A Dozen Starship Orbital Launches Next Year?

I thought that was the most unexpected thing Musk said during the teleconference yesterday.  While acknowledging they were on hold, he said they plan to launch their first orbital Starship mission at the start of next year, then later said it might stretch out to being in February.  One of his important messages is the last part of this tweet:

A dozen launches of a reusable vehicle like Starship doesn't imply needing a dozen of them built, but while they've already said they don't expect, or necessarily even intend, to recover the booster and Starship used in the first flight, there's still a need for production.  Booster 5 and Starship 21 are both close to done (I haven't checked lately - they may be done now) and it seems two or three Starship systems could get them to a dozen launches - that's building one or two more after they throw the first one out.  They've yet to get the new Raptor engine factory running and the rate they can produce those engines still seems to be the long pole in that tent, as that tweet pretty much states outright. 

The idea they're working on a dozen launches in '22 was rapidly followed by another surprising idea: they expect to start launching payloads commercially on Starship by 2023, although that could mean one payload 25 months from now if we're strictly speaking.  

One of the Bushes (either W. or H.W.) coined the famous phrase "the vision thing" about a political rival.  What distinguishes Elon Musk is exactly that: his remarkable vision.  He points out that what humanity really needs is cheap, reliable transport into the solar system.  You wouldn't take many trips by airplane if it was thrown a way after each use (or during each use).  Similarly, cars wouldn't be useful at all if they were treated that way.  Casey Handmer has been hammering on how people don't seem to grasp the size of the revolution that Starship brings, and added more to it yesterday, largely focused on unmanned science missions. 

While traditional rockets are typically expendable and can launch up to 5 T [T=ton] probes to deep space for a few hundred million dollars, Starship promises the ability to deliver ~100 T of cargo to any planetary surface in the solar system for as little as $50m including refilling tanker flights.

The potential for extremely radical change is there.  Also from the same post:

For substantially less than current annual SLS development cost, a planetary science-focused Starship launch program could send a fully loaded Starship to every planet at least once per year, except for Mars whose launch windows are less frequent, but which benefits from Starship baseline design and will probably enjoy its own dedicated program.

Why shouldn’t we have a dedicated orbiter, lander, rover, helicopter, and submarine on every discrete body in the solar system over, say, 100 km in diameter? Let’s build a fleet of clockwork automatons for Venus and an armada of submarines for Europa, Enceladus, and Titan. Let’s darken the Martian skies with helicopters. Let’s drive rovers across the frozen nitrogen plains of Pluto.

Consider this conceptual map of every solid surface in the solar system scaled to the surface of the Earth.  From XKCD: 

Note that the gas giants (Jupiter out through Neptune) aren't included in this map - they don't have a solid surface, and Monroe (XKCD creator) included the ocean surfaces for Earth and the moons of the outer planets. 

Before any of that, Starship needs to work.  It seems that betting against SpaceX achieving these things isn't a smart way to put your money, but we know of lots of things that need to happen before that first orbital flight.  The ground infrastructure needs to be completed.  Musk says that will be complete as soon as “later this month.”  After that, the booster needs to be tested, maybe not at first but eventually with all 29 engines.  It seems like the rest of the year might have some interesting things to watch over at Boca Chica.