[ceejayoz]

> I just don't see how the fuel costs of getting things up to space winning out unless production is located up there.

Starship's in theory targeting something like a million bucks in fuel for a launch. For a military that spends more than that on individual missiles, that's peanuts.

[tsimionescu]

Starship is also in theory targetting to reach Mars in 2022.

[ceejayoz]

There's an unavoidable physical cap here.

It's fueled with methane and oxygen, and its size is known.

It can't be, say, $50m/flight in fuel for the same reason a 747's flight can't be; there's not enough space for that much fuel.

[tsimionescu]

Sure, but that's true of Saturn V as well, and of Falcon 9, and Soyuz and any other rocket you want. That didn't make space deployment a viable military strategy so far, and I think we should be skeptical of any such claim about Starship.

Also, fuel is just part of the cost of a rocket.

[ceejayoz]

> Also, fuel is just part of the cost of a rocket.

Sure. But if you blew up a 747 at the end of every trip, it'd be a small part of the total cost, not a major part.

Starship's reusability makes it very clearly not like the other examples you cite, yeah? There are lots of scenarios where the US government would pay, say, $10M to deliver a payload somewhere fast, but not $250M.

[dredmorbius]

Co-development of the SpaceX Tardis makes deadlines irrelevant.