SpaceX Launch Costs
Comments focus on current and projected costs of SpaceX Falcon 9 and Starship launches, including per-kg to orbit pricing, comparisons to Apollo, Shuttle, and competitors like Ariane, and implications for Starlink and profitability.
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Because $20 million is about 0.05% of what Apollo cost.The rocket equation still applies. You still need a huge booster, and prices haven't improved all that much.
Musk recently said that they need to get Starship working because the launch cost on Falcon 9 is already exceeding the cost of the launched Starlink satellites. With a launch cost of approximately $30M and 60 satellites, they are already at $500k per satellite at most.
even SpaceX launches cost over 50 million dollars (https://www.google.com/search?q=spacex+launch+cost has a big pullquote to that effect, for example)
The cheapest and most popular rocket today in terms of cost per kilogram sent to low-earth-orbit is the SpaceX Falcon 9, which is estimated to cost about $2700/kg. If the Starship meets its goals, it will cost $10/kg to LEO. It has a payload capacity and infrastructure which can economically deliver massive payloads to any solid surface in the solar system. It could send three full-sized bulldozers to Mars in a single trip. This is the largest scale space project ever conceived and por
Last I heard, reusable F9 launches cost SpaceX ~$30M. The goal is for Starship launches to cost about $2M, for ~5x the payload mass. Starship is also necessary for Starlink launches to be economical for the full constellation deployment.
SpaceX launch cost is roughtly half of competitions for same payload: 40mil USD vs 90mil (Ariane Space).40mil is far more affordable than 90mil, and they are promising lower prices in future.
There is no answer to this.If you hang the entire R&D plus materials cost for Starship on this one launch, it's a huge amount.If you consider this as R&D that will be amortized over decades of launches, not that much.It's the same math that gets you the military buying $5000 hammers: it all depends how you allocate fixed costs across units.
$100/kg is the cost, not what they are charging. The only missions that will be launched at cost are SpaceX's own payloads (Starlink satellites / Mars colony shenanigans).
The Starship promised launch cost is literally two orders of magnitude smaller than current launch costs. I would start there.
Shuttle launches cost $1-2B, and carried significantly less to orbit.