Starship's true purpose is to compete with airlines in trans oceanic flights.
Musk has said so many times but then he intentionally obfuscates it with all the Mars and Moon talk.
But remember that you heard this before it was widely realized to be true; Starship isn't about going to Mars. Starship is about going to China.
And too fragile/explodey for niche military uses (long range troop drops?)
But for military use - think logistics. Rapid delivery of equipment to unusual places. This applies to civilian purposes as well. All kinds of use-cases for speeding up cargo.
The entire economics of Starship and rapid reusability was presented at the beginning of the Starbase work, way back when Hoppy was a thing. He's been sticking to the plan since then. You might want it to be fiction, but he's been very good at figuring out business plans to leverage his ultimate goals.
Not very good on delivering tech though, which is what makes it more fiction than not.
Tesla easily has the best vehicle software + OTA and has since the S in 2012. It still feels better than most new vehicles.
You can buy a Tesla (including Cybertruck) today that will do 95+% of drives with 0 intervention. It may not be 100% autonomous yet, but there isn't anything obvious limiting the last step.
The robots exist but are still being developed. Within 5 years, it is hard to imagine them not becoming super valuable within factory settings.
Sure: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/05/the-vehic...
https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-drivers-are-paying-big-buc...
https://www.thestreet.com/automotive/tesla-employees-shared-...
https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-04-15...
https://www.torquenews.com/17998/after-software-update-left-...
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2022/10/tesla-autopi...
the cases are endless...
>The robots exist but are still being developed. Within 5 years, it is hard to imagine them not becoming super valuable within factory settings.
Yeah, let's check back in 5 years.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaSupport/comments/1poig9a/night...
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/when-a-software-upda...
There have been many accusations about sudden accelleration, but except for the Cybertruck's pedal-cover slide, there has never been a proven case of a Tesla autonomously accellerating into a crash. But these accusations come a lot, because people are always wanting to shift the blame away from themselves and the automaker seems like an easy target.
And the Mars missions so far are just delayed.
Yeah, after almost half a century, they passed 70s-era Soyuz numbers.
>Tesla changed the automobile from ICE to BEV in a way people wanted to buy and was practical as a replacement for any use
The magic of EV subsidies (for both Tesla and buyers).
>And the Mars missions so far are just delayed.
The magic of that statement is that it can be true at any point in the future!
Surely it's too fragile/explodey for military use - the whole thing's a very volatile fuel tank - could it survive being shot at, even a single high-powered rifle bullet (during landing, or even post-landing) without going boom?
Falcon 9 is clearly proving that doesn’t have to be the case.
Transportships even reduce speed to reduce costs.
If the payload doesn't pay for all of this, it was a huge R&D investmen from the american people to Musks scifi ideas
NASA also another 6 Billion upfront to SpaceX for Dragon and HLS.
So yes the american paid for the R&D of SpaceX.
SpaceX took the 'risk' but either succeeding or not in your main business is hardly a risk if you need to succeed anyway to have that business.
If not for SpaceX, the American People would have paid more to the ULA group for what has clearly turned out to be inferior results, since ULA has received far more money for far fewer services.
SpaceX was the underdog.