It's quite interesting that the most exciting part of the Mars experiment (flying the drone) was just a rounding error to develop (millions of dollars).
SpaceX is doing the right thing by focusing on costs instead of getting a bit more data.
At this point I don't know what SpaceX is doing with their starship other than wasting money on a pipe dream.
SpaceX won't make it to Mars anytime soon if ever with their current design. How are you going to refuel 4-6 times in LEO? There is currently no technology to achieve this nor has anything been attempted or tested and it will be many years if ever refueling in LEO will be possible.
I'm not sure what wasting money you're talking about. They don't need to do refueling and going to Mars to be highly profitable even without that, their Starship prototypes are so cheap ($10-$20M estimated by some people), they can afford to just throw them out or fly them in return for a little data. Just getting high speed low latency internet for $100 for everybody in the world is a huge thing (or slower internet for lower price in the future), and Starship will make that possible.
Regarding the amount of years they need for testing, building flying a new prototype every week is crazy. If you have that manufacturing capability, it's not hard to imagine that SpaceX can improve on the design faster than any other company.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 19.5 ms ] threadSpaceX is doing the right thing by focusing on costs instead of getting a bit more data.
SpaceX won't make it to Mars anytime soon if ever with their current design. How are you going to refuel 4-6 times in LEO? There is currently no technology to achieve this nor has anything been attempted or tested and it will be many years if ever refueling in LEO will be possible.
Regarding the amount of years they need for testing, building flying a new prototype every week is crazy. If you have that manufacturing capability, it's not hard to imagine that SpaceX can improve on the design faster than any other company.