Starship vs SLS Debate

SpaceX can reliably deliver payloads to orbit at much cheaper prices than anything before. The Moon program had its share of disasters, near-disasters and other failures (Apollo 1 burned with all its crew on the ground). Starship is a vehicle in development and will obviously have all sorts of bugs and edge cases to be worked out.

Starliner is stupider than Artemis and SLS?

Starship is more flight ready then SLS and new Glenn. It's just not fully reusable yet, so it's not ready by Spacex standards but far ahead of anyone else in the world. They could also use falcon heavy but might as well use Starship, unless they need dragon.

Starship can fly to orbit, it's just not cheaper than a reusable falcon 9 that way

Starship is substantially bigger than falcon 9, with significant more mass to orbit capability. And runs on a cheaper propellant. Also Elon has publicly stated starlink s long term viability requires starship.Which data are you looking for?

Starliner /could/ be a backup however it does not have those Moon requirements

Which mission profiles does Starship not make sense for?

The plans for Starship are haisy, not scrutinised and it has not been delivered. So far design has changed massively, it was scaled down a lot, and it's stil a vehicle looking for a purpose.I have significant doubts that we will see it launch at that price-point withing the next 10 years.All the best luck to spaceX, but you can't base the entire national space programm on something that flaky.SLS solidly gets you to the moon, and you van make real plans on it. If it turns out

Three things:1. Efficiency is not an American value. The society almost always chooses decentralization over efficiency. For good and ill, the SLS project looks like America.2. I don't think SpaceX is lacking talent at this point. Their primary constraint is time, not money. The Starship will fly when it's ready.3. Three Falcon Heavy rockets can't launch the same payload as a single SLS. Cost per payload mass is only one factor. Maximum payload and the physical dimensions

Starship is still entirely unproven.There's a possible world where the cut corners and the Dear Moon mission winds up with the vehicle burning up on reentry or slamming itself into the ground, killing Tim Dodd and everyone on board, with the resultant investigation looking something like OceanGate.SLS is big, dumb and stupid and has a LES and a capsule that lands via parachutes. If SpaceX fails as a company after some accident like that, the SLS will just continue to plod along.