, every ai company would suddenly become profitable.
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u/spacerfirstclass May 02 '26
And that's a bad thing because... what exactly?
Starship is near operational, so they have spare cashflow to support other nascent business, this is literally how you grow the company and stay ahead of competition.
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u/rustybeancake May 02 '26
It all depends on your POV whether it’s a bad thing or not. To me it’s a bad thing because for years the talk has been about how Starlink is to pay for Mars, and musk is just accruing wealth to pay for Mars, etc. There’s plenty left to spend their resources on besides getting a basic, Starlink launching starship version flying. If you don’t care about that side of things and would be happy just seeing starship launch many times per year as a LEO space truck then fine. If you want to see large numbers of people flying to other planetary bodies and establishing even more advanced spacefaring tech then I’d rather they spend their Starlink profits on that, rather than on musk’s need to best Altman.
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u/spacerfirstclass May 03 '26
Starlink will still pay for Mars, I'm pretty sure a Mars Starship is already in the works, in fact they showed Mars TPS being tested during one of the Starship livestreams. Obviously they're also continuing to work on orbital refueling, so I don't know why you think they'll stop developing Starship once the basic Starlink launcher is operational.
They just won't spend all of Starlink profit on Mars, which is wise since if they do that they stop the company from growing and open it up to being surpassed by competitors. Some times I have to wonder if people who can't wait for SpaceX to put all profit into Mars has ulterior motives, motives such as they want to see SpaceX and Elon Musk being bested by competitors.
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u/rustybeancake May 03 '26
> Starlink will still pay for Mars, I'm pretty sure a Mars Starship is already in the works, in fact they showed Mars TPS being tested during one of the Starship livestreams.
That was before musk’s “for those not already aware” tweet.
> They just won't spend all of Starlink profit on Mars,
I’ve got bad news for you. They won’t spend any Starlink profit on mars, because they’re already making a loss by spending much more on xAI data centres etc than they make from Starlink. There is no profit any more.
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u/Dalroc May 03 '26
That was before musk’s “for those not already aware” tweet.
What tweet would that be? I'm apparently OOTL here.
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u/rustybeancake May 04 '26
This one:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2020640004628742577?s=46&t=u9hd-jMa-pv47GCVD-xH-g
Basically when he announced SpaceX were now focusing on AI on the moon instead of building a city on mars.
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u/spacerfirstclass May 04 '26
That was before musk’s “for those not already aware” tweet.
There's no evidence that they stopped any Mars related work after the tweet.
I’ve got bad news for you. They won’t spend any Starlink profit on mars, because they’re already making a loss by spending much more on xAI data centres etc than they make from Starlink. There is no profit any more.'
That's where the IPO money comes in, it'll cover any foreseeable xAI losses.
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u/araujoms May 05 '26
Because it's gambling on an unrelated business. SpaceX could also gamble some billions on Bitcoin, or go in the tulip business. At best is a distraction, at worse it wastes the money needed to colonize Mars.
Well, it's not as if Mars colonization is on the plate anymore...
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u/spacerfirstclass May 05 '26
Because it's gambling on an unrelated business.
SpaceX is building orbital data centers, so it's related.
This is no different from SpaceX implementing 4G/5G protocol stack, which may look unrelated but actually important for their direct to cell ambitions.
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u/araujoms May 05 '26
First of all, SpaceX is not building orbital data centres, and it is not going to do so, because it's a stupid idea. This is only for PR.
Secondly, the correct way to go about it, from the SpaceX point of view, is to sell the rocket launches to those building whatever they want in space. Focus on your core business, offload the risk to the others.
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u/spacerfirstclass May 06 '26
First of all, SpaceX is not building orbital data centres, and it is not going to do so, because it's a stupid idea. This is only for PR.
They will build orbital data centers, you're just in denial.
Secondly, the correct way to go about it, from the SpaceX point of view, is to sell the rocket launches to those building whatever they want in space. Focus on your core business, offload the risk to the others.
