>>11034802>I don't think maintenance costs will allow for an order of magnitude drop in launch prices.Five, actually. Musk wants to reduce launch prices to Mars by five orders of magnitude, and reusability is only supposed to provide two of those. Now whether they can do it or not depends entirely on how reusable the Raptor is, something only SpaceX knows right now. What we do know is that the design choices made in the Raptor engine were all specifically chosen to increase reusability compared to existing engines. By having two full flow preburners, it actually runs the turbines cooler than the Merlin engine. Methane eliminates RP-1 coking.
>He's also vastly overestimating the space tourism marketThe space tourism market is small primarily because if the launch costs mentioned previously. You can book a ticket with Virgin today, but you'll be spending a couple million dollars to barely reach space. That's not a good value proposition. If Starship can achieve the lofty goal of airliner-competitiven prices, that market increases exponentially.
>Finally where is the money for a city on mars going to come from?Starlink, hopefully. If Starlink fails the backup plan is to let NASA do the actual missions and just provide them with a cheap ride. This is easily the sketchiest part of the plan as outlined so far.
>My other criticism is getting to Mars in the first place. Requires either a ton of shielding or a fast nuclear rocket neither of which Starship has.Or just accept the 2% lifetime cancer risk increase. It's not something NASA would be happy with, but it's a lot better than the scurvy explorers dealt with in prior centuries.
>In orbit refuelling has never been triedIt's used to refuel the ISS fairly regularly, but cryogenic refueling has never been done in space. However, development of such systems dates back decades. ULA was ready to go ahead with such a system before Shelby demanded it be quashed. This isn't some "Elon promised magic", it's mainstream.
