Thunderf00t has lost last of his marbles and remaining bits of credibility

[wraper]

^I gave an example in this thread already:

BTW annual CO₂ emissions are 37.4 billion tonnes. TF must be consuming quite potent magic mushrooms to come up with SpaceX emitting twice of that. Starship with booster holds about 1500 1030 tonnes of methane, which results in about 5800 4000 tonnes of CO₂ if fueled to the brink (suborbital flights should require less). Which means SpaceX needs to do ~13 18.9 million Starship flights a year (35.6 51.7 thousand a day) to get ~75 billion tonnes of CO₂ emissions. What an obsessed dumbass you must be to make such an error while having PHD in chemistry
EDIT: I somehow got methane amount larger than it is. It's 1030 tonnes, not 1500. So it's even more insane.

^And that considering SpaceX/Musk never even claimed to target short distance flights.
As of name calling and condescending ridicule, just start watching any of his videos, especially some of the latest. Not to say his videos consist by 95% of rehash of older videos which are endless condescending blabber by themselves.

Ah, that one. No surprise you're taking that completely out of context; iirc that was the theoretical emissions if SpaceX reached Musk/Shotwell's nebulous "goals" of replacing aircraft with P2P flights in Falcon 9's or somesuch. It was deliberate hyperbole to point out the ludicrous nature of their apparent intentions. You really are either very stupid or very deceitful.

How about you watch it yourself at 11 minutes? Thunderf00t literally says SpaceX's plan is to destroy Earth. Gwynne Shotwell: Starship could fly 10x more frequently than a long long-haul aircraft (because its flight would take so much less time). Thunderf00t: SpaceX wants to be 10x of the whole aviation industry while using 10x more fuel, therefore emit 100x CO₂

[vk6zgo]

Ok, not "short distance" flights, I read that as just point-to-point. But unless you go back an research exactly what calcs he did and why, you don't know, maybe he was talking about long distance flights that were targetted by Starship point-point?

The point is as I explained, it's comon for debunkers to use hyperbole to debunk hyperbole. If you want to debate the exact details of the hyperbole go right ahead, but it's akin to fighting with the preverbial "pig in mud".
Starship commercial passenger point-to-point remains one of the stupidest ideas in history.

His claim would make sense only if starship was to replace every single passenger airplane flight, large and small, on any distance. The maximal reasonable hyperbole would be if he assumed Starship was to replace every long distance flight. Also I wouldn't call it stupid, extremely hard to achieve, yes, but not impossible. And it would be a game changer in long distance travel if actually made to work. Don't forget just a decade ago rocket launch industry was laughing about Musk's attempts to land a F9 booster. But now cozy times are gone, and good old boys fight for survival instead.
Here is a video from 2013 where Ariane's Richard Bowles on Singapore Satellite Industry Forum says SpaceX is selling a dream about rocket reuse and at 15:30 laughs there's room only for around 25 satellites per year (last year SpaceX alone did more than 5x more rocket launces, most of which contained 20+ Starlink sattelites).
https://web.archive.org/web/20170328025906/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ-7nNw-04Q&google_comment_id=z12fwdq4rt2kzjftz22nz53rrwjgsfgkv
Tunderf00t debunked and ridiculed Starlink too. But now it has more than 2 times more customers than all Satellite internet providers ever had combined.

As I said earlier, Thunderfoot is intensely annoying, but that doesn't affect the non-practicality of using Starship for any point to point service, no matter how long haul.

Commonsense Skeptic went through the reasons it is impractical, from excessive noise, necessitating the launch sites being far removed from the large cities they are proposed to serve, for which problem, SpaceX are talking about floating launch & landing sites well removed from the population of those cities.

That immediately introduces the problem of getting the passengers to & from the sites, with the only practical methods being ferries or large helicopters, both of which add a delay before they even begin to board the rocket & a similar delay at the other end.
Boarding, & debarkment aren't going to be fast, either, as people have to use a smallish elevator to get to the one entrance.