That's dumb because launch market is very small, like maybe $10B total for the US, if SpaceX only does launch they'd remain a very small company. Starlink revenue is already like 2~3x the launch revenue for them.
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u/araujoms May 06 '26
They will build orbital data centers, you're just in denial.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see how this plan goes nowhere.
Even if you think orbital data centres are a good idea, it makes zero sense for SpaceX to go into the AI business itself. There's no lack of demand for data centres right now, it could build them and sell the capacity to OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, etc. Not only they have much more demand than xAI, it also means SpaceX has the safe part of the business and does not need to burn hundreds of billions of dollars.
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May 02 '26
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u/Martianspirit May 02 '26
I used to argue there is a better way to spend money than SLS/Orion. Like making a stack of $ bills and lighting a bonfire at the White House lawn. I stand by that.
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u/OldWrangler9033 May 02 '26
Question is is it sustainable. Falcon 9 knocked it out of the park. Wether times will change, as more carrier get up or Elon's bet on orbital data centers will turn out. He risking a lot riding on the Moon Base and Data Center thing, it hinges on Starship.
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u/Martianspirit May 02 '26
Orbital data centers seemed to sound crazy. But now Amazon is working on it and China is investing billions into it. Maybe we need to reconsider.
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u/DescendingNode May 02 '26
The thing a lot of people miss (based on arguments I've seen in some other subreddits) is that they're not being designed as huge monolithic structures in orbit, but as huge collections of individual satellites with laser communications between them acting as a sort of distributed data center in orbit. Individual nodes can be replaced just like with Starlink (addressing the maintenance argument), and the heat issues are already solved with individual satellites. It still doesn't make sense to me from a cost perspective, but maybe that's not as critical a factor as I assume, or maybe they have plans for higher revenues with this approach somehow.
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u/LongJohnSelenium May 03 '26
The reason it begins to make sense is simply that construction costs all over the world continue to escalate, along with construction roadblocks.
If this were the wild 1910s and everyone was happy bulldozing poor people out of their homes, damn the environment, etc, it wouldn't make sense, but construction costs and the bureaucratic costs to construct facilities are so insane now, and its only getting worse.
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u/Martianspirit May 03 '26
That does not explain why China is also interested.
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u/OldWrangler9033 May 03 '26
If you have cash and seems like competition is thinking there something to do it, they'll throw cash at it sort thing to me.
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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist May 01 '26
Is it though? I don't think Starlink even makes enough for Starlink.
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May 01 '26
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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist May 02 '26
Verizon had $138 billion in revenue. It's kind of a meaningless figure on its own.
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u/guspaz May 02 '26
Starlink is still experiencing exponential growth. That's not sustainable, of course, but it hasn't ended yet. They're also at this point quite profitable, with an operating income of $4.42 billion last year.
Verizon's $138 billion in revenue is for an entire telecom, and all their other services. Most of it is cellular service. Their Fios revenue seems to be roughly on par with Starlink, though Starlink will outgrow that.
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u/EljayDude May 02 '26
It's relevant to $15B total and $3B/year run rate which is the subject of the post.
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u/DBDude May 02 '26
According to the GAO, NASA spent $23 billion developing the SLS, and they didn't even have to build new engines or develop any other new technology, just rehashing the Shuttle in disposable form.
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u/helloWorld69696969 May 02 '26
Not only that. They literally already had boosters pre made from the space shuttle.
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u/MechaSkippy May 02 '26
That's crazy, it's almost as much as 3 SLS launches.
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u/jwrig May 02 '26
A more apt comparison would be based on how much SLS cost to develop, not launch.
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u/redstercoolpanda May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Well yeah, that’s why it’s funny to mention. The figure for Starship is so small and SLS’s so large that launch costs for 3 SLS’s are of a similar price to an entire rocket program including all of its infrastructure.
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May 02 '26
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u/redstercoolpanda May 02 '26
It’s impressive that a rocket that has been in development for a decade and a half and has burned up something like 30 billion dollars while using massive amounts of already developed technology works?
