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> When you can start sending stuff to space for a few dollars per pound, we're not talking about just probes, but rather opening the door to the complete commer

> When you can start sending stuff to space for a few dollars per pound, we're not talking about just probes, but rather opening the door to the complete commercialization and exploitation of space. It almost sounds too good to be true or something.

jibe 3y ago
It’s not uncommon to see much bigger improvements in cost than what SpaceX is targeting. E.g., solar. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices
somenameforme 3y ago
Most of what SpaceX has already achieved has sounded similarly, but costs were so astronomical to begin with that it didn't make any immediate difference to most people. So for instance the Space Shuttle was only retired in 2011. After all was said and done it ended up costing $1.6 billion per launch - about $30,000 per pound of payload. The Falcon Heavy costs about $0.1 billion (in reusable mode) and brought the costs down to less than $700/lb. That's a greater than 40x reduction in costs, which sounds too good to be true - but the problem is that even at $700/lb, that's still far too expensive to do anything remotely interesting. But take that down again and suddenly everything changes and we, more or less instantly, enter into an entirely new stage in human development and history. It'll be akin to the automobile. Henry Ford didn't make the first automobile, but he did make the first commercially affordable one. And, in the blink of an eye, society permanently changed because of it. --- As a fun aside, when doing a web search to grab the numbers above somehow this [1] ended up in the search results. It's from 2012 and somebody pondering SpaceX's wild claims of being able to get costs below $1,100 per kg ($1,500 inflation adjusted). [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992936
- TMWNN 3y ago
  >So for instance the Space Shuttle was only retired in 2011. After all was said and done it ended up costing $1.6 billion per launch - about $30,000 per pound of payload. The Falcon Heavy costs about $0.1 billion (in reusable mode) and brought the costs down to less than $700/lb. Is that an apples-to-apples comparison? Each shuttle launch cost $1.5 billion when including development cost (that is, $200 billion in total spending on the STS program / 135 launches); as your link discusses, the incremental cost per launch was "merely" $450-500 million. The $0.1 billion figure per Falcon Heavy launch is only the incremental cost since we don't know how much Falcon Heavy cost to develop (And how to account for the Falcon 9 development costs that Heavy is heavily based on?). Obviously Falcon 9/Heavy has every potential for launching far more times than the shuttle, further reducing the development cost allocated to each launch (or at least, until Starship gets going I guess). But we ought to be as accurate as possible in comparing Falcon and STS.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    It's all about what the customer pays. In the case of the Space Shuttle the customer also completely paid for the development of the launch system, so it doesn't really make sense to exclude that. It's also fair to include it because it's also included for SpaceX. When we say a Falcon Heavy got launch costs down to below $700/lb, that also includes a enough of a profit margin built in to completely fund their past operations and development, as well as future ones. SpaceX's 'real' (in the sense you're speaking of) per launch costs are going to be substantially lower than even $700/lb. In the case of Boeing/Lockeed/etc, they didn't have to pay for any of this - as it was all completely taxpayer funded. That should have enabled them to offer prices that would be unbeatable by any company paying for their own operations. --- To put this another way, imagine Boeing et al operated like SpaceX, or frankly most any "normal" company does. They would need to set their launch prices in a fashion such that they'd be able to recoup their tens of billions of dollars in development costs on the Space Shuttle, and then also add a profit margin on top. It's likely their charged cost per launch would have been even higher than $1.6 billion!
    - TMWNN 3y ago
      > It's all about what the customer pays. In the case of the Space Shuttle the customer also completely paid for the development of the launch system, so it doesn't really make sense to exclude that. Good point. I agree that from the customer's perspective, the flyaway cost is what matters. That said, wouldn't that also mean that for Starlink launches, the development cost would still have to be amortized across them when they are not for other launches? That doesn't feel right to me; surely the flyaway/incremental cost is still what matters.
- venusenvy47 3y ago
  That link compares a cargo Dragon mission to ISS against a Shuttle launch. Did a Shuttle mission have more overhead because of the people on board? I'm not clear if the Shuttle cost is just the launch, or the whole manned mission with all the astronaut preparation.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    That was just the cost of launching cargo. I found a report from NASA on the exact costs here. [1] --- Space Shuttle - $54,500/kg to orbit, $93,400/kg to the ISS Falcon 9 - $2,720/kg to orbit, $23,300/kg to the ISS --- The Falcon Heavy is about $1500/kg to orbit. Note the units as we're swapping between kg and pounds in this thread pretty regularly. [1] - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093

