Thread

SpaceX's Starship launching to orbit for first time ever today

304 points · 367 comments · geox

Zigurd · 1790601391 · focus · HN ↗
Having an impossible critical path will be the demise of the starship project. Too many things have to work that cannot be tested out of order. Too many of those things that needed to work years ago still don't. And those are the easy ones.
The items I'm listing here are just a subset of the critical path, and each milestone along the way will take months, optimistically, and years more realistically. To the point that starship won't be relevant to moon missions or any commercial use by the time it does what it needs to do to even partially fulfill the plans for it:
It needs to meet payload specifications. Currently it is off by a factor of two, which sounds doable until you realize the spec is 100 tons, and they need to find 50 tons more capacity by shedding weight elsewhere in the system.
It needs a launch cadence fast enough so that refueling doesn't take 15 separate starship tankers. Currently it would take years to refuel one single starship to make a one-way trip to the moon.
There's just a minor milestone on the way to that launch cadence: catching both stages.
Once both stages are reliably caught after a mission, refurbishment needs to be minimal. Proving that out will take several missions.
This is a simplified list of items on the critical path, but reaching each of these items has risks, and if those risks prove to be problems to solve, then each of those problems has a list of tasks and tests associated with it.
Some people think very highly of Elon for proposing technologically elegant solutions. But he's got a really big blind spot for the project management implications.
1. netdur · 1790601586 · focus · HN ↗
  The OP will go on or not, I don't need to think high or low of Mask
2. peab · 1790601626 · focus · HN ↗
  I'm sure you also thought falcon was going to fail, Tesla would never work out, and Twitter would collapse after Elon bought it.
  1. toasty228 · 1790601861 · focus · HN ↗
    Conveniently ignoring every of his failed projects, a timeless classic
    inglor_cz · 1790602190 · focus · HN ↗
    As far as space goes, there isn't any. The closest is Falcon Heavy, which turned out much more complicated and expensive than originally expected. But it flies.
    ronnier · 1790603060 · focus · HN ↗
    Failure is a part of life and is one aspect of our growth as humans. If one has never failed then one has probably never attempted to do much in life.
    toasty228 · 1790603488 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    orangecat · 1790605114 · focus · HN ↗
    Noted failure Babe Ruth struck out 1330 times, which was a record that lasted until Mickey Mantle failed even harder.
  2. Zigurd · 1790601906 · focus · HN ↗
    Reusable falcon 9 boosters are an informative history: how many years did it take to successfully land a falcon 9 booster? Scale your expectations appropriately.
    SenHeng · 1790602289 · focus · HN ↗
    But it happened still.
    panick21_ · 1790603048 · focus · HN ↗
    That's a bad comparison. Falcon 9 wasn't developed to be reusable. And it it didn't actually take that long. Also Starship has already proven that Starship booster can land. And Starship itself has cleanly landed on the ocean.
    There is still a question about turnaround time, but just comparing the state now to early Falcon 9 is not accurate.
  3. oblio · 1790602286 · focus · HN ↗
    Musk also has FSD, the Boring Company, Tesla Solar Roof, Cybertruck, Hyperloop, etc.
    Let's stop pretending he's God.
    ronnier · 1790602654 · focus · HN ↗
    Fsd is amazing. I use it daily, it completely changed my daily drive in that I don’t. All of my driving is now on fsd, I sit back and chill while the car takes me to my destination.
    totallymike · 1790603310 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    peab · 1790605005 · focus · HN ↗
    The craziest part about FSD is that people still think it doesn't work.
    The fact that you can pay the average price for a car, and get a car that fully drives itself today, is mind boggling.
    peab · 1790603468 · focus · HN ↗
    FSD is on the path of being incredibly successful. You really have to try it, if you haven't already.
    Boring Company is also on the path to being successful, it's just not advertised much.
    Solar roof - yes, this one I would mark as a failure.
    Cybertruck - they're still selling, so not a failure. But not as great as originally promised.
    Hyperloop - this could still come after boring company succeeds.
    Nobody is saying he's god. But maybe, he understands engineering better than some commenters on HN, that's all.
    oblio · 1790608109 · focus · HN ↗
    > Boring Company is also on the path to being successful, it's just not advertised much.
    ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!? It's a marketing gimmick with lower transport capacity than a horse and buggy (and similar travel speed!) that's distracting cities like Vegas and Nashville from actual public transit.
    It's an abject failure.
    > If you were to take what should be public transportation planning and turn it into a neoliberal nightmare, this is exactly what you would get".
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegas_Loop" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegas_Loop
    > Hyperloop - this could still come after boring company succeeds.
    If my grandma had wheels, she'd be a bycicle.
