Starship is designed for operations in Earth’s atmosphere at a fairly high acceleration. A version that would be constructed in space could have a thinner hull and perhaps fewer engines, Even without the thermal protection tiles, it is heavier than necessary for the mission of landing on the Moon, but the lunar Starship as it is being designed now must get itself into space from the Earth’s surface, making its hull as heavy as the other versions. A ship designed for lunar gravity and lower accelerations would certainly be lighter than one that must carry a full load of propellant on Earth and suffer a high G-load during launch from Earth, including a max-Q stress, because it need not have a heavy, thick hull. The current lunar Starship must do those, so its hull is thick and heavy.

A different design, perhaps without a nosecone, may be even lighter for cargo runs. Without travel through the atmosphere, the nosecone is unnecessary. Blue Origin’s Blue Moon is light weight, like this.

Starship was designed for trips to Mars. It is optimized for that. It is being repurposed for trips to the Moon, because that is what we will likely have soonest, and we seem to be in a stupid race to the Moon rather than planning and executing a long-term space economy.

SpaceX seems, now, to be thinking about a space economy, and it seems positioned to be a major leader in that economy. However, leaders have to make sure that they make good decisions, or they may end up like IBM did in the world of personal computers.

Starship is not “too massive” or “inefficient” for the Moon. Other than the first one or two Artemis missions, future lunar Starship missions will carry maximum loads as SpaceX undertakes a phased industrialization of the Moon in pursuit of extraterrestrial construction of AI data centers to be based in cis-lunar space. Maximum loads will be normative for most future Starship missions, be they for Starlink deployment, Golden Dome deployment, tanker flights to refill orbiting depots or freight loads with lunar and Martian destinations.

Because they are Fascist Capitalists that will destroy the Moon’s climate for profit. Methane is the new Carbon.

That would be $500 per pound, which is a bargain compared to today’s launch prices. Even the inexpensive Falcon 9 is in the neighborhood of $3,000 per pound. If they can get Starship’s capacity up to 200 or 250 tons, then the bargain is so much greater, $250 or $200 per pound, respectively.

Starship currently has some customers. Superbird-9, a communication satellite that could launch in the summer of next year, and Starlab, a private space station that could launch in 2028.

At $100 million per launch, SpaceX could recover its development costs in about 100 customer flights. In the past, I have guessed a $20 million price tag, which would take 500 customer flights to recover development costs.

On the other hand, Starship could save SpaceX a large amount of money launching Starlink satellites, vs launching on Falcon 9, and it could recover the development costs in a few hundred Starlink launches without any external customers at all.

On the third hand, the gripping hand, Starship was conceived to build a colony on Mars, which means that SpaceX wanted it whether or not it could launch any customer payloads, and it was conceived before Starlink was conceived (which was intended to fund both Starship development and the Martian colony, and now could also fund additional goals that SpaceX is seriously considering), so the Mars mission was its only real mission at that time.

If SpaceX can get 250 tons per launch, then the number of tanker flights to re-tank the Mars and lunar versions of Starship would be greatly reduced. Several people have been rather upset that these interplanetary missions would require so many flights to refill Starship tanks. I think we were spoiled by NASA’s choice of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous for Apollo, because that did it all with one launch. Another option was Earth Orbit Rendezvous, in which several launches would each take one element of the Apollo mission into low Earth orbit for assembly/attachment. Once all the elements were put together, Apollo would launch to the Moon. This alternate concept is not so different than having a number of tanker flights for Starship.

This large number of tanker flights is also one reason why I think that Starship is not well suited for the Human Landing System for Artemis. It shows that it is too massive for the task. It will work, don’t get me wrong, but it is inefficient and other companies should be able to design better lunar landers, perhaps more along the lines of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon.

My cell phone bill as about the same as my Starlink bill, which is about the same as my wired/cable internet bill. I have no clue where my cell phone or cable payment is going. I know where my Starlink payment is going and I’m happy to pay a premium to support space development. At what point does that happiness turn into anger at the cost? I don’t know.

The reason I have two internet providers is that I work from home and need a reliable connection – and I have a tenant locked into the cable connection so the Starlink bandwidth is all mine. Both Starlink and the Blue Peak (cable) connections have occasional issues, but Starlink has gotten MUCH better over the past few years.

That argues that the tipping point “should” be around double what it costs now. I don’t know that I’d put up with double (leaving aside inflation).

I won’t be surprised if Starship ends up carrying over 95% of mass to orbit while there are no vehicles in its size with a competitive price tag, but I think they’ll come; and there will be a demand for vehicles of many other sizes-the key point will probably be full reuse, to amortize costs over numerous launches, and to cut expenses versus having to manufacture new hardware continuously just to operate.

