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The Delta Heavy is $12,340 per kg to LEO. Saturn V was ~$8,800 in current costs. Falcon Heavy is $1,411 per kg when reused. For a $10 million launch, Starshi

The Delta Heavy is $12,340 per kg to LEO. Saturn V was ~$8,800 in current costs. Falcon Heavy is $1,411 per kg when reused. For a $10 million launch, Starship would cost $67 per kg. Musk has said costs could come down to 1-2 million, although I would disregard that given the cost of the fuel is ~$1 million. Musk is absolutely utterly dismissive of marginal costs like support and maintenance, but $20-30 million per amortized launch ($134-$200 per kg) does not seem that crazy. The structure and materials of the rocket are absurdly cheaper than the Falcon Heavy, and the cost of getting all that on a pad is pretty much constant. The Heavy has 27 Merlin engines, Starship has 33 Raptor engines. If it really is that much cheaper and that much cheaper to refly, a 10x reduction is definitely possible.

cubefox 4y ago
It depends also on how often they can reuse the lower and upper stage, and how large the difference between launch cost and launch price will be. As far as I know, only China is currently developing a rocket comparable to Starship (Long March 9) and it will not compete with Starship for customers. So if there are indeed large internal cost cuts for Starship, large price cuts seem to be wishful thinking.
benj111 4y ago
All that assumes a market for a rocket as big as starship though. If you're still stuck launching the same kind of payloads as smaller rockets then the benefit will be smaller. For a rocket like starship to make sense you need an ~ order of magnitude increase in the market which isn't a given. If you look at large jets, that wasn't the future. On the other hand cargo shipping seems to be heading that way, so I'll accept it could go either way, I'm just not convinced. I just have a feeling this is more akin to musk buying Twitter, than musk landing a first stage falcon for the first time.
- ls612 4y ago
  The market even at $300 per kg (if the starship eventually costs what Falcon costs) is dramatically different from the market today.
  - benj111 4y ago
    Is that a given? What's the driver of satellite size? Is it the size of current rockets? Cube says etc would tend to point the other way. What the total cost of a satellite? Fine sending a 1 tonne satellite to space costs $300k but if it still costs $x million to build the thing you're still looking at a select group who can afford it. Taking those 2 things together how many organisations will opt for the absolute cheapest option giving up the ability to get a dedicated launch to a given orbit? What are these new markets? Is asteroid mining going to become economically viable? Is lunar exploration going to be profitable? It's cheap to get to the middle of the Atlantic, it isn't exactly a hive of economic activity though. Yes there's starlink, but that has downsides relative to wired alternatives so the market is always going to be limited. Yes starlink is a massive expansion of the space economy, but that just highlights how small the space economy was and is, which just raises the question of whether such a massive rocket like starship will be able to be supported. 'build it and they will come' sounds nice, but it isn't a given.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
      Part of the insane costs of satellites comes from the launch cost: If the launch is expensive, the satellite needs to work, and it needs to last. If every kg you launch is $$$, it's worth using much more expensive materials to make it lighter. If the launch is closer to the price of shipping a parcel internationally, you can cut a lot of corners. No more specially optimized titanium parts where cheap sheet metal will do. No more space-rated parts at 100x markup, launch with off the shelf parts, see what fails, and iterate based on that. No more designing for super redundancy and quintuple-checking everything, if it fails let it fall out of orbit and send up a new one (LEO satellites deorbit reasonably quickly, so not a major "orbital waste" concern).
fortyseven 4y ago
Are we still taking Musk's word on... anything? After all that's happened?

cubefox 4y ago

It depends also on how often they can reuse the lower and upper stage, and how large the difference between launch cost and launch price will be. As far as I know, only China is currently developing a rocket comparable to Starship (Long March 9) and it will not compete with Starship for customers. So if there are indeed large internal cost cuts for Starship, large price cuts seem to be wishful thinking.

benj111 4y ago

All that assumes a market for a rocket as big as starship though. If you're still stuck launching the same kind of payloads as smaller rockets then the benefit will be smaller. For a rocket like starship to make sense you need an ~ order of magnitude increase in the market which isn't a given. If you look at large jets, that wasn't the future. On the other hand cargo shipping seems to be heading that way, so I'll accept it could go either way, I'm just not convinced. I just have a feeling this is more akin to musk buying Twitter, than musk landing a first stage falcon for the first time.

ls612 4y ago
The market even at $300 per kg (if the starship eventually costs what Falcon costs) is dramatically different from the market today.
- benj111 4y ago
  Is that a given? What's the driver of satellite size? Is it the size of current rockets? Cube says etc would tend to point the other way. What the total cost of a satellite? Fine sending a 1 tonne satellite to space costs $300k but if it still costs $x million to build the thing you're still looking at a select group who can afford it. Taking those 2 things together how many organisations will opt for the absolute cheapest option giving up the ability to get a dedicated launch to a given orbit? What are these new markets? Is asteroid mining going to become economically viable? Is lunar exploration going to be profitable? It's cheap to get to the middle of the Atlantic, it isn't exactly a hive of economic activity though. Yes there's starlink, but that has downsides relative to wired alternatives so the market is always going to be limited. Yes starlink is a massive expansion of the space economy, but that just highlights how small the space economy was and is, which just raises the question of whether such a massive rocket like starship will be able to be supported. 'build it and they will come' sounds nice, but it isn't a given.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
    Part of the insane costs of satellites comes from the launch cost: If the launch is expensive, the satellite needs to work, and it needs to last. If every kg you launch is $$$, it's worth using much more expensive materials to make it lighter. If the launch is closer to the price of shipping a parcel internationally, you can cut a lot of corners. No more specially optimized titanium parts where cheap sheet metal will do. No more space-rated parts at 100x markup, launch with off the shelf parts, see what fails, and iterate based on that. No more designing for super redundancy and quintuple-checking everything, if it fails let it fall out of orbit and send up a new one (LEO satellites deorbit reasonably quickly, so not a major "orbital waste" concern).

fortyseven 4y ago

Are we still taking Musk's word on... anything? After all that's happened?