A notice to mariners suggests SpaceX's next Starship test flight could launch as soon as May 21.
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SpaceX test-fires Starship for an all-important next flight
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Yes, NASA could've done all sorts of things differently that would've made things cheaper. They didn't do that though, they chose to spend what they spent.
This is kind of like arguing that the real functional cost of the Artemis program is only $200 million a year instead of $4 billion, because there are other cheaper options they could've used. They chose to use a ridiculously expensive option (SLS) for political reasons, just like Shuttle was used with ISS. That absolutely is part of the cost that was paid to do it.
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The pain of what DOGE—under the direct control of Elon Musk with willing participation from SpaceX employees—has done to science and democracy in this country is going to be felt for years, if we’re lucky.
You can accept that or hide from it. There has yet to be a single credible argument in our comments to the contrary. In any thread, from anyone. There’s a reason for that. It’s not defensible.
My job is, as @trannic noted above, to help people navigate the lines. If you are here, at Ars Technica, then accepting that facts matter is part of that.
So is understanding that “political opinions” are relevant when discussing SpaceX, because the company and their CEO inserted themselves into politics.
Ars, and our readers, didn’t shift to politics. Politics came to us.
If you want to complain that “political opinions” don’t belong in space the person to address that to is Elon Musk.
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How many of those hypothetical changes to save money were too expensive for NASA to make?
For example, the original plan for the Shuttle was a flyback liquid-fueled winged booster; however the OMB insisted on the solid-rocket booster design because it offered lower upfront development costs (and higher long-term operational costs)
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There was no simple change possible - Shuttle is not separable from the ISS, the station was designed in a way that required the Shuttle's use during construction.
That's my point - you can't just leave out the cost of the 30-ish Shuttle launches that were required from the cost of the ISS.
Now, in an alternate reality, they could've designed the station modules differently to allow the use of cheaper launch options, or kept on with Skylab/Saturn V instead. Lots of different ways it could've gone that would've been cheaper. But you'd end up with a much different station than the ISS we have now.
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So NASA is at fault for choosing to do things the expensive way, but at the same time they were forced to things the expensive way?
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I think you missunderstand. Starship isn't impossible, but multiple launches per day of the SAME hardware from the same site, on orbit refueling, maintaining itself for a few months in deep space radiaton, landing on moon on regolith, taking off again, docking, and all the other things by 2028? Thats a steaming pile of bullshit.
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No, I was responding to a poster who thought we shouldn't be including the cost of the shuttle launches in the overall cost of the ISS. Attempting to explain why that's not an accurate way to account for the costs.
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Yo... politics is inescapable. If you want to put your head in the sand and pretend literal child murderer (a) Elon Musk isn't a Nazi and isn't actively working against democratic norms or the legislative process, well, that's on you.
Plenty of us refuse to separate Musk from SpaceX. They're inseparable. I don't like that Musk's wrecking ball politics has me actively rooting for SpaceX failures, but it really does. He's not a good dude, not at all, and he's actively working for the destruction of the country for s tax break.
That's disgusting.
...
(A) I do, in fact, mean literally. Perhaps it's "merely" depraved indifference manslaughter, but DOGE is quite literally killing people cutting things like USAID. "I didn't know that's what those programs did" is no excuse -- see Chesterton's fence.
If Musk removes himself from politics, there'll be a lot less politics in articles about space. Believe it or not, that's a Musk problem, not an ars commentariat problem.
You can stick your head in the sand all you like and pretend it's somehow off topic, but it's hard to imagine anything more on-topic. It would be great if science and politics weren't so deeply entwined, but, again, that's a choice Musk made -- to thoroughly get behind RWNJ politics. Quelle surprise that an awful lot of people aren't thrilled.
Sure, in the article about rotating ignition rockets, musk is off topic. But spacex is musk and vice versa. Musk being a literal neo-Nazi? Indefensible. Yet here you are, defending.
Myself, I'm furious: space is cool. And yet, I'm actively wishing for SpaceX to fail, hard, over and over. Oh, it's not going to bankrupt him, but it's possible, even likely, that a string of consecutive failures allows people to see that he's no genius -- just a dude with more money than sense.
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NASA isn't at fault at all -- Congress said "you gotta do it this way." Spreading the pork all around -- almost maximally inefficient, in fact. But that's ultimately not on NASA at all. That's our fucking stupid system of resource allocation, where reps fight to enrich their own district, nevermind it that.makes sense from a longer/higher view.
