[trhway]

it is obviously predicated on Starship. All these discussions have no sense otherwise.

> or the real one that has thus far delivered only one banana worth of payload into orbit?

once it starts delivering real payloads, the time for discussions will be no more, it will be time to rush to book your payload slot.

[gspr]

You are presented with a factual, verifiable, statement that starship has been promised for years and that all that's been delivered is something capable of sending a banana to LEO. Wayyyy overdue too.

You meet this with "well, once it works, it'll be amazing and you'll be queuing up"? How very very musky!

What a cult.

[ben_w]

I have no idea if SpaceX will ever make the upper stage fully reusable. The space shuttle having existed isn't an existence proof, given the cost of repairs needed between missions.

However, with Starship SpaceX has both done more and less than putting a banana in orbit. Less, because it's never once been a true orbit; more, because these are learn-by-doing tests, all the reporting seems to be in agreement that it could already deliver useful mass to orbit if they wanted it to.

But without actually solving full reusability for the upper stage, this doesn't really have legs. Starship is cheap enough to build they can waste loads of them for this kind of testing, but not cheap enough for plans such as these to make sense if they're disposable.

[ENGNR]

They also launched dummy satellites from the "pez dispenser", directly simulating the actual mission payload, about 4 months ago.