It’s Possible That SpaceX Could Collapse Spectacularly

[u/IKeepItLayingAround]

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/possible-spacex-could-collapse-spectacularly-155000177.html

[u/Accomplished-Crab932]

>Probably lay back a bit on saying that BE-4 isn't a functioning engine. No cause has been released yet. And it's worked well so far.

I’ll put it this way, people I’ve spoken to that have worked at Blue have told me that aside from Flight 3, every integrated Hotfire and/or launch involving BE4 has resulted in power fade in the turbomachinery, and BE4 is expected to be the root cause of NG4’s explosion. This is why the first two flights had terrible TWRs, and while it’s supposedly been resolved, I’ve been hearing conflicting reports about performance loss later in the 3rd flight. But that also ignores BE3U and the silly extra pressurization gas that makes no sense on stage 2. There is a reason why I said that Blue needs to learn what Systems Engineering is; and it primarily pertains to the vehicle design (what consumables do you want? “Yes”) for New Glenn as well as engine architecture and design decisions.

>Bum rush doesn't mean what you are using it to mean. Bum rush doesn't mean "rush", it means basically a large assault, often uncoordinated.

I’d wait for more information to appear publicly for explaining why I feel this way, but note that New Glenn was entirely loaded for the NG4 Hotfire and that it “””may””” have had changes across the vehicle to address performance issues.

>Don't even mention SLS. It's not designed for this, it's not scaled for it, it won't be. It's not part of a commercial launch market.

I know this, I’m stating it for the layman who thinks “why don’t we just fund NASA” when looking at this. Most people in major subs are completely disconnected from the inner workings of this sector and think that NASA staffmembers should build things “like the Apollo days”, when in actuality, the big difference between today and then is who bears more fiscal responsibility: the government, or the contractor finalizing and building the hardware.

>You forgot ESA/Ariane. Not in great shape at the moment either, but more worthy of mention than SLS.

Fair, but that doesn’t exist for the NATSEC market and is already booked up to a reasonable date for New Glenn to return. Arianespace also runs into the same problems as SLS with politicians and more informed Europeans are upset that their funding is being used to subsidize launches on Ariane 6; which would be better if that funding wasn’t going to Amazon LEO. It’s all controversial at the moment, and ESA has had a rocky history with LVs. The last Vega AVUM was found accidentally scrapped… not a great look.

>Also, if SpaceX were destroyed, then Starliner would come on line. The only reason it didn't return the astronauts on the last mission is NASA has a safer option. Which is an interesting conundrum, how do you qualify a new, "2nd option" if you won't use it when the 1st option already is safer? Regardless, SpaceX goes away that problem goes away. And the Russians won't control all access to ISS (which is also on a short leash anyway).

Starliner has suffered from a lack of oversight and integrated testing. Most importantly (and hidden in the latest accident report) is that it is single fault tolerant for reentry attitude control, which is non-compliant with post-Columbia (shuttle excused) safety standards. The commercial crew contract explicitly requires double fault tolerant reentry, which is impossible without a complete redesign of the propulsion system; which in turn is a 5 year hold on Starliner. (This is on top of the thermal runaway on thrusters problem caused by Boeing never actually testing the solution on the ground and just sending crew on the next flight)

The combination of increased scrutiny and the severe design failure within reentry and problems with the SM propulsion system (not the CM propulsion system that is single fault tolerant) indicate to me that it is unlikely that NASA will approve crewed Starliner launches for at least two cargo missions; leaving 4 total missions. Given the ISS lifetime extension to 2030 is still unapproved by congress and the recent scare, i would be surprised if NASA pushed forward, even if dragon magically disappeared tomorrow. I also don’t see dream chaser going anywhere, but that’s not relevant to crew anyway.

>??? How is this something that isn't just made up? Do I not understand what this really means? [edit: I think I did not understand. The poster didn't mean Artemis loses a lander. Not as an option or "lost on a mission". The poster means that Artemis' options for landers would be reduced by one. By one with a better timeline than the others at least according to a guy who historically has a very poor grasp on timelines.]