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Multiple launches per day, let alone from the same site, are not necessary for Artemis. By 2027-ish, Starship will have at least 3 fully operational launch pads (two at Starbase; one at KSC LC-39A), and possibly more (they're trying to complete the EIS for SLC 37 this year, and have also been eyeing LC-49). Additionally, the design of the Depot and the refilling scheme are such that on-orbit propellant can be gradually accumulated and stored over the course of a month or more, before the HLS Ship is launched to make use of it. Even if it takes ~20 Tankers to completely fill up a Depot, launching from 3 pads twice a week gets this done in less than a month. Yes, this does presume long streaks of problem-free launch.
Docking is another aspect that's not all that hard. SpaceX has plenty of experience with Dragon. Sure, the Starship mechanisms are different, but working it out within a couple of years seems plausible.
Propellant transfer demo (which also includes the above-mentioned docking) between Ships has slipped to next year, and might take a few attempts to solve. But, likely solvable by 2028.
Anyway, I'm expecting Artemis 3 readiness no sooner than 2029. It could possibly even slip into the early 2030's, especially if the first HLS lunar landing demo, or a few, go sideways.
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There's no reason to think same day reuse is necessary for Artemis 3. SpaceX already has 3 towers built, so they reasonably expect have at least 3 launch sites operating in a year or two. They have 4 boosters and ships already, and are building them pretty quickly.
With 3 launch sites and 10 day pad and booster turnaround (Falcon is already faster than this) they can do 12 launches in 30 days or 15 launches in 40 days. With 30 day ship turnaround that only requires 9 ships.
I don't see a reason to think these will require lots of hardware iterations. The HLS-specific part of the project has been working on all these for a while, and the hardware is likely to work pretty well once it's ready. It's just not nearly as visible as the launching and landing parts of Starship.
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I keep seeing this attitude expressed, and continue to find it mildly ridiculous. "Actively wishing" isn't going to make any difference. It's in the same category of woo as the power of prayer. Sort of a mental masturbation, at best.
Not that I'm calling for any acts of sabotage or worse. I'm just saying, wishing for SpaceX to fail won't make it so. It's best to assess SpaceX's chances objectively and dispassionately, and so far as I'm able to do that (admittedly being just another bias-riddled hooman), I don't really see much of a pathway to failure - let alone a hard one - right now.
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Well, I think there's one thing: true believers don't tend to be the smartest folks, so it.seems less likely that he'll have those "willingly working 100 hours a week" engineers;
A different incarnation of OrwellDesign would have been all over sabotage. SpaceX wont run out of money, but it might well run out of regulatory legroom in the rest of the world. His $250m bribe means he's effectively unregulated in the US, but the US isn't the world.
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Fingers crossed they fixed the pogo issue, really want to see how this ship holds up tile wise on the way down. CSI Starbase did an amazing youtube deep dive on it.
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At the end of the day none of our comments here are likely to move the needle. We're just sharing our feelings.
I treat comments as temperature checks, and if you look at the historical temp data on SpaceX you can really see how people have changed as Elon shifted after the pandemic. Or the submarine incident. Or the election.
You're totally right, people's wishes won't make things happen. But that's fine, there's no reason to take everything seriously. I think it's in fact healthy to remember that and not bother arguing with every person you see say something you disagree with.
I find the "ELON MUSK IS A NAZI" comments as tiresome as anyone else really. But if you just treat them like data points they can still have some value in a bigger picture.
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Scientists are going to want missions to go to a variety of locations around Mars, and likely that means setting up a base camp at each location.
While mobile habitats could extend the range of the science done geographically, there is likely only going to be able to cover a pretty small area of the planet.
Any given base is likely only going to be used by one expedition for a long while, unless we find something really extraordinary that needs long term study, such as a site where there are signs of Martian life.
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What if the recent Starship Block 2 explosions are just the iterative engineering process for SpaceX commissioning their own version of rotating detonations? Just rotating about a different axis.
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Strikes me that SpaceX has the same problem Tesla has and that is Musk's disinterest in details and his slapdash "move fast and break things" ethos. Not to mention his habit of bragging about accomplishments that he has not achieved, like for instance how long has Full Self Driving been real soon now? 7-8 years and still nothing.
Personally I think Musk is on the wrong track. He seems determined to launch Mars missions from earth when developing a base on the moon to launch from would both provide invaluable knowledge about setting up a human environment in a hostile environment and provide a launch point that is out of the Earth huge gravity well.
