alapsa

E3 is the best! Well deserved - congrats!!

Love this! Exactly!

Mars is awesome and I can't wait to go, but Earth is a great place to live :)

So exciting!

Definitely agree the first and second stages should be purpose-built!

You're exactly right, which is why we're developing our own engines. Where Starship will be the freight train, we will be the Sprinter van.

Thanks for correctly noting the tense - I have revised to future tense and apologize for any misgivings.

Starship is amazing and we are huge fans! That is an enormous vehicle though, designed for a different purpose. It is like comparing a freight train to a Sprinter van, if that makes sense.

Sorry for the confusion! There are plenty of space vehicles that have had "down-mass" capacity - Gemini, Soyuz, Apollo, Dragon, Shuttle, X-37B, etc. They are all spacecraft, although Shuttle is a close in-between. The distinction here is this is a true upper stage, which can also return items from orbit.

We are looking to serve a complementary market to New Glenn and are not planning to fly on that vehicle.