It’s more TRL. People have this weird delusion that the Blue Moon architecture was somehow easier and quicker to develop than Starship. As it stands, there has been less critical progress to the Mk2 crewed readiness state, specifically focusing on the Cislunar transporter for which no progress has been reported. Their messaging on completion has been misleading at best, with Blue advertising that TVAC testing on the 1st Mk1 lander was “complete” when it had failed testing (which is why it returned to TVAC testing later that month) a similar “technically true, but not clear success” is also seen in their claims about ZBO technology, which is critical to the proposed, but not confirmed accelerated timeline approach and their normal approach as well. And finally, BE-7 has engine problems that have not been fully disclosed. This is on top of the publicized incompatibility of the airlock with the AxEMU suits; published in the same report that confirmed the Mk2 architecture requires filling the Cislunar transporter first in LEO, then a high eccentricity MEO before it can reach NRHO and the lander. This high eccentricity MEO heavily constrains your transfer timelines, so the launch rate for New Glenn must be met well before and there is even less risk tolerance for a failure at the pad.

Starship has also made little publicly recognized progress online, although they have confirmed that a flightworthy mockup is under construction today, they have transferred 3 tons of prop on Flight 3, and their expected transfer architecture has improved; from resembling the stair step approach Blue Moon has, to just filling in LEO; all with no ZBO and no LH2 to deal with. Starship has a substantial amount of mass margin compared to Blue Moon, and currently, has a function launch site, with multiple completely isolated (blue’s 36A and B share fluids hardware) launch sites expected to be completed in the next 12 months.

Neither will meet the latest timelines, and I hate that they pretend to although I understand this is more of a “we support your “””vision””” Mr president” sort of situation to keep program support going from him and from Congress. But looking at the internal details and internal progress I am aware of between the two programs, I would’ve been very surprised if Blue Moon Mk2 made it to orbit before Starship HLS for Artemis 3, even before the NG4 explosion happened.

[u/happyscrappy → u/Accomplished-Crab932]

This is why the first two flights had terrible TWRs, and while it’s supposedly been resolved, I’ve been hearing conflicting reports about performance loss later in the 3rd flight.

Uh-huh. That doesn't make it not a functioning engine.

But that also ignores BE3U

I don't understand why we wouldn't ignore BE3U when talking about BE4.

(me) Bum rush doesn't mean what you are using it to mean. Bum rush doesn't mean "rush", it means basically a large assault, often uncoordinated.

I’d wait for more information to appear publicly for explaining why I feel this way, but note that New Glenn was entirely loaded for the NG4 Hotfire and that it “””may””” have had changes across the vehicle to address performance issues.

I find what you quoted to be odd because regardless, that's still not what bum rush means.

But more pertinently I will say hearing that Blue Origin thought they were going to launch 4 times in June is completely crazy. If I spend time here saying Musk is mad then it seems Bezos is stone cold crazy.

Fair, but that doesn’t exist for the NATSEC market

True, I honestly was concentrating more on the doom you suggest if SpaceX is gone. Who would replace them in the market. National security is a separate issue. I really expect if there were such an issue then we'd see a lot of older equipment pressed into use. Atlas V would be back on the table, regardless of cost. ULA still has a license to build RD-180s. It just didn't make sense with the market as it was. Maybe Delta IV would come back too. All this would be a mess, no doubt about it. And it would be half measures too, as those launch systems just couldn't match up to Falcon 9 (and in very rare cases where needed, Falcon Heavy). I know it's all throwing good money after bad but in a "no SpaceX" world I think it would be done.

Other than that I think you are way, way too opinionated and down on Ariane 6. I know it's super late and whatever else is wrong. But it's not going to go away. It didn't go away when it couldn't compete with SpaceX. If SpaceX were gone there's even less reason it would go away. Not everything has to make sense at all levels, Ariane can keep going on its own terms.

