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- To get to the point where Starship can even start doing landing demos, there are 3 missions that still must be completed — the orbital flight test, a propellant-transfer test, and a long duration flight test. For the sake of illustration we will assume all launches go perfectly — akin to what SpaceX internally likes to call a “green light schedule.” (if all the traffic lights were green, how fast could you get there?)
This puts us at 4 launches for the initial demos, and 54 launches for the three landings required. That means that at minimum, for Starship to complete its contractual obligations by Artemis IV, the rocket must fly fifty-eight times with zero failures by 2028. That’s not zero failures in the “nothing blew up” sense, but in the sense that every test must go flawlessly — redesigns and lessons learned must fit within the schedule. The clock is ticking, and one thing’s for sure, those lights sure aren’t all green.
In summary, for SpaceX to meet its contractual obligations, we need 4 Apollo programs’ worth of super-heavy lift out the door by, well let’s be kind, the end of the decade.