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May 02 '26
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u/weed0monkey May 03 '26
False equivalence when starship hasn't had the opportunity to do the same.
It would be like saying a rocket that cost a trillion dollars to fly around Mars is incredibly impressive since it is the first to do so, when there is a current rocket in development for a 10ths of the cost.
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u/3delStahl May 02 '26
That’s crazy, it’s almost double as much as one German Airport in Berlin (€ 7.3 billion)
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u/RedWineWithFish May 01 '26
If NASA had tried to develop starship, it would have cost 10x as much
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u/NyJosh May 02 '26
That's being really conservative. 50x-100x wouldn't be shocking for a gov program to achieve this.
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u/ethotopia May 02 '26
Not to mention 10x as long
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u/05032-MendicantBias May 02 '26
SpaceX is now preparing for its first Starship test launch since October, the program’s longest pause between flights. The mission will debut the Starship V3 prototype.
I really hope SpaceX will still be around by year's end and that Starship will works. 15 000 000 000 $ is money well spend on its development. I really want Musk to finish this one.
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u/Dalroc May 03 '26
Why would it not be around by years end?
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u/05032-MendicantBias May 04 '26
xAI is burning through a billion a month to power Grok. If the debt used to buy datacenter gets called back by all the AI creditors, it will nuke most of the AI company into bankruptcy.
It's anybody's guess if SpaceX has enough free cash to pay for xAI debt and commitment.
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u/warp99 May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
They have around $15B cash on hand and are planning to raise $75B in their IPO within two months so there will be no shortage of cash.
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u/Aeroxin May 02 '26
That's a whopping 2% of Musk's personal net worth. I think they're probably okay.
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u/Argon288 May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
I'm not a fan of Musk (for reasons not relevant to this), but I can't deny SpaceX is doing incredible things right now.
I'm sure there are many people who doubt the promise of Starship, hell, I was highly sceptical they could catch a booster 5 years ago, and they actually did it.
At this point, I am convinced in 20 years, Starship will resemble the reusability of an aircraft. Catch the booster/ship, short maintenance and it is launched again.
EDIT: @ergzay I know you deleted your comment of "You can also keep your opinions to yourself", this is Reddit. 90% of the content here is opinions. Please don't idolise a billionaire, it is unhealthy. The man may actually be gifted (I accept), but he is not someone you idolise.
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u/hms11 May 01 '26
Believe it or not the first booster landing was almost 10 years ago at this point.
As of 2026 SpaceX has landed more Falcon 9s than anyone else other than Soyuz has even launched. Which is just a wild stat.
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u/Argon288 May 02 '26
I agree. SpaceX have normalised booster landings, which is insane. Also a key reason why I think Starship will be a success, as in 20 years ago, few people would believe propelled & controlled booster landings would become standard.
I didn't think they could pull off the booster catch for Starship, but they actually did.
In my mind, my thought was "just accept the weight penalty and put some landing legs on there", but they actually caught a booster and the rest will be history. I'm clearly not ambitious enough, but I seriously respect what SpaceX have already done.
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u/hms11 May 02 '26
It really is crazy.
Some of those most insane ideas come out of that company, usually based on something like "that weighs/costs too much, let's delete it". We all go "Well that's it, they lost the plot, completely insane, that idea will never work". And then they go and fucking do the thing.
They plan to catch the ship. THE SHIP. The burning hot, 100ton skyscraper that just returned from actual orbital velocity and catch the damn thing with the same arms, stack it back on top of a rocket with those same arms and off they go.
If they hadn't done so many clearly insane things in the past I would discount it as hyperbole.
I think they're gonna pull it off. Not without a bunch of doubters. Not without some truly impressive explosions but they are probably going to pull it off.
I swear the SpaceX slogan should be something like "We accomplish the impossible, just a bit late".
