Starship is still not understood

It gets ignored because it is a symptom of not being able to cheaply launch probes. You spend all of this time researching and developing a scientific instrument only to make two of them. One to launch the other to go on a diagnostic model (maybe a third for a launch backup). You spread out the cost of development over more units and bring down the per unit cost of manufacturing (although probably not that much given we are still talking quantities in the tens or at most hundreds of units). But without a cheap launch system there is a fixed cost per unit of hundreds of millions to get it into space, so there is very little point in producing more than what you need for just that mission.

Of course certain missions are going to require special specs, but I do think that generic, somewhat modular spaceprobes are around the corner now that launch costs are going down. If you are going to retire a space craft that you've made a profit off of shuttling cargo to LEO might as well discard of it by sending it on one last mission into deep space with a couple of scientific missions onboard.

We will end up spending more money overall, but cost per unit of science (however you want to measure that) will go down.

I'm looking into this, the details I'm finding are not clear enough for my liking.

The FAA said there was too much shockwave risk based on their weather models, and rejected a request to waive that threshold.

SpaceX's own models said the risk was within limits.

> Minutes before liftoff, an FAA safety inspector speaking on an open phone line warned SpaceX’s staff in the launch control room that a launch would violate the company’s launch license. SpaceX staff ignored the warning because they “assumed that the inspector did not have the latest information,” the SpaceX report said.

So that leaves a very important question in my mind. Was that inspector using their authority to directly deny authorization to the flight, or were they advising spacex that their authorization was already gone because of the weather?

The former is a very big issue, but I'd say the latter is only a moderate issue. Also depending on whose weather models were actually right, but it sounds like it must have been pretty borderline.

> The fact that the FAA reviewed the situation and then allowed to continue kind of proves the parents point.

> FAA investigators couldn’t determine whether the SN8 license violation was intentional, according to people involved in and briefed on the investigation, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

That sure doesn't sound like it "proves" spacex got special leniency.

If you drop the launch costs by 100x, this means being able to launch 100x JWSTs for the same price, meaning it makes sense to optimize for production costs instead of reliability - as if one of your telescopes fail, you can always launch/use another. So now it makes sense to focus on using mass-manufactured parts instead of specialty ones, which drops the production costs significantly. It might make sense to design a telescope platform instead, opening more opportunities to exploit economies of scale.

I’m genuinely curious about the economics of doing more in space than putting up satellites.

1. None of the current public Starship designs include payload doors. So none of these are in any way useful as launch vehicles for orbital payloads. Payload doors a huge structural weakness and requires a lot of engineering effort. None of the current public Starship designs have an obvious "payload doors go here". A Starship-based delivery vehicle will likely be a separate design from the manned vehicle.

2. In-orbit refueling is not just an unsolved problem it's a largely unexplored problem. Moving fuel between two vehicles in free-fall is going to be a monumental challenge. You'll basically be running the same pump mechanisms you'd use for the rocket motors but feeding into a flexible umbilical between vehicles. Starships are huge so you're talking about docking two huge vehicles (one of which is nearly empty of fuel for maneuvers), connecting an umbilical between them, pumping fuel through the umbilical (in free-fall), then undocking and the two go their merry ways. None of that has been done and involves hundreds of individual challenges.

3. Musk (not necessarily SpaceX engineers) is making grand promises about the turn around time for Starships. I think they're wildly unrealistic. A large vehicle undergoing a lot of extreme dynamic forces in a flight is going to need a lot of examination before it can be safely relaunched. SpaceX is likely going to need to construct hundreds of Starships to maintain anywhere close to the promised cadence of launches. The manpower to refit vehicles is going to be expensive. There's a big difference between reusing a booster core and a vehicle that had to survive orbital reentry.

4. Even if launch costs were hundreds of dollars per kilogram it doesn't make any other aspects of spaceflight less challenging. If you send people somewhere they need their vehicle and life support launched with them. A broken toilet can still kill the crew. Just because it was cheaper to launch doesn't mean you get to scrimp on other expenses. The Space Shuttle was expensive not because of the marginal cost of the launch itself but the operations/personnel costs of the Shuttle program.