alt Hacker News> Rockets don't have goals. People do.
Cute but it's quite obvious I'm referring to the Starship program. And no, the payload continues to fall and is now not even remotely close to being able to achieve the program goals on pretty much any timeline at all.
> IDK what any given investor's rationale is without asking them, and neither do you. Groups, like rockets, are not possessed of singular will.
No you can actually infer from the revenue multiple that the market is pricing quite a bit more than "slightly cheaper Starlink." Of course you can play stupid if you want, because playing not-stupid would require your opinions to confront reality, but it's a very transparent play.
> I see what they've achieved already, and expect them to continue applying the same process. I'm not sure how far they'll go. But it's a fun ride already.
Uh huh....
Okay so we went from "Starship is a successful program because Starlink makes it economically sustainable" to "I don't care or know what Starship is trying to do, I don't care or know how successfully they're doing it, but rocket go up is a fun ride already."
The history of Starship is one of continuously lowering the ambitions and slowly climbing towards the new, lower ambition. Arguably fine, but it's frankly beyond delusional to be acting like this is some inexorable march towards Mars (which is literally no longer a goal at all anymore, because they can't do it with Starship).
It started at 100 tons of payload to Mars. Now the goal is 200 tons to LEO, with only 35-50 tons being demonstrated today.
> Cute but it's quite obvious I'm referring to
Comfortable with your own loose wording, but lawyering over others. I see.
> And no, the payload continues to fall and is now not even remotely close to being able to achieve the program goals
Payload was also much lower on early Falcon 9's. Virtually every rocket family is a family and not one model because they get stretched, engines get added and tweaked, etc. Reduced payload capacity is a boring, normal, and expected situation for early production design. Same goes for planes. What you see as failure is an initial qualified engineering milestone. It seems to me that you must understand the concept of iteration. It also seems like you think 50T to LEO is not incredible in and of itself.
Perhaps you are the sort of person who is unhappy at weddings?
This mindset that because something which is under development is not finished yet, it has failed or is failing, can only come from someone who has never made anything themselves. The misunderstanding is so complete. I suppose it's a mindset some folks have to unlearn to help themselves.
> "Starship is a successful program because Starlink makes it economically sustainable" to "I don't care or know what Starship is trying to do, I don't care or know how successfully they're doing it, but rocket go up is a fun ride already."
These are your constructions and do not accurately reflect anything I've said. It seems like you're just looking for arguments and not genuine understanding. I won't give you any more argument. Good evening.