Starship is threatening NASA’s moon contractors
I believe the general consensus of the informed is that Starship is going to take years longer than originally predicted. There&#x27;s a history of this. Case in point: Falcon Heavy. It ended up being delayed so long that improvements in the Merlin engine greatly reduced the payloads that Falcon Heavy was originally built for to the point there are a couple of launches a year at best.<p>Musk does deserve a lot of credit for SpaceX. The Falcon 9 vehicle is arguably the most reliable launch system we&#x27;ve ever made [1]. It&#x27;s cheap to produce and launch. It&#x27;s even cheaper once you factor in reuse. Starlink will probably be a game changer for many (but it isn&#x27;t yet). But that doesn&#x27;t matter because Starlink is driving down launch costs (with reuse) and improving the Falcon 9 track record.<p>All of this for &lt;$20B in investment, which is about the development cost of SLS. SLS hasn&#x27;t even launched yet and will probably cost ~$1B&#x2F;launch anyway. And it&#x27;s not just an issue of throwing money at the problem. Blue Origin has had just as much money thrown at it and was founded years before SpaceX yet it still hasn&#x27;t reached orbit and its BE-4 engines have been delayed <i>years</i>.<p>Starship is incredibly ambitious but if it doesn&#x27;t reach orbit before 2025 I won&#x27;t be surprised.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thespacetechie.com&#x2F;falcon-9-the-most-loved-rocket" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thespacetechie.com&#x2F;falcon-9-the-most-loved-rocke...</a>