this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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SpaceX is a for-profit company, so you can expect them to price their launches only a little bit lower than their competitors even if the cost of the launch is dramatically lower. That gives them the most profit. If you want the price to go down significantly then you'll need to find someone else who can start actually reusing their rockets to get their costs into the same ballpark as SpaceX.
What specific significant issues did you hear that Starship had? NASA is confident enough in their chances that the success of the Artemis program was literally dependent on Starship being successful (the human lander is a modified Starship), and the design has changed a lot even since their previous test launch.
I don't think starship is going to be priced like that. They've long been saying it's going to dramatically reduce cost to orbit for everyone.
Will they make it more expensive than what it would cost them for a starlink v2 launch, sure, but it's not gonna be priced per kg just below the next cheapest non resuseable rocket either.
So far the booster doesn’t seem to work since using so many engines hasn’t been solved yet. Maybe they will figure it out.
The booster they test-launched used a hodgepodge of every engine that they'd built so far, with designs that were already obsolete when it was launched. It's hardly surprising that some of them failed. The next test launch will be using a set of mass-produced engines with a more refined and consistent design, and they're entirely removing the hydraulic system that was the cause of the first test launch's failure.
Again, NASA is confident this will work out. The HLS contract is in the critical path for the Artemis Moon landing and they gave it to SpaceX in a form that depends on Superheavy working. This isn't just my opinion here.
Nevertheless, it is a opinion at this point