F9 was on paper conservative tech, seen as technically possible, but operationally difficult / economically not feasible for startup. Starship pushing so many boundaries, it is indeed revolutionary, many critics thinks it's a technical moonshot. I want it to work, but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't, or very, very late.
Empirically, you're right. Starship has taken much longer than F9 just to reliably put something in orbit.
What I don't know--because I'm not in the field--is whether that's because of design complexity (size, need for header tanks, etc.) or because the Starship team is not as tight (larger team, weaker leaders, distracted Musk).
It was conservative in that IIRC the criticism against F9 at the time, landing/1st stage reuse was seen as technically feasible, but economically not. VS criticisms of starship (even before people starting hating on Elon)... it's not technically impossible, but Starship stacked with multiple F9 resuable tier generation leap in requirements. It's another level of difficulty in terms of undertaking.
IMO economically, F9 + starlink pretty good business model. Starship + _____? It's not Moon or Mars. IMO once DoD gives SpaceX a few 100 billions in Golden Dome contracts, starshipwill start to seem much more viable / inevitable once it's fate is tied to strategic space weaponization. On topic DoD, let's not forget there's probably trillions $$$ of wasted technically feasible / moonshot prototypes from US MiC over the decades. Starship might end in that pile, but I'm optimistic it won't be, not because space but weapons in space.
> IMO economically, F9 + starlink pretty good business model. Starship + _____?
I think the best business model is Starship + Starlink. Starship can launch a lot more and larger satellites than Falcon 9.
I wouldn't bet on other big Starship customers, defense spending, space tourism, Mars plans etc. Those are highly speculative. But satellite Internet has a clear use case and a huge market.
That's a separate evolution though. The original/basic F9 was (by the standards of the time) an economically viable rocket without first stage reusability.
