>>11015509The presentation was mostly just a recap of stuff that we already knew about, plus a couple short animations showing off the latest revisions to the design. The only real piece of news was pushing the expected payload margin from 50T back up to 100-150T where it had been before last year's presentation, which says good things about engine performance and weight mitigation.
The meat was, as usual, in the Q&A, where Elon was quite visibly far more comfortable. Mk. 1 is expected to fly in a month or so, a hop, then hop to 20km/65,000', possibly orbital after that (he's said before that Starship is *barely* SSTO with no payload, so they might not need SH for re-entry testing). Landing will be at the launch site, which explains why they're buying out Boca Chica. After Mk. 1/2, they plan Mk. 3/4 (also built on-site at Boca&Cape), with less slapdash manufacturing (planning to invest in equipment to build each ring out of a single sheet of steel--maybe a use for their defunct 9m mandrel?). Production of *everything* is expected to continue ramping up to insane levels (he expects 1/day Raptor production by spring), and potentially 3-4 flights/day per Starship and ~20/day per SH (the difference being the wait time for Starship's orbit to carry it back over the LZ). That's... insane.