There are other things he included, but one very time consuming one is refueling the rocket after the passengers are already aboard.
All those "ancillary" things cut into the time advantage as well as inconvenience the passenger.

As to Starlink--of course it is practical.
Iridium showed that years ago, it was just ahead of its time.

[EEVblog]

As I said earlier, Thunderfoot is intensely annoying, but that doesn't affect the non-practicality of using Starship for any point to point service, no matter how long haul.

Commonsense Skeptic went through the reasons it is impractical, from excessive noise, necessitating the launch sites being far removed from the large cities they are proposed to serve, for which problem, SpaceX are talking about floating launch & landing sites well removed from the population of those cities.

That immediately introduces the problem of getting the passengers to & from the sites, with the only practical methods being ferries or large helicopters, both of which add a delay before they even begin to board the rocket & a similar delay at the other end.
Boarding, & debarkment aren't going to be fast, either, as people have to use a smallish elevator to get to the one entrance.

There are other things he included, but one very time consuming one is refueling the rocket after the passengers are already aboard.
All those "ancillary" things cut into the time advantage as well as inconvenience the passenger.

It's a completely dead on arrival idea.
I thought TF also debunked it based on similar problems?

[coppercone2]

you need to put starship launchers on major buildings, they will get a corporate rocket port.


DX:HR had this.

I don't think anyone would mind if they try to blast the board into space daily. They wont be able to resist those in person meetings and dining

[SiliconWizard]

I doubt it's really a practical idea either. Working on supersonic planes cruising at a higher level than conventional commercial jets (maybe around 40-50km so ~ FL1500) but still flying at normal speeds at low altitudes to be able to use regular airports sounds like a more practical idea and would probably remain niche, maybe for transporting urgent goods or medical emergencies worldwide).

For goods transportation, wondering if giant air cargos (like solar-powered aerostats) wouldn't be a much better alternative than maritime transport with longish travel times and very polluting engines.

[EEVblog]

I doubt it's really a practical idea either. Working on supersonic planes cruising at a higher level than conventional commercial jets (maybe around 40-50km so ~ FL1500) but still flying at normal speeds at low altitudes to be able to use regular airports sounds like a more practical idea and would probably remain niche, maybe for transporting urgent goods or medical emergencies worldwide).

I think a few companies are now working on modern Concorde supersonic equivalents.
One of the major problems was local noise restrictions, so IIRC the concorde basically couldn't go supersonic over most of the mainland US for example.
But it would be game changing for something like Australia that is nothing but water around it for 5000-10000km

[vk6zgo]

As I said earlier, Thunderfoot is intensely annoying, but that doesn't affect the non-practicality of using Starship for any point to point service, no matter how long haul.

Commonsense Skeptic went through the reasons it is impractical, from excessive noise, necessitating the launch sites being far removed from the large cities they are proposed to serve, for which problem, SpaceX are talking about floating launch & landing sites well removed from the population of those cities.

That immediately introduces the problem of getting the passengers to & from the sites, with the only practical methods being ferries or large helicopters, both of which add a delay before they even begin to board the rocket & a similar delay at the other end.
Boarding, & debarkment aren't going to be fast, either, as people have to use a smallish elevator to get to the one entrance.

There are other things he included, but one very time consuming one is refueling the rocket after the passengers are already aboard.
All those "ancillary" things cut into the time advantage as well as inconvenience the passenger.

It's a completely dead on arrival idea.
I thought TF also debunked it based on similar problems?

I'm not sure that TF's debunking "took". His propensity to snicker is definitely off-putting, something that CSS largely avoids.
The question is, why Musk puts up propositions which upon a minimum of reflection are unworkable?

[wraper]

The question is, why Musk puts up propositions which upon a minimum of reflection are unworkable?

