by stinkbeetle | 2025-10-04 07:36:41+00:00
Falcon 9 development was announced in 2005, first successful booster landing in 2015.

Starship development time is much harder to pin down and it has changed a lot more. A post-Falcon 9 rocket was announced in 2012, but it was very different (e.g., initially meant to be carbon composite, changed to steel in 2018, went through 3-4 name changes). Starship seems much more exploratory, pushing the boundaries of what has been done in rocketry. Structural material is unusual, fuel is unusual, engines are unusual, using tower to catch rockets is unusual, reentering and reusing booster is unusual, size and weight of rocket and thrust is unsuaul, etc.

Starship's first booster landing (tower catch) was in 2024, so even if we took the start of development as 2012, that is only 2 years later than Falcon 9 for ~same milestone. Falcon 9 of course was flying commercial payloads for some time before booster reuse, which puts it well ahead of Starship on that metric, but I would say SpaceX has been less concerned with getting something to space, they have a reliable solution for that already which is still well ahead of competitors for cost effectiveness, and the company is financially in a much better place than it was when trying to get Falcon 9 working.

Starship development is still working on returning the second stage and orbital refueling, which are beyond Falcon 9's capabilities. It's possible it could have been launching commercial payloads by now if that's what they had concentrated on (without reusing the second stage). They have demonstrated second stage engine re-light and payload deployment, which is basically is needed to put Starlink satellites into orbit.

They're making pretty steady progress. It's off what they had hoped, but so is every rocket company and government rocket project.The rocket is the largest machine ever to fly. It's approaching 3x the size and power of the Saturn V at launch. The engines are like nothing ever made before in terms of power and efficiency. It seems likely to significantly reduce cost per kg to orbit beyond the revolutionary Falcon 9 even if it doesn't hit their goals (which might be unrealistic) of 2 orders of magnitude cheaper, 1 order of magnitude might be possible ($2000/kg -> $200/kg) even without second stage reuse. With orbital refueling it promises to reduce costs of payload to Moon and other planets and outer space. This could spur development of scientific instruments and experiments that are cheaper or more capable (or both), and exploration of space.

I think it's very exciting, not just for the promise of continuing better and cheaper communications for us on earth, but for all the science and exploration it could help to unlock.

It does seem like they're having trouble with re-entry and reusing the second stage. I hope they can work that out. I'm sure they can get it to reenter and land (they essentially already have twice), I'm just quite skeptical of the promise of a few hours reflight turnaround time. I suspect that if that continues to cause them trouble, we're likely to see them start to fly payloads next year without second stage reuse working yet.