    Also, my guess is that you guys are all American. For the kind of money they're investing they could just start an automous train/tram company and the environment and humanity would be much better off.
    peab · 1790611698 · focus · HN ↗
    Ah yes - a company is such a failure that it recently raised 3 billion dollars at a 23 billion dollar valuation?
    If it's successful, their boring machine will tunnel 10x faster and 10x cheaper than competitors, and it will be the one making new tunnels for all sorts of trains.
    oblio · 1790615037 · focus · HN ↗
    That just says Musk is a good company salesman. Speaking of which, I can't find news about this funding round (found it; turns out there is a lot of dumb money out there). Plus Musk is famous for shady company operations (SolarCity being acquired by Tesla at an inflated price to pay off his family).
    Last I read about them their tunnel boring tech wasn't revolutionary, it was just smaller diameter tunnels.
    blisterpeanuts · 1790644991 · focus · HN ↗
    Typically, tunneling involves abandoning the tunneling machine underground because it's too difficult and expensive to retrieve. The Boring Company's innovation was to find a way to retrieve the machine inexpensively, thus significantly reducing the cost of tunneling.
    They also operate the machines remotely, so that humans are not risking their lives underground.
    Tunnels are a good thing. They cut across a city without paving over more greenery. They will reduce surface traffic.
    [deleted] · 1790605061 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    oblio · 1790608156 · focus · HN ↗
    We have truly lost the plot, oh well, once you make something part of your identity, reason won't take it out.
    qwerpy · 1790611781 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah seriously. Saw a Rivian parked with all kinds of anti-Elon accessories: custom license plate, anti-Elon bumper sticker AND a anti-cybertruck sticker. Was fun to park my cybertruck next to it and take some joke photos but in retrospect I should probably keep my distance from unhinged people like that.
    albatross79 · 1790645703 · focus · HN ↗
    Lol, you bought a cybertruck?
    qwerpy · 1790694688 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah it’s awesome! Can’t think of a better, safer vehicle for an active family. Charges for free from my roof solar. Carries all the large toys. Best of all it drives itself anywhere I need to go, it’s like I have my own driver.
  4. rTX5CMRXIfFG · 1790602321 · focus · HN ↗
    i personally wanted those to work (except Twitter, i believe social media is net net bad for society)... and yet i don't feel the need to jerk him off with my hands
  5. snarfy · 1790602329 · focus · HN ↗
    Cybertrucks, solar roofs and SolarCity failed just the same.
    marcusverus · 1790602637 · focus · HN ↗
    Cybertruck? The best selling electric truck on the market?
    jsiepkes · 1790603811 · focus · HN ↗
    Best selling electic truck on the market? Doesn't seem like it: <a href="https://electrek.co/2026/01/13/ford-f150-lightning-outsold-tesla-cybertruck-canceled-not-selling-enough/" rel="nofollow">https://electrek.co/2026/01/13/ford-f150-lightning-outsold-t...
    And the biggest customer is SpaceX: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-bought-tesla-cybertrucks-megapack-ipo-s1-2026-5" rel="nofollow">https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-bought-tesla-cybertru...
    marknutter · 1790605172 · focus · HN ↗
    Oh, it's only the second best selling electric truck on the market. What a massive failure.
    kg · 1790603867 · focus · HN ↗
    It sold so well that Musk had to have SpaceX buy up millions and millions worth of unsold inventory.
3. motionlessveloc · 1790601765 · focus · HN ↗
  Starship's commercial viability rests almost entirely on whether it can orbit Starlink satellites more cheaply than Falcon. Falcon is around $3000/kg, Starship was promised at $100/kg, I doubt even Elon believes that number but it does mean they have plenty of buffer and cutting capacity from 50T to 100T is not the end of the world.
  I agree that the Human Landing System plan for the moon is a shitshow, but it's almost a distraction for SpaceX at this point, and it would not surprise me if the whole program gets axed by whoever comes after Trump.
  1. estearum · 1790602756 · focus · HN ↗
    Its commercial viability (not program success) depends on Starlink launch, sure. But also: that depends on Starlink's viability and value.
    Selling sub-fiber Internet access into a globe increasingly covered in fiber is a silly long-term value proposition.
    Maken · 1790603165 · focus · HN ↗
    Starlink is just the civil version of Starshield. As long as the US Army needs unrestricted internet access across the globe Starlink will continue to exist.
    estearum · 1790610928 · focus · HN ↗
    I didn't doubt that Starlink will continue to exist.
    Schiendelman · 1790603849 · focus · HN ↗
    Is it? I think you might think differently if you challenge yourself to calculate the total addressable market for Starlink.
    estearum · 1790605756 · focus · HN ↗
    The vast majority of that market is too poor to afford Starlink and as soon as they're not, their top priority will be to invest the capex to replace it with the vastly superior terrestrial modalities.