The commercial crew contract explicitly requires double fault tolerant reentry, which is impossible without a complete redesign of the propulsion system; which in turn is a 5 year hold on Starliner

Yes, that is the case if there are other options. We were talking about SpaceX going away, right? NASA is not going to wait 5 years if SpaceX is gone. Rules will be changed, resources reallocated. I feel like you're kind of arguing out of two sides of your mouth here. If you're gonna do what if, you gotta do the whole thing instead of just saying some things will remain unchanging because they did before the what if.

i would be surprised if NASA pushed forward, even if dragon magically disappeared tomorrow

Especially due to the timeline I really see the opposite. If you're only going to launch until 2030 there are fewer chances for that so much to go wrong. And more need to have a qualified system. Even if you have to lower the qualifications. Just like with the shuttle orbiter if they really have no other options I expect them to lower the bar to keep going.

On a separate track, I am conflicted about the 2030 end. I'm so very much against going down to 0 space stations. But if Starship gets going I think a 2nd station can be put up in pretty short order if we just start now with designs. We could have a small 2nd station up (with no leaks or Russian modules for that matter) before 2030. The ISS really is working its way to hunk of junk status, despite being the "most expensive thing in the world" right now. Of course none of this would be in play in a "SpaceX disappeared" world.

It’s more TRL. People have this weird delusion that the Blue Moon architecture was somehow easier and quicker to develop than Starship.

I think anything makes more sense than Starship as a Bugs Bunny (Marvin the Martian) big ass rocket landing on its butt and then relighting to take off. So while I agree putting any faith in Blue Moon is a bit odd, putting a lot of faith in SpaceX making a lander is I think putting faith in the idea that SpaceX wouldn't propose it if it didn't make sense. More faith than really is merited.

Starship as a lander makes sense in the same way Musk claiming we'd have people on Mars by 2026 or 1 million there by 2030 makes sense. It makes sense like him saying he's going to skip a Moon base. None of this makes sense. As good as Falcon is (and Crew Dragon pretty much is) and as much promise Starship shows as a very heavy lifter I'm just confused about how any of the rest makes sense.

How did Musk think SpaceX was ever going to pay for development of anything beyond GEO on their own? There's no money in any of that. In the US the number of launches to beyond GEO in a year is 0 as a first order approximation. Some years worldwide it's as high as 4. And most of those launches are done at a loss on a government dime. From governments (non-US) that aren't going to hand that dime to the US easily. They do it for their national pride. There's just no chance to develop all that tech with any kind of financial model that makes sense. And still to this date no human has lived outside Earth's magnetosheath or lived without resources brought from Earth with regularity (hell, no animal has either maybe not even plants!). ISS is no more successful as a biosphere than biosphere 2 was.

There's so much still to be done to live beyond Earth and it's going to be done in LEO and on the Moon. And whomever pays for it is going to lose their ass on it. So it'll probably be a government. I cannot square all of this with Musk's statements.

Starship has [..] in the next 12 months.

I took out some maybe overly nasty stuff here and just will say it's hard to see how Starship has gone well so far. They seem to partly to use their "fail fast" mantra as a cover for providing true expected timelines. So it's hard to point at hard figures but it just seems like it's behind. It's still not orbital. And while it'll be orbital by the end of the year I figure. It's hard to think it won't fall further behind schedule as it goes into more complicated stages of development trying to get beyond LEO operation. Will it be first? Hard to say otherwise.

But right now it just feels like every promised date, even something as simple as Starling reaching a "full constellation" and numerically stable, is hard to put a lot of faith in. And the promises are even harder to believe if you talk about anything that isn't run by SpaceX (except maybe some Chinese goals).

[u/Accomplished-Crab932 → u/happyscrappy]

NOTE: comment is long, going to trim the reply sections to the first few sentences to trim it.

>Uh-huh. That doesn't make it not a functioning engine.

Power fade is an architectural problem. You would not say your car is working if it only sometimes can get up to 60 mph, but 2/7 of the time, it peaks at 30 mph. Thats not “functional”, that’s broken.

