Foust Forward: Who’s afraid of the big bad Starship?
SpaceX’s Starship launch vehicle elicits strong opinions. Take, for example, Toni Tolker-Nielsen, ESA’s director of space transportation. Asked in a SpaceNews interview about how Starship might affect Europe’s Ariane 6, he was dismissive. “Honestly, I don’t think Starship will be a game-changer or a real competitor,” he said, concluding that Starship was oversized for the types of satellites that would fly on Ariane 6. “Starship will not eradicate Ariane 6 at all.”
The response on social media to those comments was one of ridicule and derision. The most charitable responses suggested that Europe was making the same mistake it did a decade ago when it ignored the Falcon 9 — now the world’s leading launch vehicle. Other responses weren’t nearly as polite.
However, Tolker-Nielsen is not an outlier. Many in the launch industry on both sides of the Atlantic are skeptical that Starship will dominate the industry and force competitors out of business, at least over the next several years.
