""If the cost to launch is 1/4 the price of the [Falcon 9] and can carry 4 times the satellites… how is that anything but the right tool for the job?"
Indeed, the Starship is designed to reduce the price of rocket flights by a large amount. In November 2019, CEO Elon Musk said that the operational costs of flying Starship would be around $2 million per flight.
But one of the main issues could be deploying the satellites in space. SpaceX's website shows how the cargo bay could open up to release satellites." inverse.com
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Well, pilgrims, they haven't managed to get the thing more than a few feet off the ground yet. Let's see that happen before we celebrate. pl
I found an excellent video put out by SpaceX that lays out the NASA/SpaceX programs dealing with the ISS, returning to the Moon and establishing a Mars base. How everything fits together in a timeline is well laid out. Obviously the Starship figures prominently in the video. It answered a lot of questions for me.
One strange thing about the video is the narrator. He’s an odd dude who looks like a humanoid species from Star Trek. Very strange, but oddly appropriate for a SpaceX video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmcr2FaoWoU
Dropping in several links on SpaceX/Starlink issues from an expat blogger in rural New Zealand; he is interested in Starlink out of hopes for better internet, and also interested in another of Musk’s projects, his battery banks, due to problems with dependability of electrical power over the grid).
First, a post on latency issues that Starlink hopes to solve (click the orange type for hyperlinks):
https://www.cryptogon.com/?p=58597
Second, a post on Tesla plans to build off-shore, floating launch platforms for their nest generation of bigger rockets. Am extension of their current off-shore landing platforms, or thinking ahead to a time when dependence on land-based launching would be risky if a civil war kicks off? Hmm…
https://www.cryptogon.com/?p=58659
Third, one possible implication of the new Starlink-enabled internet, and freedom of access from any point:
https://www.cryptogon.com/?p=58611