Re: Flawed
"I'm curious how reliably that will work, especially given the pressure to launch V2 Starlink sats. Or just having a functional clamshell fairing so Starship could also launch other payloads."
With the design as shown that includes a tank in the nose, only 1/2 of the nose could open. Some sort of arm or other mechanism would be needed to deploy satellites so they don't strike the rocket as they exit. Getting that huge door to hinge open will be a big task as well as making sure it closes securely. There would be no way to reenter and land if the door wasn't completely secure.
There is also a big question over what other payloads starship would be good for. It's like the local gravel store having a mining hauler. They could deliver everybody's rock order for the year in one day, but not everybody needs their rock on the same day and anything less than filling up the bed would be wasteful. It's even worse for space launches as not many launches will be going to the same orbit. Many of the tag-along ride sharing satellites don't care about an orbit as their owners are just looking to get their cube sat into space wherever that happens to be and they'll get their data one way or the other. Falcon Heavy sat without a mission on the books for 3 years. Not many entities are going to build a payload that can only launch on one rocket (commercially). One Web found they needed to get the Indian's to launch their birds as flying with the Russians has become out of the question (and I think the Russians are sitting on at least one of their stacks). If those could only launch on a Soyuz, they'd have big problems.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