    Schiendelman · 1790610430 · focus · HN ↗
    Their top priority? Compared to what?
    estearum · 1790610902 · focus · HN ↗
    Compared to spending large amounts of money on shitty space-internet?
    Zigurd · 1790608215 · focus · HN ↗
    The elephant in the Starlink business model room is the fact that terrestrial wireless keeps getting cheaper and faster. To be a good Starlink customer you need to be prosperous enough to afford it, while being far enough away from an urban center to have little or no chance of being served by terrestrial wireless services.
    That's a very special TAM to begin with, and the harsh part is that it shrinks over time.
    Schiendelman · 1790610405 · focus · HN ↗
    As a product manager, I can tell you you're making a mistake in the way you're thinking about this. If you actually try calculating it, you'll figure it out.
    estearum · 1790611008 · focus · HN ↗
    Makes sense. Product Management seems to attract the economically illiterate.
    bluecalm · 1790604765 · focus · HN ↗
    Starlink has about 13 million subscribers today and makes around 500$/year net on average per subscriber. It's still growing fast and will get faster and more reliable. You will also be able to use from your phone quite soon. It can very realistically get to 100 million subscribers which is going to generate 50 billion/year of profit. They have 0 competition in that space. Even if they make half of that it's still a 1 trillion dollar company right there.
    You are saying "sub-fiber" but Starlink will likely be faster for long round trips once enough new gen satellites are deployed.
    That comes before the whole datacenters in space conversation.
    chasd00 · 1790623959 · focus · HN ↗
    > You will also be able to use from your phone quite soon
    This, I think, is a much bigger deal than a lot of people realize. A global telephone provider that works in the middle of the ocean or in the middle of the dessert or pretty much anywhere on the planet. The simplification to international travel alone would be worth switching.
    fragmede · 1790624314 · focus · HN ↗
    Apple is currently doing this via Globalstar's satellites for sos messaging.
    estearum · 1790628165 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah I'll totally spend more than 0 seconds of my life and $0 switching telephony providers so that I can have connectivity when I'm ... checks notes ... in the middle of the ocean.
    Huge huge untapped market of people just like me.
    bluecalm · 1790663478 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah you are not the target demographic. I buy e-sims all the time, have 2 plans from two different countries and I am already thinking about buying Starlink mini (waiting for the new device) because I am often in regions with terrible coverage.
    So let's call it 50-50?
    fragmede · 1790624189 · focus · HN ↗
    Amazon Leo has already launched almost 400 satellites, with expected service 2027 so there's one competitor approaching in that space.
    xoa · 1790606298 · focus · HN ↗
    >Selling sub-fiber Internet access into a globe increasingly covered in fiber is a silly long-term value proposition.
    Wow, that's so amazing estaerum, you've figured out how to get photonic-bandgap (hollow core) fiber to transoceanic airlines and ships, as well as drones, and satellites in orbit!? Would you mind sharing any hints on this great breakthrough you've made?
    ...or did you just sorta somehow completely ignore the whole "terminals can be mobile" aspect of Starlink, as well as latency of free space optical vs conventional fiber?
    estearum · 1790607263 · focus · HN ↗
    The market for airlines, ships, drones, and satellites is - quite obviously - nowhere near large enough to justify Starship lmao
    80% of the Starlink subscriber base is fixed points and that will grow.
    xoa · 1790621453 · focus · HN ↗
    >The market for airlines, ships, drones, and satellites is - quite obviously - nowhere near large enough to justify Starship lmao
    The only thing that's "quite obvious" is that you're not merely incredibly, confidently ignorant, you're also so deeply uncurious you can't even be bothered to take 30 seconds to check your priors. Starlink's present annual revenue is $11.3 billion with $4.4 billion in income on that. The total global civil aviation (commercial airline) fleet size is over forty thousand aircraft [0]. Expand that to general aviation including business jets etc and it grows to something like half a million. Starlink actually publishes their general aviation plan pricing [1], which for CA is going to be one of the top two plans that don't have data limits and thus $12500 or $20000 per aircraft. From what I can find international flights account for something like 20-30% of all flights, and maybe 5-10% are intercontinental. But plans are per aircraft per month, and plenty of airliners use the same plane to fly across a continent and then also fly intercontiental, which would still need the highest plan. So using a 90/10 split that'd be an average of $13500/plane, for a TAM of $6.7 billion per year just for CA and maybe another $1-4 billion for GA (which is a lot more complicated to reason about). And the profit margins there are going to be high.
