Thread

1. paulus_magnus2 · 1790605967 · focus · HN ↗

   Starship is not yet reusable but they have the MVP and a fantastic position to iterate forward.

   -- they have an orbital launcher with the largest diameter cargo bay

   -- larger sats have bigger antennas and bigger PV area and more bus power. this scales as diam^2

   -- 26 x Starlink v3 ~40-65 tons to LEO

   -- every launch generates revenue, locks out the orbit for competitors.

   -- they can launch more volume, more mass and cheaper than anyone else by a large margin

   -- the design is validated - things will work

   -- there is technical debt, issues but the rocket did the job

   Caveats

   -- timelines for full reusability are optimistic etc

   -- there will be other issues in scaling to launching gigawats into orbit

   -- cooling will have to be

   -- Musk might go Full Villan mode before the thing works

   [meta] I really didn't like that other negative comment getting voted to the top. Looks like it's made by someone who never worked in a bigco. For every bigco I worked, at any time there were hundreds if not thousands of open issues. You could list them and try arguing the company is about to fail and you'd scare people who don't know better.

   It's the judgement of the severity of the issue that matters not #no_of_issues. And if there were 0 issues would our job exist?

   [edit] getting the formatting right is very hard, maybe we could get a preview / TinyMCE ?

   1. trencedamp · 1790611117 · focus · HN ↗

      Is nobody concerned about putting things in a ship that explodes every other time they launch it

      1. jfoster · 1790612641 · focus · HN ↗

         Falcon 9 used to do that when being tested.

         They push them to the limits in testing/development to make them reliable in production.

         Starship still in testing/development.

         1. spwa4 · 1790625185 · focus · HN ↗

            Or you could do it like every other rocketry startup: either succeed first time or go bankrupt. Hell, occasionally they go bankrupt after succeeding at their first flight.

            People here act like SpaceX is the only or the best rocket startup. That trial-and-error is somehow the superior design strategy and that that is responsible for SpaceX's success.

            In reality, of course, SpaceX's only real distinguishing feature is how much they blow up and how they keep getting funding despite financial analysis after financial analysis saying "this will never work, it's a loss". But no worries! Starlink will fix it! Except ... when calculating Starlink profits they're ... also negative. Starlink caused a huge boost in SpaceX funding, while losing money. How do you do that?

            In my personal experience, creating a company that runs at a loss results in losing money. I guess SpaceX makes it up on volume?

            SpaceX's secret is dollars. Investor dollars. The amount of money Musk has (frequently literally) more than the funding of EVERY other private rocket startup COMBINED.

            1. QuiEgo · 1790626829 · focus · HN ↗

               SpaceX has some absurd majority of the launch market. Because their rockets work.

               <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Space_launch_market_competition" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Space_launch_market_competitio...

               I won’t comment on the finances, but their technical success is self-evident.

               1. luke5441 · 1790627431 · focus · HN ↗

                  2025 SpaceX launches carried payloads from outside customers only 43 times. Most of it from US govt. The launch market it simply tiny and not growing much.

                  Luckily SpaceX pivoted the narrative just in time to be an AI company, not a Space company. We&#x27;ll see what the next narrative will be, if any.

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