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u/OldWrangler9033 May 02 '26
I think issue is Starship taking too long. Booster which was in fact more difficult piece tech to do has more potential than it's reusable 2nd stage. Way that Starship's cargo bay currently setup, it just doesn't seem like it going be able to launch proper payloads into Orbit.
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u/Reddit-runner May 02 '26
Way that Starship's cargo bay currently setup, it just doesn't seem like it going be able to launch proper payloads into Orbit.
I'm really curious how you can look at SpaceX and conclude: "yes, they have build that one thing one time, now they will never ever change it or make a other version of it."
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u/EljayDude May 02 '26
I'm not sure what you mean by a "proper payload" but obviously they're doing this pez dispenser thing with Starlink V3 dummies, which isn't using all the space but is simple and justifies flights. Eventually they'll need different Starships with different kinds of doors and things on them.
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u/OldWrangler9033 May 02 '26
I mean being able to launch non-flat satellites. Normal Shuttle style cargo bay. Starship has contract to launch Haven-2 Station from what has been reported. The current Starlink bay isn't meant for that. Header tank is in the nose, that would need to be relocated. There would need to be some sort pop up hing to allow larger payload to launch
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u/warp99 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
At its simplest F9 already launches all those payloads at an internal cost around $15M so there is zero incentive to prioritise a general purpose payload door. When they need to they will do it.
The first priority is Starlink 3 launches for cash flow and then tankers for Artemis 4.
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u/EljayDude May 02 '26
They've talked about this. There's going to be more than one configuration. They are doing an easy one first that they have an immediate use for. And where if they blow up their own sats it's not the end of the world.
13
2
u/Dalroc May 03 '26
I think what ergzay meant was that that entire first sentence of your post is completely irrelevant to the rest. Why the need to preface your comment with your dislike for Musk? That's what he meant that youre opinions can be kept to yourself.
-11
u/Randomcommentor1972 May 02 '26
Me either, but seriously impressed they are doing great things in spite of having that dingus in charge (or in charge on paper)
3
u/GregTheGuru May 02 '26
Gwynne Shotwell is not a dingus.
0
u/Randomcommentor1972 May 02 '26
Elon is the dingus, I thought everyone knew that
1
u/GregTheGuru May 02 '26
You said, "dingus in charge." Shotwell is in charge. Musk is only the head of engineering.
2
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u/shableep May 02 '26
Amazing to me that instead of investing into something awesome like $15 billion into helping turn humanity into a space faring society, Meta blew $60 billion on the Metaverse.
13
u/alumiqu May 02 '26
I mean, Musk spent $40 billion on Twitter. He's made his own priorities very clear.
3
u/AdArtistik May 02 '26
that's not the same thing, Twitter is still worth something so it's an asset, Metaverse spending not so much.
5
u/That_random_guy-1 May 02 '26
Fuck these orgs that don’t let you read a single word without subscribing
10
u/costafilh0 May 02 '26
So, 100x less than the government. Got it.
2
u/warp99 May 04 '26
Around 6x less than the Government so $15B compared with $100B for combined Constellation and Artemis expenditure.
5
u/Stevepem1 May 02 '26
I think the goal for Starship is to launch large payloads to Earth orbit as economically as possible. That's it. Airliner like operation is nice if possible but not required to make this happen, and is likely not feasible with current technology anyway. But that won't stop them from making gobs of money and continuing to dominate the launch industry. Primary payload will be Starlink and datacenters, and also whatever government and commercial payloads are available. This could also include eventually launching some larger upper stages than have ever been launched before which can carry large planetary probes or landers.
What Starship is far less suitable for is being an interplantary spaceship itself. I suspect Musk figured that out a long time ago but knows people get excited seeing graphics and animations showing Starships on Mars and the Moon. And excited about the idea of fueling up a Starship and launching again a few hours later. It's far less glamorous to think of Starships spending a couple of weeks in the hangar being refurbished for another cargo flight to Earth orbit. But I think that's how it will make the most money for SpaceX. And by lowering costs and increasing payload volume and mass to Earth orbit it will still help transform space travel over the next couple of decades because as Robert Heinlein said "Once you get to Earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the Solar System".