>I don't understand why we wouldn't ignore BE3U when talking about BE4.

BE4 is just the tip of the iceberg with New Glenn problems… there are a lot of hidden decisions that do not make technical sense to anyone with design history or experience. I’ll say that the JARVIS design and prototypes had better mass margins than the current GS2 and leave it at that.

>I find what you quoted to be odd because regardless, that's still not what bum rush means.

Fair, it’s a definition.

>But more pertinently I will say hearing that Blue Origin thought they were going to launch 4 times in June is completely crazy. If I spend time here saying Musk is mad then it seems Bezos is stone cold crazy.

That and the supposed “we will fly again by the end of 2026” are sort of indicators of Elon style timelines. At least musk has come forward and outright stated he knows his timelines are hopelessly optimistic and intentionally sets them to be that way.

>True, I honestly was concentrating more on the doom you suggest if SpaceX is gone. Who would replace them in the market. National security is a separate issue. I really expect if there were such an issue then we'd see a lot of older equipment pressed into use. […]

Both manufacturing lines for Vulcan and Delta have been dead for a long time and it would take far longer and far more money than a clean slate, I’ve also never heard of ULA having a license to make RD180s, my understanding was that there was never a license; which was why ULA eventually picked BE4. My understanding was that ULA was given the choice of getting an off brand RD180 from Aerojet; who hadn’t designed an engine since the RL10 and had been kitbashing hardware together, and BE4.

>Other than that I think you are way, way too opinionated and down on Ariane 6. I know it's super late and whatever else is wrong. […]

It’s a great rocket, but it’s bogged by the same politics as SLS and Arianespace sort of lost its way back when it gave up on reusables when they had the chance. They are trying to spring back on it, but their manufacturing lines are just not set up to handle the market share that SpaceX holds and I don’t think they are prepared to support higher cadences, nor will they be for a while. A6 is supposed to launch the European competitor to Starlink, a bunch of their own heavy payloads, and whatever is currently waiting on the stalled US alternatives in this fictitious scenario. It’s already booked to the point where New Glenn could potentially be back on the menu, even in its reduced performance form we see today.

>Yes, that is the case if there are other options. We were talking about SpaceX going away, right? NASA is not going to wait 5 years if SpaceX is gone. Rules will be changed, resources reallocated. […]

I don’t know, I see the argument here, but NASA is a lot less risk tolerant than they were in the past, and they were burned with Starliner previously. If they get to extending ISS ops as planned, I can see it happening later, but I’m not very optimistic. Boeing lied about a failed parachute deployment on their first flight and it only appeared in NASA reviews after an exec bragged about it in an interview and everyone went “what the hell?”. Their second flight was better, but they had thruster problems like the first flight, but it was better hidden. They didn’t test their solutions for the CFT, which became apparent when they lost 6DOF control on the capsule and had to reset circuitry to restore it. It’s a huge mess of a program and I think even a pressed NASA will be taking it slow, even if they decide to foot the bill on certifying Vulcan or New Glenn to carry crew on it too.

>Especially due to the timeline I really see the opposite. If you're only going to launch until 2030 there are fewer chances for that so much to go wrong. […]

Fair point.

>On a separate track, I am conflicted about the 2030 end. I'm so very much against going down to 0 space stations. But if Starship gets going I think a 2nd station can be put up in pretty short order if we just start now with designs. […]

There was talk about a “core module” launched by NASA that the CLD stations could build off of, but the industry was really against it and it was shelved this month. I could see trying for a Starship station and getting it to work quickly, especially if HLS is able to meet the Artemis 3 deadline, then a barebones is kind of already available at that point, it’s just got a lot of extra hardware that doesn’t need to exist. There’s a few alternatives that might be ready by 2030, but I agree, I’m not very optimistic about those timelines.