I dunno, maybe I read to much scifi but seems to me a moon base would be a prerequisite for a Mars mission but, apparently, Musk disagrees.
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Only assuming good weather and the presence of enough light, though. Plus non-ambivalent information in the visual data - like some structure intersecting with the course of the vehicle visually merging with the sky because of specific lighting conditions. I seem to remember a Tesla hitting a trailer because of its grey color merging with the sky… or am I misremembering???
More sensors of different kinds will provide more data. The data needs to be used cleverly, of course.
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The moon and mars are both hostile environments that will present a range of challenges to humans not just surviving temporarily but more permanently.
Just because they a both hostile doesn’t mean the challenges they present would have the same solutions (yes a lot of overlap exists).
It general terms it better to focus, test, and develop the technology you need for the specific planet you want to visit.
In some ways Mars is easier to survive on thanks primarily to having an atmosphere and a wider range of local resources more easily accessible.
Anyway I only mean to convey that moon isn’t a prerequisite for mars or vis versa. The moon being closer does allow us to more quickly deliver and test some technologies that would take many months of travel in the mars case so for some of the overlapping technologies that we can’t test well otherwise on or near earth the moon could make a good testbed.
At the moment however I can’t think of any such mars/moon shared technologies that can’t be reasonably well tested and validate on earth.
Note a moon base as leap off point for mars is not something that will make sense until the far far future assuming rather massive lunar activity.
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If self-driving cars only could operate in the same lighting and weather conditions as human drivers, I think that'd be perfectly acceptable to start with. If only...
In some ways, human eyes (when they work well) are superior to conventional cameras - for instance, due to their high dynamic range. However, nowadays we're seeing increased availability of HDR cameras and low-light imaging capabilities, which furthermore cover a wide color gamut. Supplement them with infrared ones, and you already have a solid pathway toward super-human vision (especially when considering the issues people start having with their vision, especially at night, past middle-age.)
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I agree that it’s not gonna be easy. But the multiple launches per day is the most trivial problem to solve. SpaceX already launches falcon 9s every three days. Starship has such a cheap build cost that they can easily afford to build a dozen or more tankers to rotate among launches. Super heavy comes back within an hour, so they only need as many as a maintenance period demands. Could be two or twelve, again at $60M or so per SuperHeavy, it’s not a huge investment.
All your other concerns are no harder than what Apollo had to solve in its eight years of development. SpaceX doesn’t have Apollo’s infinite budget, but technology has advanced massively, and the starship program benefits from the super low build cost of the raptor and stainless steel construction, allowing a lot of testing of prototypes to destruction, whether on earth or test landings on the moon or test fuelings in lower orbit.
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The primary justification for testing this in a more realistic environment on the moon is that the equipment you sent to Mars absolutely has to work. Returning to Earth is not going to be an option for most of the time on Mars. On the moon, return can be done at any time and takes days instead of months.
It is going to be very difficult to do a full scale integrated test of the equipment on earth. The temperature swings, radiation, near vacuum, etc. are really hard to test at full scale, especially at the scale of a habitat.
Obviously there will be some equipment you can't use the moon to test for Mars. But a lot of equipment could be shared between the missions, especially with things like habitats. And equipment designed for Mars aren't going to be optimized for the moon.
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There are still significant technical risks. Not necessarily (and probably not) showstoppers, but with a strong potential to delay the overall program.
One obvious case is the TPS: it could take a good while, and many Edisonian failed experiments, to finally converge upon a highly reusable implementation.
Another, is Raptor engine endurance. These engines are very complex and yet are also being pushed to ridiculous levels of performance, with Raptor 3 targeting at least 300 tonnes of thrust per engine. Parts of the plumbing (such as the preburners and the regenerative cooling channels in the nozzle) operate at extreme pressures - probably around 700 if not going on 800 bar at this point - along with crazy temperature gradients and very violent acoustics. They've been proven mostly good-enough for a single flight, but can they really survive a dozen flights (never mind, multiple dozens, or hundreds?) Especially on the Ship, where each flight involves sustained burns more than twice as long as the Booster's. Even with all the engine testing going on at McGregor, it's not clear whether any single engine had yet been put through the equivalent of ten or more full duration burns. And despite Raptor 3 debuting last August, currently SpaceX seems to be only in the teens for that engine's production (serial number 16 was just recently spotted.) It's not surprising that something so challenging and bleeding-edge might take longer than hoped to debug and ramp up: it's just a major factor in the overall pace and progress of the program.
