For missions that are sufficiently short, use the fuel boil off to generate power instead of heavy, bulky solar panels.

Instead of launching starlink satellites with starship just turn starship(s) into one gigantic starlink satellite.

Yes you would still need to launch a lot but the capability of each individual one would be real high so probably less than 30,000.

...and possibly for HLS too. Who wants to hump 3 extra raptors to the moon or an interplanetary mission?

Has anyone done the math on that?

Quickly, before China steals the idea.

The best part is no part.

Back in September, there was a lot of fuss over fining SpaceX for operating a water deluge without the right permit.

Instead of a deluge, surely they can get 2 birds with 1 stone by using a flame tunnel with a water jacket?

The water would be in a closed system so the people complaining about them spraying it all over the nature reserve would quieten.

Meanwhile, the water jacket could exchange the exhaust heat for steam which drives turbines, generating electricity which could be sold to the grid. It's an all-round win for everybody!

• they already have knowledge of the logistics around the site
• the area is remote enough, and under US jurisdiction, so no issues with foreign countries having access to the tech
• only requires SN11 legs

I will trade Spacex 2 gold for each one.

This will save NASA a lot of money.

Wait, they just did that. Would anyone think that would be a legitimate approach otherwise?

Don't forget the restaurant/bar, and the museum and the pool. And the skydiving wind tunnel.

Oh and they can run a Teslabus service from Brownsville, and a loop, as well as have a Super Charger in the parking lot.

Think about it: the main advantages to stainless steel for Super Heavy structures (it's good enough, it's easier to work with so Starship can launch faster, it's easier to make changes to, it's the same as the Starship upper stage so you only need one set of tooling) would mostly go away by Starship versions 5 or 6, and that should be around when Rocket Lab has been demonstrating first-stage recovery of a large carbon fiber first stage with Neutron. Around that time, Rocket Lab will have enough Neutron first stages to have spare production capacity, and they've explicitly said they want to build structures for external customers when that happens. And Starship's specs should have settled down enough that Super Heavy at least can be outsourced.

Musk is so good at digging himself deeper and deeper holes at this point Boring seems almost redundant. They could even start a geothermal power generation company with the holes.

If he could find a way to harness power from haters, he could probably end American reliance on coal entirely.

I heard those trusses are weak - this should definitely fulfill the contract.

SS is made from steel, that's magnetic. It uses a load of fuel just to get off the ground. Fully stacked it weighs 5000 tons. A Maglev coil can use 1kW to levitate a ton, so a 5MW maglev coil under the tower would make the whole rocket float so launching it off the pad and getting that initial lift would be easier and save fuel. If they upped that coil to 10MW or something they could just ping the thing into the sky without lighting the engines!

The best part is no part!