    So JUST aviation, not even touching on maritime or everything else mobile, has the potential at present market size to approach the entire current revenue of Starlink by itself. And they have barely even gotten started with cellular, or doing other stuff like Earth sensing with the sats that bigger, higher power birds makes more feasible.
    You claim it's "quite obvious" mobile applications don't justify Starlink. It's not any such thing.
    >80% of the Starlink subscriber base is fixed points and that will grow.
    You need a lot more than 5x the residential plans at $55/month to approach $10-20k/month. Of course, some of those fixed points are business/enterprise customers on higher priced plans, but those customers are likely to be using Starlink already (as we are) as part of a redundancy plan alongside fiber, so your original argument about spreading fiber is perfectly irrelevant to those users anyway.
    ----
    0: <a href="https://statbase.org/datasets/air-rail-and-water-transportation/aircraft-fleet-by-company/" rel="nofollow">https://statbase.org/datasets/air-rail-and-water-transportat...
    1: <a href="https://starlink.com/support/article/78b0428b-4546-0b7f-ea45-fdd94c297f35" rel="nofollow">https://starlink.com/support/article/78b0428b-4546-0b7f-ea45...
    estearum · 1790628059 · focus · HN ↗
    Ah, I see you're very confused.
    The question of whether "portable Starlink" (the aviation/maritime++ category we're talking about) justifies Starship's existence is whether the marginal increase in payload capacity or efficiency of Starship over Falcon produces a marginal increase in "portable Starlink" profit that's multiples beyond the amortized development cost and the launch costs of Starship.
    Given that Starlink's entire enterprise is probably loss-making if it had to pay for its own launch capacity (it currently pays SpaceX Space $0 and is accounted for just in hardware depreciation, so frontloads profit and all the costs are incurred in coming years)... the answer is almost certainly no.
    And for what it's worth, the one aircraft I've been on with Starlink Internet was (by a gigantic margin) the worst in-flight wifi experience I've had in 10 years. I'm curious how much of cost-savings it is over the current alternatives. I hope it's a lot because there's a long road between here and whenever I'd willingly buy a seat on a Starlink-connected flight again.
    xoa · 1790632153 · focus · HN ↗
    >Ah, I see you're very confused.
    Nah, that'd be you, as well as a very insufferable asshole.
    >The question of whether "portable Starlink" (the aviation/maritime++ category we're talking about) justifies Starship's existence is whether the marginal increase in payload capacity or efficiency of Starship over Falcon produces a marginal increase in "portable Starlink" profit that's multiples beyond the amortized development cost and the launch costs of Starship.
    And it clearly does, as I showed you. It's not even close, they're constrained on capabilities not demand right now. Starship total dev cost has been about $15 billion. Access to even a tiny piece of the global cellular market justifies that.
    >Given that Starlink's entire enterprise is probably loss-making if it had to pay for its own launch capacity (it currently pays SpaceX Space $0 and is accounted for just in hardware depreciation, so frontloads profit and all the costs are incurred in coming years)... the answer is almost certainly no.
    Speaking of "lmao", now you're resorting to make believe.
    >And for what it's worth
    Nothing, in your case. I'm also being kind to you and only talking about the fundamental thing it does that fiber can never do, vs your hilarious suggestion that fiber will rollout worldwide to everyone on the planet in or even in the US in the foreseeable future. I don't think the US has even reached 50% fiber coverage yet.
    estearum · 1790637465 · focus · HN ↗
    > Starship total dev cost has been about $15 billion. Access to even a tiny piece of the global cellular market justifies that.
    Similarly I can justify developing a $15 billion pizza oven because the pizza industry is $250 billion. And are you even reading the words in front of you? The question is the marginal improvement in their ability to serve that unmet demand via Starship versus Falcon. You said literally nothing about this question and still haven't. Do you understand the question?
    > now you're resorting to make believe.
    Describing SpaceX's accounting practices and Starlink's actual launch costs is... make believe? Very substantive response.
    > I'm also being kind to you and...
    I didn't claim fiber will roll out to everyone on the planet, or even everyone in the US. I said the Starlink market is clearly shrinking, and Starlink's success will ironically accelerate that shrinkage because people who get access to shitty Internet are far, far more motivated to get good connectivity than people who have no connectivity at all.
    And sure, let's assume fiber hasn't reached 50%. Even broadband is a vastly superior experience to Starlink. You can disprove this by showing me any evidence of a substantial number of people who have access to fiber or broadband and opt to use Starlink as their primary ISP. I would guess this set is approximately null, as someone who ordered Starlink for his house and then filed an FCC complaint to get fiber brought out to it instead. I would have to have been literally braindead to use Starlink.
    [deleted] · 1790704426 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  2. inglor_cz · 1790602833 · focus · HN ↗
    It won't get axed, the race with China is on.