And a third example is the durability of the launch pad. Dealing with what's eventually going to be 3× the liftoff thrust of a Saturn V, doing so on a frequent basis with very infrequent refurbishment is a very nontrivial challenge. The "pad A" design at Starbase has already proven thoroughly inadequate in that regard. There's more hope for "pad B", which seems to be overall much better engineered to take the punishment - and yet, it still remains to be seen just how resilient this new design will prove against the historically unprecedented challenge of Starship launch.
So again, Elon Time and NASA's perpetually hyper optimistic schedules (and budgets) aside, there's plenty of potential for the Starship program to continue slipping due to even such underlying, internal technical challenges - quite apart from the more obviously ambitious Artemis 3 milestones.
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I don't know where you got your history, but it's riddled with errors. I know revisionism is a popular pastime these days, but primary sources show that reality is different than your version above.
First, let's clear up some basic things: Penemünde was the German Army's R&D and test facility for rocket devices, including nascent surface-to-air guided missiles (Wasserfall), rocket-assisted takeoff units for aircraft and, of course, the program that led to the A-4 rocket that was produced as the V-2 ballistic missile. The V-2 was produced largely in the underground Mittlewerk facility using slave and forced labor, administered by the Gestapo. The two facilities were not co-located as you imply, but were in entirely different parts of Germany, and run by entirely different organizations in the German government.
Von Braun visited the Mittlewerk V-2 factory exactly once. Clearly, yes, he saw and was aware of the horrific living and working conditions to which the labor force was subjected by the Gestapo.
After he had witnessed the horrors of Mittlewerk, transfers of POW and other prison labor at Penemünde to the Mittlewerk all but ceased. They were being used at Penemünde for construction work and non-skilled labor in the development labs, service buildings, and launch sites. These laborers lived under far better conditions than those at the Mittlewerk. In prison and forced to work, surely, but at least with decent food and housing. I'm not justifying it or saying it was okay, just pointing out that at least these people were being treated with a shred of humanity compared to the living hell that was the Gestapo's Mittlewerk. All POW and other forced labor was administrated by the Gestapo, even the ones at Penemünde, so they were typically transferred to Mittlewerk for V-2 construction labor when a project using them at Penemünde was completed. After von Braun and the other Penemünde officials had seen Mittlewerk, those transfers all but ceased, and "make work" projects devised to make it "necessary" to keep them at Penemünde. This was particularly true in the engineering and test department, which von Braun ran. This went on for several months until the Gestapo forced the resumption of transfers under threat of deep investigation into the "loyalty" of Penemünde leadership (which pretty much meant, under the Gestapo, trumped up charges and summary execution). Neither von Braun nor any of the Army officials running the R&D center that was Penemünde chose slave labor for production of the V-2, did not administer the production sites or program, nor did they have any power to change those sites or programs. The only reason Penemünde scientists and engineers ever visited Mittlewerk was because some production problem needed an engineering fix and they needed to see it first-hand to develop one. The development and production of the V-2 were carried out by entirely different arms of the German government at entirely different facilities. It was not one organization.
Von Braun joined the Nazi party on the advice of army officials funding his research projects, as a way to make things easier with the political leaders for funding and approvals. He resisted the idea, and was not a member until Army/Nazi politics made it necessary. As was noted above, he was briefly jailed and was set for execution for anti-war statements until army contacts intervened and got him released.
Yes, von Braun was an opportunist. His life passion was rocketry and space flight. He wasn't an angel and, to be sure, he was leveraging the development of weapons of war that would kill thousands of people in his quest to develop spaceflight. And he continued to do that after moving to the US after the war, where he worked at the US Army's Redstone Arsenal developing the first generation of US ballistic missiles. Nobody is claiming he should be in line for sainthood.
But there is ample evidence that he and the Penemünde leadership did try to save forced-laborers at Penemünde from the horrors of the Mittlewerk for a significant period of time, defying the wrath of the Gestapo to do so. Was it "enough"? Possibly not. But having been jailed pending execution just a very few years earlier for the "crime" of simply speaking out against the war, it's easy to see how von Braun, in trying to do something, was rather more circumspect in the face of an even more aggressive, paranoid, and violent Gestapo in the mid- and latter-part of the war. Nobody is defending the guy. But let's keep to accurate history if we're going to discuss him, please.
