Anywhere on the globe in less than an hour... plus months of planning and days of preparing the launch vehicle. How fast can one "scramble" a Starship off the ground?
I assume fast turn around times from the Boca Chica (Texas) spaceport. Pick whichever Starship SN is refreshed and ready to go. Less Space Shuttle, more Southwest Airlines. Vehicles on the ground are vehicles not generating revenue.
Given the drone ship landings of the Falcon first stages, I wonder: could you land a Starship on a US aircraft carrier?
And the obvious next question: given Musk is happy to take ship names from pop culture and sci-fi, might he name one of the Starship vehicles “Enterprise”, and could the Starship Enterprise land on the USS Enterprise (CVN-80)?
The cost is likely to fall in the 1%-3% range of that of a C-17. The War Department could buy 100-200 of them for the cost of 2 C-17 Globemaster IIIs.
I would be interested to see if some form of portable, quickly constructed landing pad could be deployed, much like the mats used as runways during WWII.
Do they need a landing pad? They have to be capable of landing on unimproved martian or lunar rock, with enough spare capacity for either the fuel for a return flight (from the moon) or a local fuel generator (from Mars).
That should work, but it will likely not be able to safely launch again even if you managed to refuel it.
The engine power needed to launch in Earth gravity, even with a small hop fuel load might be too much for engines so close to the ground & with thick atmosphere preventing the exhaust from dissipating.
Oh... I forgot about the noise from launch, which is loud enough that echos could damage the vehicle if not damped.
Some form of tower to stand off the exhaust would be required.
So, the one way cost to get a C-17 full of cargo anywhere in the world is about $500,000
1 Million round trip.
I had the cost wrong, I thought it was per vehicle, it's per launch... $2,000,000. If it could fly back, it's only $4,000,000 per round trip.... just 4 times the cost of a C-17 delivery and return.