Given how Americans tend to self-sort into political castes, I suspect that the majority of SpaceX employees are now ideologically aligned with their CEO. Working there would be too risky for them otherwise.
You got me figured out completely. I hate Elon so much I have watched every launch stream since 2010, own stock in his companies, buy his car with $10k beta software, and voted as a shareholder to give him the biggest pay package in human history.
I hate him so much I'll even agree with his quote from this year saying that “Starship Version 3, I think this design can be fully reusable.”
Don't sweat it. Lots of Starship fans (myself included) are overly sensitive because there is so much bad-faith criticism out there.
Still, I think you're discounting the accomplishment here. Boosters have reflown after a catch, so re-usable engines is already demonstrated. And heat shield reuse is going to be iterative: the first few will require lots of work, but they will keep improving until the tiles last for many missions.
But you can't iterate if you don't get the ship back in one piece. That's what makes this accomplishment important.
My understanding is that the real fly in the ointment has been that Starship isn't anywhere near its target payload capacity, and it may be difficult to get it there. I don't know if that's changed with this flight or not.
This launch put 50T in orbit, which is half the stated goal. If it never improved past this, it'd continue to be the largest and least expensive heavy lift rocket into the foreseeable future.
[−]literalAardvark · 2026-11-15 Sun 12:09 UTC ·
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> half the stated goal
It's 1/4 of the design goals though. Pretty massive haircut.
[−]somenameforme · 2026-11-15 Sun 02:06 UTC ·
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Due to the nature of spaceflight, payload tends to be around 1-3% of total mass. You don't tend to max payload during testing for stuff you expect to have a reasonable chance of going boom.
This was the third heaviest payload ever put in orbit. None of the others had a reusable first stage, second stage or fairings, so they cost vastly more (throw away the entire stack each launch)
Even if they never increase it from here, this is an enormous achievement and success.
That's because when launching from Texas, they have to do a dogleg maneuver to avoid populated islands such as Cuba. If they launch from Florida, they claim they'll get 100 tons.[1]
> Flying Starship from Florida, he said, will further improve capacity compared to Texas launches. Launching from Florida offers more favorable trajectories to certain orbits, potentially allowing Starship to carry more satellites without expending propellant on dogleg maneuvers. Dontchev said a single Florida Starship launch will be able to carry up to 20 times the bandwidth of a single Falcon 9.
SpaceX currently claims that each launch is 10x the bandwidth of a Falcon 9 launch, and is 50ish tons of payload, so launching from Florida would be around 100 tons of payload.
That's like saying a 2026 F150 is safe because a 2023 trim passed a crash test, despite a full overhaul of all the crash structures taking place in between
hmm, think it's more like saying a newly redesigned f150 will eventually pass the crash test, because it's basically 80% the same design as the previous generation. It might be in 2027, but if not then and the engineers keep at it, then in 2028 or 2029.
[−]HarHarVeryFunny · 2026-11-15 Sun 01:29 UTC ·
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Only booster engines though. What remains to be seen is how the vaccuum raptors hold up for reuse - pretty brutal temperature cycling.
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.
Reducing their work to the (self-serving) political alignments of the CEO is a big part of the optics issue.
I hate him so much I'll even agree with his quote from this year saying that “Starship Version 3, I think this design can be fully reusable.”
Still, I think you're discounting the accomplishment here. Boosters have reflown after a catch, so re-usable engines is already demonstrated. And heat shield reuse is going to be iterative: the first few will require lots of work, but they will keep improving until the tiles last for many missions.
But you can't iterate if you don't get the ship back in one piece. That's what makes this accomplishment important.
Calling it a fully reusable vehicle is just fantasty.
Something something Ship of Theseus.
It's 1/4 of the design goals though. Pretty massive haircut.
Even if they never increase it from here, this is an enormous achievement and success.
> Flying Starship from Florida, he said, will further improve capacity compared to Texas launches. Launching from Florida offers more favorable trajectories to certain orbits, potentially allowing Starship to carry more satellites without expending propellant on dogleg maneuvers. Dontchev said a single Florida Starship launch will be able to carry up to 20 times the bandwidth of a single Falcon 9.
SpaceX currently claims that each launch is 10x the bandwidth of a Falcon 9 launch, and is 50ish tons of payload, so launching from Florida would be around 100 tons of payload.
1. https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/11/spacex-now-fundamental...