It’s for showing off the engineering. Lots of robotics competitions focus on different things (throwing balls, kicking soccer balls, moving fast), but BattleBots is definitely the one I’d be most worried about advancing a dangerous line of killer tech.

A humanoid bipedal foot race shows off balance, speed, power efficiency, and things like that.

Kinda depends on the rock, right?

Starship has charged $90m so far. That’s including a healthy profit I’m sure.

SpaceX has a contract with Voyager Technologies for a 2029 launch at $90m. I would read that in the opposite direction as you, where you assume that it’s costing SpaceX less than what they’re charging. That’s far enough away that I’m not sure they’re going to be able to keep that price or be certain that they can actually launch on time or make a profit at that price.