I will remind again, just a decade nearly everyone in the industry was saying that landing rocket boosters is a stupid idea that will never work. Now SpaceX made more than 400 successful booster landings and up to 25 refights per booster, and launch rockets more often than anyone ever before. I'm fairly skeptical if they ever will be using Starship for point-to-point travel, however technically it's absolutely possible. There are no physics that would prevent it. The question is if Musk can actually pull it off. My opinion is that it's extremely hard to do but I would not bet against it. If you're going to debunk something, do it properly. Spewing emotions diluted by bullshit, poor research and call for reason does not make your debunking stronger on actual merit. Watching one of Thunderf00t's Starship livestreams revealed that he did not research the thing and knew fuck all about what he was watching and what Starship should do.

[Simmed]

I doubt it's really a practical idea either. Working on supersonic planes cruising at a higher level than conventional commercial jets (maybe around 40-50km so ~ FL1500) but still flying at normal speeds at low altitudes to be able to use regular airports sounds like a more practical idea and would probably remain niche, maybe for transporting urgent goods or medical emergencies worldwide).

I think a few companies are now working on modern Concorde supersonic equivalents.
One of the major problems was local noise restrictions, so IIRC the concorde basically couldn't go supersonic over most of the mainland US for example.
But it would be game changing for something like Australia that is nothing but water around it for 5000-10000km

yea the boom thingy looks exciting

[EEVblog]

The question is, why Musk puts up propositions which upon a minimum of reflection are unworkable?

I will remind again, just a decade nearly everyone in the industry was saying that landing rocket boosters is a stupid idea that will never work.

No one was saying that, it was always going to work, it's not like SpaceX invented it, it's had been done before.
The question with a thing like this is whether or not they could do it reliably at scale before the funding runs out. And Elon is on record as saying they were literally one more crash away from the company going under, it was so close to never happening.

Now SpaceX made more than 400 successful booster landings and up to 25 refights per booster, and launch rockets more often than anyone ever before. I'm fairly skeptical if they ever will be using Starship for point-to-point travel, however technically it's absolutely possible. There are no physics that would prevent it. The question is if Musk can actually pull it off. My opinion is that it's extremely hard to do but I would not bet against it.

Then you haven't really thought about the real world practicality of it.
Even if it can be made 100% safe and reliable, you cannot get around the basic logistics of launching big arse rockets close to population centers. And if they aren't close to where people want to board and offload, then it's going to fail. Not to mention the hours required to fill the  the things and the safety procedures involved in doing so with people around.
Anyone who bets on this is a fool, and I will happily take their money.

[CatalinaWOW]

The use of a Starship for routine passenger transport doesn't seem likely to happen, though there are workarounds and solutions to most of the objections.  But there are use cases where it might make sense.  Wouldn't make sense to develop this whole system for those niche cases, but if the basics are in place for orbital launch the extra development cost is low.  Regardless of aspirational goals like Mars, the reason Musk wants Starship is to make launching Starlink satellites cheaper.  Everything else is just marketing or first exploration of new business opportunities.

In all of these discussions about wild ideas remember Clark's laws.  Paraphrasing his two first ones.  If a knowledgeable and respect person says something is possible they are almost always right.  And if they prove it can't, they are frequently wrong.  Clark buttressed this arguments with quotes from professors of aeronautical engineering who "proved" that transatlantic passenger aircraft would never be possible and the British Astronomical Society who went through the rocket equations along with materials engineering and other factors and concluded that man could never deposit an object on the moon.  More recently very astute members of this forum stated quite strongly that Starlink couldn't succeed because it wasn't scalable. 

In all of these incorrect predictions of impossibility the issue wasn't incorrect math, but it was analysis that missed possibilities.   The aeronautical professors missed the possibility of flying at high altitude where drag was lower (and a few other things).  The British Aeronautical Society overlooked the benefits of staging.   And analysis of Starlink probably missed both the size of the market which cannot be reached with more conventional approaches and the cost reductions in various parts of the system that are possible.  Two key areas being reusable rockets and cheap electronically steerable antennas.

