alt Hacker NewsStarship is, essentially, Space Shuttle done right: fully reusable booster without solid boosters (avoids Challenger disaster) and orbiter stacked on top instead of on the side (avoid Columbia disaster).
The original designs for the Space Shuttle had the booster (with wings!) return to the launch site, but the cost for two new crewed vehicles was too large, so they scaled it back to the compromised version.
Even more revolutionary, compared to Shuttle, Starship is built on an assembly line. They can build a booster ever 4 weeks and a ship every 2 weeks.
The future we were promised in the 1970s is about to become real.
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"fully reusable" is highly aspirational.
They have barely reflown a handful of tiles, and have not reflown any engines.
Essentially, the two things you'd expect to break will probably still break.
The Space Shuttle took 2 people into orbit on its first launch and returned them safely to earth. On the first attempt. On the first test of any of the hardware into space. In 1981.
Starship did not and has not done that and until it does I will continue to hold reservations.
I do not see this Starship and its mission profile ever being a human-rated system in this incarnation, ever.
A really cheap way to launch mass into LEO? Sure, I'll give it that.
>> Even more revolutionary, compared to Shuttle, Starship is built on an assembly line. They can build a booster ever 4 weeks and a ship every 2 weeks.
Note that they are also scaling up production in a big way, because they want to launch weekly soon, and then daily. Not sure if we will get to the latter anytime soon but I'm also not going to bet against Elon.
Space shuttle was a reliable recovery vehicle too.
I see a need for maintenance crews and large payload recovery in the future.
Starship doesn't seem like the tool for that, and no tool is in development for it TMK?