Doesn't seem to be that different. Space Shuttle: 27.5t payload/2030t launch weight = 1.4%. Starship: 40t payload/5000t launch weight = 0.8%. For comparison, the Falcon 9 has 17.5t/549t = 3.2%. Bringing back the orbiter appears to still come at a significant cost.
The maximum payload of the current configuration is a matter of conjecture, but 40t is considerably lower than the low end. I think 80t-100t is more likely.
Yeah, but still 40t to LEO with cheap rapid reusability (say 60 days, cheap engine replacement, some mass produced tiles) is still revolutionary, just not as revolutionary as Musk’s vision is. Imagine what research packages you can send to the outer planets with 40t budget from the effin LEO. Approximately infinite delta V with ion drives and fat solar cells.
I’m more concerned with payload bay doors than the spacecraft’s performance tbh.
But Starship does not currently seem to be on track to achieve cheap, rapid reusability.
I know that is what was promised, but I do wonder how many of Starship’s design goals the program needs to miss on before the general public starts to wonder if maybe goals are not the same thing as guarantees.
[−]JumpCrisscross · 2026-11-15 Sun 12:45 UTC ·
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> Starship does not currently seem to be on track to achieve cheap, rapid reusability
What? Based on what? Starship has had two orbital flights ever. And they’ve gone pretty well.
They still don’t seem to have figured out how to reliably recover and reuse Superheavy. They did it a couple times in 2025, but it’s been over a year and quite a few flights since the last time they successfully caught one.
Raptor isn’t shaping up to be a sufficiently reliable engine. They are still having shutdowns and failures on every flight. That could be a huge problem for cheap and rapid reuse because it implies that quite a lot of inspection and refurbishment will be needed for every engine they re-fly. This was famously a major impediment to cheap reusability for the RS-25 and Shuttle, and they only had to worry about three of those per flight. Starship has 13 times as many engines to worry about, and those engines have thus far had a much higher failure rate.
And then they’ve also been having trouble with the thermal protection system, which seems to require a lot more refurbishment than what they had originally wanted. There have also been some kinks to work out in terms of its actual protection of the vehicle, which is a problem because even minor materials degradation due to thermal stress will limit the reusability of the upper stage.
These are still experimental flights. That could have been a bad procedure or a misconfiguration; we don't know. Claiming it as an upper limit if the design and then comparing it to a fully mature STS (you're quoting Endeavour's payload IIRC; Columbia was heavier and could not match its numbers) is cherry-picking. If you want to organise your claims with "in the absolute worst case..." then that's fine. But this is a subject with a lot of uncertainty around it, and asserting that one end of the error bars is the only one that counts isn't really justified.
That doesn't say much without knowing how the fuel was used. They may have pushed it to the max to give Starship more room, therefore didn't save enough fuel for the booster's return. They may have set higher safety margin. They may have used more conservative thrust settings.
There are so many knobs to turn. Everything is conjecture because it's only the beginning. One thing for sure, Superheavy/Starship in the future -- a year, two years, five years from now, will be very different that what was used for this flight.
These flights use a minimum amount of fuel with a half empty payload.
[−]burnerRhodov3 · 2026-11-15 Sun 17:03 UTC ·
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That's not how rocket science works lol. You don't put it up and accidently run out of fuel because it used more fuel than you think. Slosh in the internal tank and a sensor failure is most likely. Second most likely is that engine that went out started spewing fuel. You don't "Run out of fuel", when attempting a tower catch.
I’m more concerned with payload bay doors than the spacecraft’s performance tbh.
I know that is what was promised, but I do wonder how many of Starship’s design goals the program needs to miss on before the general public starts to wonder if maybe goals are not the same thing as guarantees.
What? Based on what? Starship has had two orbital flights ever. And they’ve gone pretty well.
Raptor isn’t shaping up to be a sufficiently reliable engine. They are still having shutdowns and failures on every flight. That could be a huge problem for cheap and rapid reuse because it implies that quite a lot of inspection and refurbishment will be needed for every engine they re-fly. This was famously a major impediment to cheap reusability for the RS-25 and Shuttle, and they only had to worry about three of those per flight. Starship has 13 times as many engines to worry about, and those engines have thus far had a much higher failure rate.
And then they’ve also been having trouble with the thermal protection system, which seems to require a lot more refurbishment than what they had originally wanted. There have also been some kinks to work out in terms of its actual protection of the vehicle, which is a problem because even minor materials degradation due to thermal stress will limit the reusability of the upper stage.
There are so many knobs to turn. Everything is conjecture because it's only the beginning. One thing for sure, Superheavy/Starship in the future -- a year, two years, five years from now, will be very different that what was used for this flight.