Starship’s been in development for over two decades and the design keeps being changed and failing.
Soyuz has a very impressive record, Starship has been horrifically mismanaged by comparison. The falcon heavy flew 14 times and SpaceX is all in on a heavy launch vehicle because what? Even if they hit every target perfectly from now on it was a wasteful project.
The design changing and the development _failing to meet its stated deadlines_ is not a good argument for the system never working. Especially given we know the deadlines were unrealistic to begin with, yet significant milestones have been achieved in (deadline-ignoring) impressive time frame - like landing a second stage rocket from orbit within 8 years of development (by a private company, not a national effort).
Not paying off isn’t the same thing as never working.
Opportunity cost is a real thing. The obvious alternative buying stock (or handling out dividends to investors who buy stocks) would have created a new revenue stream larger than a working starship in 2027 represents.
Thus even if nothing else fails, the project was a poor investment. The market just isn’t big enough that making launch cheaper would be worth it at this point, profits might grow in the future but the deficit keeps growing in the meantime.
An addendum to this is that Falcon's 85th launch was Demo-2 (30 May 2020)... 10 years after Dragon Spacecraft Qualification Unit.
[−]DarmokJalad1701 · 2026-11-15 Sun 00:41 UTC ·
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> Starship’s been in development for over two decades
What? The first version of something that looks anything like Starship was the ITS announced back in 2016, later "BFR" in 2017 and the stainless steel version (which is now flying) in December 2018.
Eight years is very reasonable for a fully reusable heavy lift system - something no one has built before.
The Space Shuttle took roughly 12.5 years from formal concept studies to its first flight (and 9 years from official program approval)
Space Shuttle was an even harder project. Amendments to the Starship project were all directed towards making it fly better. Modifications which various departments demanded from the Shuttle project made it a worse and worse spaceship. They even had to let go of the emergency recovery capability, which eventually led to death of 10 astronauts.
Soyuz has a very impressive record, Starship has been horrifically mismanaged by comparison. The falcon heavy flew 14 times and SpaceX is all in on a heavy launch vehicle because what? Even if they hit every target perfectly from now on it was a wasteful project.
Opportunity cost is a real thing. The obvious alternative buying stock (or handling out dividends to investors who buy stocks) would have created a new revenue stream larger than a working starship in 2027 represents.
Thus even if nothing else fails, the project was a poor investment. The market just isn’t big enough that making launch cheaper would be worth it at this point, profits might grow in the future but the deficit keeps growing in the meantime.
They're averaging over 2 successful launches+landings per week now, and it's so routine that nobody cares.
What? The first version of something that looks anything like Starship was the ITS announced back in 2016, later "BFR" in 2017 and the stainless steel version (which is now flying) in December 2018.
Eight years is very reasonable for a fully reusable heavy lift system - something no one has built before.
The Space Shuttle took roughly 12.5 years from formal concept studies to its first flight (and 9 years from official program approval)
Look at the change in airplane designs over the years.