Be cautious about debunking ideas.  It is much harder to prove impossibility than most people seem to think. 

[Psi]

It's never going to replace air travel and I don't think anyone is saying it will.
But like any new thing there will be some situations where it make sense, assuming the safety can get to the point where the public will accept the risk, which I think it will but not for a while. 

regular human point to point flights are not really a priority for Starship.
If it does happen it's going to be like 10 years after Starship has taken humans to mars.

[vk6zgo]

The question is, why Musk puts up propositions which upon a minimum of reflection are unworkable?

I will remind again, just a decade nearly everyone in the industry was saying that landing rocket boosters is a stupid idea that will never work. Now SpaceX made more than 400 successful booster landings and up to 25 refights per booster, and launch rockets more often than anyone ever before. I'm fairly skeptical if they ever will be using Starship for point-to-point travel, however technically it's absolutely possible. There are no physics that would prevent it. The question is if Musk can actually pull it off. My opinion is that it's extremely hard to do but I would not bet against it. If you're going to debunk something, do it properly. Spewing emotions diluted by bullshit, poor research and call for reason does not make your debunking stronger on actual merit. Watching one of Thunderf00t's Starship livestreams revealed that he did not research the thing and knew fuck all about what he was watching and what Starship should do.

Back in the 1950s, there was great excitement about the Fairey Rotodyne "Compound Gyroplane".
It was a large vertical take off aircraft, capable of carrying 50 passengers at 150mph.

There was great interest in using it for relatively short hops, between city centres.
Passengers would be saved the time wasting travel to an airport, as it could take off like a helicopter, then transfer to horizontal flight, before heading off to the other city, where it would land vertically in the centre of the destination.

There were no physics to prevent this being done, the aircraft worked, but the noise from the tip jets on the large rotor was a major problem for its intended purpose.
it went through a number of iterations, including a planned 150 passenger version, before its "Achilles heel" of noise eventually killed it.

The noise from Starship results in it being banished to 32km out at sea, so that will never be fixable by any clever ideas.
As a sad commentary upon how things work out, if the Rotodyne (especially the 150 passenger version) had survived, such an aircraft
would have made trips to & from Starship launch/landing platforms much more viable.

Even in a timeline when something like Rotodyne was available, the logistics problems of embarking 100 passengers via an entrance high up on Starship, suitably preparing them for the flight, then sealing then in whilst refuelling the craft add hours to the time between reaching the site & liftoff.

All except the refuelling has to be repeated at disembarkation,again burning time.
No emotion, just cold, hard facts will ensure that point to point services using the kind of technology we currently possess won't happen.
It happens in visionary fiction due to the possession of technology which can just be hand waved up out of the air, technology which we may not ever have, if there is even a theoretical basis for it.

[vk6zgo]

The use of a Starship for routine passenger transport doesn't seem likely to happen, though there are workarounds and solutions to most of the objections.  But there are use cases where it might make sense.  Wouldn't make sense to develop this whole system for those niche cases, but if the basics are in place for orbital launch the extra development cost is low.  Regardless of aspirational goals like Mars, the reason Musk wants Starship is to make launching Starlink satellites cheaper.  Everything else is just marketing or first exploration of new business opportunities.

In all of these discussions about wild ideas remember Clark's laws.  Paraphrasing his two first ones.  If a knowledgeable and respect person says something is possible they are almost always right.  And if they prove it can't, they are frequently wrong.  Clark buttressed this arguments with quotes from professors of aeronautical engineering who "proved" that transatlantic passenger aircraft would never be possible and the British Astronomical Society who went through the rocket equations along with materials engineering and other factors and concluded that man could never deposit an object on the moon.  More recently very astute members of this forum stated quite strongly that Starlink couldn't succeed because it wasn't scalable. 

