I’m well aware of the link, but again Starship shares similar links with much older projects.
We can trace them both down to liquid rocket propulsion, but one flew in 1980’s the other is still in R&D.
We can trace them both down to liquid rocket propulsion, but one flew in 1980’s the other is still in R&D.
Then why don't you tell us about it?
Because you’re obviously trying to deflect from a lost argument. Starship has clearly been mismanaged and nothing you’ve suggested has actually countered that core issue.
Even if I use your example and timeline:
Shuttle: 1968 (project announced) - 1981 (first launch): 13 years
Starship: 2012 (project announced) - 2022 (first launch): 10 years
Starship's several years ahead of Shuttle development.
Hilarious conversation. Thanks for providing laughs for the evening.
Yep, you’ve got nothing. Starship even borrows heavily from the shuttle program using a lifting body design etc.
At least have the dignity of walking away.
And note that the actual shuttle that was launched in 1981, the Columbia, went on to conduct 27 more successful missions (until its tragic end many years later). So it was already successfully reusable from its first test flight (with the known caveats around cost of refurbishment).
Only the orbiter was refurbishable (not fully and rapidly reusable like Starship - booster reuse was demonstrated today), which took 6 months, and cost $2 Billion per launch.
The whole Starship development program is slated to cost about as much as 5 Shuttle launches.
Feel free to counter the points being addressed rather than attack a straw man. Obviously if Starship was strictly worse there’d be no point in trying to develop it.
Suggesting a modern preproduction car is better than a Fiat Argenta from the early 80’s isn’t a recommendation, same deal with Starship.
No fatalities with Dragon yet, thankfully. It seems to me that Dragon and Shuttle are much more directly comparable. Falcon 9 throws away it's second stage, which is still less than Shuttle did. And Dragon requires a similar level of refurbishment to Shuttle. Shuttle could carry 27,000kg to LEO whereas Falcon 9 can carry 22,800kg to LEO.
Starship is slated for 200,000kg to LEO. It's in an entirely different class.
The aspect of Starship I find craziest - it's lack of launch abort system at this stage of development - was a problem Shuttle suffered it's whole life. And Shuttle didn't have the engine redundancy of Starship or Falcon 9.