That sounds like an improvement, but not enough for passenger air travel replacement between the cost of coach and business class (New York to shanghai), promised for 7 years from now. They need many orders of magnitude of reliability improvements over shuttle for that, though it would be slightly suborbital reentry.
The Dear Moon mission in a couple years will have full reentry at extreme speeds, assuming they weren't just ripping off that Japanese billionaire guy. I think they still planned transpirational cooling at that point?
Dragon was supposed to have at least one mission to Mars every transfer period from 2020 onwards and that seems to have been scrapped.
I dont understand where this comment is coming from. What sources are you using the make the cost claims you are making and/or the reliability requirements and/or heatshield requirements?
> Shotwell estimated the ticket cost would be somewhere between economy and business class on a plane — so, likely in the thousands of dollars for transoceanic travel. “But you do it in an hour.”
I based reliability requirements on passenger jet travel and the risk people would be willing to take for non space-tourism transport.
Also, I don't see how the tiles can be fully uniform except on the cylindrical part. The geometry of the nose part I don't think would allow it mathematically. Shuttle tiles often only differed in thickness based on needed heat withstanding, and could be generated by cnc processes automatically. Spacex may want something similar to optimize weight, especially since they are planning computer controlled install as well for most of them.
The Dear Moon mission in a couple years will have full reentry at extreme speeds, assuming they weren't just ripping off that Japanese billionaire guy. I think they still planned transpirational cooling at that point?
Dragon was supposed to have at least one mission to Mars every transfer period from 2020 onwards and that seems to have been scrapped.