[consumer451]

> The only hurdle would be the price.

This is not the only hurdle. You can have an airport right next to a major city, with hundreds of arrivals and departures each day.

The same cannot be said for a Starship spaceport. Due to very loud launch, sonic booms on landing [0], and the danger of dropping a Starship onto populated areas, it would likely need to be offshore. That requires a boat, so now boarding a Starship involves thinking about sea states, taking a ferry ride on each side, and more.

Starship is super cool, but point to point Starship is a bit of a fantasy when you start to get to the nitty gritty.

[0] https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2024/11/starships-sound-stud... (TL;DR: Super Heavy's sonic booms are 110 dB when standing 20 km from the booster.)

[gmueckl]

110dB 20km from the origin? That is a serious WTF right there if that number is accurate. If my quick estimate is correct that would mean that the sonic boom is deadly to anything within a few 100m around the booster. Even 110dB is skirting the border to permanent hearing damage from a single exposure.

[mr_toad]

Both the Saturn V and the SLS produced over 200dB. Considering that the scale is logarithmic the sound must be quite literally staggering.

https://www.theoverview.org/p/sls-vs-saturn-v-which-was-loud...

[gmueckl]

Here's some noise data from Starship launches. This says that it emits over twice the acoustic energy of SLS at launch:

https://pubs.aip.org/asa/jel/article/5/2/023602/3337259/Star...

[HPsquared]

The launch (engines etc) are MUCH louder still.

[rbanffy]

It could be possible for a couple routes where launch and final approaches could be done over water. It'd need some shallow seas, so platforms could be anchored to the bottom, as well as some high-speed rail and some veeeeery long rail bridges connecting the spaceport to land.

A quick look at ocean depth maps points to friendly continental platforms around the East US, China, a lot of Australia and New Zealand, and most of South America.

It'd be a massive effort, but not completely impossible. To get to Brazil to see my family, I'd probably need to first go to Southwest Ireland before boarding a suborbital flight to Rio, so it'd be 2 hours of rail, then 20 or so minutes of suborbital, then another hour flying to São Paulo (which is not on the coast). Still beats flying through Lisbon, Amsterdam or Paris.

[numpad0]

Hear, hear. Rapid dragon air-launched Superheavy with two-way radial symmetry switchblade wings for engine-forward horizontal landing. Make it a big-ass glider biplane with big Dragon in its tail for cargos. No sketchy flops or balancing act, Cg forward of CoL all the way from retro burn to touchdown. Capsule escape available down to 500 feet or there abouts.

[timschmidt]

> Starship involves thinking about sea states, taking a ferry ride on each side, and more.

Passengers could eject a few km above ground and parachute to their destination like Yuri Gagarin did on Vostok 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_1#Reentry_and_landing

:) /s