Not too shabby, unless you only wanted to send 500 pounds to a specific orbit unique from any other satellite, then a $6 million launch on a small launch vehicle would be much better for you. One size does not fit all. A major benefit of having multiple companies and multiple space products is that customers can find the size that fits them for the price they can afford.

In another thread you wondered why build space stations when Starship can be its own space station.
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/the-space-station-race-startup-max-space-to-establish-factory-at-kennedy-in-florida/#comment-1627124

Starship would make a perfectly acceptable space station.

https://www.space.com/nasa-considering-spacex-starship-space-station

Starship’s use as a space station, while still only an idea on paper, is intriguing given the vehicle’s enormous size. The only comparable space station for open interior volume would be NASA’s old Skylab outpost, which measured just 21.76 feet (6.61 m) in diameter.

There are limitations, however. Starship was designed for a specific mission — colonize Mars — and it will also raise revenues through other missions that it can perform, such as land on the Moon and take payloads to LEO. However it is not ideally suited for many of the missions that people want to use it for. It is not designed as a long-duration space station, the way that ISS was. It could easily perform missions similar to the Space Shuttle, perhaps with six-month missions (the time it would have to work in space to get to Mars), lower cost, and more capacity for science. I’m sure that SpaceX will perform at least one dry-run mission in LEO in order to test Starship’s ability to function for the duration of a trip to Mars. That mission will look a lot like a space station mission or a long-duration Space Shuttle mission.

Think of having a semi-truck and using it for everything that you do. It can take you to the grocery store (analogous to a lunar landing), but it is not ideal for that task. You can use it as a camper (space station), but it is not ideal for that task, either. Commute to work? Not really. Hauling large or heavy loads long distances? It excels at that, but that excellence may also depend upon the payload. If it is a box truck or trailer, then hauling earthmoving equipment may be difficult. If it is a flatbed, then moving groceries from the warehouse to the store may be difficult.

As for Starlink, a competitor would keep SpaceX honest. If SpaceX is a monopoly, then it could get greedy and charge so much that customers begin to shy away. Business school teaches the concepts of “all the market will bear,” and finding the price point for maximum profit before too many customers stop using your product. Both of these philosophies cost the customer more than necessary, resulting in customers having less money to spend elsewhere. Customers may even choose to leave the market and spend their money or move their business model to some other market or industry. Competition will keep SpaceX from charging too much, and may force it to reduce its current prices.

SpaceX, in designing Falcon, Dragon, Starship, and Starlink left some efficiencies on the table. Despite the way it looks, none of these spacecraft are the be-all do-all end-all of space travel. Other companies can find better efficiencies and still compete with SpaceX. This is why they have not all packed up and gone to other industries.

SpaceX has done some amazing things, and I applaud them for making space actually popular, not just something to talk about, like we did in the 1960s and 1970s. We thought that the Space Shuttle would open up space in the 1980s and were sorely disappoint when that failed to happen. Now we have several companies that are in the space business for the purpose of growing the space business, and that is a good thing.

The entire starlink constellation cost maybe $19 billion to build and launch. The entire cost of starship development was around $5 billion. Final estimates are as much as $10 billion. That includes building the entire factory to make starships, and two launch towers. But starlink basically will cover all costs and pay back all investment.

Once starship is fully operational, and I see no obstacles, within 5 years, nothing will be even close to competing. Cost and safety are directly tied to how often you do things. When you launch 130 times a year, you are racking up the experience points very rapidly. Cost go down; safety goes up.

And, thing is, once you have starship functional, every other rocket launch system makes zero sense. It can do anything you need, anything you can conceive of. Also, once star link is full active, launching a competitor becomes an expensive waste of time – most people will have bought into star link, and they will have a substantial first mover advantage.

The race is already over, and most people don’t know it. Maybe Blue Origin can get a piece, maybe rocket lab. China will launch, but who will contract with China for launch services other than the Chinese? The EU, if they are smart, will simply start launching with Space X for everything. Same with Japan, Korea, etc.

Starship is a quantum leap from Falcon 9, and most companies out there are still trying to build their own version of a falcon 9. Starship will make falcon 9 superfluous. And this will happen in 5 years…at most.

Nate P,
I have recently started advocating for NASA to transform its function into something more like the NACA, which had a mandate to be useful for the American aerospace industry (before there was the space part), not an agency that is in competition with the American aerospace industry. An example is wind tunnels, which NACA provided, because they could be far too expensive for individual aircraft companies to own.