In all of these incorrect predictions of impossibility the issue wasn't incorrect math, but it was analysis that missed possibilities.   The aeronautical professors missed the possibility of flying at high altitude where drag was lower (and a few other things).  The British Aeronautical Society overlooked the benefits of staging.   And analysis of Starlink probably missed both the size of the market which cannot be reached with more conventional approaches and the cost reductions in various parts of the system that are possible.  Two key areas being reusable rockets and cheap electronically steerable antennas.

Be cautious about debunking ideas.  It is much harder to prove impossibility than most people seem to think.

Starlink had a good chance of success as it had already been done by Iridium, but was not a viable proposition at the time they introduced it.
We don't have to prove impossibility, because impracticality has sunken many more projects over the years.
Otherwise, where are all those nuclear powered cars, gas turbine ones, nuclear powered aircraft?

"Man-powered" flight was a very popular concept back in the 1700s & 1800s.
It never worked, & was assumed to be both impossible & impractical.
More recently, using advanced materials, it has been shown to be possible, but practical?----

[Psi]

Other than the issue of transporting humans out to a launch area in the middle of nowhere, the main problem to solve is engines, guidance and fuel systems with near an order of magnitude more reliable that jets. Since a rocket can't glide in the event of a propulsion failure those systems need to be rock solid reliable with triple redundancy.

Starship does have the advantage of having 10-20x the number of engines of a jet.
So that brings the needed reliability down a little assuming they have full engine-out reliability at every stage of flight.  But it's still a tall order to get that sort of reliability against falling out of the sky.

Astronauts and people going on trips to space will accept a lot more risk than the public would for point to point.

It's hard to see how the advantages, speed/time, would ever be enough to overcome the disadvantages of risk/inconveniences. 

[tszaboo]

The question is, why Musk puts up propositions which upon a minimum of reflection are unworkable?

I will remind again, just a decade nearly everyone in the industry was saying that landing rocket boosters is a stupid idea that will never work.

No one was saying that, it was always going to work, it's not like SpaceX invented it, it's had been done before.
The question with a thing like this is whether or not they could do it reliably at scale before the funding runs out. And Elon is on record as saying they were literally one more crash away from the company going under, it was so close to never happening.

Now SpaceX made more than 400 successful booster landings and up to 25 refights per booster, and launch rockets more often than anyone ever before. I'm fairly skeptical if they ever will be using Starship for point-to-point travel, however technically it's absolutely possible. There are no physics that would prevent it. The question is if Musk can actually pull it off. My opinion is that it's extremely hard to do but I would not bet against it.

Then you haven't really thought about the real world practicality of it.
Even if it can be made 100% safe and reliable, you cannot get around the basic logistics of launching big arse rockets close to population centers. And if they aren't close to where people want to board and offload, then it's going to fail. Not to mention the hours required to fill the  the things and the safety procedures involved in doing so with people around.
Anyone who bets on this is a fool, and I will happily take their money.

You only need to connect the launch site to an airport close by. For example launch it from Nevada, check in at the international airport there, take a 20 minute turboprop flight to the launch site.
Going from EU to USA or Japan could take a day or more in travel. Even if you only have one launch site per continent, you can potentially cut it in half.
I don't think it will happen, not with the current mentality of people. We will probably cancel it because it disturbed the sleep of some fish or some other environmental nonsense.

[vk6zgo]

The question is, why Musk puts up propositions which upon a minimum of reflection are unworkable?

I will remind again, just a decade nearly everyone in the industry was saying that landing rocket boosters is a stupid idea that will never work.

No one was saying that, it was always going to work, it's not like SpaceX invented it, it's had been done before.
The question with a thing like this is whether or not they could do it reliably at scale before the funding runs out. And Elon is on record as saying they were literally one more crash away from the company going under, it was so close to never happening.

Now SpaceX made more than 400 successful booster landings and up to 25 refights per booster, and launch rockets more often than anyone ever before. I'm fairly skeptical if they ever will be using Starship for point-to-point travel, however technically it's absolutely possible. There are no physics that would prevent it. The question is if Musk can actually pull it off. My opinion is that it's extremely hard to do but I would not bet against it.

