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Starship Will Simply Never Work
The 7 Deadly Sins of Starship
A collective cheer echoed throughout the internet on the 6th of March as yet another Starship spectacularly exploded across the Caribbean sky. Some of this derision came from the understandable backlash to the now-outed billionaire nazi-sympathiser neo-fascist goon at the head of SpaceX. But a surprising amount came from a chorus of disgruntled engineers, physics teachers and people with common sense. You see, SpaceX’s plans for Starship are demonstrably stupid. In fact, it is so stupid in so many different ways a lot of us, myself included, struggle to get a big-picture view and articulate why this moronic giant phallus will never work. I want to correct that with this article. So, come with me as I will lay out in glorious detail the 7 Deadly Sins of Starship and why this project is destined for the scrap heap.
Deadly sin №1, thrust.
Starship is meant to be a heavy-launch vehicle with a payload capacity of at least 100 tonnes to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). This specification is critical to every contract Starship has received. However, Musk has stated that, due to issues with thrust, Starship can only take 40–50 tonnes to LEO. That is actually less than their already operational Falcon Heavy! Okay, so what is going on here? Well, it seems Musk massively overestimated how much thrust their rocket engines can actually produce. This is not surprising; the figures he used to claim were basically impossible. However, SpaceX also has to throttle back the engines on Starship, as they keep failing due to their proximity to the other engines, causing excessive heat and vibrations.
Musk claimed that this reduced thrust cut the payload by just over 50%. But, the only payloads Starship has ever carried were 8 tonnes and 4 tonnes during the most recent 7th and 8th test flights. These Starships exploded during these flights due to excessive vibrations causing giant fuel leaks. So, right now, it seems even that tiny payload is too much stress for the engines, and Starship actually can’t take any payload to orbit. As such, Musk’s 40–50 tonne figure is either a lie, or he stated how much payload Starship can take to orbit if the final stage (Starship, not the Super Heavy Booster) is expended. So, for the sake of appeasing the Musk fans, I will assume…
