I'm not a space person, so this may be a very basic question but how is this same rocket supposed to launch from locations on the Moon or Mars? The propulsion force is obviously less because the gravity is less there, but that really enough to overcome all of this work they have to do on Earth? At least at Boca Chica you can get a construction crew there.
The large lower booster only launches and lands on Earth. The upper section (the Starship) will be able to land and launch on other bodies, but it has only a fraction the number of engines.
There is a different version of Starship for landing on the moon. Supposedly, for Mars, the single stage part of the rocket has enough acceleration to get off of Mars on its own.
The more you look into it, the more it becomes apparent that Starship is optimized for launching very large constellations of LEO satellites, not for Mars colonization or even Moon missions. It's publicly pitched as a Mars colonization rocket because this pipe dream is the foundation of SpaceX's recruiting strategy. (It's easier to motivate rocket engineers with the dream of Mars colonies than with SDI contracts.)
No other ship can launch 150+ tons in a 9m-diameter payload bay, use propellant that can be created on Mars, and can vertically land and take off again.
It seems all of these are required optimizations for Mars colonization or Moon missions. The fact that NASA selected Starship as its human landing vehicle for the US's return to the moon strikes me as a remarkable vote of confidence by a highly qualified organization with far more data than we have and a lot at stake.
The biggest issue with the Mars plan is there's no money in it, no customers lined up and ready to take advantage of it. And even if a serious organization of prospective colonists started organizing and got funding now (nobody has a plausible answer for how a Mars economy would work, how it would get enough Earth cash to pay for itself) it would still take decades for them to develop viable Martian colony hardware. Even test-runs of such technology in closed environments on Earth are in their absolute infancy and have virtually no funding. As a Mars rocket, Starship is a bridge to nowhere.
Yet Starship is costing SpaceX a whole heck of a lot of money to develop. I don't think that makes any sense unless they have some other business plan in mind for it. Launching massive constellations of satellites is that plan, there's a huge amount of profit potential in the near-term if they can make Starship work. Starlink alone might make Starship worth it, but fulfilling SDI contracts could be the real money cow (incidentally, SDI is politically polarized, and this might be part of the reason why Musk has "gotten political". If Musk really wants SDI contracts then he needs republicans to fund it.)
If you're inclined to believe Musk is sincere with the Mars colonization talk, then perhaps you could conclude that the plan is to make insane amounts of money building huge LEO constellations and then use that to fund Mars colonization. But from what I understand, Musk has said that SpaceX won't be building colonies and is focused on building the ships to get there instead. Who's buying?
> The fact that NASA selected Starship as its human landing vehicle for the US's return to the moon strikes me as a remarkable vote of confidence by a highly qualified organization with far more data than we have and a lot at stake.
Maybe. I'm very surprised SpaceX won that contract, maybe people at NASA really believe they can do it. Or maybe they decided to give SpaceX enough rope to hang themselves. Or maybe nobody really expects Artemis to get that far and the whole thing is basically a joke at the taxpayer's expense. Or maybe there are people at NASA who believe in SDI and want to make sure Starship is successfully developed. In any case, even if they can actually do the moon missions there's a huge gap between hanging out on the Moon for a few weeks and making a serious go at a long-term Martian colony.
I see. The important distinction that was a bit ambiguous in your post is that the Starship /program/ is better suited to LEO constellation delivery, not that the Starship rocket itself has some flaw that makes it ill-suited for Mars or the Moon.
Frankly, as someone very interested in Starship (and SpaceX in general), I don't disagree with you. But this isn't really a revelation - the strategy has always been Starlink first, HLS (NASA Human Landing System) second, Mars third. Due to delays and NASA-driven deadlines, it's arguable that HLS has moved into the top spot and limited launch activities will need to focus on fuel depot milestones instead of Starlink launches.
The Starlink business model is impressive. Two million people worldwide (as of Sept 2023) paying $200/month grosses $4.8 billion in revenue - about what NASA paid for HLS, IIRC. I don't see why pursuing that is a problem, and spending $5B on Starship to get a 30,000 satellite constellation in orbit to expand the capacity to 20 million subscribers per year or more is a slam dunk financially.
As for Mars, we know one thing: nothing will happen without a new heavy lift rocket similar to Starship. Once that's in place, doors will open - one may be to Mars, but I agree it's much further down the road than people think.
But I do believe that Musk's goal is Mars, and he's willing to spend a large percentage of his fortune to get there. In the meantime, he's betting that a lot of people will come along for the ride and address the challenges of a Mars mission (not even "colony") with new innovation.
Without Starship, there's no reason to research ISRU technologies like efficient Sabatier reaction equipment, or automated assembly, or million other Mars-specific technologies because we have no vehicle to get there.
With Starship, he's able to pull an entire industry forward. Maybe it is made of crazy dreamers, but crazy dreamers are often needed for a step-change level risk.
