No, Elon, Starship Won’t Make Aviation Obsolete
The b*llshit merchant strikes again.
There is no denying it: Starship is damn impressive. It’s the largest man-made vehicle ever to fly and one of the most daring engineering projects on Earth right now. But even this insane rocket can’t live up to Musk’s ad-nauseam bullshit. For one, it is years behind schedule, far more expensive than promised, and has yet to actually achieve an orbital flight, let alone a commercial launch or human space flight. Despite all of this, Musk recently claimed that under Trump’s presidency, it would be possible for Starship to offer 30-minute passenger flights between London and New York. On X, Musk went further and claimed that flights like this across the entire world could be “approved in a few years” and that actually “this is now possible.” So, is Musk about to revolutionise the aviation industry? Hell no! Let me explain why.
Even if Starship fully passed human space flight regulations, no country would want Starships landing there regularly. Why? Sonic booms.
Starship breaks the speed of sound on takeoff and landing; in fact, it reaches Mach 6! It has to do this to reach orbital velocity soon after takeoff. Because it uses atmospheric resistance to slow down both stages during descent, it also reaches these Mach numbers during landing.
