>>12991113>The cost of the launch isn't a majority of probe cost even today. Starship won't revolutionize interplanetary probes.indirectly it is.
probes are expensive because launch is so expensive and low cadence that even a 1% chance of failure is unaceptable.
so if launch is 300 million, you can't risk makng a probe "only" 5 million if it has a 1% failure chance, it's too high. So they follow mad design philosophies and the cost increases exponentially. Not to mention the old old space mentality thats always present.
Once starship is operational, if launch costs 10 million, then it makes sense to pay 100 million for 20 probes, that each has a 1% chance of failure (but colectively they have 0,00000000000000000001% chance of all failing together) rather than pay 1000 to make sure the probe you launch on a 10 mil rocket doesnt fail.
And in the long run, robots are still very VERY shit, just like making a robot that could do the same job as a janitor in a bar (in terms of intelligence, flexibility, physical skill dexterity self repairing capacity, power, etc) is wildly beyond our capabilities, and the norm will be to send teams of manned exploration.
Even from a purely scientific non pr move, it makes a lot more sense to send scientist than probes, basically to anywhere.
and thats leaving outside 0g manufacturing of 3d printed organs and space mining of titanum that will be profitable even after importing huge quantities, not as much but still and presto voila
we have what we always dreamd off, a reason for a space economy, were gonna get the sci fi future we was owed bros, here it comes!!