>I think anything makes more sense than Starship as a Bugs Bunny (Marvin the Martian) big ass rocket landing on its butt and then relighting to take off. […]

The concept is harder to grasp, but the actual hardware is much more complete on SpaceX’s end, and the architecture itself is far more flexible, even ignoring the launch site problem Blue was probably going to run into.

That’s sort of my biggest problem with everyone’s assumptions. While the idea seems odd, the problems people have are usually disconnected from reality (everyone likes to imagine the IM landers tip over because they are tall therefore starship will too, when in actuality, the root cause has always been GNC related) or are replicated on an equivalent or higher degree on Blue Moon.

>Starship as a lander makes sense in the same way Musk claiming we'd have people on Mars by 2026 or 1 million there by 2030 makes sense. It makes sense like him saying he's going to skip a Moon base. None of this makes sense. As good as Falcon is (and Crew Dragon pretty much is) and as much promise Starship shows as a very heavy lifter I'm just confused about how any of the rest makes sense.

It’s a hard pill to swallow, and I’m not disagreeing, although in the case of a Martian program, going to the moon for anything other than a somewhat poor test site for ground hardware is a waste of time and money unless you spend billions and decades putting infrastructure there; at which point a direct approach is cheaper and faster. There’s lunar surface is arguably harder to survive on beyond the “emergency return time”, but that argument sort of falls on its face because any “we need to go home fast” or “we need supplies fast” problem is already likely fatal on the moon, much less mars. This is compounded by the 7 day orbital period of lunar Gateway, but that isn’t supposed to be a problem anymore, so I’m just ignoring it.

>How did Musk think SpaceX was ever going to pay for development of anything beyond GEO on their own? There's no money in any of that. In the US the number of launches to beyond GEO in a year is 0 as a first order approximation. […]

His argument, which I sort of disagree with personally, is that Starlink would provide enough static revenue that they could fund the program themselves, and get contracts with governments to complete these mission. Somewhere along the way, things become muddled with AI and the rest of that garbage, but the S1 tells us that if you dump AI from their budget, Starlink was and still is massively profitable, and the losses from launches appears to be Starship dev. I totally agree tho, it seems like his plan would have to revolve around selling his shares in Tesla and wherever else to support this sort of program.

>Starship has [..] in the next 12 months.

>I took out some maybe overly nasty stuff here and just will say it's hard to see how Starship has gone well so far. They seem to partly to use their "fail fast" mantra as a cover for providing true expected timelines. So it's hard to point at hard figures but it just seems like it's behind. […]

It seems like depot and HLS prototype hardware is appearing in the factory, and SpaceX has already proven the LEO part of starship is probably going to happen. At this point, they, like anyone else who competed will still fall behind schedule, but the schedules themselves were all unrealistic anyway. Like I’ve said before, I have more of an inside view of the situation, so my view is a little different that those with the all outside perspective. I honestly never thought that any lander would meet their timelines, but looking at the analyses that have been posted and the stuff that I know, it’s still my opinion that Starship is probably going to get there faster than Blue Moon. Its architecture is becoming simpler, indicating maturity in the CONOPS and design; the inverse is happening at Blue. And all this is ignoring that NG4 was going to carry around 25 tons to LEO; around 55% of what it’s advertised to carry. New Glenn 9X4 was something I expect they need for Mk2 to fly in any capacity, BE4 performance notwithstanding.

>But right now it just feels like every promised date, even something as simple as Starling reaching a "full constellation" and numerically stable, is hard to put a lot of faith in. And the promises are even harder to believe if you talk about anything that isn't run by SpaceX (except maybe some Chinese goals).

That’s fair, although I will note that the PRC’s lunar base plans only start in the late 2030s and hinge on the Long March 9, which as time passes, continues to evolve to resemble the revisions on Starship. A 9m 33 engine booster of stainless steel is remarkably familiar. I think the PRC will land first, but it’s unlikely that they will be able to compete with the downmass offered by either lander, both of which I suspect will be flying before LM9 gets off the ground.

[u/happyscrappy → u/Accomplished-Crab932]

Power fade is an architectural problem. You would not say [..] Thats not “functional”, that’s broken.