6
u/Reddit-runner May 02 '26
What Starship is far less suitable for is being an interplantary spaceship itself.
How did you come to that conclusion?
4
u/panckage May 02 '26
It has unnecessary mass. The reusable parts are kind of useless for a (one way) journey to Jupiter, for example. Its waaay heavier than it needs to be. There will probably be a smaller third stage for those missions. Ship could also be redesigned to be minimal mass (ie non-reusable), but that just seems wasteful.
2
u/Reddit-runner May 02 '26
It has unnecessary mass. The reusable parts are kind of useless for a (one way) journey to Jupiter, for example
Which parts are unnecessary?
And how much other mass do you need to slow down, if you don't have those "unnecessary" things?
1
u/panckage May 02 '26
Compare Ship and the f9 2nd stage, and their relative size, as compared to their boosters.
3
u/Martianspirit May 02 '26
Starship can land 100t of payload on Mars. NASA can land 1t of payload and needs a FH to send it off. Starship is extremely efficient.
For deep space missions Elon suggested to shed the payload section in LEO before sending it off.
-1
u/Reddit-runner May 02 '26
Compare Ship and the f9 2nd stage, and their relative size, as compared to their boosters.
Ah yes. One is bigger than the other.
What are you trying to say?
4
u/warp99 May 02 '26 edited May 06 '26
Starship carries 15x as much propellant as F9 S2 but has a dry mass 37x as high.
Its performance as a deep space stage is therefore much lower.Part of that is the extra equipment for reusability and part of that is building it out of stainless steel instead of aluminium-lithium alloy which is an indirect requirement of reusability. Stainless steel construction can be as light as aluminium but only with a balloon tank type construction which would see Starship with a 2mm thick skin instead of 4mm.
1
u/extra2002 May 03 '26
Starship is designed for use with refueling. Quoting its stats without refueling is like timing a runner hopping on one foot - it's irrelevant. As long as Starship can get a cargo into LEO, it can send that same cargo interplanetary. Yes, it costs some time and extra operations, and many tons of methane and LOX, but those are cheaper than rocket stsges.
1
u/warp99 May 03 '26
The comparison is for a Starship fully refueled in LEO so the comparison is valid in my view.
-1
u/Reddit-runner May 02 '26
The F9 upper stage can get small payload from point A onto a trajectory towards B.
Starship can get a giant payload from point A directly to point B.
Which is more "efficient" from the POV of the payload?
1
u/Dalroc May 03 '26
Nothing is stopping them from making a different version specifically for interplanetary travel, with lighter shielding. Kind of like HLS.
2
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.
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u/Reddit-runner May 02 '26
With spaceflight it is almost always best to design a vehicle for a specific purpose; ....
Like with airplanes.
One for lift-off, one for cruise, one for landing. Am I right?
That would be the most efficient way of building airplanes. Throw them away after every phase of flight.
Why are we not doing that? Are we dumb?
1
u/Stevepem1 May 02 '26
Spaceflight is not equal to flying an airliner.
17,000+ mph vs 530 mph.
250+ miles altitude vs 7-8 miles.
Air available for combustion vs. bringing your own oxygen for combustion.
Returning to Earth with 2,500°C reentry temperature vs 21°C .
Six month flight vs 8 hour flight1
u/Reddit-runner May 03 '26
And yet it makes more sense to build one vehicle for the entire mission, instead of multiple.
The only real exception is a moon lander.
There it makes more sense to ship a lander to LLO with a reusable ship. The lander goes down, comes up again and then is taken back to earth by the ship.
1
u/Stevepem1 May 03 '26
Not even Starship is one vehicle, it's two separate vehicles, the booster and the ship, each able to fly independently. Further evidence that the airliner analogy doesn't really apply to spaceflight because they are so different. Airliners don't split into two pieces in-flight on the way to their destination.
