> to fly manned missions, starship either needs to be redesigned to accommodate an escape system, or it needs to show a level of reliability and safety never previously achieved by a rocket.
I assume they'll do the latter. If the vehicle is truly rapidly reusable, that's less crazy than it sounds. Just fly it 10,000 times and fix all the problems you find :) Escape systems are only really useful during launch anyway. The only way to protect the crew from a failure during reentry is reliability.
People are relatively small and precious. Why not keep Falcon 9 / Dragon for human-rated space flight, and rendezvous with the rest of the system in orbit?
that's not feasible for a mars trip or even a trip to the moon and back with real cargo. Even with starship you need many refueling flights for it to be possible. Not to mention the cost.
[−]Alive-in-2025 · 2026-11-15 Sun 18:47 UTC ·
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Besides the fact that they're going to do a lot of those Falcon missions with the Starship, I think they actually are pulling the rug up behind them. They don't want to give a lot of launch capability to their future competitors.
I assume they'll do the latter. If the vehicle is truly rapidly reusable, that's less crazy than it sounds. Just fly it 10,000 times and fix all the problems you find :) Escape systems are only really useful during launch anyway. The only way to protect the crew from a failure during reentry is reliability.