Sources for the above: Mostly The Rocket and the Reich by Michael J. Neufeld, along with V-2: A Combat History of the First Ballistic Missile by T.D. Dungan.
EDIT: Cleaned up some typos and grammar issues.
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Pad A was turned around (launch to next booster mounted for static fire) in only 9 days after flight 5. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they get the new mount design turned around in a couple days pretty quickly once they start ramping up cadence.
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I'll be honest, I'm no student of rocket history. But comparing Musk to Braun just feels like another "Tony Stark" moment. It mythologizes how much he actually does.
Some will argue that his leadership has been instrumental to SpaceX's success. And fine, I'm happy to concede that. But clearly he's not the only person who can be CEO of a space company. And given ALL THE OTHER shit he's apparently up to it's hard to see how SpaceX even gets that much of his attention at this point.
When you're running Tesla's brand into the ground, tweeting 24 hours a day, bragging about how good you are at video games, and (checks notes) systematically and probably illegally dismantling the US government you don't have a lot of time for playing rocket engineer.
It doesn't feel like a stretch to say that at this point the company could continue to succeed without him. I refuse to believe the future of space technology is riding on the shoulders of one spread-too-thin-possibly-ketamine-abusing-man.
If we play crystal ball and map out two futures, where is SpaceX in 10 years with and without Elon Musk? Is it far fetched to think the one without him could still be successful? Or maybe even more so without the extra distractions?
The truth is SpaceX doesn't need his government connections to succeed, they're the best option without cronyism and ethical considerations, no?
Some will argue that his leadership has been instrumental to SpaceX's success. And fine, I'm happy to concede that. But clearly he's not the only person who can be CEO of a space company. And given ALL THE OTHER shit he's apparently up to it's hard to see how SpaceX even gets that much of his attention at this point.
When you're running Tesla's brand into the ground, tweeting 24 hours a day, bragging about how good you are at video games, and (checks notes) systematically and probably illegally dismantling the US government you don't have a lot of time for playing rocket engineer.
It doesn't feel like a stretch to say that at this point the company could continue to succeed without him. I refuse to believe the future of space technology is riding on the shoulders of one spread-too-thin-possibly-ketamine-abusing-man.
If we play crystal ball and map out two futures, where is SpaceX in 10 years with and without Elon Musk? Is it far fetched to think the one without him could still be successful? Or maybe even more so without the extra distractions?
The truth is SpaceX doesn't need his government connections to succeed, they're the best option without cronyism and ethical considerations, no?
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IMHO, SpaceX without Musk continues to be a successful and world-leading commercial launch company for many years. Nobody is matching even Falcon 9 reusability and reliability for quite some time.
In a SpaceX without Musk, however, Starship withers after the Starlink constellation is complete, relegated to occasional resupply missions for that constellation and once-or-twice-a-year large-payload launches. There just isn't a "space economy" large enough to justify the extreme launch cadence that Starship's architecture allows and facilitates. And launching Starship twice a year? That's about as pointless as you can get. It was intended and designed for eventual airline-like operations, and you don't run either that kind of service or an airline by flying twice a year. You lose all the cost-savings of rapid reuse at scale.
But what people forget is that SpaceX isn't even designed to be a commercial launch company by purpose and conception. Its commercial launch services are a means to an end, and that end is landing people on Mars and eventually building a colony there. Whether or not that goal endeavor is even remotely realistic is completely irrelevant - that's the purpose and reason for SpaceX to exist. And that goal was set and continues to be pushed by Musk. Even if he's just steering the boat and isn't involved with day-to-day operations at all, he's still providing the direction and energy for the company to go on with that dream.
Without Musk, SpaceX "devolves" into just another commercial launch company, because the goal behind its commercial activities - fund the Mars program - will wither and die. That goal may well be a pipe-dream, and nobody seems to hold as much value in it as Musk does. So without him, SpaceX goes public, and the shareholders and board do what shareholders and boards do, which is maximize value for themselves by jettisoning anything that doesn't serve that end. Going to Mars certainly doesn't, so that will go away. And SpaceX will become another ULA, chasing ever-bigger government contracts and "safe" improvements that get nowhere in terms of improving access to space.
Yes, Musk is an asshole. I do not like him involved in the Federal goverment this way. It hurts us, it hurts his companies, and it's hurting the future of space access and travel, the latter of which happens to be important to me personally.
