[oceanplexian]

A single terminal could serve an entire African village. It's also serving use cases in the Ukraine war, ships at sea, Antarctic research stations, numerous aerospace and military use cases, and so on. DTC is provide texting and emergency services to countless people who might need it in an emergancy, like we saw in North Carolina.

Last and most importantly, Starlink exists is to create revenue for SpaceX and to fund the Starship program. The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high.

[xnx]

> The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high.

Starship to orbit sounds useful, but Starship to Mars is near useless. If that's what rich people want to spend their money on, go nuts.

[chermi]

I'm quite confident if it was anyone besides Elon behind spacex, we'd be hailing starship(cross fingers it works out) as one of the most exciting things we've ever done. And we should be, because it is.

It's something for humanity to be excited about and root for. What happened to wanting to achieve things? Having things to look forward to, build toward and be proud of is healthy for society. Must we aspire to and dream of nothing because there's suffering on earth, is that what it is? Why can't we take it as the objective good it is that we're trying to push technological boundaries that will unlock more advancements in science? In what world does HN not want that?

[Ancapistani]

> Starship to orbit sounds useful, but Starship to Mars is near useless.

I strongly disagree.

If "Starship to Mars" is a possibility, then so is "Starship to the asteroid belt". It's very close to "Starship to the asteroid belt, capture asteroid, return to Earth orbit" - and that's very close to orbital mining of metals that are rare and valuable on Earth.

[JumpCrisscross]

> It's very close to "Starship to the asteroid belt, capture asteroid, return to Earth orbit"

To put this into perspective, an Earth-Mars round trip costs about 15 km/s; Earth-main Belt about 13 km/s.

You'd need to add Δv for returning the mass of the asteroid. But you get your reaction mass for "free."

(To be clear, we are hundreds of billions of dollars of capex and decades away from asteroid mining. But the work to get there is decently in line with the work we would need to establish a logistical chain to Mars and back.)

[oceanplexian]

> Starship to orbit sounds useful, but Starship to Mars is near useless.

A single astronaut with a shovel could do more science in a couple days than all the probes combined in the last 54 years (Which have barely scratched the surface). For all we know there are literal fossils a few meters below the surface but none of our technology had the ability to even start looking.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Starship to Mars is near useless

Apollo to the Moon was near useless by that metric. We wouldn't have Starship to orbit if we hadn't gone to the moon.

[thrance]

You're discounting the fact that building Starship, if successful, has a non-zero chance of taking Musk away from Earth forever. That's a huge potential positive.

[londons_explore]

> The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high.

If humanity agreed with this statement, humanity would fund the program directly through investment, donations or taxes, the same way we fund roads and schools which we also value highly.

[JumpCrisscross]

> If humanity agreed with this statement, humanity would fund the program directly through investment, donations or taxes, the same way we fund roads and schools which we also value highly

...Starlink and SpaceX are funded through investments and taxes. When they launch a non-profit's satellite I guess, indirectly, through donations, too.

Also, what? Why is the funding source a measure of value?

[inemesitaffia]

Like SLS?

[tgv]

> The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high.

I beg to disagree. I see no value at all. This must be one of those accelerationist or extropianist/utilitarian beliefs.

[leptons]

>The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high.

This does not benefit "humanity" at all, even if they do succeed. If a human colony on Mars is established, and all of humanity is wiped out on Earth, does it really benefit "humanity" or only the 0.000000001% of "humanity" located on Mars?

And life on Mars is going to be difficult, it isn't habitable, and is in fact quite hostile to life. I seriously doubt any colony on Mars would be viable long-term. If life on Earth is wiped out, the colony on Mars will very likely wither and die soon after without continued support from Earth.

Any colony on Mars is going to be so exponentially more fragile and fraught with problems for sustaining life, that the suggestion that it's somehow going to save humanity is ridiculous.

[bryanlarsen]

The primary benefit of Starship is a sizable reduction of the cost of getting mass to orbit, not Mars dreams.

[leptons]

That's a bit of a re-branding.

How does "getting mass to orbit" benefit all of humanity more than what we have now? Not that much, I think, but maybe you have some inside scoop that the rest of us don't know about.

[JumpCrisscross]

> That's a bit of a re-branding

No, it isn't. Starlink's entire commercial value is in being able to perform high-mass / low-latency launch to LEO. There is some fun stuff on the Moon. And a long-term pitch on Mars. But the commercial branding has always been about LEO.

> How does "getting mass to orbit" benefit all of humanity more than what we have now?

Better Earth observation. Better space observation. Communications outside our ecology versus based on wires strung through it.

Let's reverse the question. For the environmental impact of space launch, what else do we do that's more-agreeably useless?

[leptons]

Bullshit. Every story I've ever heard about "Starship" is how it is going to Mars to take humans there to build a colony. I've never once heard that "Starship" will be used to launch even more starlink satellites. They even made movies about it:

https://www.google.com/search?q=spacex+movie+mars&oq=spacex+...

Google tells me exactly this:

>"Yes, SpaceX's Starship is being developed with the explicit goal of transporting humans and cargo to Mars, with Elon Musk aiming for the first uncrewed test missions to send robotic Tesla bots by 2026 and crewed missions potentially beginning around 2029 or 2031. The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and is the world's most powerful launch vehicle, intended to eventually establish a self-sustaining city on the planet."

It's pretty wasteful to blow up starship after starship after starship when they could have spent that money launching normal rockets for their satellite deployments.

Of course spacex probably wants to rebrand starship now that Mars is looking like the very stupid plan that it was.

There are better things humanity could be doing with the time and money spent blowing up "starship" after "starship". And really, why name it "starship" if it's just meant for LEO? Because it wasn't intended for LEO, that's why. It's a rebrand. Just call it "LEOship" if it's just going to be launching satellites.

It's yet one more case of Musk over-promising and under-delivering.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Every story I've ever heard about "Starship" is how it is going to Mars to take humans there to build a colony

Could this reflect your media diet?

> never once heard that "Starship" will be used to launch even more starlink satellites

That's kind of wild. I understand getting the PR stuff first, but every newspaper I read mentions Starlink whenever SpaceX comes up, unless it's about a launch explosion or Artemis.

> pretty wasteful to blow up starship after starship after starship when they could have spent that money launching normal rockets for their satellite deployments

V3 doesn't fit on smaller rockets. And Starship's launch costs promise to be much lower than the Falcons.

> why name it "starship" if it's just meant for LEO? Because it wasn't intended for LEO, that's why

Starship isn't an interstellar platform...

[chermi]

Umm, a lot. Do you know how many cubesats falcon has launched? Did the space station help humanity? Now imagine a bigger one(s) faster. Bigger satellites- do you know how much of James Webb design and difficulty was around packing into tight space? Bigger satellites, big enough for new wavelengths. Big interferometer setups. Microgravity for bio and pharma crap. Better for particles far enough away to be unaffected by earth magnetic field.

Do you agree science is good for humanity? Do you like James Webb? The other things mentioned above? I'd guess yes to all based on your username. How is getting more mass into space of questionable benefit? If starship works, which everyone on earth should be hopeful and excited about, we get more mass for cheaper into space. It's the equivalent of new funding(falcon has brought down launch costs sooo much) while also unlocking previously inconceivable experiments/instruments. Who doesn't like more science funding? Who doesn't like new experiments and instruments?