SpaceX's monstrous, dirt-cheap Starship may transform space travel

[gristy]

WHEN IT COMES to size and spectacle, the peak of the Space Age passed in 1973, with the final flight of the Saturn V rocket that had carried the Apollo astronauts to the moon. Taller than the Statue of Liberty, the Saturn V could lug 140 tonnes into orbit. Its first flight, in 1967, provoked Walter Cronkite, an American news anchor reporting far from the pad, to exclaim: “My God, our building’s shaking here!” as ceiling tiles fell around him. Despite half a century of technological progress, nothing as powerful has reached orbit since (see chart 1).



https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2022/02/11/spacexs-monstrous-dirt-cheap-starship-may-transform-space-travel

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Like SpaceX's landing ships, the article author has reused Iain M. Banks Culture book Ship names

for the section titles - "Zero gravitas", "Congenital optimist", "Nervous energy". But "If at first you don't succeed..." doesn't appear in the lists: https://concord.fandom.com/wiki/Iain_M._Banks_Culture_Universe_Spaceship_Names , though it has the sound of a Ship name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_spaceport_drone_ship

[Klaralven]

2. How many kilograms of fuel and oxidizer are required to propel one kilogram to escape velocity?

Dirt cheap, is it?