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Here is what Elon said on instrgram, "Fly to most places on Earth in under 30 mins and anywhere in under 60. Cost per seat should be about the same as full fare

Here is what Elon said on instrgram, "Fly to most places on Earth in under 30 mins and anywhere in under 60. Cost per seat should be about the same as full fare economy in an aircraft. Forgot to mention that." Source : https://www.instagram.com/p/BZnVfWxgdLe/?hl=en&taken-by=elonmusk https://www.instagram.com/p/BZnVfWxgdLe/?hl=en&taken-by=elon...

godelski 9y ago
Which gives evidence to my guess. Because there is no way you can do a rocket for anywhere near that price. I mean, let's do some quick math. We'll even give him buffer room. Let's say you can get 50 passengers at $5k per ticket. That's $250k/flight. I just can't see how that would cover the flight (fuel), let alone things like: maintenance, licensing, insurance, and the staff to operate the facilities. Let alone doing it on $50k ($1k/ticket). I'm EXTREMELY skeptical. Elon's a pretty smart guy, and may see things that I'm not, but my best guess is that this isn't for the money. The money is just to lessen the losses.
- ajnin 9y ago
  He mentions in his presentation that the BFR will have more pressurized cargo space than an A380, which can carry 853 passengers in an all-economy configuration. Let's say the BFR would carry a bit more that that, and prices would be a bit less than $1k, that would bring the flight budget in the order of $500k to $1M very roughly. Let's try to estimate fuel costs, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Syste...) propellant costs $168 per tonne, and the spaceship can hold 1950t of it, so assuming one full tank per trip, that's $328k for fuel. The actual cost of the rocket is around $200M, assuming a service life of 1000 flights, that's a $200k amortized cost per flight. Add a few hundred k for launchpad, personnel, administrative costs of various kinds, and you get in the $500k to $1M ballpark. So on the back of the envelope it looks about break-even. Maybe there's a sufficient market of people willing to pay a premium for very fast travel to make this profitable.
  - godelski 9y ago
    I didn't realize he said 853 passengers. In the article it mentions 40 cabins. So I rounded to 50. We still don't get enough for fuel. And 1000 flights is pretty optimistic. Especially at this stage. Their rockets already aren't fully reusable (only just having tested reuse) and they have to replace parts. 10 flights is optimistic, let alone 1k. I'm sure we'll get there at some point, but I see no evidence of that technology currently. I'm just saying that there are a lot of red flags and that one should be really skeptical.

godelski 9y ago

Which gives evidence to my guess. Because there is no way you can do a rocket for anywhere near that price. I mean, let's do some quick math. We'll even give him buffer room. Let's say you can get 50 passengers at $5k per ticket. That's $250k/flight. I just can't see how that would cover the flight (fuel), let alone things like: maintenance, licensing, insurance, and the staff to operate the facilities. Let alone doing it on $50k ($1k/ticket). I'm EXTREMELY skeptical. Elon's a pretty smart guy, and may see things that I'm not, but my best guess is that this isn't for the money. The money is just to lessen the losses.

ajnin 9y ago
He mentions in his presentation that the BFR will have more pressurized cargo space than an A380, which can carry 853 passengers in an all-economy configuration. Let's say the BFR would carry a bit more that that, and prices would be a bit less than $1k, that would bring the flight budget in the order of $500k to $1M very roughly. Let's try to estimate fuel costs, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Syste...) propellant costs $168 per tonne, and the spaceship can hold 1950t of it, so assuming one full tank per trip, that's $328k for fuel. The actual cost of the rocket is around $200M, assuming a service life of 1000 flights, that's a $200k amortized cost per flight. Add a few hundred k for launchpad, personnel, administrative costs of various kinds, and you get in the $500k to $1M ballpark. So on the back of the envelope it looks about break-even. Maybe there's a sufficient market of people willing to pay a premium for very fast travel to make this profitable.
- godelski 9y ago
  I didn't realize he said 853 passengers. In the article it mentions 40 cabins. So I rounded to 50. We still don't get enough for fuel. And 1000 flights is pretty optimistic. Especially at this stage. Their rockets already aren't fully reusable (only just having tested reuse) and they have to replace parts. 10 flights is optimistic, let alone 1k. I'm sure we'll get there at some point, but I see no evidence of that technology currently. I'm just saying that there are a lot of red flags and that one should be really skeptical.