> Commercial aircraft were also totally unreasonable for quite a time after Wright's first flight in 1903.
That's comparing apples and orangutans.
This isn't a 1903 situation at all - we've launched rockets on a weekly basis for 60 years and operated crewed reusable spacecraft for more than 30 years.
This is well known territory. All limitations, possibilities and risks are well known and documented.
If you have to make a comparison, choose the Concorde versus Ju-52 or something. But even that's flawed because it doesn't fit at all.
The concerns I mentioned aren't going to magically disappear - even a "perfectly safe" (by whatever definition) rocket still has to deal with these. A 30-engine, 122m, 65MN rocket will generate a literally deafening blast and for that reason alone cannot be launched near cities. This is a fact of nature, not just a simple engineering problem or overly cautious safety concern.
Same goes for airspace closure, weather on both ends, and simple things like customs and security checks.
Starship won't have any cross-range capabilities, full stop. That's how rockets work and one consequence of this is that bad weather means a scrubbed launch, simple as that. Nothing to do with attitude or "modern America".
That's just physics and natural phenomena that exist and cannot be wished away.
Again, none of this prevents point-to-point travel from being possible, it just demonstrates that it's likely not going to be an everyday occurrence like long-haul flights. A novelty, maybe. Another option for the rich and important, sure.
A viable alternative to regular jets, I think not. Time might prove me wrong, but I'm fairly certain the odds are stacked against regular point-to-point passenger flight service using huge rockets.
That's comparing apples and orangutans.
This isn't a 1903 situation at all - we've launched rockets on a weekly basis for 60 years and operated crewed reusable spacecraft for more than 30 years.
This is well known territory. All limitations, possibilities and risks are well known and documented.
If you have to make a comparison, choose the Concorde versus Ju-52 or something. But even that's flawed because it doesn't fit at all.
The concerns I mentioned aren't going to magically disappear - even a "perfectly safe" (by whatever definition) rocket still has to deal with these. A 30-engine, 122m, 65MN rocket will generate a literally deafening blast and for that reason alone cannot be launched near cities. This is a fact of nature, not just a simple engineering problem or overly cautious safety concern.
Same goes for airspace closure, weather on both ends, and simple things like customs and security checks.
Starship won't have any cross-range capabilities, full stop. That's how rockets work and one consequence of this is that bad weather means a scrubbed launch, simple as that. Nothing to do with attitude or "modern America".
That's just physics and natural phenomena that exist and cannot be wished away.
Again, none of this prevents point-to-point travel from being possible, it just demonstrates that it's likely not going to be an everyday occurrence like long-haul flights. A novelty, maybe. Another option for the rich and important, sure.
A viable alternative to regular jets, I think not. Time might prove me wrong, but I'm fairly certain the odds are stacked against regular point-to-point passenger flight service using huge rockets.