alt Hacker NewsThe question is not even whether or not Starship works. Starship is, in theory, designed with the idea of getting many, many payloads to Mars. However, getting payloads to Mars is not currently something that anyone is paying for; even NASA isn't going to focus on Mars for at least another decade (likely more). And in the meantime, it's not like we don't have rockets capable of getting payloads to Mars (the Saturn V was fully capable of doing so in the 60s). Likewise in the meantime, the Artemis plans that look to require a dozen+ launches for a single moonshot aren't painting Starship in a favorable light.
So what is the near-to-medium-term economic prospect of Starship? That's the question. You can't just say "bigger rocket make more money", because there exists a useful upper to the size of payloads that companies actually want to ship to LEO in practice. To use an analogy, we have jumbo jets, but most flights are not on jumbo jets.
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> because there exists a useful upper to the size of payloads that companies actually want to ship to LEO in practice
This is only true because we are so completely beholden to the tyranny of the rocket equation with the current status quo. With the $/kg (and payload volume) that Starship would unlock, the entire ELO/GEO/Interplanetary/Deep Space market looks very different.
Labs in space. Hotels in space. Weapons in space. Much more interesting satellites in space. More government science missions. Privately funded science/research missions. etc
> there exists a useful upper to the size of payloads that companies actually want to ship to LEO in practice
Well, they are going to live with multi-customer payloads if Starship can do it for a tenth of the price. There's already a large market for ride-sharing and it's only going to get bigger.
The Saturn V payload to LEO is large, but the payload to the Moon was much smaller (the Eagle lander was less than ten tons on touchdown, with a couple of tons of cargo). Starship might be able to put 100 tons on the Moon, because of orbital refueling, which is the reason they need several Starship launches.
It’s not really sensible to compare a single spacecraft with what is essentially a fleet of ships with an order of magnitude greater cargo capacity. It’s the possibility of refueling that unlocks the ability to push really large payloads beyond LEO, and many of the more audacious plans (like a Moon base) do require a lot of cargo well beyond LEO.