Did you even read what I wrote? I'm not talking about any of this. I'm not saying "they HaveN't MaDe it to OrB1TTTT1!!!111!!" at all. I'm also not saying they won't be able to get a ship back (they did this several times already) or even catch it (although they haven't done this yet).
I'm just saying that being able to deliver 40 tonnes (this is what they did in flight 12, not 100 tonnes) to orbit (or almost orbit, doesn't matter) and getting the ship through to a soft water landing is not the same as being able to reuse it to again to launch 100 tonnes to orbit, not by far.
The ship can perfectly make through EDL and still not be able to be launched again with 1600 tonnes of propellants on board. They have to actually catch and analyze a ship to assess if it still is structurally sound enough after a reentry to be launched again. And this may (will, IMHO) need further changes to manage this.
And there's even much more to this than just the structures. Like, from the coloring of the steel hull with the last flight it's obvious that the naked steel reached temperatures of about 400° C. The steel may be fine with this, but this will have quite thoroughly baked everything in the ship, like the PEZ dispenser with its motors, chains and belts. They will have to add insulation or other mitigations to make all of this really and reliably reusable. And there will be uncounted other details they will have to care for before being able to launch a ship again. That's iterative development, but it takes its time, step for step. They are not done with this yet.
Being able to land the ship does not automatically mean you can just stack it onto a booster, fill it with 1600 tonnes of propellants and fly it again it as you seem to think. Getting the ship back is a required prerequisite to reuse it, but not a sufficient one.
But you said they will reuse a ship this year to launch 100 tonnes to orbit. If they will do this I will be very happy, but I doubt that a lot.
I think they may be able to catch a ship this year, but even this will be tight. The next flight won't even go to orbit (so it will not be able to make it back to the launch site), so they can at the earliest go to orbit in flight 14. Even if they then go right to a catch attempt with their first orbital flight they would have to relaunch the same ship with flight 15 to make it this year. And they could do this only if they don't do any Artemis-related flights apart from that and if absolutely everything perfectly works from now on. Currently they can get a ship ready maybe every two months, so three more flights already hits the end of the year.
You're either totally misunderstanding what I'm actually saying or this is a typical "he's right but I don't like what he's saying" thing.
What I'm saying is just that progress will be slower than some people think or hope, just as progress in the last 12 flights was slower than some people expected.
But if you really think they will reuse ships this year to deliver 100 tonnes to orbit you again won't read what I wrote.
PS: Not that it would matter, but could please someone explain to me why they're downvoting what I wrote? I mean, what I wrote is just reasonable. SpaceX even took about a year to launch their first landed Falcon 9 booster a second time. With Super Heavy they took four months to reuse it (which was quite an improvement certainly). But do people here really expect that SpaceX does this within months or weeks with a Starship second stage once they manage to catch it later this year or early next year (which I fully expect within this timeframe)?
Getting the ship safely back to Boca Chica will only be the first half of full and operational reusability. Are you people really that thin-skinned when someone says that all of this is hard to do and won't happen without lots of further iterative development and assessments? I really don't understand how people can be that impatient. You people are the very material that haters are made from: You expect miracles and then will be sooner or later be disappointed because what you get is just solid iterative engineering that takes its time and in the end will be not really a miracle.
It really seems to me as if there are just haters and fanbois here anymore. The haters say "Starship just explodes every time and will never work!" and the fanbois say "Everything will work perfectly the next launch!" and anyone who's just reasonable and factual about things will be hated by both sides just the same. What a situation to be in.