Then you haven't really thought about the real world practicality of it.
Even if it can be made 100% safe and reliable, you cannot get around the basic logistics of launching big arse rockets close to population centers. And if they aren't close to where people want to board and offload, then it's going to fail. Not to mention the hours required to fill the  the things and the safety procedures involved in doing so with people around.
Anyone who bets on this is a fool, and I will happily take their money.

You only need to connect the launch site to an airport close by. For example launch it from Nevada, check in at the international airport there, take a 20 minute turboprop flight to the launch site.
Going from EU to USA or Japan could take a day or more in travel. Even if you only have one launch site per continent, you can potentially cut it in half.
I don't think it will happen, not with the current mentality of people. We will probably cancel it because it disturbed the sleep of some fish or some other environmental nonsense.

It's not the sleep of fishes, but that of people.
SpaceX want to launch from platforms 32 km out at sea for that reason.
There will be no airfields for turboprops at those, so the best they can hope for is helicopters.

The trips you quoted take much less than a day from various airports & travel to Nevada  takes around 5-6 hours from major Eastern US centres.-----Both EU & USA are seriously large, so  frankly, "One  launch site per continent" is not going to hack it!

[tszaboo]

It's not the sleep of fishes, but that of people.
SpaceX want to launch from platforms 32 km out at sea for that reason.
There will be no airfields for turboprops at those, so the best they can hope for is helicopters.

The trips you quoted take much less than a day from various airports & travel to Nevada  takes around 5-6 hours from major Eastern US centres.-----Both EU & USA are seriously large, so  frankly, "One  launch site per continent" is not going to hack it!

That's not how plane flights work. If I travel somewhere in the USA, I don't travel from Frankfurt international to wherever in the USA. I travel from the (one of the) nearest airport to a hub, where I take a flight to the USA, most likely Newark where I change flight again. With hours of delays. One day easily spent on this. If you can cut the middle 8 hours flight into 40 minutes, people would take that.
And yes, I get that it's loud. My point is that (even though it's happening already in space centers) environmentalists will make approvals a hell for this, just because they can. Don't believe me, see how much effort it is to approve a nuclear power plant in 2025.

[CatalinaWOW]

While I agree that it isn't going to replace air transport, horribilizing the trip time is not an honest way to say it won't work.

Yes transport time to a launch site will add time to the trip.  But let's add up realistic trip times for comparison.  Something realistic like Denver to Sydney. 

Current system.  Home to airport and into the air, not much less than two hours for travel to airport, check in, security etc.  Maybe get that down to a bit more than one.   Flight to coastal city is somewhere just over two hours.  Flight time to Sydney, right at fourteen hours.

Suborbital transport.  Same time for trip to coastal city.  Add one hour for transfer to flight pod.  Two hours for travel to launch site and loading.  Round up to an hour for the flight and then add two hours to get the pod unloaded and into Sidney.

So the suborbital flight knocks a 18-19 hour trip down to a 10-11 hour trip.  As someone who has had to make some very long air trips that time savings is very appealing.

Would it be appealing enough to make the price difference worth.  Unlikely.  Just like the SST it would be appealing but not economically viable.  But who knows.  Even conventional air travel doesn't make economics sense in most cases. 

[Ranayna]

Not that i am in any way an expert, but most potential customers will also not be experts.
Will SpaceX ever be able to become as reliable as aircraft currently are?
Granted, the Falcon 9 has an impressive track record. But there is still roughly a 1% failure rate. Several orders of magnitude worse than aircraft.

But that is a failure rate i would not be comfortable with as a passenger.

[EEVblog]

It's never going to replace air travel and I don't think anyone is saying it will.
But like any new thing there will be some situations where it make sense, assuming the safety can get to the point where the public will accept the risk, which I think it will but not for a while. 

