Resolves yes if Starship/Superheavy successfully deploys at least one Starlink satellite in a nominal orbit during 2024. The satellites don't need to function as long as they are deployed from Starship.
For a similar market but for commercial payloads, see this one: https://manifold.markets/chrisjbillington/first-starshipsuperheavy-commercial
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@esusatyo Why would they need 5+ launches before they can carry satellites?
Simple answer is that the tests are reaching the point where we expect attempts at getting to orbit to succeed, and starlink satellites are a "why not deploy a whole bunch of them if you're going to be flying to orbit anway?" kind of thing.
Starlink-deployment hardware is being tested in the upcoming flight, so this is clearly something they're aiming for soon. And starlink satellites are cheap and easy test payloads that nobody will miss much if things go wrong - so it doesn't matter if the primary purpose of a flight is "testing" or not - that's not really a clear distinction when you have ready-to-go payloads that you're wanting to launch thousands of to space anyway.
Getting re-entry and landing working is going to require a whole lot more testing, so they might as well deploy heaps of starlink satellites in the meantime to make those flights pay for themselves at least somewhat, and to get some practice in at deploying satellites rather than that being something brand new that they don't even try until everything else is working.
I think they'd be putting starlinks in IFT-3 if it were going for full orbit, which it only isn't because they haven't proven they can relight and do a de-orbit burn in space, which means going to full orbit is not safe (deorbit would be uncontrolled). In the next flight they plan to demonstrate that they can relight engines in space, meaning we might see full-orbit (and maybe starlinks) on the next flight after.
@chrisjbillington Well until @esusatyo just switched his position I was. 25% conservatively at 2.5:1 odds put it at 65% of balance.
@NGK Fair enough, though I think balance isn't really the right way to think about it - something like net worth minus all your holdings correlated with this bet makes more sense. Otherwise Kelly tells you to never make any bets without building up lots of balance first with loans, which is not really related to what Kelly is about.
I keep coming back to this one and buying more. I swear I'm not obsessed with the outcome! It's just that I put the odds at around 85% YES, and this question consistently has the biggest spread between market value and my belief, and with good liquidity.
When I look around for profit opportunities, this just keeps being the best one.
@DanHomerick It's mostly NGK vs everyone else 😅 though he's not wrong to generally be skeptical of spaceflight timelines. Still think he's wrong on this one though, but we'll see!
@NGK my thought process is that they're going orbital in IFT-4 (early May?). For that flight, and every flight after, they're going to want at least a "mass simulator" as payload. Why wouldn't they use Starlinks for that? They are cheap to produce, have significant value if deployed, and the only payload door they currently have for Starship is custom designed for deploying flatpack sats like Starlink.
Once Starship reaches orbit, the next steps will be to get reuse working. But I can't think of any reasons to not bring a load of Starlinks for every attempt. It's exactly how they developed Falcon 9's landing capability -- landings were always a "bonus", attempted after their main mission of deploying satellites.
I really don't get the thought that it's only 15% likely, unless you think they only have like a 40% chance of going orbital this year or something (I put orbital in 2024 at >90% certain).
@Mqrius Not much beyond my confidence that starship development is behind what the average manifold trader believes. I think fair price for this market is probably about 10-15%
@NGK Fair enough. Personally I expect Starlinks as soon as IFT4, depending on how 3 goes. We'll see!