  3. Zigurd · 1790609415 · focus · HN ↗
    The problem is not that they are not meeting their payload spec, or that they have not demonstrated in orbit refueling.
    The problem lies in the relationship of those two milestones: if you can't meet payload, it takes way too many starships to refuel, no matter how well the fuel transfer works.
    Every dead project demonstrates progress every week, right up until the day it is canceled.
4. timschmidt · 1790601790 · focus · HN ↗
  They've reached orbit, and at the time of this comment are preparing to deploy Starlink sats. Which means they've successfully closed the economic development loop for the Starship program. Falcon 9 can't launch Starlink v3, only Starship can. They've already demonstrated successful booster catch. Even if they discard Ship in the ocean after every launch they're no worse off than with Falcon 9 (which also discards it's upper stage).
  They'll ramp falcon flights down quickly. Ramp up Starship launches just as quickly. And in a couple years time we'll have a blooper reel like this one but larger by 10x: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ
  Edit: Starlink deployed.
  1. estearum · 1790602589 · focus · HN ↗
    Now the goalposts for Starship is just whether it can put Starlink into orbit?
    You seem to be suggesting that Starship just needs to self-fund its own development, and then the question of whether that development leads somewhere desirable/valuable is de facto answered or irrelevant. Why would that be the case?
    panick21_ · 1790602948 · focus · HN ↗
    Now the point of economic sustainability was always putting Starlink into orbit. That's something people in the space community have said from the beginning.
    And both the booster and the Starship itself have proven that they can get back to ground mostly intact. So its not like they are only working on 'getting to orbit'. And clearly it is leading something desirable if the have proven that they can basically land the second and first stage, something nobody else has ever achieved.
    Question how fast they can make the turn around are still there along with other question. But once you can repeatably launch you can improve much faster as they did with Falcon 9. And you can do more and more tests in shorter time, accelerating development.
    timschmidt · 1790602983 · focus · HN ↗
    > Now the goalposts
    Milestones. Engineers deal in milestones. Goalposts are for sportsball.
    estearum · 1790605871 · focus · HN ↗
    So reply to the immediately following sentence that asks you to connect the milestone to the next.
    timschmidt · 1790606789 · focus · HN ↗
    Frankly that sentence doesn't make much sense. Would you mind rephrasing your question?
    estearum · 1790607391 · focus · HN ↗
    > You seem to be suggesting that Starship just needs to self-fund its own development, and then the question of whether that development leads somewhere desirable/valuable is de facto answered or irrelevant. Why would that be the case?
    Reply please.
    timschmidt · 1790609430 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, that's the sentence that doesn't make much sense. Would you mind re-stating your question?
    estearum · 1790610821 · focus · HN ↗
    Your comment says Starlink deployability makes Starship economically sustainable.
    Starship's goals are not merely to be "economically sustainable." SpaceX investors are not investing in a marginally more efficient Starlink deployment system.
    You seem to be suggesting that it's a foregone conclusion that from here (economic sustainability via Starlink) that Starship will achieve its much grander ambitions. Is this what you're suggesting? And if so, evidenced by what?
    timschmidt · 1790613501 · focus · HN ↗
    > Starship's goals
    Rockets don't have goals. People do. Rockets have features like payload capacity, thrust, cost/ton to orbit, reusability, etc. On which Starship seems to be doing excellently compared to... everyone else.
    > SpaceX investors are not investing in a marginally more efficient Starlink deployment system.
    IDK what any given investor's rationale is without asking them, and neither do you. Groups, like rockets, are not possessed of singular will.
    > You seem to be suggesting that it's a foregone conclusion that ... Starship will achieve its much grander ambitions.
    You seem to be the only one who's said such a thing. However, since you bring it up, I will point out that engineering is a process, akin to science, and success merely takes enough determination and resources to keep trying. SpaceX seem to repeatedly demonstrate the determination, and successfully launching Starlink with Starship provides the resources.
    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. I trust the process. I'm a fan of the process. You and I get to have this conversation because science and engineering work, rockets fly because science and engineering work. I'm not sure how one would even attempt to argue otherwise.
    estearum · 1790613797 · focus · HN ↗
    > 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.
    timschmidt · 1790614699 · focus · HN ↗
    > 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.
    estearum · 1790616105 · focus · HN ↗
    You are continuing to ignore the actual stated goals of the program have been cut back over and over and over. You are acting as if they have held ambitious goals and are marching towards them. The program is clearly not working as they intended or else they would not be cutting their goals.
