Starship's Sixth Flight Test

Weather prediction isn't just about "should I have a picnic today". Accurate weater information is important for innumerable economic activites, from farming to shipping to contruction to power generation planning. Providing better forecasts would allow us to save lives and money in these industries and this will reduce the costs you pay for goods. It might even save the life of someone you love.

There are 3 new GPS satellites being launched by the US in 2025. Satellites do regularly need to be replaced; fuel runs out, batteries die or there os damage or failure. We also are developing newer and better satellites.

Satellite based internet is currently going through a revolution that is bringing internet access and economic opportunity to isolated small communities all over the world. This is a great example of new deployment that simply wasn't economically feasible with pre-SpaceX launch prices. This technology has so many potential positive impacts that it alone should justify reusable rockets. This is another application that could save the life of someone you love (better acess to emergency services in remote locations or deadzones).

Another incredibly valuable satellite industry is satelite based imaging. Timely, high precision satellite imagery is currently very expensive. Significant drops in the price would enable a unimaginable plethora of usec ases. Better wildfire monitoring, more efficient farming and ranching, search and rescue, etc.

On top of all this, starship development is actually comparatively cheap compared to how valuable space is. Losing GPS would cost the US alone 1 billion dollars a day which is why the US is planning on spending 2 billion building a backup. Starship RnD costs are estimated to somewhere near 10 billion total spread out over a decade or two.

For further comparison, I'll also note that the 2024 US presidential election cost us more 50% more than that. The entire space industry is worth about as much as the entire semiconductors industry (~600 billion) and McKinsie estimated that to triple in the next 10 years.

Finally, I'll say that what I've listed is the merest drop in the bucket compared to the uses we haven't figured out yet because space launch was so expensive.

An second order of magnitude drop in launch costs on top of the ond SpaceX has already delivered would be a big boost the the global economy in many ways, including some that are hard to predict on advance. If SpaceX can deliver a third order of magnitude drop beyond that (which has been claimed as possible with Starship) then the results would be staggering, completely transforming how we view and use space economically and enabling completely new types of space exploration missions.

The biggest problem right now is that nobody else is keeping up with SpaceX. We need more companies doing the same thing SpaceX is.

You are not citing precedentedly binding law on the United States.

If one wanted to be cute, you’d presume they revert to their prior affiliation before deporting.

Actually I was just listening to this song, when OP recommended the SpaceX video and I did not want to pause the song. A happy accident.

I don't think we should. SpaceX has successfully applied the "move fast and break things" approach to rockets, but that's not something you can do everywhere. If Musk, as Trump's "efficiency secretary", will reduce regulations that "hinder" Tesla from doing the same thing with robotaxis, people are going to die.

This is true.

   SLS       is around  $ 37000 / kg to Orbit
   Falcon 9  is around  $  2700 / kg to Orbit

So in excess of an order of magnitude difference.

Starship build cost is currently estimated at $90 million [1]. Let's call it $100 million to make the calculations simple. So even if they can't reuse anything and the payload is at the low-end of what they expect, so 100t from the 100-150t range, that would be $1 million per ton or $1000 per kilo. So 1/37th of SLS even when fully expendable.

With full reuse, the cost should come down to around $10/kg.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/rocket-report-a-new-es...