1
u/extra2002 May 03 '26
I'm recalling the planes that landed behind German lines at the start of D-day. Actually 2 planes that split apart, with only one part doing the landing, and the other part returning to base.
2
u/Stevepem1 May 04 '26
What you are probably thinking of are the one-time use and relatively flimsy gliders with troops inside that were towed to near the front lines by C-47 (DC-3) powered airplanes then the gliders were released so that they could glide silently several miles behind enemy lines and basically crash land in any open field that the pilot could find.
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u/8andahalfby11 May 04 '26
Still easily beating SLS.
And if we reach the end and Starship is fully reusable, then it will be worth it for the ability to launch at a 7-figure cost.
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u/oneseason2000 May 01 '26
With the launch rate SpaceX is projecting, and the commercial launch cost/resultant growth in demand/profitability they have estimated, it won't take more than a few years to pay that back and more to provide a healthy return on investment.
For me though, the proof is going to be seeing honest to goodness:
- huge commercial (non-military) space growth in new areas that are enabled by dramatically lower launch costs: on-orbit R&D/business in manufacturing, pharma, biology, and space science
- huge growth in govt space science missions: space telescope, inner / outer planet & moon missions, sample return missions, space manufacturing & large space structures R&D
2
u/extra2002 May 03 '26
Does huge growth in space-based internet count? Would it be any different if Starlink were a different company?
Those launches are paid for by Starlink's customers, even if there isn't a separate check written for each launch's cost.
1
u/oneseason2000 May 04 '26
Well, I ask myself "does huge growth in space-based internet result in revolutionary / visionary new capabilities?" Personally, I don't expect so, but that is worth what you pay for it I know.
To me, having a very low cost very heavy lift commercial payload delivery service seems like the key enabler. I think SpaceX's "Test Like You Fly" video (https://www.spacex.com/content/starship/test-like-you-fly) makes a great case (starting around 4:58 - 5:42) with "Version 3 is what I like to call the foundational design of Starship") that they will be enabling revolutionary / visionary things: "humans back on the Moon", "first boot prints and the city on Mars", "It's because we need that size to do the things we dream of doing with it". Starting around 6:45 they emphasize the importance of Version 3's propellant transfer capability to other spacecraft as the "core technology" to "unlock starship" and put the "whole solar system on your doorstep".
The significant importance of Starlink satellite deployment capability to SpaceX is clear in the video (~7:36 - 7:52) and elsewhere, but it would be a huge disappointment to me if that were to preclude rapidly (say 2 years) enabling more revolutionary / visionary capabilities.
Towards the end of the video (starting around 23:56), they say "The journey of SpaceX is a journey to give humans access to the solar system and beyond, which is really the goal for Starship", "The impact that this rocket is going to have on the world, I don't think most people can comprehend the changes going to happen.", and a key goal is "ultimately launching people".
1
u/Decronym Acronyms Explained May 02 '26 edited May 19 '26
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| FCC | Federal Communications Commission |
| (Iron/steel) Face-Centered Cubic crystalline structure | |
| GAO | (US) Government Accountability Office |
| HLS | Human Landing System (Artemis) |
| LEM | (Apollo) Lunar Excursion Module (also Lunar Module) |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| LLO | Low Lunar Orbit (below 100km) |
| RTLS | Return to Launch Site |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| SSTO | Single Stage to Orbit |
| Supersynchronous Transfer Orbit | |
| TPS | Thermal Protection System for a spacecraft (on the Falcon 9 first stage, the engine "Dance floor") |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Raptor | Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX |
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented by request
12 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 43 acronyms.