    And no, despite their continuous cutting back on ambition, it's still obviously a remarkable program absolutely chock full of amazing achievements. That does not mean the program is a success or is situated to be a success, which is what the original comment was talking about that you "rebutted" by stating they've achieved an intermediate milestone.
    chasd00 · 1790623222 · focus · HN ↗
    If Starship can self-fund its own development then there's no reason for it to be cancelled, it's making money and an asset to SpaceX. The only way to absolutely guarantee no desirable/valuable outcome of the program is to cancel it. So i would say the question of whether that development leads somewhere desirable/valuable is now irrelevant (from a financial survival perspective). The only direction for the value of Starship to go now is up.
    Don't forget, there are no politicians involved here. No election cycle for teams to switch and cancel the other side's work out of spite. SpaceX is only beholden to its shareholders.
    estearum · 1790629751 · focus · HN ↗
    I am jealous of your world of no opportunity cost! Simpler place, it seems.
    DarmokJalad1701 · 1790652549 · focus · HN ↗
    Indeed, it is simpler when the beancounters who can't see past the next quarter are not in charge.
    estearum · 1790680699 · focus · HN ↗
    Opportunity cost is not exclusively a financial concept. For example, the opportunity cost of smart people working on Facebook Ads is immense, despite probably actually being one of the best-remunerated things they could do.
    It's still not really clear where any of this SpaceX stuff goes besides "rockets cool and scifi planetary settlement cool". Planetary settlement is an absolutely dogshit idea that doesn't survive first contact with any reality.
  2. state_less · 1790603644 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm glad they gathered the courage to go for orbit and launched these v3 satellites so they can test real deployment of starlink v3. A bit of a cliffhanger for a few moments there. The starlink v3 direct-to-cell coverage will be a big upgrade when it comes online, allowing users without a terminal to use the constellation. And the laser based inter satellite communication is a big upgrade to how v3 can communicate. The catch, landing and recovery of both stages will be big next steps.
    SpaceX knows that pulling the risk out of system is the ask here and they continue to progress and push their limits and capabilities, which is a healthy sign for the US space industry and more broadly for technical progress worldwide.
5. s08148692 · 1790601867 · focus · HN ↗
  If people didn't try things just because they were hard we'd all be ploughing fields right now
  1. Zigurd · 1790602036 · focus · HN ↗
    If people didn't recognize when projects became impossible to complete, Lotus Modern Jazz would've shipped in the last year.
    timschmidt · 1790602475 · focus · HN ↗
    For something impossible to complete, it sure seems to be deploying a lot of Starlink satellites.
    kg · 1790603905 · focus · HN ↗
    Is deploying starlink satellites the end goal of Starship?
    timschmidt · 1790604210 · focus · HN ↗
    Putting Starlink sats in orbit is the economic engine that pays for Starship development and infrastructure build-out. You really think you get to skip straight to the end goal without establishing a way to fund it?
    bryanlarsen · 1790604497 · focus · HN ↗
    Deploying starlink satellites is the milestone that makes a viable project. Even if it fails on all remaining goals, it will continue flying regularly.
    timschmidt · 1790604727 · focus · HN ↗
    And it's amazing how much easier it is to test and iterate when you're making regular flights.
  2. usrbinbash · 1790602499 · focus · HN ↗
    Uh huh.
    Gentle reminder that Saturn 5 worked pretty much eprfectly on its maiden flight.
    plqbfbv · 1790603035 · focus · HN ↗
    > Gentle reminder that Saturn 5 worked pretty much eprfectly on its maiden flight.
    Yeah, except it costed 12x per-flight, ran at 30x/kg, and wasn't reusable. So not exactly the same thing.
    usrbinbash · 1790682418 · focus · HN ↗
    Remind me again, how many orbital refuelings will it take to make starship reach the moon?
    timschmidt · 1790603115 · focus · HN ↗
    Saturn V was the culmination of a loooooong development history which included many rockets in the same family (hence the V), and some spectacular RUDs.
    dreamcompiler · 1790603174 · focus · HN ↗
    And it sent 3 people to the moon and brought them back with no refueling.
    60 years ago.
    inglor_cz · 1790603570 · focus · HN ↗
    Saturn V worked well, but we seem to be forgetting that Apollo 1 killed three astronauts on Earth and Apollo 13 almost killed another three in space.
    dreamcompiler · 1790605769 · focus · HN ↗
    I never forget either. Both were failures of the command/service module design, not the rocket.
    inglor_cz · 1790606073 · focus · HN ↗
    True, but ultimately Saturn V + Apollo was a stack intended to fly together, much like Booster + Starship. Both have/had to be reliable as a whole, with disastrous consequences if not. We can praise Saturn's V reliability, but it is just a part of the entire project, and it makes sense to judge the entire project as well.
    jve · 1790605520 · focus · HN ↗
    That's an incredible achievement. But you seem to be ignoring the goals of Starship program - to make economically viable and reusable means of space transportation.
