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lukeschlather • today at 12:02 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

I'm excited at the prospect of Starship landing on the moon. 100T payloads are maybe not required to make it happen, but probably are. For those of us who care about Artemis IV happening on schedule, being disappointed in a 52t payload capacity is very straightforward.

I'm not excited about more Starlink satellites.


Replies

tristanj • today at 12:49 AM

Starlink payloads are the literally the path to making Starship human spaceflight ready. Starship has to launch dozens to hundreds of times to identify and fix low probability failures. Without frequent Starlink flights testing and debugging the vehicle, it would take far longer to build a safe and reliable Starship.

They're also highly profitable, and fund/subsidize future missions. Recall, Starship development was funded by Starlink.