The NASA history includes the exclusion of commercial space companies. It is unfortunate that government regulated an independent American commercial space industry out of existence. NASA was the sole provider and supplier for several decades, and even when the government relaxed its stranglehold on commercial space, it was difficult for the industry to find investors. Kistler Aerospace is a good example. It was not until Orbital Sciences and SpaceX were successful that investors began to take some risks in commercial aerospace.

Governmental interference or control is still a major factor in the ability to operate in space. Governments have other concerns that distract them from space, but space companies can remain focussed on their corporate goals: to explore or to utilize space in a way that we earthlings will pay them for. A government has other goals: To defend its citizens and their rights and to peaceably resolve disputes as an indifferent third party. Space is a distraction from these two primary purposes for government, so we should not be surprised that their space programs are underfunded and poorly run. Governments were also meant to stay out of the way of their citizens, but many have forgotten that they, the governments, are not the sovereign, the citizens are, and the government was created to be of service to the citizens, not to be the ruler. This lapse of memory is why governments created space programs that left out the citizens — civilians were prevented from participating in space, and that was the intent of the Outer Space Treaty, created and enforced by governments.

When civilians, through space companies, are able to develop their own space vehicles or their own experiments with a minimum amount of government interference, we have seen that they do very well. Rocket Lab, SpaceX, and Virgin Orbit are good examples, where the last example also shows what happens when government unexpectedly hampers operations.
__________________
Robert wrote: “In reality, the real American space program right now is SpaceX’s, and it is the one truly racing China in space. It is not only building the biggest rocket ever (Starship/Superheavy) to create its own Mars exploration project (with a side effort on the Moon), it is doing so on its own dime.”

This brings up two more points that are especially important. They may be in a race in space, but I don’t think either one thinks that they are in a race with each other. China undoubtedly thinks it is racing NASA, if it thinks of itself as being in a race to the Moon, and Congress definitely thinks that it is funding NASA at a level that allows it to beat China to the Moon. SpaceX, on the other hand, is racing NASA for readiness with its, SpaceX’s, contractual obligation for a lunar lander under the HLS project, and SpaceX’s other interest in the Moon is for development of a source of materials for its own needs to make and supply its own future spacecraft that will provide products for we earthlings — products that we will pay for. For that second SpaceX interest, they are in a race with time, if they are racing at all.

The second point is the independence from government and its taxpayers. Doing space exploration on its own dime allows a company to choose where and how it wants to explore, and what and how to supply products that we earthlings will pay for. When the taxpayer pays, he gets upset that one company (or more than one) may profit from his tax dollar, so the government sets rules, regulations, and laws that restrict what, where, and how the taxpayer dollar is used. Thus, the ISS has not produced anything that lets the American taxpayer feel good about funding such an expensive National Lab.

On the other hand, Starlink was funded exclusively with investor money, and right now 20,000 new subscribers a day feel good about being able to pay for and use that service. If it fails, no taxpayer money was wasted, and if it succeeds, taxpayer money didn’t go toward anyone’s profits. Profits are the reward for improving the efficiency of production, and Starlink is an improvement over Iridium and GlobalStar, which were improvements over geostationary communication satellites, although not quite so efficient as to win out over the cellular telephone.

The revolution in rocketry has had an effect on the world’s launches, on who is doing the launching, and on who is being launched into orbit.
______________________
Richard M,
Your linked X post is instructive. I agree that two of our operational launch companies are about to take off in a way similar to SpaceX. Rocket Lab has used rapid development in the same way as SpaceX, but Blue Origin took a little longer to get there, and I hope that Firefly is also able to get back on the scoreboard and ramp up, too. A couple other American companies are approaching first successful launch and operations, Relativity Space and Stoke Space. Hopefully, other companies around the world will also get on the scoreboard and become relevant launchers, too.

Some of us here would argue that the most important and valuable thing that NASA’s manned spaceflight program has done since then, ironically, is to enable the rise of SpaceX, via COTS (2006), Commercial Resupply Services (2008) and Commercial Crew (2011-2014) awards. And all of those programs had to overcome serious entrenched opposition within the agency before they happened.

The recent takedown of Maduro didn’t require begging VCs for cash:
https://breakingdefense.com/2026/01/venezuela-150-aircraft-cyber-effects-maduro-operation-how-it-happened-caine/

Musk and Bezos have close to two trillion bucks—far, far more than SLS…and MSFC is going to embarrass both of them in short order…assuming no one named Jared slashes the tires of our bus.

Nate P: I have spent more than forty years watching NASA achieve almost nothing in manned space flight, following the Apollo landings. It has been a failure, and a failure that has only gotten worse with time.

In business, failures go bankrupt and are replaced by competitors who can get the job done. The time is long past for this process to happen to NASA.