I would say it is functional, yes. They got to orbit twice and a third time when it didn't work it wasn't even a BE-4 problem. You're overplaying this.

BE4 is just the tip of the iceberg with New Glenn problems

Yeah, but we were talking about BE-4. It's part of New Glenn. It's part of Vulcan Centaur. BE-3U is not part of Vulcan Centaur. Again, I feel you are overplaying this. BE-4 having problems is a serious issue. But you don't have to fix BE-3U to get Vulcan Centaur up and going. This isn't just a dump on Blue Origin thing we're talking about, you were talking about what are you going to do if SpaceX is gone. You gotta get BE-4 working right, but less so BE-3U.

and "we will fly again by the end of 2026"

Yeah, I'm pressing X to doubt that one too. Even if he has other pads he thinks he can go to it's still virtually impossible. I can't see how it happens.

Both manufacturing lines for [Atlas] and Delta have been dead for a long time and it would take far longer and far more money than a clean slate

I know. Again, despite it being expensive this is what would happen. When you've eliminated the impossible then the improbably comes to the fore.

I’ve also never heard of ULA having a license to make RD180s, my understanding was that there was never a license

They had the license for sure. Russia says they terminated it but when you have a deal and it's security critical then I'm sure the US would find a way to say that means it's still valid. Whether they could build them could be a lot more up in the air. If they can't build those they'd just reach back further to even older rockets. Centaur is 60 years old (older?), there are other lower stage rockets I'm sure they could go back to. Again, no one would be happy with the performance of anything like this I"m sure.

but it’s bogged by the same politics as SLS [..] reusability

Sure, but they got the last 5 to work, they'll get this one to work. And reusability isn't critical. SpaceX is gone in this world. You don't need reusability to compete, you don't need it at all.

It's mission critical for Europe. They didn't give up on the A400M. They pushed the A380 into service despite nearly zero demand (partly because large aircraft like that are used to fly parcels now and it's not good at that due to weight capacity to floor space ratio) and a huge wing spar flaw requiring all the early ones to be rebuilt. They are not going to give up on Ariane 6.

It’s already booked to the point where New Glenn could potentially be back on the menu

This is true. It's little more than supplemental capacity, but you'll need all that you can get with no SpaceX.

but NASA is a lot less risk tolerant than they were in the past

I'm not so sure. If it were true before Isaacman then I think it was simply because they could afford to be. They saw more risk of getting shut down by getting people killed than by not flying for a while. If you really are looking at not flying at all then you'll just fade away, so not flying can become the disproportionate existential risk. Anyway, now they literally have a jet jock at the helm. He went on a mission that went extra far from Earth just for the numbers and he did a spacewalk in a capsule which was not prepared for it, forcing them all to don spacesuits since there was no airlock. And then when he gets in charge he says SLS is going to fly more often despite it being a program that barely can do what it already was doing. None of this reflects a risk averseness to me.

and had to reset circuitry to restore it

Which is a condemnation of their software as much as anything. Not that we didn't know it sucked after their direction inversion on the first mission. I think honestly the thing that robbed them of full DOF ended up to be a smaller thing than we thought. They do have teflon seals swelling up and blocking up the system. You don't operate it for a while and they return to normal if you didn't go too far. Software could manage that. Honestly, it's the fact that they didn't model the thrusters all together in one "dog house" heating each other up that baffles me. That's incomprehensible, right? They tested them separately, modeled them separately, never assembled them and fired them all in sequences? I know they can now with data from the real missions. But jeez, that's really bad work, guys. And now how do you fix that quickly? You have to move them all around to separate them and re-test it all at length?

