'there is no evidence that the company is putting effort into developing a conventional payload fairing door for the vehicle to accommodate traditional satellites and spacecraft.' Good to see this being mentioned in more reporting now. arstechnica.com/space/2026/1...

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For years I've sat through so many talks and had many conversations based on the courageous projections made for launch costs and smooth vehicle turnarounds from Starship. It's all for naught if all Starship can launch are flatpack smaller satellites designed by SpaceX.

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Global space industry is nowhere near standardisation of design to fit whatever payload deployment SpaceX might want to impose on everyone else. Given how close we supposedly are to Starship being the Falcon-9 replacement I'd expect to see some confirmation/details of a universal payload bay by now.

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That "95% reduction in launch costs" most people will have heard (and base wild space megaprojects on) is all drawn from Starship ambitions. Not hard facts.

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I'm working on not worrying about what's outside my control—which is almost everything. Re: the Alaska Senate race, however, I remind myself not to worry about that one because Trump's DOJ is staffed by a bunch of inexperienced idiots. They can do damage, but they're mostly morons playing lawyer.

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