Additionally, I doubt that Starship or SuperHeavy will be ready by 2024; flying, maybe, but reliable enough for manned missions? I don't think so.
I think that’s doable in 4.5 years. They expect to fly and land an unmanned prototype upper stage this year. A manned upper stage up to 4 years later doesn’t seem unreasonable. They reckon the upper stage is that hardest part, the first stage should be much simpler.
They will actually have to prove out refueling pretty soon under the NASA contract.
And SpaceX bid also includes flying the system many times until 2024.
So SpaceX will have to do a lot of flights and demonstrate all this stuff to have a shot at this. So it is good that they are going right into mass production that is the only way they can prove all these different things until 2024.
That seems overly optimistic for a system that is now a year and a half past it's original target launch date and has a current target date of late next year.
Seems to work great for satellite launch and ISS supply mission. Why not for moon transport?