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Do you have a link to an article, etc where he says Falcon 9 / Heavy might not be replaced by Starship? If he did say that, I imagine that would just be in the event that Starship turns out to be significantly more expensive to operate than expected.As it is today, Falcon 9 is like a 737 (vs Starship being an A380), but a 737 that has to jettison an entire engine nacelle before landing. They were and might still be looking at cost effective methods of returning F9 second stages, but unless that happens there is a decent chance that Starship could turn out to be cheaper to launch (with a number of reuses of course) than Falcon 9, let alone Falcon Heavy.The article might have been in error and been edited since your post, but they expect to begin flight tests in one to two months rather than weeks.Perhaps they could do something with those methalox RCS thrusters that they want to replace the Starship's cold gas thrusters with on Mk5+. They're already going to be doing a suicide burn with Raptor to land on the Moon (3x Raptors for symmetry at minimum throttle still have a T:W of 1.05 with Starship 100% fueled and with 150t of payload), so maybe they could kill their speed with the Raptors, then cut them and descend under the power of something kind of arrangement of methalox UltraDraco engines; perhaps mounted along the raceway between the fins, angled diagonally downward or something.
Do you have a link to an article, etc where he says Falcon 9 / Heavy might not be replaced by Starship? If he did say that, I imagine that would just be in the event that Starship turns out to be significantly more expensive to operate than expected.
As it is today, Falcon 9 is like a 737 (vs Starship being an A380), but a 737 that has to jettison an entire engine nacelle before landing. They were and might still be looking at cost effective methods of returning F9 second stages, but unless that happens there is a decent chance that Starship could turn out to be cheaper to launch (with a number of reuses of course) than Falcon 9, let alone Falcon Heavy.
The article might have been in error and been edited since your post, but they expect to begin flight tests in one to two months rather than weeks.
Perhaps they could do something with those methalox RCS thrusters that they want to replace the Starship's cold gas thrusters with on Mk5+. They're already going to be doing a suicide burn with Raptor to land on the Moon (3x Raptors for symmetry at minimum throttle still have a T:W of 1.05 with Starship 100% fueled and with 150t of payload), so maybe they could kill their speed with the Raptors, then cut them and descend under the power of something kind of arrangement of methalox UltraDraco engines; perhaps mounted along the raceway between the fins, angled diagonally downward or something.