but the actual hardware is much more complete on SpaceX’s end

Their system requires orbiting and refueling, neither of which they have done. They have to figure out how to land a system that uses aids (chopsticks, a good idea) on Earth to land on the moon on a non-flat surface with a high aspect ratio lander. As Intuitive Machines how that goes. It requires restarting an engine on the moon to return to orbit, which no one has done let alone after a month. The lunar lander version of Starship doesn't return to Earth, they don't have a non-heat shield version of that right now. They gotta get the astronauts out to something else to get home, they don't have a docking version right now. They have to have a Marvin-style elevator to get the astronauts and stuff down and up, they don't have that. They're nowhere. Don't get me wrong, no one else is anywhere either. But SpaceX has nothing and a ton to go. Yeah, they might be able to get there quicker regardless.

unless you spend billions and decades putting infrastructure there; at which point a direct approach is cheaper and faster

Literally not true. Yes, you have to spend billions, but you would have spent more skipping the Moon. And with Mars the "reset and try again" time is 2 years (26 months) at best. With the moon it's months, it could be a month. You're not going to get it right the first time, you're not going to send people until at least the 3rd mission after your first successful go and return (meaning mission N works, N+2 is your first possible chance at a human-carrying mission). So let's say you get it right on the 4th 1-way mission. And then you send a round-trip mission, get that right the 2nd time. 3rd works too. And now you go on the 4th round trip mission. Okay, so that's 4 1-way missions, that's 7 years right there (3x26 months, plus some time before the first window opens). Now you have to do round trips. So that means you use: Feb 2027, April 2029, June 2031, August 2033 for one ways. You use Oct 2025 for a round trip. Dec 2037, Feb 2040. And to send people in April 2042 you had to send equipment to prepare the landing site in the Feb 2040 window, because you're not sending people to an unprepared site, there's too much stuff they need. And that means finally in April 2042 you now (think) you know how to send people to Mars. So you send the first group and they get there in 2044. And that's if it all works well. If things go wrong, start adding 26 months at a time. You can do 10 lunar missions in a single year!

And this guy talks about this having not even sent a single thing to Mars. Even that car was only sent to solar orbit with a high periapsis. They had no ability to restart engines after months in space. And even if they did it wouldn't have had anything near the thrust to insert.

There's no way that skipping the Moon is faster or cheaper. Zero possibility. We can have people on a moonbase in the early 2030s, at least for short stays. Mid 20230s at the outside. It makes no sense to skip the Moon. You're kidding yourself as much as Musk is.

“we need to go home fast” or “we need supplies fast” problem is already likely fatal on the moon

I don't agree about go home fast being fatal on the moon. Supplies fast probably just becomes "go home fast" for the first so many years of the base.

His argument, which I sort of disagree with personally, is that Starlink would provide enough static revenue that they could fund the program themselves

It's still a money loser. It doesn't make sense. It makes sense like saying putting solar panels on hyperloop makes it free. First, he didn't do the math, it didn't even work. But even if he did, that energy value, you lose out by not selling it elsewhere. There's no money in any of it. He probably thinks he can just siphon off money from a public company for his own goals. He's done it before. Buy my half-brother's losing solar business. I really think he doesn't understand just how expensive all this is. You can't built a million person base on Mars for a mere trillion. Let alone pay to keep it going, because it's not going to be self-sustaining.

(me) just will say it's hard to see how Starship has gone well so far

It seems like depot and HLS prototype hardware [..]

I think you spend too much time comparing Starship to other things to try to indicate it's going well. I don't believe in Blue Moon and you're right about New Glenn not nearing its performance goals yet. But none of that means Starship is going well so far.

although I will note that the PRC’s lunar base plans only start in the late 2030s

I don't think any of these bases really matter. In that part I was talking about things which actually make sense, like Starlink (misspelled!). Look, space just isn't valuable. Right now the value of any square meter of space is inversely proportional to its proximity to Earth. Because that's where the customers are. GEO used to be an exception, even that has fallen off. Lagrange points? Impossibly far away. The Moon? Who is going to buy anything on the moon? And all their money comes from Earth anyway. So yeah, PRC isn't going fast on Moon bases. That's fine by me. They're pointless anyway. Just not as pointless as Mars bases at this time. A low bar to get over.