You should have read the top two posts; they point out that SpaceX has already tackled the problem and that the solution is simple.

To the original post: “NASA’s effort is not only irrelevant, it is trivial in comparison.” I find this unfortunate, especially the enthusiasm some show for NASA’s diminishing role. It seems that as long as they get their way, they do not care whether NASA remains relevant to American spaceflight.

“In the U.S. freedom ruled more than anything last year, and for this reason we saw real progress across the entire industry. Sadly, that progress was mostly an effort to make up lost time.” Let us hope that future administrations keep this up, and continue to hamstring the administrative state until it can no longer constrict us in the name of faux ‘safety’ and ‘diversity.’

That’s a close thing.

I liked Beal’s approach in that both liquid propellants are pretty much room temperature, but the carbon fiber wouldn’t like that HTP.

O/T
I am surprised the AP ran this
https://apnews.com/photo-gallery/venezuela-us-explosions-caracas-25a01a23e7b936b430901428ab0d0907

That’s different.

I thought you were referencing hydrogen anent ground transport. My bad. But, in a away, you were referencing hydrolox for starting-at-ground-level transport.

For boosters, methalox isn’t really a compromise. It allows for a much smaller and lighter booster structure than does hydrolox and provides nearly the same sea level Isp. Hydrolox boosters usually require big-ass SRBs to get them off the pad – e.g., Ariane 6 and SLS. The only hydrolox launchers that could levitate on hydrolox alone were the Delta 4 and the Japanese H-2 & 3 and most of the time they used SRBs as well. Hydrogen’s Isp only shines in vacuum. Stoke, ULA, JAXA-Mitsubishi, Arianespace and BO are still doing hydrolox upper stages for exactly that reason.

SpaceX went with all-methalox-all-the-time for Starship because it needs to operate between Earth and Mars. Methalox is easier to make and store on Mars than is hydrolox.

Oh yeah, the fact that the two cryo components of methalox have similar boiling points just makes it easier to engineer common dome tankage. Everything shrinks and expands at the same rates and one doesn’t need a lot of insulation to keep the fuel from freezing the oxidizer.

The two propellants are close in temperature.

With kerolox you just need the oxidizer cold.

Another reason I want Marshall kept alive—to keep North Alabama from becoming puke blue:
https://www.wbrc.com/2026/01/03/no-war-oil-protesters-gather-huntsville-after-strikes-venezuela-maduros-capture/

All Birmingham was ever good for was protests—-but things are changing.

I don’t want folks from Colorado here. That’s Trump’s big mistake..

The “let them eat cake” libertarians are going to trigger a blue wave…so you lot just keep it up.

There will be worse than MSFC to deal with.

The voting public is fickle.

If it helps Jeff, or anyone else who is curious, Tim Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut, did a video that included the difference and usefulnesses of hydrogen vs methane vs kerosene, another popular first stage fuel. This may give the answer, if you were thinking of asking the question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbH1ZDImaI8#t=1200

Scott Manley has his own version of why SpaceX chose methane for Raptor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pzgFHrLXmc

“Speaking of China, while Elon runs from hydrogen, they embrace it:”

Well, yeah, Chinese researchers may be embracing hydrogen *production*, but are they really going to use it much for propellant in coming years?

LandSpace’s Zhuque-2 is methane-powered.

Long March 9 will be methane powered.

Korean Air/Hyundai’s Rotem will be methane powered.

So is Rocket Lab’s Neutron.

So is Blue Origin’s New Glenn (booster stage).

So is ULA’s Vulcan (booster stage).

So will be Relativity Space’s Terran R.

So will be iSpace’s Hyperbola-3.

And the list goes on.

So many new players are pursuing methane rather than hydrogen for their first stages — it might be worth asking why that is.

https://x.com/KenKirtland17/status/2006458197356257480

And he makes an observation similar to that which Edward makes: “I think this graph also helps give us a picture of how healthy the US launch market is outside of the elephant in the room. Growth has not been impressive the past 23 years. But I think that is about to change. With Electron contiuing to increase cadance, New Glenn coming online, and Neutron etc behind that, ~2025 will likely be the start of the “USA without SpaceX” line climbing rapidly.”

I think he’s right, too. This is the sign of an increasingly vibrant U.S. launch industry.

America still has a can-do mojo, but it has moved from NASA and Congress to several U.S. companies. SpaceX’s can-do is so powerful that they succeed at doing the impossible, most of the time. Rocket Lab is also showing its can-do spirit as well as Stoke Space and several other launch companies. Then there are the space operators that are already flying or are soon to fly. Varda has already shown it can manufacture in space (but it cannot convince the cannot-do American government to let it return its space products). How many companies are working on space stations? Talk about can-do, Vast is getting ready to fly its first version to orbit.

