I’m not really into the idea of moving everything to a baby Google, even if they’re currently good about privacy. They just added an AI tool to email and a crypto wallet, which could be either awful or great signs depending on your perspective.
I was kind of hoping for Impulse Space, but they’re probably too unproven.
One of Starship’s engines on the lowest setting would tear the station apart. Regardless of whether they make this based on Starship instead of something more reasonably sized like a Dragon or Falcon 2nd stage, it’ll still need either a new engine design or a big cluster of Dracos. It’ll be something custom.
Regarding their Artemis work- the payments are milestone based, so they get money as they pass milestones. Engine relights and ship to ship prop transfer are some of the next ones.
Regarding their other customers- the Starship manifest includes another moon cruise, several satellite launches, and a lot of Starlinks.
Serious answer- SpaceX is building the deorbit vehicle then turning it over to NASA, who will have full control over it.
There’s no way Russia builds a new station. The timeline for them getting Nauka to orbit basically proves that it’s impossible. They’ve been trying to buddy up with China to visit theirs, though.
And it will hallucinate and give wrong answers
There are private/paywalled Discord servers and forums out there, too, so this could replace some of those. I think the Reddit format is better than a lot of alternatives, so I don’t actually hate this idea.