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Costs per passenger for a reusable vehicle like this are largely a function of launch rate. Launch a few per year, it'll lose millions. Launch a hundred, and th

Costs per passenger for a reusable vehicle like this are largely a function of launch rate. Launch a few per year, it'll lose millions. Launch a hundred, and they'll make plenty of money. Additionally, you should highly doubt this kind of outside estimate of cost per New Shepard launch. It sounds like they used the same costs as you would expect for a fully expendable rocket like Falcon 1e class (same first stage thrust, for instance), even though New Shepard is fully reusable. And lastly, these suborbital New Shepard launches are also a big advertisement for orbital New Glenn launches which are orders of magnitude longer in duration. New Glenn could also take people around the Moon or, with the (eventually) reusable "Blue Moon" lander that Blue Origin is also developing, to the Moon's surface and back. So there's actually a lot of upsell, and I believe they've been explicit about using New Shepard to upsell for eventual orbital flights.

rory096 8y ago
>Additionally, you should highly doubt this kind of outside estimate of cost per New Shepard launch. It sounds like they used the same costs as you would expect for a fully expendable rocket like Falcon 1e class (same first stage thrust, for instance), even though New Shepard is fully reusable. The article discusses intended price, not cost. And $1.2 million/flight is significantly less than Falcon 1. >So there's actually a lot of upsell, and I believe they've been explicit about using New Shepard to upsell for eventual orbital flights. Definitely. It's also important to note that New Shepard and New Glenn have significant technology overlap - NS development costs won't have to be amortized by passenger flights alone.
- Cogito 8y ago
  From the article: > While Blue Origin has not disclosed its per-flight operating costs, Teal Group aerospace analyst Marco Caceres estimated each flight could cost the firm about $10 million. With six passengers per trip, that would mean losing millions of dollars per launch, at least initially.

rory096 8y ago

>Additionally, you should highly doubt this kind of outside estimate of cost per New Shepard launch. It sounds like they used the same costs as you would expect for a fully expendable rocket like Falcon 1e class (same first stage thrust, for instance), even though New Shepard is fully reusable. The article discusses intended price, not cost. And $1.2 million/flight is significantly less than Falcon 1. >So there's actually a lot of upsell, and I believe they've been explicit about using New Shepard to upsell for eventual orbital flights. Definitely. It's also important to note that New Shepard and New Glenn have significant technology overlap - NS development costs won't have to be amortized by passenger flights alone.

Cogito 8y ago
From the article: > While Blue Origin has not disclosed its per-flight operating costs, Teal Group aerospace analyst Marco Caceres estimated each flight could cost the firm about $10 million. With six passengers per trip, that would mean losing millions of dollars per launch, at least initially.