You do remember that they signed a contract with NASA to have a lunar lander ready this year, right? A lander that requires more than a few launches and reuse of both the first stage and tanker Starships?

These launches are less about iteration than they are marketing. They are burning money and need to maintain interest in their magic Starship. They need just as many years as NASA and they need NASA’s money. The difference is, SpaceX have not demonstrated they can achieve their technical goals and they gloss over all the challenges while at the same time they waste money and Raptor engines on these publicity flights.

Remember, Falcon 9 was earning them money while they experimented with landing. And they hyped up its capabilities and cost before eventually under delivering. Starship will be different in that it may not even male them money.

What an absolute shit show. Why SpaceX isn’t getting raked over the coals for not being able to even maintain control on reentry is insane. That is like the least difficult challenge they face in getting Starship to work and they failed spectacularly. Not to even mention losing tiles that high up in the atmosphere.

My bet is that, just like with Falcon 9, Starship will become expendable with first stage reuse. They’ll continue to pump out Starlink for their primary customers, governments, and Musk will eventually talk himself into securities and espionage charges. At which point sober responsible adults will take over SpaceX and drop his pet project that is costing them billions. Raptor may or may not be repurposed.

/rant

Cool video though

“Ah boy, I’m just so tired of all these star wars.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWxiTPQv0ME

I don’t get it. Men go around for years carrying Yeti tumblers and no one bats an eye. Women start carrying a similar cup with a handle and everyone acts weird.

I was going to say the same thing. Pretty much all the games I was playing at the time worked on Linux 10 years ago, Portal 2, Civ 5 , Kerbal Space program. There were others I’ve forgotten too.

I tried Mapquest recently for the first time in 18 years. It was astonishing just how terrible their app and directions were.

I would gladly pay a few dollars a month for an alternative to Google Maps or Waze, but it’s like no company even wants to try and compete with Google and Apple maps.

100% agree with you OP.