Hydrogen as a propellant has its advantages, but it also has its limits. For some uses, the limits overwhelm the advantages.

You look to Marshall Space Flight Center, do not see a can-do attitude, and assume that the rest of America has lost it, too. Your viewpoint is a bit myopic. You may want to expand it and look at the whole of the big picture, or at least more of the bigger picture.

I don’t think that the United States has ever had such a consequential industrialist — not even Ford or Edison. The scary thing is, a decade from now that might be exponentially more true.

I never saw your shipbuilding comment, but if you have a link, I’d be happy to read it.

Artemis 2 isn’t going to be any demonstration of MSFC’s “worth.” At best, it may demonstrate that, after 3-1/2 years, it has figured out a way to barely squeak by the engineering failures that attended Artemis 1. At worst, we’ll be chiseling four more names into the Astronaut Memorial and awarding four more posthumous Space medals of Honor.

I would prefer the first outcome. I would prefer it even more were it to eventuate without any crew put at risk. Let us hope Jared sees the wisdom of making Artemis 2 another uncrewed test run.

The reason a military Moon base effort never got a LeMay or Rickover-class budget is because – unlike jet bombers and nuclear subs – it would have had no military utility and was, in any case, proscribed by the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. One of these things is not like the others.

If the PRC wants to chase after hydrogen, let it. Hydrogen as a fuel is a fool’s errand – something now uniformly acknowledged by Western automakers who have entirely abandoned it.

Is there any form of ridiculous engineering you will not cheerlead for? The world wonders.

john hare,

Boeing and Lock-Mart get the majority of that annual $4 – $5 billion. The rest, which goes to MSFC paychecks, is more inertia than attaboy I’d say.

Richard M,

Yes, absent Musk, the US would be in a world of hurt anent space. That’s an alternate universe I am very happy we do not inhabit. 2025 was our best-ever space year. 2026 is shaping up to be far better. The future’s so bright I gotta wear shades.

US naval shipbuilding is very much in shambles and civilian shipbuilding at any significant scale is pretty much dead. I offered some ideas about how to fix the former awhile ago over on Rand Simberg’s blog. But the way things are going, the US may well be out of consequential enemy nation-states before anything – my solution or any other – could be implemented to rationalize naval construction.

To Richard M

There are only a handful of folks in America who know how to weld armor….shipyards are a sore point with me as well.

Speaking of China, while Elon runs from hydrogen, they embrace it:

https://techxplore.com/news/2026-01-demand-hydrogen-fuel-production-dark.html

This isn’t me doing a Gary Church and quoting Mao—this is me wishing America could get our can-do mojo back.

America has suffered from bipartisan stupidity. The Greens in California and libertarians have BOTH done a number against American industries.

Anent engineering, the Starship guys are the Falcon guys. You keep trying to pretend that SpaceX is actually two separate companies. It isn’t.

Nobody with sense gives any attaboys to MSFC because they haven’t done anything to deserve any in decades. Either the MSFC guys are not the best and brightest or they’re working way below their potential. I’ll let you decide which of those alternatives is the worse.””””

I’d say that $4B-$5B a year is a heck of an attaboy.

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/sacramento/news/vallejo-mare-island-dry-dock-closing-layoffs/

Mare Island closed its shipyard in 1996. Now they’re even closing the dry dock. You can blame some of this on California’s radioactive business environment if you like, but it’s clear that the causes here are also deeper and nationwide. If I’m not mistaken, the only dry docks the US Navy has access to in WESTPAC now, even theoretically, are the ones remaining at Puget Sound and Pearl Harbor. He might be laying it on a bit thick, but cdrsalamander has reason to be rueful when he says, “This is what a dying naval power looks like.”

Makes you wish, just a little, that Elon Musk was into shipbuilding.

Because it would be yet one more area of advanced industrial activity where the PRC would be kicking our rear ends. China might or might not be facing imminent demographic armageddon, but even if they are it is no less humiliating that the Chinese shipbuilding industry pumped out over 1,000 ships last year, as against America, the country that obliterated the Empire of Japan by spamming out not just aircraft carriers but also ice cream barges within living memory, ended up building….just six. With no SpaceX on the scene, the United States would look almost as humiliated in space, too, with most of its launch activity still consisting of the usual dozen or so gold-plated ULA milsat launches, struggling to get its humans to orbit reliably in a balky Boeing space capsule, and without even a dream of Starlink. With all the rest of the knock-on effects for the U.S. space industry that implies.

But we do have SpaceX. And that changes everything.