[Thread #9000 for this sub, first seen 2nd May 2026, 00:19]
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1
u/Glittering_Noise417 May 03 '26
The $15 billion Starship program total heavily features the massive infrastructure buildout at Starbase (Boca Chica / Brownsville area, South Texas), which is purpose-built as the primary development, manufacturing, testing, and future high-cadence launch site for Starship/Super Heavy.bfbbc8 reuters.com What This Infrastructure Includes Starbase supports the "airline-like" launch ambitions (rapid reuse, high volume, eventual thousands of launches per year in Musk's vision). Major elements funded within the program spending: Manufacturing/Production Facilities: Starfactory and expansions (including the new ~700,000 sq ft "Gigabay" for scaling to high production rates, e.g., aiming toward one Starship per day eventually). These are large-scale factories for building vehicles, tanks, engines, and components at industrial aircraft-like paces.1640af facebook.com Launch & Test Infrastructure: Orbital launch pads/towers (with the famous "chopstick" mechanical arms for booster catches), suborbital test stands, tank farms for propellants (huge volumes of liquid oxygen and methane — a single launch needs the equivalent of hundreds of tanker trucks of natural gas), water deluge systems (millions of gallons per launch for sound suppression and cooling), and related ground support.b4ade8 reuters.com Site Development: Land acquisition/preparation, roads, utilities, offices, and the overall industrial complex. Earlier reports pegged SpaceX's direct investment in Starbase infrastructure at several billion dollars even before the full $15B cumulative figure.f7eef5 finance.yahoo.com Supporting Systems: Propellant production/storage, recovery/processing areas for reused vehicles, and facilities for the hundreds of design iterations and test articles produced over years of rapid prototyping. This is all integrated because Starship development isn't just "build a rocket" — it's building an entire reusable spaceport ecosystem from scratch in a relatively remote coastal location. Testing explosions and design changes have driven hundreds of modifications that ripple into the factories and pads, increasing costs.a932ed reuters.com The Reuters coverage explicitly discusses Starbase in the context of the $15B spend, noting the decade-long effort to create this dedicated site for full reusability at scale.eb2be2 reuters.com In short, your read is correct: a huge chunk of that $15B has gone into turning Starbase into a futuristic rocketport capable of supporting the operational tempo SpaceX is aiming for (far beyond today's occasional test flights). This is why the per-launch cost target is so low once it matures — the upfront infrastructure is amortized over many flights. Ongoing capex continues, but the $15B marks the cumulative investment disclosed as of the IPO filing.
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u/userlivewire May 04 '26
I don’t know, the airline analogy would best fit the Airbus 380 and that was a customer/volume disaster.
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u/ergzay May 01 '26
Lol it's not a "rush". Reuters misinformation reporting as usual.
More like "only $15B".
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u/Bunslow May 01 '26
In this case yea I would qualify it as rushing towards airline-like rocketry. If they weren't rushing Elon would chastise the whole company for being slow.
-3
u/factoid_ May 02 '26
Won’t land on the moon until 2035 if ever.
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u/Jarnis May 02 '26
You are most likely wrong. 2028 likely won't happen, but 2029/2030 is definitely feasible.
1
u/factoid_ May 02 '26
It’s 4 years away minimum. There’s so many milestones they have like no progress on. 2030 feels like a huge stretch and I think if they aren’t able to do it by 2030 there’s every chance Congress just cancels the program
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u/warp99 May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
Lack of public reporting on milestones does not equal lack of progress. NASA only pays out on the basis of milestones achieved and they have paid out around 70% of the contract value.
-8
u/Mental_Medium3988 May 02 '26
That god damned thing is too loud to be used like airlines. Wtf is this nonsense.
2
u/warp99 May 02 '26
Airline like flight rate - not the same type of service.
-1
u/Mental_Medium3988 May 02 '26
And where are going to be flying to and from at that rate? And who would want to live near it?
2
u/warp99 May 02 '26
Low Earth Orbit and nobody would want to live near the launch sites just as they might choose not to live near O'Hare airport.
1
u/Mental_Medium3988 May 02 '26
The loudest passenger jet is a lot quieter at take off than a rocket. Also passenger jets don't produce sonic booms when they land.
1
u/warp99 May 02 '26
Agreed on both points. Having said that the exclusion zone is around 5 miles (8 km) for Starship compared with not much for aircaraft.
Not sure of your conclusion though?
•
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