While I'm rooting for SpaceX with Starship, lets be clear: they're still trying to get hovering grain silo versions working. Meanwhile JWT is ready to go. If it's a race one side has already won rather emphatically.
Actually, they're well beyond the "grain silos" by now. They've successfully demonstrated the "bellyflop" landing maneuver from a terminal velocity fall, and now they're (credibly) trying to launch a full prototype Starship stack to orbit within the next few months.
Wiki says JWST is planned to launch by this November, so I think there is a decent chance Starship beats it into space. That won't be a production-ready vehicle, and launching anything valuable on it (let alone something like the JWST) would be certifiable, but let's give credit where it's due.
I know where SpaceX is. Elon does have a clear history of being overly optimistic about timelines.
There's a zero percent chance they'll have a vehicle ready by the JWT launch date that could launch it instead, even if they get to orbit by then.
This is not a race. As I said I'm a SpaceX fan, but I am not a fan of every single space topic being derailed by "but what about SpaceX?" as if they're the only company doing things meaningful in the industry. They're the super cool new kid on the block, but there's still a lot more out there that doesn't deserve to constantly be lampooned for not being SpaceX.
I mean, Musk may be famous for his "optimistic" timelines, but you completely misrepresented their progress. "Still trying to get hovering grain silo versions working" is not remotely accurate.
That's the only point of my previous comment: give credit where it's due, as I said. I agree with most or all of the other things you've said in this subthread.
I am giving credit. I'll call it working when they've demonstrated repeated access to orbit. Until they, they are indeed playing with flying grain silo prototypes, even if they landed one belly flop maneuver.
In any case, this is the exact sort of argument I find entirely wasteful of energy, and a distraction from what we should be talking about in this thread, which is JWT.
No, you aren't. "Still trying to get hovering grain silo versions working" is not an accurate characterization of the current state of Starship development: they had hovering in the bag months ago, and have since demonstrated much more challenging and impressive capabilities.
> I'll call it working when they've demonstrated repeated access to orbit. Until they, they are indeed playing with flying grain silo prototypes, even if they landed one belly flop maneuver.
None of this is germane to the problems with your original statement. It's just empty snark--if you want to call rockets "grain silos", I'm not going to try to stop you, though I might caution you against erasing your ability to identify actual silos full of grain.
> In any case, this is the exact sort of argument I find entirely wasteful of energy, and a distraction from what we should be talking about in this thread, which is JWT.
I'm just here to correct the record, which I think is reasonable as there's a lot of weird SpaceX misinformation out there, both "for" and "against". Personally I don't understand why people can't just sit back and watch what happens, without putting their own spin on it.
> if you want to call rockets "grain silos", I'm not going to try to stop you, though I might caution you against erasing your ability to identify actual silos full of grain.
