Huh? Space shuttle killed 14 astronauts. It was a flawed design from the beginning and never delivered on its original promise.
Starship has its own design trade-offs, as any engineered object does, but it has the benefit of 50 years of technological development since Shuttle.
I'm not as certain as you about whether or not Starship will ever be human rated. But if successful, it will be launching a couple of hundred times per year. Talk to me in five years and we'll see where we are then.
[−]cucumber3732842 · 2026-11-15 Sun 00:26 UTC ·
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I don't think it makes sense to make starship human rated. They'd likely give up too much. Probably better to have a different cheaper rocket for the people.
Like you don't build a barge to ferry standards, it would defeat the point of the barge.
Maybe you're right--I don't know. But large freight airplanes are the same as large passenger airplanes, except for the seats, etc. I think the same might be true for Starship.
[−]kevin_thibedeau · 2026-11-15 Sun 03:14 UTC ·
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Freight airplanes have additional reinforcement to increase max takeoff weight and manage uneven floor loading.
Starship is a lot cheaper than it looks, because they're mass manufacturing the engines. They're targeting $250k per Raptor 3. The RS-25 used on NASA's SLS/Space Shuttle costs about $100M to make currently, comparable thrust.
The most damning thing I've seen on starship was a video that described how little space there is inside for the humans Elon said it would hold. Something like urban transit personal space.
That is practically all spaceflight. The Apollo LEM - which landed on the moon - had ~2.3 m^3 per person. The command module had ~2 m^3 per person. There is nothing unusual there and depending on how you configure the interior it could be relatively spacious.
Starship has its own design trade-offs, as any engineered object does, but it has the benefit of 50 years of technological development since Shuttle.
I'm not as certain as you about whether or not Starship will ever be human rated. But if successful, it will be launching a couple of hundred times per year. Talk to me in five years and we'll see where we are then.
Like you don't build a barge to ferry standards, it would defeat the point of the barge.