Focusing on the Non-Reusable Starship

I have one of those rare cases where I disagree with a professional's take on a space story enough that I think it simply shouldn't have been published as it is.  

The story is by Eric Ralph who heads the SpaceX writing for Teslarati, and the story is, “Elon Musk teases expendable version of SpaceX’s reusable Starship rocket.”  

The fact is, as Eric Ralph himself cites over and over, there will always be expendable versions of Starship so Musk wasn't teasing something unheard of.  Further, there has always been recognition of that fact because there will always be missions for which return to launch site (or even launch planet) isn't planned.  SpaceX’s multibillion dollar Human Landing System contract to use Starship to return NASA astronauts to the Moon features a tanker variant - a ship that will store propellant for refueling on-orbit that can't and won't return to Earth.  There are proposed missions to the outer planets where it would be waste of precious cargo capacity to include features for reuse on Earth.  

Three expendable variants of Starship anticipated for NASA's HLS. SpaceX image.

Even excluding missions like that, there will be several missions flown before reuse is even possible. That sort of operational reuse knowledge of Starship and the Super Heavy booster is going to be hard-won.  While we have every reason to expect that it will take fewer test flights to successfully recover Starships than it did to recover Falcon 9s, I think it wouldn't be unexpected at all to lose some test vehicles before recovery becomes routine, as it has for the workhorse F9.  As he notes:

Simply ensuring that Starship can reach orbit at all is a major challenge. Successfully recovering Starship and Super Heavy after the fact may be an even bigger challenge and cannot be fully demonstrated until the rocket can consistently reach orbit. SpaceX won’t be able to reuse Starship until it can consistently recover ships and boosters from orbital launches. And there’s no guarantee that early prototypes will be reusable even if they’re recovered.

Perhaps to hit that point with a bigger hammer: until full reusability is demonstrated, every Starship will be expendable no matter what anyone might want to call it.  

It therefore might not seem as controversial to point out that there have already been non-reusable Starships produced in Texas for various tests: 

Prototype Starships already built (note the date of 10-5-22).  Image from The Ring Watchers on Twitter.

Eric Ralph concludes with some mind-boggling numbers that reflect on just how much Starship changes everything, and here I'll just give him the floor. 

In early 2023, SpaceX updated the Starship section of its website, revealing that an expendable version of the rocket will be able to launch up to 250 metric tons (~550,000 lbs) to low Earth orbit in a single launch. Saturn V, the next most capable expendable rocket, could launch up to 118 tons (~260,000 lbs) to LEO and cost $1-2 billion per launch. SpaceX publicly advertising the expendable performance of Starship unsurprisingly confirms that the company is considering all of the capabilities its new launch system will offer.

And Starship’s expendable capabilities are significant. Constructed piece by piece over dozens of launches, the International Space Station weighs about 420 tons (~925,000 lbs). Two expendable Starships could launch more usable mass to LEO – truly revolutionary if SpaceX can make Starship launches frequent and routine.

Two expendable Starships could deliver more mass to orbit than the dozens of Shuttle flights it took to deliver all the pieces of the ISS to orbit.