    It's like after Jobs unveils iPhone to the world you'd comment that, meh, we could make telephone calls more than 100 years ago?
    marcusverus · 1790603276 · focus · HN ↗
    This comparison would make sense if we'd been giving Elon 5% of the federal budget like we did to the Apollo mission.
    inglor_cz · 1790603480 · focus · HN ↗
    Gentle reminder that the Apollo project was eating about 0.5 percent of the entire US GDP yearly. That buys a lot of engineers and other capacity.
    An equivalent of this would be about 160 billion USD a year today, and Starship is definitely at least an order of magnitude, perhaps two, cheaper than that.
6. inglor_cz · 1790601931 · focus · HN ↗
  "Currently it is off by a factor of two, which sounds doable until you realize the spec is 100 tons, and they need to find 50 tons more capacity by shedding weight elsewhere in the system."
  You can probably prolong the stack, exactly as they did with Falcon. Also, Raptor 3 is more powerful than previous models, and I would expect future Raptor 4 to add some oomph as well.
  "But he's got a really big blind spot for the project management implications."
  Uh, isn't Starbase evidence to the contrary? They can produce rockets and rocket engines faster than anyone else in the world. And Raptor unit cost is ridiculously low for a liquid rocket engine.
7. NitpickLawyer · 1790603202 · focus · HN ↗
  I'm saddened by this comment being upvoted a lot on this site. I'm a space nerd from EU and have been watching SpX since they were launching from an atol. This comment is the epitome of clueless negativity, wrapped in an umbrella of big words and a list of things that are neither important nor factually correct.
  Nothing listed in this comment is going to lead to "the demise of the starship project". And nothing listed there is original. We've heard it time and time again, when F9 was ready to launch, when F9 was ready to land, when F9 did land (bbbut they have to do it constantly), when F9 managed the first re-use (they need to do it at least 10 times so it's worth it) and so on and so forth.
  They've now launched AND landed >600 times already. Let's just say they know what they're doing.
  Anyway, for a bit of context: the current first orbital flight, with 26 satellites deploying right now, is adding the same amount of Starlink bandwidth as 10+ F9 launches. Let that sink in and re-do whatever cost/opportunity and "management" spiels you need to do. One flight > 10x F9 flights.
  That alone justifies the Starship. The rest is the cherry on top.
  1. Zigurd · 1790604515 · focus · HN ↗
    "That alone justifies..."
    ...keeping whatever project that should've been put to sleep months ago alive. Most people reading this have been on a software development project that fits this pattern of ignoring massively missed milestones and hoping to catch up. That's often accompanied by isolated economic arguments that are fragments of what started out as a coherent business case that can no longer be supported.
    tim333 · 1790608191 · focus · HN ↗
    >should've been put to sleep months ago
    The thing works and is launching satellites? And if they just continue as is it'll be the lowest cost per Kg to space?
    Seems quite successful even if the moon landing doesn't happen.
    DarmokJalad1701 · 1790652455 · focus · HN ↗
    > Most people reading this have been on a software development project that fits this pattern of ignoring massively missed milestones and hoping to catch up.
    And some of us work in the industry that is in the form it is today, as big as it is today, majorly due to the one company alone. The one that puts more mass into orbit every year than any other entity in the world - nation states included.
    As for "massively missed milestones" - it is easy to predict milestones when you are making CRUD apps in React. Not so when building the largest rocket that has ever existed, and making it fully reusable.
    > coherent business case that can no longer be supported.
    Lol. They operate the most successful and most profitable rocket in history, and they are confident enough that they have stopped taking bookings for it. And they just demonstrated a system that can bring the cost down another 1 or 2 orders of magnitude with nearly zero competition even close to them. No coherent business case indeed.
  2. medler · 1790723730 · focus · HN ↗
    > Anyway, for a bit of context: the current first orbital flight, with 26 satellites deploying right now, is adding the same amount of Starlink bandwidth as 10+ F9 launches.
    The mass being launched is roughly 50 metric tons, which is a bit over twice F9’s capacity. Yet it took something like 10x the propellant because of the fundamental rocket equation. I don’t think there’s a path to starship being economical
8. maxdo · 1790603466 · focus · HN ↗
  This post feels like written by a QA. This is their first semi operational flight . In its current state starship is a reason to be proud by any nation . It pushed science forward with cost and payload size never possible before . That’s only current state .
  Raptor 3 has its only 3rd flight . That’s why the payload is “only” ~50t. Just for the reference, it’s already one of the most capable rocket in the world as of today , and even with partial reusability it has future.
