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Yes, but keep in mind that Starship is mostly going to be used for launching Starship satellites in the early years, and that is super valuable to SpaceX. Falco
by Robotbeat 3y ago
Yes, but keep in mind that Starship is mostly going to be used for launching Starship satellites in the early years, and that is super valuable to SpaceX. Falcon 9 is super cheap and has a low marginal cost to SpaceX, but to launch the full sized Gen2 Starlink system would cost ~$100 billion extra if done on Falcon 9 vs Starship (and that’s just initial launch… the constellation would need refreshing on a 5-10 year basis), so Starship is worth about $100 billion to the Starlink program alone. Refueling will also be helpful for launching commercial satellites to geosynchronous orbit, for crewed missions like Dear Moon, etc.
This is why SpaceX doesn’t mind co-investing on Starship.