@KenKirtland17 Most likely to protect Spacex's goals. Once they are public, shareholders can vote against a city on mars as it is not an immediately profitable venture. Most of Elon's goals do not align with the shareholder pressure for short-term profits.
Three years since the first flight of Starship, the next generation is here. New ship. New booster. New engines. New pad and new test site. SpaceX engineers are working to solve one of the most difficult engineering challenges in history: developing a fully, rapidly reusable rocket
@ThePrimalDino Nah, test as you fly. It’s best practice to fly Orion in the same configuration as going to the moon. Also EFT-1 was only 2 orbits, the crew will be in orbit longer to test one or both landers so they will most likely need the thermal tape anyway.
@ej_sa Its very odd, the drone-ship seems to small to transport a booster and I think there is already a barge under construction for transport. Landing a ship on it doesn’t seam likely, but maybe that is part of the accelerated timeline.