  They clearly doing rolling improvement , rollout and testing of many components of different readiness. Otherwise they will never ship anything.
9. indoordin0saur · 1790603552 · focus · HN ↗
  > they need to find 50 tons more capacity by shedding weight elsewhere in the system
  In it's current test iteration they are overengineering many parts and opting for heavier, cheaper versions since currently the ship gets thrown away each time. One example are the grid fins. On Falcon 9 they are made of titanium, but on Starship they are steel probably because it's just easier to work with and why put in extra effort for something that will end up in the gulf? If they just swap in titanium grid fins they'll save 3 tons in the weight of the booster and even more fuel since that extra weight won't be getting carried up.
10. small_model · 1790604482 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
11. jve · 1790605255 · focus · HN ↗
  I wonder how this type of comment would apply to software development world where something innovative is being built, currently not ideal but the devs would just look at it: Meh, it doesn't do X, it doesn't do Y, it does Z worse and it doesn't send email!
  Maybe AI applies here - from a few years of supercharged intellisense to builds stuff on its own. But even here I don't remember such a skepticism some folks are aiming at Starship.
  It's like running into R&D department and just pointing out at the flaws/not implemented features while you iterate on your product. Annoying.
  1. Zigurd · 1790607910 · focus · HN ↗
    AI and the success of agentic coding is an excellent example. It works because validation is external to the AI coding process. If it had to validate itself it wouldn't work. Luckily, humans created a lot of tools to validate the work of humans. If your use case doesn't match the characteristics of agentic coding, don't expect the same success. That kind of serendipity is rare when conditions for it are good, and the conditions for serendipity around rockets is never that good.
12. DarmokJalad1701 · 1790652141 · focus · HN ↗
  > or any commercial use
  As it stands today - Starship Flight 14 just deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, 52 tonnes total. At around $110M marginal per launch, that is about $2.1M per tonne. A Falcon 9 at $30M carrying 15 tonnes is about $2M per tonne. So even as a fully expendable rocket, Starship is already basically in Falcon 9 cost-per-ton territory.
  > and they need to find 50 tons more capacity by shedding weight elsewhere in the system.
  Or increase performance in the engines and elsewhere. Falcon 9 Block 1 was 9000kg to LEO. The Block 5 that is flying now is 22000 kg to LEO. It's not magic. They already have a path forward with Raptor 4 and other improvements.
  > needs a launch cadence fast enough so that refueling doesn't take 15 separate starship tankers
  They don't need to launch special tanker missions for a depot. Their goal is to start launching Starlinks and AI inference sats en-masse. Once they demonstrate on-orbit fuel transfer, the easiest way is to fill the depot during normal missions. They can cut out some payload from specific flights to carry excess fuel and top off the depot. The sheer scale of their other flights is enough to keep it full. It is infrastructure that they need for higher energy missions. I doubt they are going to launch 15 dedicated flights just to fill up the tank.
  > just a minor milestone on the way to that launch cadence: catching both stages.
  They can hit massive cadence even fully expending every Starship, still work out kinks with reusability in the process and still make a profit off of Starlinks given their pace of production.
  And given what they have shown so far, I think they are going to try to catch both in the next 2-3 flights barring unforeseen issues.
  > Once both stages are reliably caught after a mission, refurbishment needs to be minimal
  Nope. Even a cadence of once a week means that by the time they have 10+ launch pads up (in LA+FL+TX), they can be launching once a day if not more frequently. Their rate of production can already sustain that. What's missing is fuel source which will get built out in Louisiana.
  > really big blind spot for the project management implications
  Lol. The guy got partially reusable rockets and human rated spacecraft working at a cadence unheard of in the aerospace industry. Quite the accomplishment with such a blind spot for the project management!
  1. Zigurd · 1790689226 · focus · HN ↗
    This mindset kills projects. Even worse it prevents capital allocation to productive projects by keeping dead projects as zombies walking around consuming resources. This happens in software development all the time on projects that are months to years late yet every status meeting shows incremental progress. Usually it takes some kind of specific crisis like a customer walking away from a product in development to get senior management involved enough to ask whether a project actually converges on completion. You can also see how that kind of clarity is not obtainable here.
    Now that the most recent test flight is complete, we can see a glaring hole in the optimistic projections: everyone is celebrating that an orbital insertion was possible even with an engine out on the upper stage, and multiple engines failed to light on the booster when it ran a simulation of a return to launch. It's nice that the mission did not fail due to failed engines. But it also means that it will likely take years of further development to attain rapid reuse.
    This person is living in the same days of future past when people didn't utterly dismiss the PowerPoint Mars colony. We now know better, and even the stans have limited themselves to touting an oversized rocket for orbital launches.

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