Far better to get him and DOGE out of the government than get him out of SpaceX. I can't even imagine a more efficient way to strangle SpaceX and turn it into just another rocket company. Keep him at SpaceX, pushing Starship and Mars, until either they succeed or determine once and for all that it's impossible. Because the wonderful things in spaceflight that SpaceX has and will develop in the service of that (possibly unrealistic) dream are pretty wonderful, after 50+ years of utter stagnation in the field. I saw the Apollo landings on TV, starting with Apollo 12 (eleven just isn't in my memory, although I'm sure my parents had me watch it). I saw the first flights of the Space Shuttle (I was at the landing of STS-1 at Edwards AFB). After that, we just stopped. The ISS is fine and all, but we haven't been out of LEO since I was eight years old. I turned 60 last year. SpaceX, in the service of a possibly impossible dream, has done more for spaceflight than anyone or anything else since the Shuttle started flying. And Musk, despite whatever else he is, is at least driving that.
As always, my opinion. YMMV.
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Thanks for clarifying some irrelevant trivia irrelevant to the thrust of my point, I guess. I reject the premise that any of the above demonstrates any consequential moral opposition to slave labor on Von Braun’s part. Maybe I’ll give him credit for being a touch more pacifist than I’d have given him credit for, but that doesn’t mean much. If you’re going to shake a finger for historic revisionism, start with Invariant Capitalist and get to me if you have time, but cut the sanctimony.
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if you sincerely believe this, and believe it to be anything but an exercise and personal branding and myth making, you are in a high and eccentric orbit above the hard firmament of objective reality.
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Eh, depends on how much time you mean by "quite some". I'd say by 2030, Falcon 9 will have several very strong competitors (New Glenn, Neutron, possibly Terran R, at the lower end Nova; and then there'll be a fistful of Chinese rockets too.)
Falcon 9's days of undisputed championship are nearing an end, which is partly why Starship has such urgency for SpaceX (as a means to maintain global launch dominance.) The other aspect of the urgency is upcoming competitive pressure on Starlink: having a giant rocket capable of deploying huge-and-heavy satellites by the dozens as an unmatched capability, makes for a pretty decent moat.
Never gonna happen. Starlink alone is likely to grow to a ~40,000 satellite constellation, with anywhere between 5,000 to 8,000 of that total needing replacement annually. In the worst case, even if a Starship can launch 100 birds at once (which assumes they don't just continue to get ever bigger and heavier as capability continues to be upgraded once the constellation is fully deployed), and Starlink never grows past 20,000 birds, and they each last 10 years - that'd still be a guaranteed minimum of 20 launches per year (or, about 2 launches per month), forever, just for Starlink.
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"Don't bother me with facts, I know what I know" isn't the flex you think it is, dear.
You were going on at some length on von Braun's actions, motivations, and morality, and I'm being kind when I say that most of your information, supposition, and conclusions were simply wrong. There's no other way to say it but that. Your finger-pointing at other people doesn't change anything.
As you're so fond of saying to others, just own your mistakes and move on. But I suspect that's not advice you can take yourself.
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I assume they are thinking of the DOGE cuts to aid
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-09/bill-gates-plans-to-give-away-99-per-cent-of-his-money/105275318
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Why do you believe Elon when he says this, when he lies about figuratively everything?
Years ago, I would've bought it. Now, you've got to be extremely credulous to.
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The point is that the people at SpaceX believe it, and are working towards attempting to make it happen. In that context, it doesn't even matter whether Musk believes it himself or not, or whether it's all a lie or not. The hardware is being developed, and the advances are being made. That's what matters in this particular point.
Starship will be the first fully-reusable launcher in history, and a gigantic one at that, and if they can achieve large-scale in-space refueling with cryogenics, it's a gigantic step forward, period. In-space refueling has already been done - Soyuz to ISS, for example - but not with cryogenics or at scale. This ability finally opens up the solar system to large-payload flights in an economical way.
Honestly, who cares whether Musk is lying or not about this goal. Work is being done towards it, and that work is applicable to many other uses.
EDIT: Progress to ISS, not Soyuz. Sorry.
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Ironically, one of our new developments in US politics is that many representatives are seeing that appearing on tv and going viral (usually by being obnoxious) has more upsides for them than defending the interests of their districts. That's why you have a certain senator fighting to get a shuttle moved to his state while not doing squat to protect people in his state actually working at NASA.
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