Humanity's ambitions beyond Earth have always outpaced the engineering required to fulfill them, and SpaceX's Starship is no exception. With 18 million pounds of thrust—more than twice that of the Saturn V—the vehicle commands attention, yet raw power has never been the measure of a civilization's reach into the cosmos. After 13 test flights, the capability that truly matters for Mars remains undemonstrated: two independent ships meeting in orbit, docking, and exchanging the cryogenic propellant that would make an interplanetary journey possible. The gap between spectacle and readiness is wher