So now that it's confirmed that Starship is viable, what does this mean for the space industry?
The SN8 test means that nothing is fundamentally wrong with Starship, it just needs a bit of tweaking. Thus, it should work as expected: Cheap launches, enormous capacity.
The question is, what will the space industry do with a vastly reduced launch cost and increased launch capacity?
This means that no matter how cheaply you build something, the internal cost for SpaceX to launch it will be cheaper. Even for mass-produced cars, it'd cost you more to buy the car than it'd cost SpaceX to launch the car.
It also means that launch capacity is effectively unlimited. Once SpaceX gets into the right rhythm, there's simply no way to exceed the tonneage per day (potentially thousands) that they could provide.
The SN8 test means that nothing is fundamentally wrong with Starship, it just needs a bit of tweaking. Thus, it should work as expected: Cheap launches, enormous capacity.
The question is, what will the space industry do with a vastly reduced launch cost and increased launch capacity?
This means that no matter how cheaply you build something, the internal cost for SpaceX to launch it will be cheaper. Even for mass-produced cars, it'd cost you more to buy the car than it'd cost SpaceX to launch the car.
It also means that launch capacity is effectively unlimited. Once SpaceX gets into the right rhythm, there's simply no way to exceed the tonneage per day (potentially thousands) that they could provide.