More than a while, never in fact, for the general public.
Apart from Richie Rich novelty/adventure value, which is at least possible (which is already a thing with space tourism), there is no viable path where people take it because it's quicker if you have to be transported to the middle of nowhere to board, and then spend hours of delays as it fuels. And then the transfer in the middle of nowhere to your city where you want to go.
No amount of engineering is going to eliminate the noise problems caused by a gigantic frigg'n rocket.

People already complain about how long it gets to the airport, and how it takes for boarding screening, and is is for airports that have spent 80+ years being optimised for passenger movement efficiency.
So if the big time improvement potentially available to a Starship point-to-point rocket system is going to be mostly eaten up with increased transport, fueling and safety time, then it's guaranteed to be an impractical boondoggle for Joe Public.

[EEVblog]

Not that i am in any way an expert, but most potential customers will also not be experts.
Will SpaceX ever be able to become as reliable as aircraft currently are?
Granted, the Falcon 9 has an impressive track record. But there is still roughly a 1% failure rate. Several orders of magnitude worse than aircraft.

I think that's just not possible.
The aviation industry has gotten to the incredible safety standard it has because of the orders and orders of magnitude more flight hours, types, and scenarios over the last 80-100 years.
Passenger rockets simply don't have the same volume, not even close.
That's without even factoring in the fact that in many(most?) failure scenarios on planes result on a safe manual landing because they can glide. Rocket don't have the same luxury. That alone puts planes in an entirely different safety category.

[EEVblog]

While I agree that it isn't going to replace air transport, horribilizing the trip time is not an honest way to say it won't work.
Yes transport time to a launch site will add time to the trip.  But let's add up realistic trip times for comparison.  Something realistic like Denver to Sydney. 
Current system.  Home to airport and into the air, not much less than two hours for travel to airport, check in, security etc.  Maybe get that down to a bit more than one.   Flight to coastal city is somewhere just over two hours.  Flight time to Sydney, right at fourteen hours.
Suborbital transport.  Same time for trip to coastal city.  Add one hour for transfer to flight pod.  Two hours for travel to launch site and loading.  Round up to an hour for the flight and then add two hours to get the pod unloaded and into Sidney.
So the suborbital flight knocks a 18-19 hour trip down to a 10-11 hour trip.  As someone who has had to make some very long air trips that time savings is very appealing.
Would it be appealing enough to make the price difference worth.  Unlikely.  Just like the SST it would be appealing but not economically viable.  But who knows.  Even conventional air travel doesn't make economics sense in most cases.

You said it, even if that's all possible, the time reduction is not appealing enough for most people to take the extra risk and expense. It is doomed to failure.
Is it possible that some adventurous rich people take a point to point rocket system in the future, sure, but I don't see it evolving like plane travel has.

And that's not including the finances of building another "Starship port" in wanted locations around the world. Who's paying for that? Who's going to approve it?
Ok, so there is Starbase in Texas, but it's literally on the Mexico border that no one wants to go to, So you get a car from Starbase to one of the nearby regional airport and then hop a flight to the city you want to go to, probably in two hops depending upon where you want to go.
So it could be up to 4 flights, plus the rocket point-to-point vs the existing solution of a cab to the airport and you get your direct international flight, with one (sometime welcoming) stopover half way.
And enough people are going to pay a privilege for this extra complexity and safety risk to maybe save a couple of hours? And do this routinely?
Sorry, nope, dead in the water.

[EEVblog]

Starship does have the advantage of having 10-20x the number of engines of a jet.

Starship only has 6 engines, you are thinking of the super heavy booster it sits on.

[wraper]

Starship does have the advantage of having 10-20x the number of engines of a jet.

Starship only has 6 engines, you are thinking of the super heavy booster it sits on.

IIRC Starship V2 will have more engines. As of current one, 2 out of 3 gimballed center engines are used for landing. AFAIK they start all 3 for redundancy in chance if one does not start and quickly switch to two.