Why not both?

You've correctly identified that there are two economies of scale - the first being in production (the more we produce, the cheaper it gets) and the second being payload per flight (the more we carry, the cheaper it is).

The problem is you think starship is attempting to do the second, at the cost of the first. This is not correct. Starship is doing both - it's intended to carry huge amounts of cargo basically anywhere AND do so at scale with many units being produced.

I like to think of it like the 747 - big, ambitious, and yet an everyday workhorse.

Why not both?

You've correctly identified that there are two economies of scale - the first being in production (the more we produce, the cheaper it gets) and the second being payload per flight (the more we carry, the cheaper it is).

The problem is you think starship is attempting to do the second, at the cost of the first. This is not correct. Starship is doing both - it's intended to carry huge amounts of cargo basically anywhere AND do so at scale with many units being produced.

Building 100 Starships/year gets to 1000 in 10 years or 100 megatons/year or maybe around 100k people per Earth-Mars orbital sync

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1217990326867988480 (Thanks @Robyn for the source!)

I like to think of it like the 747 - big, ambitious, and yet an everyday workhorse.