LRT: I can't think of a more techbro mindset than trashing nature reserves with a poorly-tested rocket that blew up, and calling it "entertainment".
And when your biggest competitor launched cleanly to a perfect orbit on first launch literally days earlier, "space iz hard" is a lame excuse. The reality is that the Starship program is very poorly run, embarrassingly so. The fact that they have almost zero employee retention is a huge factor in that.
And you can guarantee there are people paying attention to this in both government and commercial launch circles. Vulcan is already ready for government payloads, and New Glenn halfway there. Neutron and Nova are coming up soon, and neither seem to follow the "casually explode rockets" developmental philosophy.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter to customers how cheap the nominal $/kg to orbit is for Starship if the insurance is so high that another launcher is net cheaper.
@simonbp I think you're missing that, yes, government is paying attention to this because they were highly involved in it. This plan was made with government. This is the development process that government wanted to see.
This isn't a tech bro thing. This is a development process that governments around the world have a huge stake in, and huge influence on.
And it's because the other platforms from Vulcan through New Glen don't offer the same potential as this one. Governments really want this to succeed and so they are working together with #SpaceX on getting it across the finish line.