jibe 3y ago

It’s not uncommon to see much bigger improvements in cost than what SpaceX is targeting. E.g., solar. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices

somenameforme 3y ago

Most of what SpaceX has already achieved has sounded similarly, but costs were so astronomical to begin with that it didn't make any immediate difference to most people. So for instance the Space Shuttle was only retired in 2011. After all was said and done it ended up costing $1.6 billion per launch - about $30,000 per pound of payload. The Falcon Heavy costs about $0.1 billion (in reusable mode) and brought the costs down to less than $700/lb. That's a greater than 40x reduction in costs, which sounds too good to be true - but the problem is that even at $700/lb, that's still far too expensive to do anything remotely interesting. But take that down again and suddenly everything changes and we, more or less instantly, enter into an entirely new stage in human development and history. It'll be akin to the automobile. Henry Ford didn't make the first automobile, but he did make the first commercially affordable one. And, in the blink of an eye, society permanently changed because of it. --- As a fun aside, when doing a web search to grab the numbers above somehow this [1] ended up in the search results. It's from 2012 and somebody pondering SpaceX's wild claims of being able to get costs below $1,100 per kg ($1,500 inflation adjusted). [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992936

TMWNN 3y ago
>So for instance the Space Shuttle was only retired in 2011. After all was said and done it ended up costing $1.6 billion per launch - about $30,000 per pound of payload. The Falcon Heavy costs about $0.1 billion (in reusable mode) and brought the costs down to less than $700/lb. Is that an apples-to-apples comparison? Each shuttle launch cost $1.5 billion when including development cost (that is, $200 billion in total spending on the STS program / 135 launches); as your link discusses, the incremental cost per launch was "merely" $450-500 million. The $0.1 billion figure per Falcon Heavy launch is only the incremental cost since we don't know how much Falcon Heavy cost to develop (And how to account for the Falcon 9 development costs that Heavy is heavily based on?). Obviously Falcon 9/Heavy has every potential for launching far more times than the shuttle, further reducing the development cost allocated to each launch (or at least, until Starship gets going I guess). But we ought to be as accurate as possible in comparing Falcon and STS.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  It's all about what the customer pays. In the case of the Space Shuttle the customer also completely paid for the development of the launch system, so it doesn't really make sense to exclude that. It's also fair to include it because it's also included for SpaceX. When we say a Falcon Heavy got launch costs down to below $700/lb, that also includes a enough of a profit margin built in to completely fund their past operations and development, as well as future ones. SpaceX's 'real' (in the sense you're speaking of) per launch costs are going to be substantially lower than even $700/lb. In the case of Boeing/Lockeed/etc, they didn't have to pay for any of this - as it was all completely taxpayer funded. That should have enabled them to offer prices that would be unbeatable by any company paying for their own operations. --- To put this another way, imagine Boeing et al operated like SpaceX, or frankly most any "normal" company does. They would need to set their launch prices in a fashion such that they'd be able to recoup their tens of billions of dollars in development costs on the Space Shuttle, and then also add a profit margin on top. It's likely their charged cost per launch would have been even higher than $1.6 billion!
  - TMWNN 3y ago
    > It's all about what the customer pays. In the case of the Space Shuttle the customer also completely paid for the development of the launch system, so it doesn't really make sense to exclude that. Good point. I agree that from the customer's perspective, the flyaway cost is what matters. That said, wouldn't that also mean that for Starlink launches, the development cost would still have to be amortized across them when they are not for other launches? That doesn't feel right to me; surely the flyaway/incremental cost is still what matters.
venusenvy47 3y ago
That link compares a cargo Dragon mission to ISS against a Shuttle launch. Did a Shuttle mission have more overhead because of the people on board? I'm not clear if the Shuttle cost is just the launch, or the whole manned mission with all the astronaut preparation.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  That was just the cost of launching cargo. I found a report from NASA on the exact costs here. [1] --- Space Shuttle - $54,500/kg to orbit, $93,400/kg to the ISS Falcon 9 - $2,720/kg to orbit, $23,300/kg to the ISS --- The Falcon Heavy is about $1500/kg to orbit. Note the units as we're swapping between kg and pounds in this thread pretty regularly. [1] - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093